The Ravens Nest

How The Real Culture War Is Actually Defined

I really don’t like writing this. Kinda dredges up a lot of bad memories but it’s necessary that I do because, even though it’s going to take awhile to get there, this story needs to be told.

I’ve always said, some had it worse than I did and that’s entirely true. The West Memphis Three is a prime example of it but I’m getting off-track.

I went through The Satanic Panic. Feel free to skip over all of this if you have heard it and don’t want to hear it again. There will be a bold and italicized title later. That can be your stopping point. I will tell you that some of you really don’t know the half of it.

For years, during my catechism classes (I was raised Catholic) my catechism teachers had me terrified of people who listened to metal, played Dungeons & Dragons, loved horror movies, read horror novels and had read books that we were expressly forbidden from reading. There were a lot of taboos created in a very short span of time but things began to become confusing for many reasons.

As a kid, I loved watching the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. I’d had plastic armor, swords and even odd action figures that bore the brand back in those days. How were stories of heroes fighting evil creatures and evil wizards considered evil? Back in those days, even hair metal, which was popular at the time was deeply frowned upon even though it played on major radio stations. On Saturday Nights, I would watch WWF: Saturday Night’s Main Event because these instructions were so ingrained in me that watching Tales From The Darkside, which was the only other thing on at the time, had me deeply afraid of turning evil.

How ridiculous was that? Very.

As I got older, I got into Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Skid Row. So did my friends.

We had Hero Quest back then. I got it for Christmas one year. A fantasy dungeon-crawler that had minis. It was a board game with roleplaying elements. My friends and I would sit and play through the adventures until, ultimately, we ran out. I know there were expansions like Kellar’s Keep and the like but I never did get them. We had to make up our own. GURPS came into the equation and, after we’d all looked through this one book, we began to make up our own. Actually, the game belonged to me. I had to make up the plots and stuff like that. I was saddled with being the “dungeon master*” for these games. When we talked about it, no one seemed to know or care one way or the other.

I was at sort of a creative block for adventure-writing when one day, a friend of ours from out of town brought in First Quest for AD&D 2E. This time, he took the DM chair and we played this game which skirted familiar territory for us. We played at my friend’s house down the street. We listened to, of all things, Ozzy Osbourne. We were all hitchhiking the Road To Perdition for certain now.

When we wrapped that box and listening to the No More Tears album alongside Pantera, Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer for about the umpteenth time, we found that we were still cracking jokes. We were still playing video games as well. Nothing else seemed out of place. We sat through marathons of the Faces of Death movies which, we now know to be completely staged movies and nothing more. They were the “gore porn” of our day. We also rented the first UFC videos and watched as Royce Gracie took down opponent after opponent. Crazy times.

Something occurred to me, though, and it made me a bit angry.

I’d been lied to with the people I’d entrusted with my spiritual development. With the introduction of the AD&D 2E Player’s Handbook and Monstrous Manual, that became even more apparent to me. I had, in fact, been lied to and I was bound and determined that I wouldn’t let the lies stand anymore.

There were shouting matches in catechism class now. None of the stories of wandering bands of devil-worshippers that killed blonde-haired, blue-eyed children on the stroke of midnight on Halloween made any sense. Where were the bodies? Where were these people and why were they not being charged with murder?

None of the questions would ever be answered. Instead, I was told I was never to play that game again and I defiantly told my catechism teacher that unless she were plotting to do something about it right then and there…I Would Play The Weekend Game As Scheduled. She had no say in it.

I had no idea what would happen next. I was standing on the side of fact and truth, surely that would count for something.

It didn’t.

Word swept through the school like wildfire that I was now some sort of devil-worshipper. It didn’t stop there. It kept going. It built.

Before I knew it, I became a target.

Every time I joined a friend’s church, it got worse. I got “You don’t go to MY church.” It was a never-ending cavalcade of stupid shit coming my way. I got my ass kicked on more than one occasion. The harassment, the bullying, the threats, they were all very real and, the only thing that worked in my favor at the time was that the game prompted only one thing in real life; my sense of exploration. In my own hometown, I could find places where I could simply disappear. I could hunker down for awhile until the coast was clear and then take back routes to get home without coming to harm.

You’d figure after graduation, it would be over. People would look at it and go, “This is just stupid. If the guy had a fraction of this power, how has he not come after us?” You would think that. You’d also be wrong.

I got jumped one night coming home from a friend’s house where we’d just played. When I came to, I was pretty beat up. My books were irreparably damaged. Dice were broken and chipped and my notebook, character sheet, and the like were soaking in a puddle. My backpack had been torn open. My head was swimming and I was in and out of consciousness. It took me awhile to get to the local hospital. I had to have stitches above my right knee from a knife and I still carry that scar to this day. My hips, knees and lower back remind me nearly every day of that night. I also had a pretty nice concussion from it.

After that, I had trouble getting jobs. The ones I was fortunate enough to get, I had to fight to keep. Living on my own and renting an entire house, I’d get death threats over the phone at two and three in the morning. By that time, I was working for the D.O.C. and when I went for my walks at night, I had to pack more than just something to play music. Thankfully, I only had to unpack it to unload it when I got home. I never had to fire it, thank goodness for that.

Eventually, I uprooted and moved 1300 miles away from my hometown.

So, I’d been labelled the following, and I’m not joking at all about any of this:

Devil-worshipper

The Antichrist

A Vampire

A Witch

A Warlock

and that’s just to name a few right off the top of my head.

These days, I’m still all of those things…depending on who you ask. I’m either a Nazi or Nazi-adjacent, some kind of -ist or -phobe. Why?

Spiritually-speaking, these days, this is where I live and I’m very happy with it.

You don’t have to sign up yourself. You don’t have to like it. You don’t even have to acknowledge it. Matter of fact, I’m not expecting you to do anything with this information. Disregard the matter entirely if you like. We need to wrap this though and get to the point. I told you it might take awhile. I’ve probably never covered every detail but I don’t like to pound this chapter of my life like I’m at a pulpit. I’m doing so because all of that was designed to do something and I’ll be getting to that point very soon.

My dad noticed me stressing out. I was trying to do everything I could to dispel these rumors about me. No amount of logic, not even my confirmation, my baptism into a Baptist church or several did anything at all. It was like firing a pellet gun at a runaway freight train. They just smiled and kept coming at me.

I explained it all. Spilled my guts to my Marine Corp Dad who never once interrupted me. He just sat there and listened. In a nutshell, he asked if any of them were coming over for visits, hanging out with me, inviting me over for get-togethers, in short, what were these people to whom I’d acquiesced so much doing for me?

Nothing at all.

Then he asked if they were constantly asking me to give up more and more of the things I enjoyed?

They were. There was always something I had to give up. Always.

He looked at me, thumped the butt of his cigarette away, offered me one, pulled another for himself, lit us up and said “Listen. If nothin’ you’re doin’ ain’t good enough for those motherfuckers, just don’t do a goddamn thing for ‘em. They’re makin’ you miserable because they’re fuckin’ miserable. Now, ya got a choice. You’re gonna be miserable. They’re gonna make your life miserable because they’re assholes. It’s what they do. You do what you wanna do. You ain’t doin’ nothin’ that’s hurtin’ anybody. It ain’t fuckin’ illegal an’ we know where ya are. Ya ain’t smokin’ dope or gettin’ in trouble, right? Well fuck them. Do what makes ya happy for at least a little while.”

I usually shorten it but I will never forget those words because, there was wisdom in that profanity-laden advice.

The Wisdom of A Father:

Everyone knows that one of my favorite books is The Havamal. The first part of it sounds like advice a father would give to a son. I listened to Dr. Jackson Crawford read The Cowboy Havamal which puts Odin’s own words into a sort of Old West dialect. I was immediately reminded of my father and that moment.

The real wisdom isn’t in whether or not there would be misery visited upon me. Dad had a point and that point was if there was to be some dark days ahead, then maybe I should create my own bright spots. What could they do about it that they weren’t already doing?

Dad knew I stood on truth and I don’t really count what I did as anything courageous but more the works of a complete and total dumbass kid.

Everything, every stop, they had pulled out was to make me cease playing the games, watching the movies, listening to the music and so on and so forth but they hadn’t succeeded. I’d won. As long as I did what made me happy and harmed no one, I was in the clear and I could enjoy it. They could be unhappy but they would do that without me. I had the power and never realized it.

If that story sounds familiar, it’s because it is. It’s happened since at least 2012 and has been escalating since. Fast forward to today, look at how rapidly things are changing. Some of you were harassed, bullied, intimidated, threatened, had your entire lives and reputations destroyed. You were chased down every hill and up every dead end street. I know, I’ve been right there with you. We’ve all pointed out the escalating series of weird mental disorders jockeying for supremacy. Nothing you or I did or said got through. They couldn’t be convinced to think past their backs of their eyelids.

So, we had to make a choice.

We are still in a war.

We won a critical battle, overwhelmingly.

Now, they’re in their death spiral.

There are only two factions in this war: Meddlesome busybodies and people who want to be left alone.

I do believe that we can agree that we are the people who look at this map and confidently say “These People In Red Want To Be Left…The Fuck…Alone.”

All the areas marked in blue and the meddlesome busybodies. The type of people who become irrationally enraged to absolute nuclear meltdown levels at you for having a donut because they’re on a diet.

You Do You. I’ll Do Me. We Can Part Ways Where We Just Can’t Agree.

That’s it, people. You can stop labelling people now.

Let me give you an example.

We, Norse-Leaning Pagans, have The Grove of Odin. I’m on the board. I’m an ordained Gothi and Shaman. Then we have our fuckheads, The Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA)

They’re pretty legit, actually racist. That’s why they’re our fuckheads. They’re meddlesome busybodies. People think that because they claim to worship the same gods as we do that we’re like them, no. They’re the fuckheads, the ones that talk shit no one cares to hear and they love to get people riled up. In the same breath as claiming their superiority due to genetic lines, they also claim to be oppressed. They have their bad guys and I’m probably one of them. I don’t care though, they don’t represent us. They leave me alone, they’ll be left alone. It’s a nice arrangement but requires a lotta maintenance.

I want you to take a moment and I want you to step away from your screen and just reflect a bit. Do you care what anyone thinks about you? Are you mature enough to handle the fact that there are things about others that are completely out of your control? The people in the blue areas couldn’t. They had everything. Then they ran out of people to exile. That’s how they got here.

How did you get here? Like the idea of being left alone to do your work, make your art, write the books, illustrate them, make the movie, make that short, do something no one has ever seen before or even just present it again? Want that freedom? Yeah you’re going to have to go all-in on leaving others alone. That’s the name of the game.

If you can do that, you’re golden.

If you can’t do that, we will teach you. We’ll go ahead and make sure the point gets across.

Want to know what led to an absolute meltdown of my catechism teacher enough that she recommended me for excommunication? These words. Verbatim.

“If Satan Is The Father of Lies, Then Who’s Closer? Because If Lying Is Evil, Then It’s Evil, No Matter Your Reasoning!”

If it’s wrong. It’s wrong.

Censorship is wrong.

Liberty, being Humankind’s Natural State, will be restored. If you’re not prepared to back that, I recommend being honest with yourself. You’re a busybody and all you’re doing is wearing a different t-shirt.