Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
The Knight's Farewell
(1858)

"My relief far exceeds whatever guilt I feel."

I maintain a select few followers on my social media accounts. The numbers have changed little over the decades, with newbies roughly equalling retirees, regardless of my recruitment efforts. Some content producers seem to effortlessly attract tens of thousands of followers. I have attracted low hundreds of them, though I remind myself that they are the right few hundred people. Others might produce for volume, while some focus exclusively on other qualities like … quality … or perhaps authenticity. I remind myself that not everyone prefers authenticity in their breakfast every morning, and that my content might be seen as rather rarified material unsuitable for any mass market. It probably uses too many adjectives for injestion among more polite company. Consequently, I have traditionally been possessive about retaining my Friendlies. Hesitant about shrinking my audience numbers, I have been forgiving when I’ve noticed transgressions. I have prided myself on my tolerance and even faked some ignorance in my time. I find that I’m less tolerant now that our idiotic incumbent has publicly demonstrated the price of tolerating an ever- lowering bar.

I suddenly feel the strong need to stand up and actually be counted. When an injustice occurs, I won’t jump to join any lynch mob, but I feel more willing to shun someone who really should have known better the once, twice, or three times before. I finally find a limit I cannot, even in terrible conscience, tolerate. I separate myself. Usually with little fanfare. I simply disappear into the virtual ether, a tad lighter for the effort. These small separations once felt excruciating to me, back before I found this fine fresh limit. I then considered it somehow my sacred responsibility to extend my generosity even far beyond what might have seemed reasonable, so as not to make myself guilty of anything even distantly resembling hasty judgment. I figured that anyone might be considered a saint in waiting, one of those worth extending special privilege to, one who, if given a little leverage, might be saved. I’ve gratefully become less tolerant.

I’ve noticed how a few sour apples affect the sweetness of my overall experience, how a few obtuse opinions contribute little to my general enlightenment, or to the elevation of the conversations I intend to convene within my select community. Those who can’t let well enough go, who insist upon being disagreeable for its apparent own sake, make me want to avoid my own hard-wrought community gatherings. I go paranoid, feeling displaced from my own Eden. My role cannot possibly be to hide out from my community, whatever jollies one member might find from casting aspersions upon what I’d intended to be collegial waters. Did they not get the memo that we were all Friendlies here, not amenable to even distant hints of evil doings? We can’t give any despot quarter without forfeiting it for ourselves, regardless of the relative size of his teeny tin pot. We cannot believe he has decent intentions when his every action insists otherwise. Nor can pleading ignorance or indifference to the facts save anybody’s sorry ass. One eventually wakes up gone after repeatedly singing that same, deeply troubling song. The choir sounds much better without them.

Those in my orbit who have refused to accept the facts of our impending data center have managed to make themselves something other than Friendlies in my community. I know a few who chose divorce in favor of something more like dismemberment when this issue first came up, for they held religious-quality beliefs against the whole concept. While this position seems rather self-punishing, I accepted it and even appreciated that they chose a different direction. No community ever benefits if it enforces anything even distantly resembling locksteps. Some diversity seems to necessarily encourage some separation sometimes. People can exit and return as their circumstances shift. Those who continued to promote the propaganda pushed by the disgraced opposition seem different from those holding any simple diversity of opinion. They seemed destructively insistent, dead set against, regardless of whatever mediating facts might emerge. The ones who slandered The Muse, insisting that she’d done what they should have damned well known The Muse could never do, they crossed my line. They turned evil and stayed behind to gloat. They engaged in our incumbent’s game of insisting and insisting that some fantasy position had to be accepted. I finally accepted that they’d self-imploded.

My previous extension of my most generous possible interpretations couldn’t stand in the face of such deliberate insistence. I can accept good-faith difference, but I cannot tolerate bad-faith insistence. Those who damned well should know better of The Muse, for instance, might have at least noticed that they were impugning my spouse, fer cripe’s sake. One should not continue to accept hospitality from the host who’s married to your latest avowed enemy. And I won’t even get started on blasphemy against family. I finally have enough and disappear myself, though I secretly wish social media had a feature that allowed for separation with resonant impunity. I simply go quietly into a hopefully brighter tomorrow without that poisonous presence any longer with us. This must be a sacred responsibility of any convener who aspires to be seen as at least half-decent. We must winnow the herd, cull out those who have proven they no longer belong. To assist some in going their own separate way. I feel immediately lighter, though, truth told, a little guilty after. My most generous possible interpretation rule could have extended even their sorry tenure. I simply chose to end it. My relief far exceeds whatever guilt I feel. You’re welcome.

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Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz