Well it's been a minute or two since I've been around these parts and it turns out that 2020 is a completely shitty year, for real this time.
The past 3 years have often been called by various left of center folks as "the worst year ever" - well it turns out that yes, 2020 came along and said "hold my beer" and here we are.
I don't have to much to say about the pandemic, other than that it sucks and that I pray every day for things to get better and for it to end sooner rather than later.
I don't think the nationwide lockdown was the correct strategy - in hindsight we cratered our economy for a "good reason" in that we didn't want hospitals overwhelmed, but now there's lots of evidence that that wouldn't have happened regardless. But I'm not really here to Monday morning quarterback, what's done is done, and it's done.
It's very evident now, after 2 weeks of protests and riots that the lockdown was never really about health and safety - if you open a restaurant or nail salon you can get arrested, but marching shoulder to shoulder with 20,000 people is no problem because social justice or something.
Whatever.
No, I'm not here to bitch about the bad strategy of putting ourselves under house arrest for months at a time, I'm not here to say too much more about that - no, the reason I'm here is to say that I'm both scared and angry over what is happening to our country in regards to the ever growing hoard of thought police.
I've warned about this for years - and I am so sad to say I was absolutely right. I have seen it now with my own eyes - on facebook, I have been castigated and shamed for posting what I thought wasn't political. And I have seen much worse happen to much nicer people than myself.
This sweet woman named Alice, who was a co-worker of mine back in the day, now lives in the midwest with her husband and beautiful kids; she borrowed a facebook post of mine that read as such -
"I will never discard a friendship over something so small as politics"
Now I got a couple of lukewarm and borderline negative reactions from my post on my wall - but Alice took my post with my blessing and posted it on her wall, and the comments she got from her so called friends were just disgusting.
"You're making yourself feel better because of your white fragility"
"You can minimize politics because you aren't living under a repressive and systematically racist system"
"You are lost and confused and you need to read Howard Zinn (or various radical left authors) and educate yourself"
"You are perpetuating white supremacy"
I'm paraphrasing all of these - but this was the gist of the comments.
"Alice, you're a racist piece of shit and fuck you."
Actually, if they had said that I would at least respect it. There is almost nothing more infuriating to me than this passive aggressive and cryptic accusation of racism that is now the inevitable response from anyone who has bought into the leftist poison that has infected our schools, universities and corporate America.
And make no mistake - it is poison.
If you say "all lives matter" you are a racist piece of shit.
Now I understand there is an argument to be had that saying "all lives matter" is indeed insensitive and offensive. I don't really care, but the argument goes that you wouldn't say "all houses matter" if people were talking about houses that were on fire. Whatever, it's an argument and that's fine.
But here's the problem - in the minds of these brainwashed people - there is no argument. You are to submit to the narrative that saying "all lives matter" is offensive. There's no argument. There's no discussion, this is not up for debate.
You are to literally bend a knee to this and other weak platitudes.
Saying "I don't see color" is offensive because it implies that you are ignoring the plight of people of color.
Saying "I don't support rioters and looters" or even worse "Looters and rioters are criminals" - is very offensive because you are ignoring the anger and the voices of the unheard. Again - there's no discussion here or dialogue - there is only submission.
Well - I'm here on record to say two things.
First, the less important thing I have to say is. - I disagree with every single one of these infantile arguments, and the seemingly endless other arguments that all feed into this stupid notion that black people are delicate flowers who can't handle being treated as equals.
I mean really - is there anything more racist than saying that black people aren't able to deal with being treated with the same respect and accountability that we treat white people with? How fucked up is that?
Nah. I categorically reject this despicable notion from affluent white people that black people are to be coddled. I'm going to treat black people the way I want to be treated, that means as an equal. And if they fuck up and do something thuggish I'm going to call them a thug just as I would any white asshole who did some stupid shit. If they bust a shop window, they should go to jail and stay there for awhile. Don't care what color they are - I know, a very "triggering micro-aggression" or some other stupid shit. Don't care. Fuck off.
Second - and this is much more important - is that this notion that there can't even be a discussion to begin with over these childish beliefs - is where I stop the ride and get off.
Cancel culture it turns out, is a very real thing - and now it's being exercised on the premise that if you don't swallow the soft-racism of the radical left, you are to be cast out and lumped in with white supremacists.
In tandem with this relatively recent edict that has infected all social media platforms and nearly the entirety of corporate culture - is what I call the 2nd HAMMER.
The second hammer is this - when you inevitably fuck up and accidentally say something truthful like "people who burn down businesses in their own neighborhoods are thugs" (I can hear the gasps as I type this) - and somehow you were foolish enough to say or write this in public - you must immediately be called out as racist of course and of course be made to apologize.
Not just apologize, but flagellate yourself to the extreme and beg for mercy.
That's when the 2nd HAMMER comes and hits hard.
Your apology, your begging - all of it will NOT be accepted or entertained. You are DONE. You are FUCKING HISTORY.
Your life is over - you should probably go kill yourself.
We've seen it over and over and again and again
So here's the thing - I recently went onto facebook and went back and deleted every single one of my posts on the corona virus, even though at the time I thought foolishly that all of these data driven posts weren't political. Turns out, they are and I'm a white supremacist or something.
Yes - it doesn't matter what the truth is here, the point is subservience to the woke mob. The point is to be shamed into fealty.
I also deleted my handful of very recent posts that did stray into political territory - including the post saying I would never de-friend someone over politics.
Really - all of these posts were not put up for me to make a political point, but to call for unity and kindness and healing.
I don't know what I was thinking.
Took all of that touchy feely shit down.
Now once again it's all family, work and silly cat videos.
The reason I did this is because a friend of mine that I played poker with at my local Moose lodge (well I don't play live poker these days, pandemic and all) shot me a message out of the blue the other day. The conversation was mainly me listening to what he had to say.
He works in Hollywood, not sure what he does but he's in the business - he told me of his friendship with Andrew Breitbart and Gary Sinise back in the day, and they had an organization called FOA which stood for "Friends of Abe"
Wow, I thought, that sounds like a great thing. An anonymous support group for people in the biz who have different views than the militant majority in Hollywood.
Well, the point of my friends story was to tell me that after almost a decade the organization had to be disbanded because they were infiltrated with undercover leftists who promptly went out and made a list of the members and called studios and production houses and said don't hire these people because they are nazis.
Yeah, that is a scary thing that I was told that and it caused me to panic a bit and go to town on deleting my facebook "political" posts - which weren't really political but still no doubt would be taken as such.
Now, it may be too late, word is no doubt already out among many industry professionals - Chris is a nazi piece of shit. There's not much I can do if I do end up on a list.
I am hoping and praying that my good reputation at my job and with the crews I've worked with as someone who is relatively easy to work with and professional will be enough - but I don't know...
I've been at the same production company now for 26 years, and I love it and I love my employer. My employer is in his 7th decade of life, and I have no doubt he intends to rock on as long as he can but at some point he will retire, and then I likely will be looking for work elsewhere.
I hope and pray that some of this sickness that has infected our country and is much more destructive than any actual virus, will have abated by then.
By writing my views down here, in this "anonymous" blog, I still am taking a risk. But honestly, I'm going to just have to live with that. At a certain point grown-ups have to take calculated risks, or alternatively just crawl under their beds and never come out.
I'm going to speak my mind here, and to my friends and confidants in private groups on social media - I have to be able to be comfortable with myself and my views. As much as I like to preach that politics don't matter - my views I must concede are part of who I am, just a bit anyways. It's not healthy for me to stay bottled up over issues that are important and watch my country take blow after blow and not say anything.
Someday I pray also that I may have the courage to come out of the political closet entirely. I know a man who I consider a friend, though our relationship is purely professional - he is the host of one of our shows and he also is a working and very visible actor.
He is out of the political closet as a full throated Trump supporter and he still gets work - so he gives me hope. I greatly admire his courage and steadfast refusal to be silenced.
But he is an outlier - there are not many working actors or other industry professionals who can be open about their political views. They understand the consequences of being truthful and they above all fear the 2nd HAMMER.
I have a friend who is on one of my crews on a big network show - he is hilarious and fun and a completely out of the closet gay man and no-one cares because he is great at his job and a super cool dude to be around. Everyone, including me, loves the guy.
He also has a secret that he will never tell anyone. He confided in me late at night, I presume it was a drunken text - that he is a conservative Republican and a Trump supporter. He made me promise I would never tell anyone, and of course I promised - being one myself.
Yes, you read all that right. He is absolutely terrified of being "outed" as a conservative, and confided this to me because he had heard the rumors that I was a FOA as well. Pretty fucked up if you ask me.
I wish there was an easy answer for me, and for no doubt the thousands of others like me in entertainment who not only have to keep their views to themselves (itself not that big a deal) but actually risk losing their livelihoods if they ever slip and say something that doesn't toe the party line.
But for now it will have to be enough for me to vent here and other mostly private venues - and of course risk my banishment and 2nd HAMMER anyways.
But one thing I promise you - as GOD as my witness - If I should ever be called out by the woke mob for something "racist" that I said - I PROMISE YOU - I will not apologize to anyone.
I will not apologize for speaking my mind, for expressing my views, for seeing the world and stating the truth as I see it.
I will not apologize, even if my job depends on it - because it wouldn't be sincere - and also I know, thanks to the 2nd HAMMER, it wouldn't matter anyways. I'm not going to beg and grovel like a bitch, because the mob won't be satisfied anyways.
So fuck them.
If I have to live with being a Subway sandwich artist, or any other noble but low paying profession, than so be it.
I will never bend the knee to this leftist, Marxist garbage, I will never bow my head to this awful nonsense about not saying "all lives matter" or "blue lives matter" because black people can't handle it. Fuck that.
I will never pledge fealty to the woke mob. I was raised, from the time I was born, to not see color, and that's how I'm gong to continue my life. To be kind, to be respectful, and to treat people as I want to be treated. I certainly don't want to be treated as if I'm delicate and can't handle living in a meritocracy - I don't want hand-outs, I don't want special treatment or allowances because of shit that happened in the past. I don't want any of that - and I'm not going to do that to any one else.
I have too much time on this earth - traveling the world to almost 40 countries, many of them deeply impoverished - to change my views on this, the most basic tenets of human decency.
It is MORE than good enough to treat people with kindness and compassion.
It is MORE than good enough to dig deep for empathy when dealing with people who are angry and lashing out.
It is MORE than good enough to still hold these same people accountable for their own behavior and to flatly condemn any kind of violence or criminal behavior that they bring to the table.
It is NOT acceptable to condemn people for doing their best, for being kind, for disagreeing with the majority opinion.
It is NOT acceptable to shame people for different views or even wanting to stay out of the conversation. It is everyone's God given right to abstain from outrage if they so choose.
And really, that's all I have to say for now. Hopefully I can write a bit more here in the upcoming second half of this awful year. I just have to get the energy up and do it - I'm glad I did just now. Much better than keeping all of this pent up, that's for sure.
Peace out for now.
