The Ravens Nest

I posted an article here that was just me talking, letting everyone know that The Raven’s Nest has changed directions. No more politics or hate-watching, hate-buying and bitching, you know, the things that no longer align with me. The things that don’t serve me.

Make no mistake, politics and politicians do not serve us. Those that get those offices seek to keep them, not because their policies are any damned good, because it’s become an office of nothing short of power that will be used to beat you over the head and the beatings will continue until morale improves and beyond.

This is why I haven’t been posting lately. I go in thinking, “I’ve fallen into a group of…” and they turn into activists or slacktivists before I can even finish the sentence.

Let me do a quick recap:

Late 80s – 2000s: The Satanic Panic. Official sources say it stopped in the 90s but I can tell you, for me, I was still getting 3am phone calls with death threats. I’d just let them know the locks on the doors are there for their safety, not mine and hang up. I had guns in the home. If someone broke in, it would be the last door they entered and thankfully, no such threats were ever followed through. Politically, we had both parties, led by Tipper and Al Gore coming after us. That shut up only the moment Al Gore needed to be a running mate for Bill Clinton. The people never stopped.

2000s – Present: The Woke. After moving 1300 miles to get away from the rumors about how “demonic” I was, I genuinely believed what I was told. Places like where I moved to were more open-minded, didn’t mind quirks so much. But suspicion and paranoia didn’t take too long to catch on. This time, politically, it was The Obama Crowd coming for …everyone.

Present: The exiles outnumber those doing the exiling. The ridiculous part is that there are those still in that crowd demanding people like me choose a side.

There’s a difference here. Notice, I just recapped. I hit the highlights here.

I’ve also noticed something else, constant expression of the trauma suffered. In relationships, this took the form of controlling, manipulative, abusive people in the writer’s life. There have been two writers that have had very vocal about how the nervous system is under those kinds of constraints. Allow me to illustrate.

wrote this. I can relate whole cloth to this small series of words. If you need to know more about what that’s like, there’s who explained it further.

And this is the part that becomes difficult to relate to people. After being conscripted into two culture wars only to be expelled by both armies and still both have the nerve and gall to tell me to take a side.

People, let me put it this way, when you’re the sheep and you’ve been bitten by enough wolves, you don’t care what color the wolves are. All you know is that the next time one of them shows up, they’ll show up to the horrifying realization that the question to “Hey Sheep, What’s For Dinner heh heh…” that the answer is, as he realizes once on the spit…that it’s him and the next one to show up is going to be steaks, ribs and burgers if they don’t heed what happened to the first wolf.

That comes from knowing that every time you venture out the door, you put in headphones so that the screams from moving cars don’t actually reach your ears. You start carrying small, nondescript weapons just in case.

You have to make your mind up.

You know that, as long as you’re left alone, all is well and that’s all you ask. If not, your choices are prison, the morgue, the hospital or home. Home in one piece is my decision but, barring that, I absolutely eliminated the morgue or the hospital from the list of options because I’m not going to allow more injuries to pile up.

Things get so bad you move only to find the same behaviors, turned up to 11 flying under a different flag. You have hospitalizations, X-rays, visible scars and scars that aren’t. Pretty soon, you see it. Both parties are two wolves asking the sheep “What’s for dinner, Sheep? Heh heh…”

You.

That’s my answer.

Both of you.

Now, you’re in you’re about to enter a new decade and you look back and you realize that none of these people ever supported you, encouraged you or backed you…it was all conditional on how you vote. You don’t make friends easily. You’re sick of unpacking everything about you.

So you don’t.

You go to work. You go home. You write and then you see the smug shit, dismissing everything you went through, still demanding you take a “side” and you just turn off the computer. You walk away.

You take that three-dollar journal.

You stretch out.

You bleed out on the page.

You rage out.

Your most calm responses go online.

You stay in again.

You were so “Privileged.”

You’re glad this wasn’t a meeting in person because you would have shown them their future. Exhausted. Old. Tons of time wasted because you were so busy desperately doing anything and everything to be accepted that something breaks.

You stop caring.

You don’t hold space for them anymore.

You figure you’re fucked either way.

You withdraw. Again.

…kinda wish I’d known this was what privilege felt like.

You can just call me Richie Rich because I’m not apologizing. If our continued association is dependent on how I vote or your suspicions are just that much stronger than the deeds and the words I put down, no one’s keeping you.

As stated in my pinned article, I’m not here for that. Twitter/X, that ghetto part of the internet, you can have it. I nuked an account over that.

I think the funniest part of this, and I have spent days thinking over whether I’d call this out but I will.

Equality looks like oppression when you’ve suffered from privilege. You’ve spent years wielding moral hammers, calling scars ‘complicity’ and silence ‘violence.’ Now, when someone draws a line and says ‘leave me out,’ it feels like a crown of thorns jammed into your skull.

Call it what it is, the sting of losing the power to conscript others into your loop.

To the one who never bled from the wolves they fed, scars look like privilege. Equality looks like oppression when your ‘activism’ was just another way to harvest the sheep. You masked control as care, exile as justice, and now the sheep’s refusal to play dinner feels like an attack. Cry your martyrdom louder somewhere else; the rest of us are done being the meal.

Did you use lines like ‘When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression’ to justify every wound they inflicted over things I couldn’t control which came after retroactive examination of all things I could, like playing games, my music, my movies, my books, my comics…again. Funny how equality looks like oppression when you’ve suffered from the privilege of never being the target. Your crown of thorns is self-inflicted; mine was forged in two fires you helped stoke.

You wear it not as a martyr, but because you never learned from history and kept standing on the ‘Doomed to Repeat It’ line.

Privilege isn’t invisible to those who possess it. It’s invisible to those who weaponize victimhood while holding the whip. Equality feels like oppression to the martyr who built their throne on others’ graves. When the graves stop supplying, the throne wobbles, and suddenly fairness is fascism.

If inclusion into your group involves constant tests, mark every one of mine as “F” and let’s get that over with. I’ll never test your loyalty. I’ve either earned it or I haven’t. That simple.

Furthermore, I would love for someone to explain to me (and I’m sure I’m going to get them in the comments) how I…me…owe YOU anything. My politics, my spirituality, my comics, my books, my music, my movies, my TV…you’ve already taken everything by smug declaration or by force while lecturing me, doxing, harassment and the examples are numerous. I’m sure I’m about to be treated to all kinds of paranoid, Cold-War-Era nonsense that will display the commenter as someone trying to place in the Olympics in the mental gymnastics event…which still doesn’t exist.

You’re getting closer though. You had crappy breakdancing.

Call it a win if it helps you sleep.

Let me close on this one. This is what kicked this article off…

This is my baseline and has been for over 30 years. But then…

When you’ve been identified by both sides as The Heat,

when you’re the one the parents warn their children about,

yank them aside in the grocery store aisle

or cross the street when they see you…

I’m sure you’ll let me know how privileged I am

to have been bestowed such scars.

…I’ll be waiting.

I just won’t be holding my breath.