An appeal to our visitors

For the past ten years, I have operated an independent website at this address. For the past six, the operations of 4d2 dot org have met the current legal definition of an Internet Service Provider. I am proud of the fact that we have provided hosting to a number of individuals and groups who might not otherwise have had a voice on the Internet.

Perhaps this “mission” of ours has become less important and less interesting as Internet presence has become cheap and ubiquitous; however we are still receiving requests every few weeks from people who are interested in joining us. Even though our members have often posted contentious material, we have never placed restrictions on the free speech of anyone we have hosted, thanks in large part to the freedom of speech enshrined in the constitution of the United States of America, from which we operate.

Today there is a distinct possibility that we will lose those freedoms. At this moment, the U.S. Congress is debating the “Stop Online Piracy Act” bill. Disguised as an effort to combat online piracy, this bill will in fact grant the government broad-reaching power to censor and control the Internet in unprecedented ways. It places onerous restrictions on small Internet Service Providers like us — restrictions with which we have no reasonable means of complying. This bill will require us to adhere to a government-mandated “blacklist” of forbidden websites, preventing our users from accessing these websites by any means within our control. Because we provide Internet access to our customers via shell sessions, virtual desktop sessions, proxy systems, DNS lookups and other means, we will be required to comply with these unreasonable restrictions if this bill becomes law. For our administrative staff of one, this is an unmanageable burden.

Every major Internet advocacy organization has spoken out against SOPA. The creators of the Internet have even expressed their categorical opposition. Yet, the future of the Internet — a revolutionary open forum which we have all helped shape into what it is today — is being decided even now by a group of politicians, most of whom do not know the difference between a website and an inbox. If government truly does derive from the consent of the governed, there is no evidence of it today. The future of a medium rests squarely in the hands of people who do not understand, do not care, and answer only to their corporate benefactors.

I am writing this note because I believe our online home is under genuine attack by my government. Although 4d2 dot org has been my project, I like to think that a piece of it belongs to all of us who have used it as a meeting place over the years. If SOPA is passed in its current form, the future of this project is deeply uncertain. As a U.S. citizen, I cannot legally fail to enforce the restrictions imposed by SOPA, but as a conscionable and reasonably intelligent denizen of the Internet I categorically refuse to enforce them. If this bill becomes law, I may be left with no reasonable option but to shut down 4d2 dot org, at least in its current form.

I would like to encourage all of you who are citizens of the United States of America to read more about this bill, and if you agree with me to write or call your Congresspeople and express your displeasure with this bill and for the appalingly broken process that has brought it to the floor of the House.

Sincerely Yours
Michael Proctor
December 15, 2011
michael@4d2.org

There’s just one problem. The federal government doesn’t fund abortions and never has (Edit: with the exception of Medicaid funding for cases of rape and incest). What the Republicans actually voted to cut was a relatively modest $330 million in federal spending to provide critical reproductive health care services to economically vulnerable women. That is 100% of the federal funding to be received by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America — one of the most highly rated charities in America in terms of fiscal responsibility and organizational efficiency. Not one cent of that money would have been used to perform abortions. I won’t even get into defending the work that Planned Parenthood does, because we should all already appreciate that.

The 230 Republicans and 10 Democrats who voted to cut the funding knew all this. Please don’t forget that. They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the debate they were staging was a cynical emotional ploy that had nothing at all to do with the topic at hand. They believe that women shouldn’t have a choice in whether or not to be pregnant, and they would rather spend money maintaining race cars than uteri, simple as that.

The vote that occurred last night is a tragedy that reflects exactly what the elected government of the United States thinks of half of its constituency. I am not a feminist, but I have a very hard time thinking about this as anything other than blatantly and explicitly anti-female. It’s gross and slimy and I don’t even want to think about the moral character of people who would vote for such a thing while continuing to authorize an orgy of other government spending.

These cuts won’t become effective until the House passes the spending bill containing them, and the Senate approves it. So there’s a chance that this won’t stand. I would suggest that you write your representative but they’ve already made clear their commitment to playing along strict partisan lines. Instead I suggest you do what I did: Make a donation to Planned Parenthood in support of the valuable work they do.

I think it’s important to remember that I subscribe to the “every parent fucks up their child” view of life. One day M and my’s children will be sitting in a therapist’s chair talking about how we screwed them up – over-intellectualizing their problems, giving them horrible asthma and allergies which caused them to be incessantly teased, crippling them without a culture or religion to identify with. Leaving them alone and adrift in the cold tidal wave of reality.

Chances are they will also be crippled by their mother’s open-ness regarding sexuality. And possibly her unreasonable desire to have an outdoor shower and a million octopus stuffed animals.

My point is this: No one is perfect. Every parent will pass a piece of their problems onto their children, along with an enormous chunk of their admirable qualities. I said I loved my parents. I do. They’re funny, moral, thoughtful, intelligent. I am, in my estimation, a totally bad-ass person and at least 50% of that, if not more, is due to my parents’ hard work and good natures. I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating – I would sit down with any of my siblings and have an awesome time. They’re all funny, interesting, intelligent people – who are also moral and caring.

I should also say this – my parents have suffered tremendous guilt for many years due to my mental illness (which is NOT related to being hit). They’ve paid for my therapy, they cried and held me and tried to convince me I was a worthwhile person. It wasn’t their job to do or their problem to fix. It was MY responsibility.

About a year ago, when I attempted suicide, my mom sat in a waiting room late into the night. She could not see me in the emergency room, but she sat there for hours with my brother and my husband. When I was moved into the psychiatric unit, she visited me twice – I was there for 4.5 days. How horribly stupid do you feel sitting across from the woman who birthed you, held you, fed you, burped you, untied your shoes, taught you to read, to cross-stitch, to color, hugged you, tucked you in, drove you to and from therapy for years, made you sandwiches, listened to your curse-word laden stories about your day, listened to your crappy band, read your crappy poems… how horribly stupid? I could not begin to estimate the amount of stress, energy, time and money I cost my parents. But I thought I had the choice to throw all their work away.

So yes, our parents fuck us up. Most of the time, they fuck us up enough so that we fit in with our peers. And they do it all at an enormous personal cost to them.

So, here’s to parents. We wouldn’t be here if they didn’t screw.

Whatever happened to politicians being politicians and activists being activists.

Let me break it down.

Activists get shit done. They focus on one problem or one section of  a problem and they work their asses off to solve it. Eventually, when they find a solution that works in multiple arenas, they convince politicians (who know the rules but can’t think worth a damn to solve an actual problem) to make a law to support what they’ve already found to be  a solution to a social problem.

Politicians don’t get shit done. We keep acting like they should, but they don’t do that. They’re mired in bureaucracy and they can’t think outside the box (or Capitol, whatever) long enough to come up with a viable solution to any problem. That’s okay.

The shit is this: we’re lazy. Most of us aren’t activists. We’re too lazy to think and way too lazy to go out into the streets and talk to the people who have the real problems. I have some friends who do that shit. I admire the hell out of them. But because we’re not all activists for whatever small cause holds our heart, we expect the assholes we elect – who have no real thought or power to change things (or motivation, really – the status quo put them where they are and it pays their bills)… we expect them to be our  activists.

And nothing gets done, and we wonder why…

I think it’s okay to trot all that crap out. Because she attached her name to it. Let’s trot it all out and leave it at that.

Anyone who would blame her in a direct sense is an idiot and an asshole. But, do I believe she can personally wash her hands of all responsibility? Absolutely not. No one who has contributed to the emotional appeals, inflammatory and downright violent rhetoric that political discourse in this country has degraded into can wash their hands of this event.  That means you too, Olbermann.

Here’s the problem with emotional appeals. This will always be the problem with emotional appeals. Stupid people respond most to them. Stupid people are, by nature, less critical of what they’re being told. If you want to make an emotional appeal to make people adopt abused animals or give money to kids with cancer – that makes sense and is harmless. If you make an emotional appeal for the violent overthrow of the government in place, no matter who you are, YOU ARE AN IRRESPONSIBLE ASSHOLE.

Not only are you over-simplifying what is bound to be a complicated issue (in fact, politically almost NOTHING is black and white in my mind except gay marriage), but the people most motivated by that rhetoric are those least capable of critically breaking it down. When you INCITE those people to VIOLENCE, you ARE at fault, in some way.

I’m not saying the cat who shot those people yesterday watched Sarah Palin. Maybe he didn’t. McVeigh didn’t need anything other than the government’s actions in Waco and his own critical thinking to motivate the Oklahoma City Bombing. He was wrong, an asshole, and what he did was just as fucked up as what he was aiming to criticize. But then, that’s always the risk you take when you do something violent.

But my point is this – he will not be the first person to go on a rampage in this country in the near future. We’re so focused on attacks from outside our nation, and the inside is what’s crumbling most quickly. It’s crumbling because we’re all so emotional and so victimized by politics that we can’t even talk to each other anymore.  These assholes talk about compromise in the same breath as “don’t retreat… reload”. No one wants to compromise. We want to win by any means necessary. Again, this is both sides. They want to be right more than they want to solve problems.

But my real point is this: we should hold people responsible and publicly shame them when they use emotional, incendiary rhetoric to motivate people to action. Sarah Palin is fine with what she has said. She shouldn’t be.

Here’s a facebook post with the “crosshairs” picto. It’s still up.

I’m not going to say it’s her fault. She didn’t hold a gun to anyone and make them shoot anyone else. But I will say this: if I posted on this blog (and I have much less sway with people than Palin) and just said something as ambiguous as we should take care of someone, politically. And that person wound up dead or injured. Even if I had nothing to do with it. My heart would hurt. I would regret what I had said.

Because I’m a moral person. And that’s what moral people do. They recognize something was inflammatory and may have had unintentional consequences. And they feel bad about it.

I understand that’s an emotional appeal, but there’s no violence behind it.  No call to action. Just deep sadness.