I’ve been wrong, so very wrong. With a feeling of righteous outrage, I’ve written hateful things using words and names which I believe have shown my lack of respect for the impact those words and names have had on my credibility and character.

The truth is, it’s not okay to use hate language on anyone. Not even Donald Trump. You know who it hurt? Not Donald Trump. It hurt me.

For every utterance of anything foul and hateful, I have a price to pay, and it’s too much for me to bear.

A month ago I left Facebook again. I left behind friends I didn’t want to leave. I miss them, but I had already been missing them for months. I rarely heard from most, and one friend who acually sent me inspirational books, who interacted with me a lot, probably wonders why I abandoned my account…and friends.

The reason was simple, as I stated a year ago, the first time I left Facebook. Too much hate, too much misinformation, all bringing me down and making me sick. I deleted my account abruptly, with little warning. I awoke one morning and read something that I can’t recall, but which proved to be the last straw.

Every day I realize that I wasn’t finished with just leaving Facebook. That was the beginning. And I’ve got a few things to tell you.

THE CORNER ROOM

Robert Johnson, often referred to as the father of modern blues, lived from 1911 to 1938. If you’ve never heard of him, don’t feel bad. In his lifetime he was unknown but blues purists and historians know his music well.

He was struggling. It was said that he wasn’t really that good until he disappeared for a couple of weeks, then returned with amazing guitar skills. As the legend goes, he went to a crossroads in Mississippi and there sold his soul to the devil who then tuned his guitar and showed him some things, and Johnson went on to publish an amazing body of work until his death at age 27, one of the first of the well-known “27 Club.”

A friend said he was a decent harmonica player but a lousy player of the acoustic guitar. When he returned from the crossroads, he was clearly a master.

It isn’t known if the story is true, but I’m here to tell you, other names you readily recognize have been said to have done the same. I may be one of them.

From 2006 to 2014 I lived in an upstairs corner room of a group home. The house was haunted, and is the one I lived in during the time when the stray cat came to adopt me (see “The Cat Who Knew Too Much” in my archives). I was challenged to write a novel by a sibling who was critical of my nonfiction blog. His challenge: write a book with vampires, werewolves and zombies. With all the accumulated TV, film and printed literature in abundance, that was a tall order. How would I do such a thing without retreading what’s out there?

I sat down to type in October of 2011. What happened was that the book largely wrote itself. It flowed, came from places I’d never known, was better than anything I could have written. But it’s dark, and I more than rose to the challenge. I outdid my own hopes.

Finishing it proved elusive. I stumbled around with several different ideas but didn’t like them. Then I moved out and couldn’t write anything at all.

I can do it now, but it’s so dark that I wonder whether I should. Only two test readers have reacted favorably, and only one of those was enthusiastic. She’s a voracious reader, loves science fiction and fantasy, which I put a lot of into the story.

I never watched a single episode of the CW series “Supernatural” until this year. Some things in it are very similar including a couple of real characters from the supernatural world. At times dirty and hilarious, my book shares that trait with the show. But they’re not the same. My treatment of the characters and the story diverge greatly.

After 6 years of not having an ending, I figured out why. My lead character was trapped by the storyline. Meaning well, I’d turned him into a seriously evil creature. How could I get out of that without a hokey ending?

I can’t stand “Supernatural” and made it to season 5, beyond which I cannot imagine going. You don’t keep doing something repeatedly and not jump the shark. It grew tedious for me. Besides, if I decide to finish the book, I don’t want that material to influence me.

But how I came to be in such a creative groove with the story and considering that Satan is a main character, I wonder what was influencing me. I want to think I’m that good. That the room I was in was conducive to creativity.

That’s true to a point. I was standing out on the porch one night. Down the hill on a side street, a house sat, a floodlight on. All I could see was a utility pole, a backboard for basketball and the roof. But we’re tuned to see things, like faces in clouds, and that little patch in the darkness produced an image that was priceless. I made a really evil character just from what I saw. It affected a lot of the story. The book seemed to be writing itself. Once, I came across a word in the old MS Windows XT dictionary that caught my eye. I used the word as a chapter name and formed a whole subplot out of it. It’s good, too. Very good.

My dilemma comes not from the similarities between the book and other material out there. It is a question of responsibility. I want to publish it, and it would gather at least a “cult” following. The lead character was written for Johnny Depp should a screen adaptation come about, and he could do it, no question. But it can’t be done in a movie; the story cannot be edited and not lose its impact. As I wrote, I became convinced that it was perfect for an HBO limited series. From that point forward, that became my intent. With a three camera setup, and minimal special effects, I could see it being a hit. It’s that good.

However, the dark theme and the inclusion of demons have made me wonder what would happen if I were to publish.

Remember the film “The Truman Show”? You know, where Jim Carrey discovers that he’s a subject of a TV series, that cameras have always been on him, that everyone he has ever known was really an actor paid to interact with him? Well, not long after that movie came out, psychologists encountered “The Truman Syndrome,” a disorder in which people believe that they are the subjects of a TV show and want out. They’ve gone so far as to petition HBO to release them. I guess the fact that I consider HBO the prime choice for a film adaptation of my book struck a note with me when I read about the Truman disorder and how people seemed to think Home Box Office was pulling their strings. Worse, reports tell us that the disorder is difficult to treat because the patient believes that even the psychologist treating them is part of the show. Ultimately, for that reason, the subjects are untreatable because they’ve convinced themselves that they are, in the end, utterly helpless. In a bizarre way, what they’ve done is to teach themselves the learned behavior known as helplessness, and that is positively way out of the scope of known personality disorders. It has the unfortunate ramification that media can cause susceptible individuals to drive themselves mad, with equally unfortunate consequences, ranging from desperation and presenting a danger to others, all the way to suicide.

It’s the first concrete proof I’ve ever seen that anything in the entertainment industry could cause harm.

Oh, I’m aware of close calls. Maybe that is an oversimplification, but copycats did take movies like “Boondock Saints”, “Blair Witch”, and “Amityville Horror” too seriously. The former may not have led to lethal vigilantism, but there was violence. The latter two caused endless traffic to the Amityville house, even to the extreme of people actually intruding on the property and at least a few walking right in when the door was answered. The windows and front facade had to be changed before it slacked off but interest in the house has never gone away. Awful B movies passed off as “sequels” to the original led people to believe that demonic activity in the house was ongoing, and the awfulness of the scripts, production values and budgets, along with atrocious acting could not keep amateur ghost hunters away. Then came the remake of the original starring Ryan Reynolds, and I cant forgive him for that or “Green Lantern”; I’m sorry, but nothing can erase those dreadful choices.

In Maryland, the real town near the events of “Blair Witch” hasn’t known a day since where someone didn’t drive through or go tromping around in the woods. Now, that’s not anyone’s fault but those who get caught up in fiction and go too far. Bad choices aren’t necessary. They cause harm, perhaps not much. Sometimes they merely take away the peace of a small town or a single homeowner. The Amityville house still attracts attention, but there was never any evidence that it was haunted. It was in fact the place of a horrible crime, but the story should have ended there. The Lutz family moved in almost as George’s business was going o hit bottom. They got in over their heads with a mortgage they couldn’t pay, and the haunting provided a way out. At one point one of the two recanted the story but then, offered money for interviews, the went back to the original story. History having been rewritten, the house remains infamous to this day despite its makeover.

Any story involving Ed and Lorraine Warren is suspect, including the Amityville saga; in “The Conjuring 2” they were portrayed as being far more involved and critical to the case than they actually were. Not only that, but the story was significantly altered in other ways. Hollywood has taken “based on true events” too far before, but this is now understood by most to translate as “The following is total bullshit.” Most. Not all. A character may be shown driving a blue 1968 Volkswagen Bug and the real person actually had one. Well, close. The one in the episode may be yellow. But the rest? No resemblance to real events at all.

The proliferation of supernatural “reality shows” has become a plague. The Travel Channel switched formats with Destination America not long ago and ramped up its production of supernatural schlock so much that people have gone two ways: they can’t get enough, or they call out the channel, producers and Facebook accounts of the stars of the shows. The latter is growing at a fast pace. It’s gotten so bad that disclaimers front certain shows such as “The Dead Files”: “This Program is for Entertainment Purposes Only.” One thing that stands out is that Amy, the “psychic,” always arrives after dark and invariably, fog is clinging to the entire lawn. Every time, no matter what time of year, no matter the geographical location. Fog, everywhere. None airborne, always on the ground, indicating gas, dispensed from some vessel like a liquid nitrogen or oxygen tank. I know because I used to watch the rigs at Airgas unloading tankers of liquid gas into the liquid towers at our plant. There was always some pressure release and the liquid would hit the air, causing the cryogenic gas to boil and turn into a heavy gas cloud which clung to the ground.

Any real show wouldn’t need cheap tricks to set a mood for the viewer; therefore everything else about the series is suspect, but it has a fanbase that’s just plain enraptured. How gullible could you get?

But the shows do something far worse than make up things and present them as real. That mix is a heavy influence on viewers. You’ll also find plenty more on YouTube, including ghost hunters and urbex channels where young people and old venture to private property to video ghosts, demons or abandoned places which are extremely dangerous. One team, a father and daughter, push their luck way too far in desert locations where old buildings and manufacturing facilities and even mines exist, and where anyone could be squatting or hiding from the law, and would love to shoot the dad and have some sick things in mind for the daughter. Why would any father put his child into such a dreadfully dangerous situation?

Two teens enter an abandoned theme park on ATVs and that’s a creepy enough thing to do right from the start; splitting up and exploring is even creepier, and stupid to boot. The whole point of urban exploration is the unknown, and they could run into trouble that they can’t get out of. We sit here and condemn Trump for needless deaths due to his bungling with the coronavirus, but some people go to places they know they shouldn’t, and needlessly risk their lives. That makes no sense to me. Nor do the ones who have ouija sessions on camera in a real effort to summon evil entities. This fixation and risk taking is nothing but what is is: foolish. Behaviour during the pandemic is equally peppered with irresponsible actions by people, and “COVID-19 parties” are a real thing. Even incidental contact passes the virus on, because people distance but linger and chat without masks. Or they fail to sanitize their hands and remove their masks as soon as they exit a store. They clearly aren’t concerned, or they wouldn’t do it. That’s despite everything they’ve been told through their local health department or government or any other source.

From the beginning, Trump has said such things that people have died because they believed him. It was first a hoax, then he had to face it and said it would “disappear,” then came the controversy over masks, ending with him blaming Fauci for saying at the beginning that masks may not be effective which isn’t the whole truth. There was a shortage of medical grade masks, and that was cause for alarm. They couldn’t spare them for anyone outside of healthcare workers. Non medical grade masks were not known to be effective, so it wasn’t an immediate issue. The consensus was that masks couldn’t hurt. As soon as it was learned that any face covering could help, Andrew Cuomo was one of the first governors to mandate wearing them. Store chains then began to require them. The partial shutdown and masks led to New York proving that these things are not optional. They save lives.

Meanwhile Deborah Birx has been on Fox or OANN, saying things Trump wanted her to say. I’ve gotten mixed messages from her just during press conferences, but what she was doing on right-wing media I was ignorant of because I don’t watch it. As soon as she changed up, Trump called her “Pathetic”; and Trump was interviewed by Axios on HBO, and the president had no idea he was being taken apart. It’s painful to watch; never before has an American president said so many stupid things nor lied so much in a single interview. He claimed he had done more for “blacks than any other president” including Lyndon Johnson. He was dumb enough to show the true depth of his pettiness and racism by saying that he did not attend services for the late John Lewis because Lewis “didn’t come to my inauguration.” He handed over printouts that “proved” that the United States was the “lowest” of all other countries in COVID-19 mortality, and repeated that the only reason we have more cases is because we test “too much.”

It is unclear how delusional he is, but when people who trust you despite your lies listen to you, then die because of that trust, it’s evil.

ULTIMATE DISHONOR

And evil runs this country. The new postmaster general is slowing down mail delivery. This, at Trump’s direction, for several reasons. At least for the census, but also to prepare for mail-in voting ballots. He is trying to get reelected by once again cheating and having help from Russia. He never confronted Putin about his bounty placed on American soldiers in Afghanistan, which we now know to have caused real casualties. Putin desperately wants Trump to stay.

But the American people seem to be progressively fed up with him. Republicans are on Facebook saying they’ve had enough, heard enough. Some senators are distancing themselves from him. And that’s encouraging. There’s hope.

But we must be resolute and on guard. We can still see another four-year term with the nightmares only getting worse. It certainly can happen.

Trump has “joked” that he wants to be “president for life” but it is not a joke; he’s serious. He has messed with the Judicial branch and infiltrated it. He has compromised intelligence and the military. He failed to impose sanctions against Russia for murdering American troops and there is no reason to believe that he can or will ever do anything honorable. He will sabotage the election any way he can. He will attempt to and possibly even succeed in delaying the election under pretenses including a sudden turnaround and total confirmation of the seriousness of COVID-19 and the illegitimacy of mail-in voting, and, failing all of that, should he lose, will refuse to leave the White House in January. Never underestimate Donald Trump.

Along the way, chaos will break out in places. COVID-19 will continue to kill. Sometimes because it’s that contagious. Sometimes because people have a great capacity for doing evil things.

CORRUPTED BLOOD

In an MMORPG, short for massively multiplayer online role-playing game in which you will meet the characters of other players as you complete quests and battles, there are often problems. These can be glitches and exploits that require patches, servers going down, and other technical issues. But often, it is the players themselves that cause trouble. From bullying characters with less power who are not as developed because they are beginning a new game to headset taunting and berating, other players can ruin a game for you. I refuse to play against anyone else for this reason. It’s the AI or nothing.

But in 2005, the very popular game “World of Warcraft” had something truly bizarre happen. Sometimes online games add new content, from new levels to spells or weapons and costumes. In this case a new dungeon was added and there was a boss fight at the end. Bosses usually mark level endings, meaning they must be defeated for you to exit that level. Bosses are formidable AI opponents with the ability to take a lot of damage before they fall. They’re programmed in such a way that they appear to be pretty pissed off that you’ve made it so far. I’ve often been spooked by bosses, like Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid. I didn’t know that to beat him you had to plug your controller into the “player two” port, otherwise he’d “read your mind” and counter every attack. So, I learned to hate boss fights. There have been some which I’ve never been able to beat, causing me to quit a game in frustration.

Apparently, the boss added to the new dungeon in WOWC would cast a spell on the player’s character as soon as it was attacked by the player. The spell was “Corrupted Blood” which lasted for a few seconds and weakened the characters who teamed up to fight the boss. Due to code errors, the virus didn’t exactly wear off. It was caught by pets, who couldn’t be healed. Pets are non playable characters, or NPCs. Infected with Corrupted Blood, they left the dungeon and spread it to any player it came near. What happened was a virtual pandemic and it spread fast. Some players accidentally transmitted it to other players, while some uninfected players grouped together in isolation. It was so sensational and weird that epidemiologists actually watched it. They found that players who had leveled up their powers to heal acted like doctors, attending the sick, while others who knew they were infected knowingly passed it on. We have seen this happen. People who either deny that COVID-19 is real or those who have few or mild symptoms deliberately go out, grocery shopping or to a restaurant, and have spread it to unknown numbers of people. Some dine-in restaurants had been open only a short time before having to shut down again because employees got sick or the place was named in contact traces.

I’m sorry, but that recklessness was heinous. Selfish people, or people who don’t care about others, will always be with us. They always have been and they always will be. You’d think that the Black Lives Matter protests would have caused more people and police officers to correct their behaviour, to use more self restraint, but that has not been the case. Held at gunpoint, handcuffed with two crying babies in their car, two women were held 45 minutes and the doors to the car were open, exposing the infants to the heat. That’s positively bestial. Babies die that way.

There’s a backlash happening in response to the massive protests, and the backlash is pure racism, pure revenge and anger. Cops are more likely to deploy in riot gear for the slightest reason. It won’t end soon.

You want these things to stop?

They won’t, but there’s help. Vote Donald Trump out of office. Fire him. He’s manipulating the census for congressional districts, so go online and do the census. It’s for us, not him.

Don’t pay attention to polls; that was part of the problem in 2016. Clinton led the polls and too many people said, “Oh, she’s got this,” and they stayed home. Don’t believe for a second that Trump can’t win. With all his interference, he’s not going to lose unless we all turn out in numbers. If you have to vote in person, do it. Use masks, and add a filtering layer using a square of pantyhose or a paper filter, whatever you want. There’s no such thing as too much. You’ll be directed to use social distancing and it’s essential that you take hand sanitizer with you to use when you’re finished. Minutes, and you’ll be out of there. If you have to, vote by absentee ballot right now. The delays in the USPS closer to the election could cause your vote to be mishandled or not counted. Senator Amy Klobuchar, who I have great respect for, confirms that the mail service is likely to cause problems with mail-in voting.

She’s concerned as well about people who get critical medications by mail. Make no mistake: Donald Trump doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about your medications or health. He doesn’t, and shame on you if you think otherwise because with COVID-19, he’s proven that death means nothing to him (“It is what it is”).

The deaths of soldiers means nothing to him. Empathy means nothing to him. He once told a soldier’s widow, “He knew what he signed up for.” I seriously doubt any president ever showed such a coldness toward the family of a fallen warrior for our country. Which, by the way, he’s proven he has no love for. He can’t feel patriotic or empathetic. He does not feel love, or know what it is. He sits and watches Americans die, and lies and deflects blame. He’s got to go.

We will only defeat him with reason, solidarity and Marquis of Queensberry rules. We have to be better than him. No stooping to his level, fighting his way by his rules. I promise, Joe Biden will not engage Trump on Trump’s turf. He’s too smart for that and he’s too honorable. Keep from giving any weapons to trolls, die-hard republicans and possible Russians on social media. We’ll lose. Joe is the better man. He’s always been good and kind and decent. He’s lost a lot. He will feel for others who have lost. We need him. Be responsible, and we can win this.

As for me, I don’t know what I’m going to do with my book. I have to decide. I’m afraid people will read it and come away with ideas like parts of it are real. I couldn’t live with that. We’ll see. Meanwhile, I’ve turned a page. No more name calling for me. I want to be the better man. A responsible man. A decent man. After all, that’s all I ever wanted to be.

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRRESPONSIBLILITY

Irresponsibility is obviously the opposite of a place or state in which an individual or group assume accountability for their’s or another’s actions, and it could be parents of children or a plant manager to employees and everything from production to safety. It is what Donald Trump and the sycophants who imitate pilot fish do. Irresponsibility is Donald Trump calling an accidental explosion of stored ammonium nitrate in Beirut an “attack.”

Irresponsibility is Donald Trump pushing for school reopening during a pandemic claiming a thousand lives a day.

At what point do we need to reflect on our words and actions and attempt to find the possible consequences? Because time after time, people have proven that they can be influenced by just about anything. And that influence can lead to disaster.

Trump originally said that the coronavirus would simply go away. Later when we had a hundred thousand dead, he repeated it. He said, “and it will go away.”

That’s a heavy lie, a twisting of facts, a gaslighting for all America: “No, you don’t see any bodies, do you? Therefore no one has died.” It is absolutely Orwellian and one more reason he has to go. Irresponsibility is changing that to “It is what it is.”

Irresponsibility is us, screaming and writing, scribbling horrible things about Trump, wasting energy and becoming exactly like the enemy, fighting by his rules, on his turf. We have other choices. We can talk. Debate with civility. Disengage from those who will not hear reason. Engage those who are willing, using reason, kindness and facts.

Perhaps Longfellow had such a choice in mind when he wrote his famous poem:

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

We can shoot arrows that land without changing a thing, or breathe a song into the air and find later that it left a significant impact. I’ll take the song any day.