Why I don't complain about Bill Gates.

I lost five percent of my followers with that “science” piece two days ago. Let’s see who I can shake off with this one. People don’t like it if you poke at their religion.

I generally try to suffer fools gladly and I tone it down accordingly but after a few weeks I find that I have a tendency to have brief fits of ungladness and I end up writing too truthfully.

As a white male who turned down Yale for grad school and who was spread too thin and with too many interests (French philosophy, Native American studies, early American history, theology, and literature) strung out between Harvard, Princeton, and the school that invented woke, Duke, I was in something of a pickle when both my handlers died (I didn’t do it, I swear). Dr. Ted Davidson of Duke died of a brain tumor, and Dr. Walter Hughes of Harvard died of AIDS, whatever that is. May they rest in pieces. I’ve never mentioned them in print before but their names are worthy of record. Both died quickly and as a bit of a surprise. On the other hand they say that death is always a bit of a surprise to the people doing it.

People in the academy got tired of white males in the eighties but it took Duke to turn hunting whities into a full-time occupation in the nineties. Scary? Not really unless you had a bourgeois heart. Funny? Oh my yes.

So yeah, both my handlers kicked the bucket at precisely that career moment (me I’m talkin, though I suppose death also wrecked the careers of my handlers) where I would need the magical two primary letters from handlers to get the magical first job at a real school, not one of the lower three-thousand American colleges and universities. This death stuff was on top of my odd trajectory (between Cambridge, Princeton, and Durham while weirdly avoiding New Haven) and when combined would have normally taken a white male’s career to the grave with his dead handler’s bodies (Walter had my dissertation on his desk when he died). Nevertheless I not only finished the doctorate using pinch hitters who didn’t like me because I was a shit disturber but I got a good job and even came back later to teach at Princeton for a bit as a real prof. By the time I was finished I barely believed in credentials but I had six degrees (of separation ha ha) that suggested I was as all over the place as I had been in my years hitch-hiking America. “This guy gets around.” [like that]

My point is that as a white man with dead male handlers I never had the luxury to be anything other than in top form intellectually, and now in this century having to read endless sloppy Substack essays to see what people are wasting their time on is a bit like listening to a symphony of nails scratching a blackboard.

And now on with Thursday’s regularly scheduled entertainment and gladness. Thursday essays are not for the general public but are directed at a more restricted audience. For example, anyone thinking that my title up there would license them to imagine that I like Bill Gates should go away right now.

Let the essay begin:

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Why I don’t complain about Bill Gates.

When I was fifteen and a good Bible boy, I went on a one-year imagery fast in which I did not look at a single female form in a magazine or on a billboard or tv, which basically meant no tv and certainly no National Geographic jungle articles. Not one.

Making my way through Dad’s U.S. News and World Report, I’d sort of hold the right page to the light to see if there might be something looming on the other side, and I’d turn away if I sensed a female presence.

And don’t get me started on real girls. I was chaste as heck. I’d established a very popular 7:45 a.m. prayer meeting at Bedford High there in Massachusetts, and let’s just say that in the era of boomers in miniskirts I was good at examining the school ceiling. Yes kids, Gramma was once sexy as hell.

When I was nineteen and had never been in any flying machine of which I wasn’t the pilot, I was walking by a tv and I saw a Cessna crash and, given my short but boisterous career in heavier-than-air flight, I realized at once that that was too intimate a thing to witness and I decided to never look if I thought a man was about to die in a flying machine. I follow this protocol to this day. Some years after my decision to not witness flight deaths, on a September morning in 2011, while carrying my youngest baby up the stairs in my neighbor’s house in Urbana, Illinois, I heard something on my neighbor’s tv that suggested that this might be an especially good time to admire the wallpaper. Years later I had still not seen any image of the 911 stuff, and not till 2008 did I happen to catch a picture at the top of a stack of newspapers. Seven biblical years is a pretty good blind run for a sighted man in Christendom, given how uninterested the media was in the thirty-thousand children who died of hunger and related causes on September 11, 2001 (or any day) and how fascinated it was with the death of well-fed people sitting in chairs like celestial thrones and flying through the sky like gods. So yup, never saw that till 2008, and then only for a split second.

I’m pretty good at not seeing stuff when it needs to not get seen. I call this activity disciplined inattention. It’s served me well since I returned from the street into your world. Your internet world.

When I chose to leave bourgworld and be a streetperson and fighter, I had an excellent side gig in not looking. If I saw a cop harassing an honest citizen, I’d do my drool routine and drift unseeing between officer and citizen and park myself there, as fake lost then as I am nowadays for real on the internet. If things were especially tense I’d ask the officer for directions to Yonge Street and when he’d be like, “you’re standing on it,” I’d be blown away by the existential power of that coincidence and would need time to stand there slack-jawed processing it. For justice like this to work, you have to know how to be blind, to not see what is and to visualize and feel powerfully what might be as if it has already happened.

Regular just-is is badblind, but strongly felt future justice that has already arrived is betterblind.

Theoretically that there is the most important sentence written on the internet this month and I wish it could have been smoother. But I needed the “just-is” thing.

What just is is becoming less and less important to me all the time. This is why I no longer “tell it like it is” as I did when I was a muckraking journalist. I want to call it not like it is but like it’s going to be. I want to make history, not merely observe it. When you [me, I’m talkin] explain to a big man who has been unkind to someone on the street, a man who’s more muscled than you, how you slept with his mother last night, you have to feel how this is going to work well, just as it has with the last man whose mother you mentally double bagged, and the last before that, and before that. Love is a kind of blindsight. It’s all energy. Seriously, I really did develop a bizarro way to love my enemies.

Hey, funny side note I just heard about was a couple weeks ago, Jordan Peterson on a youtube short complaining that about fifteen years ago he had marveled inside his car to his family that it was “like there was a war against cars in Toronto.” I did the math and realized that I formally became a Toronto carfighter fifteen years ago. Let me say for my handler in Langley that I am not condoning violins nor claiming to have committed any offense against local yada yadas, but if I was in constant motion across Toronto for seven years as a fighter, Peterson must have seen my tall hairy staff-wielding longboard craziness many a time. Maybe I licked his car window. I was into that. People who drive cars in cities really do think they’re better than everyone else. And I’ve usually been the man to give them a good lickin. Much as I like the occasional Peterson jab against woke culture for its comic potential, I’m glad I was able to make Peterson’s car experience a little less pleasant for seven unruly years. We each have a part to play.

My game as a streetman was that I owned every corner I was on at any particular moment and I would fight to the death to protect the people on it. And I felt that. I called it The Education Act, a phrase I got from warning signs at Toronto schoolyards. I’d been a stay-at-home dad and then lost the boys in a divorce, and I think bad guys on the street understood that they had more to lose in a street encounter than I did. As I rollicked through Toronto pushing my longboard laughing maniacally and bearing aloft my nine-foot cedar staff, I was Moses parting a potentially very bloody red sea. I could ditch the staff quickly if citizens needed me to help out with the police. And Langley: let me say that I was on the side of good police, just as any good cop doesn’t appreciate the beater cops who make good cops look bad.

I was on a mission. Starving children in India would have to fend for themselves—I was doing this one intersection at a time. Think globally, act loco, Lee. I owned nothing save myself, and I was happy. I owned my gaze.

Predators don’t take my attention. I give my attention when I choose.

That’s as long as the longest Substack article you’re likely to read, and there’s important stuff coming, so I suggest you take a break and read the rest of this tomorrow.

All designated apex predators have this in common: they have no skills of any sort. Gates, Fauci, Musk, the orange skin-muppet, and all “leaders” ever elected or semi-elected in all democracies, all are selected for their capacity to do nothing useful. The only exception is one of my followers who has a kid who is running for congress, I kid you not. Congress is the old word for sex, so jeez, I don’t know whether to wish him well.

Jesus, you people who believe in leaders. Always looking for a master.

These leader facsimiles are only on the pedestal to fulfill their function as scapegoat for the bad vibes of the mob. These men, or women posing as men, got nothin. The’re [They!—how in heck do these typos get past me?]…They’re just so much depleted uranium. “Leaders,” huh. They’re not especially clever speakers, they can’t grow anything, they’re useless at open-mic comedy or washing dishes, and they can’t design anything worth having. They’re not apex predators, they’re designated apex predators. Daps, could we call them? Costumed for the part—dappers. Nor is it true that the real predators are the slightly jewey shadow masters stirring martinis in Georgetown or in a Blackwater mountain fastness in Switzerland and lurking behind the front daps. Illimunasties from Illinois code-named Blackrockerfellow III, which is either ‘the third’ or some guy whose ego is so big he stutters it into three like he’s the trinity. No, the real predators are the fricken masses.

The real predators are the masses. This is the part where most readers quietly unsubscribe. Do so now, if that’s your instinct. The real predators are the masses. The masses who keep propping up the daps and other billionaires, feeding them, cleaning their toilets, building their absurd mansions, carting their sad sacks of flesh around in trains planes and automobiles, pretending they’re masterminds, and remaining endlessly devoted to them at the attention-payment level. There’s no one to blame about all this in the deepest divine-comedy sense, but at the Act level the real villain is the masses who keep directing their attention at the designated preds. At the d-preds, the daps, the dapperoos. Was it George Carlin who offered a campaign slogan something like “down with the common man”? I could sign on to that. Check my subscriber count to get a sense of just how popular this slogan could be.

If the Pentagon is so overfed and bored on its massive budget that it’s taken to wiling the days away shaping the clouds with frequency, that’s on the common man who thought working hard to pay big income taxes was a great idea so he, the common man, could have standing armies sitting around getting up to mischief. Have you ever told someone how great you are cuz you pay your taxes? Have you ever said patriotic things about your government even though you knew it had a standing army? Then you’re the one who caused this biz of jazzin the clouds using mega frequency. Thank-you for your service. What are you going to inspire next?

The real predators are the masses.

So there you have it. Clouds controlled by radios held iin [second typo!]…in the hands of standing armies.

Semper wifi, bruh, semper wifi. [Were readers smart enough to get this joke?][What readers? Lol.]

Your Tex dollars at work, Dallas.

All your excess lives in Texas.

That’s your sky, Mrs. Proud Taxpayer. Mr. Governments Are So Great. You wanted the sky full of junk, and here it is, made to your order. Destroying the world—that’s your superpower.

Now listen up, because these jokes are essential to the survival of your species:

As even the limited-perspective groundling C. Little pointed out about the lead and aluminum chaff coming down, the sky’s falling. This sky is on you, pal.

Thank-you, Mr. C. Little, for pointing out who’s responsible for skyfall.

You made the skyfall, citizen. Not Bill Gates. He’s just your biatch. He’s just doing what you trained him to do with your purchasing and attention-paying powers.

Why would you complain about skyfall if it’s what you intended? Standing armies always end up attacking their own people. Duh. When I put it that way, you recognize the truth of it at once, don’t you? You still won’t issue an apology on Substack, though, will you? You’ll still go on complaining about the supposed bosses. You knew this about how a standing army works, but you supported it anyway. Thank-you for your servileness. You kept pumping your attention towards D.C. and the CDC, giving the goofy muppet show with the OCD ACDC soundtrack all you’ve got. You sent your soul to Washington, Mr. Smith. What’s left now? Driving a truck to Ottawa and complaining to daddy to tell him how important he is? If anyone’s a victim—no one is, but if anyone were—it would be that pathetic son of a pathetic son you decided to pretend was your “leader” in Ottawa. The one you pretend you’re against yet you keep calling him the leader.

You’re the one who asked for frequ-clouds [freak clouds] as a health outcome.

You asked for it, you got it. Visuals on this are a toy Yoda (wisdom as a small plastic product).

The force is with you. You have all the power.

You’re a commoner with uncommon power.

Word?

Frequin’ A.

Apply the truths of attention and focus and gaze to health as necessary.

You are what you consume.

You are what you eat with your eyes. Add other senses as needed. Garnish with a sprig of parsley.

When the Chinese military finally shows up in your neighborhood on joint maneuvers (late already, by my count) with a paddy wagon and no Chinese food for you to uber-eat, meaning you’re the takeaway at the tag end of history, you’ll yell “I told you so” like everyone else. But it won’t be true, will it? You bought that phone, making lives difficult for people who refused to buy a phone. You participated energetically in the muppet show though you knew you shouldn’t. You put an I Voted sticker on your forehead so your third eye wouldn’t have to witness your shame at participating as a grownup in a muppet show. You complained about Bill although he was your biatch doing exactly what you’d ordered him to do with your behaviour and attentions and attention and money. Attentions and attention—says it all. Everywhere you look in your life, there’s you supporting some elite, some billionaire, some fool with your money, your attention, and even your handiwork. You not only paid the minimum taxes to stay out of jail but far greater amounts and then trumpeted about it as if paying a lot of taxes were a virtue.

And after ushering in the end of the world with your attention, you’ll pretend it wasn’t you and you’ll say “I told you so.”

You told people so? No you didn’t. With your attention and energy you brought China into all our lives, and then you’ll say “I told you so” when we’re all packed off to China-style gaols. That’s g-a-o-l, the British word for jail that sounds like ghoul. Just like here in N’Am North America, England has been made in China. Your endless search for a master have been very gaol-oriented. You did that. You do it still.

The worst thing about Chinese jail, as opposed to Russian, is they’re not going to understand our jokes. That’s our destiny, if the common man keeps paying tribute in attention to precisely the wrong sort of people. Do Chinese soldiers strike you as people who appreciate humor, or do they just strike you, period?

Stop bleeding your attention to fools.

Substack writers writing from a traditional justice point of view enumerate the sins of some malefactor who has never heard of them and if he had would only be pleased by the attention. But if you were to illustrate the dynamic of a thousand influencers writing and speaking against the malefactor not from a justice point of view but from an attention point of view, it would be a thousand influencers on their knees worshiping the focus of their gaze, with a million readers behind them worshiping the worshiping influencers with their likes. What are you doin hangin out with the likes of these? If this isn’t divinely funny, what is? “The likes of these” indeed.

Or: we could change the world. You in? With a million people unwilling to pay their attention to muppet goofs and pretend masterminds, we could all die laughing and ease more slowly into the apocalypse. With ten million grownups unwilling to give their gaze away to daddy, we might not even die. As the energy folks put it, we need to raise the frequency.

Or you could go on complaining about Bill Gates. Your choice. If you love Bill Gates so much, show him how much and be sure to not like and share this article. [24 hours later note: I think your readers are following your command, bruh] I already have what I need. I laughed so much writing this article the cat had to get off my lap. Seriously. Especially the China stuff and the C. Little stuff with the skyfall and all.

Far more practical action than giving all your attention to designated preds would be to turn your lawn into a food garden and teach your daughters parkour, archery, and the appropriate tactical moment to drool and/or strike. Do this after you throw your smartphone into the sea. I’ve never owned a phone in this century, with the possible exception of my getting a landline for no extra charge on top of my wife’s plan years ago (I liked the idea of a line in the land) and I only told Ma about it so it was basically a dedicated line from Niagara to Tennessee but then Ma supposedly died and I didn’t cancel because, well, you never know, right?

It’s been three years. It could ring any time now.

Photograph: the only thing I added to a machine gun in the school grounds of the junior high here in Beamsville Ontario is a little ladder I had lying around a job site. Otherwise unretouched.

Sorry for the typo. I didn’t see it, but with something this long there’s got to be one. I’ll fix it when I see it.