THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY

It's first Sunday of Advent today, and hereby starts the season to be jolly. The Dodologist promises lotsa Christmas fun, but starts out by recommending some really rather tasteful Christmas music: Christmas Carols by Dutch viola da gamba player Ralph Rousseau Meulenbroeks:


Christmas Carols by Ralph Rousseau Meulenbroeks
You can download this CD from the most excellent people at Magnatune, one of The Dodologist's favourite sources of legal downloads. The deal is thus: You pay a minimum of 10 $ a month (through PayPal), and then can download anything you like from Magnatune's catalogue. Or, if you prefer, stream it without those annoying messages at the end of each song that you get in the player above.

It is, to tell the truth, a jolly good deal. And thereby perfect for the season.
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THE BIG ONE

Judge Dread was one of the big ones. In his own, curious way, he was the biggest – the rudest of the rude boys. For one thing, he was BIG, for another he had a string of "Big" hits, starting with Big Six in 1972. According to Wikipedia, he “He was the first white recording artist to have a reggae hit in Jamaica, and has the most banned songs of all time”.

The thing was that the judge was a naughty boy. He was the Benny Hill of ska, only lacking Mr. Hill’s subtle humour and sophisticated jokes. Where Hill remained in the land of the double entendre (though veering dangerously close to its far border from time to time), the judge was an all out, in your face spokesman for pure, joyful vulgarity. The joke – and it is a mighty funny one – was to be obviously vulgar, while pretending to be subtle. As in the hilarious Up With The Cock:



The Dodologist tend to use the judge’s music as a test of peoples sense of fun. It they look away in sheer embarrassment, they are found wanting. You may not find him funny, but if you are embarrassed by him, you probably take yourself a bit to seriously. The judge’s humour may be a stupid one, but we should all find the time to honour our inner blockhead.

And for all his “music hall gone bad” sense of bad taste, it is quite intelligent humour from time to time. As in his version of Je T’aime (Moi Non Plus). The punch line still has this extinct bird roaring with laughter, ten years after he heard it for the first time:



Dread was born Alexander Minto Hughes in 1945, and had a colourful past when he finally became a recording artist. He had worked as a bouncer, a bodyguard, professional wrestler (under the moniker "The Masked Executioner") and a debt collector. He took the stage name from a Prince Buster song, and the title Big Six is a reference to Prince Busters 1969 hit Big 5. Here is a, eh, live version:



For a time Judge Dread really was big. He had eleven chart hits in the UK during the 70s – more than any other reggae artist, including Bob Marley.

The Beeb didn’t like him, though. You just didn’t record songs like Up With The Cock and get away with it. So they banned him. Even when he recorded entirely innuendo-free songs, they still banned him. It was Dread, so it had to be dreadful. If they heard no innuendo, it was probably just because he was speaking in code.

As the 70s came to an end, so did the judge’s career. He died in 1998, on stage in Canterbury – but his was definitely no Canterbury sound. And while we today might see him simply as vulgar, this kind of vulgarity had an important element of counter culture in the still righteous and self-satisfied cultural climate of the 70s.

He died before I ever heard him. I still miss him though. The world is poorer without men like Judge Dread in it. Here he is in his soft mode, Bring Back The Skins (aka The Last Of The Skinheads – it's the best version of the song, the pictures are completely absurd, though):


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"MAY", BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

I cannot tell you how it was,
But this I know: it came to pass
Upon a bright and sunny day
When May was young; ah, pleasant May!
As yet the poppies were not born
Between the blades of tender corn;
The last egg had not hatched as yet,
Nor any bird foregone its mate.

I cannot tell you what it was,
But this I know: it did but pass.
It passed away with sunny May,
Like all sweet things it passed away,
And left me old, and cold, and gray.
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GOODNIGHT KEITH MOON

The thing about spending too much time on Twitter, is that from time to time you come across some true oddities. Like the internet version of the not-exactly-children's book Goodnight Keith Moon. (Thanks, @Glinner.)

It's sad. It's funny. It's a gem. Go ahead, say goodnight to Keith.
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DON'T STRAY ON THE PATHS OF ABNORMALITY

OK folks, this is a serious blog, discussing important issues in a time of cultural decline and spenglerian regress. Still, The Dodologist has to admit that from time to time it does seem like the abnormal ones are having a good time. Sometimes they even have an important message for us upstanding citizens.

My friend, the most upstanding citizen of Little Storping in the Swuff, the ever well dressed Lord Bassington-Bassington, brought to my attention the popular music singer Gay Pimp and his joyful song Soccer Practice, about young, healthy men playing sports. And even though Gay Pimp is a pervert, The Dodologist cannot deny that he enjoys this youthful and innocent ode to youth and healthy frolicking on the field.

But it is another song of Mr. Pimp that truly brought on The Extinct Ones admiration – a warning to young women not to stray on the paths of perversion. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Don’t Fall In Love With A Homo:



Such style, such grace, such a charming tie. No homo. Obviously.
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HARD ROCK. NO HOMO

My friend, the utterly Mad Mullah, recently posted a joyful celebration of the upcoming CD of Norwegian nazi odinist black metal guru Burzum (though Burzum himself denies all charges of … more or less everything except the CD).

The CD is due next spring, according to a press release. It will be something entirely different than that low life black metal stuff:

”The 'black metallers' will probably continue to 'get loaded,' 'get high,' and in all other manners too behave like the stereotypical Negro; they will probably continue to get foreign tribal tattoos, dress, walk, talk, look and act like homosexuals, and so forth.”

As an advice to the black metal community on how to avoid being accused of homosexual tendencies, the mullah now has posted a video about the “no homo” phenomena in hip hop culture. It’s both instructive and rather funny, and has some great advice for the emotional poets in corpse paint.

Not to be outdone, The Dodologist offers another introduction to the same phenomena, by hip hop blogger Jay Smooth (who has been exploited by The Extinct One before):




There ought to be some good advice for the spiked leather boys here. Though, as The Extinct One has pointed out before, you should consider dropping the gay couture, boys. Even it those spikes are long … and hard. Just as hard as your music.

No homo, of course.
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NO WAY TO TREAT AN ENT

It’s autumn. Late autumn, actually. Last time I wrote about autumn, there were still a few leaves on the trees. Not so anymore.

And, as it’s autumn, I have gotten the urge to return to Middle Earth. I picked up where I left off – as Merry and Pippin enters Fangorn forest.

I read Tolkien like that: Read a few chapters, then stay away for a long time, sometimes a year, then pick up again from wherever I left. I know the story, after all.

And Tolkien himself left the company outside the gates of Moria for more than a year. Now, that’s a bleak place to spend twelve months or more. (There was a war coming in Europe.)

Though Merry and Pippin doesn’t know, entering Fangorn is the start of great things – for them personally and for Middle Earth. It rouses the ents, as Treebeard realizes he can no longer stay out of worldly things. Which spells the end for Saruman’s dreams of power. Which again means that Gondor is not threatened from two sides at once – and that the forces of Rohan are free to ride to Gondor’s support.

All this because of two hobbits that only want to get away from their orc(ish) captors.

We can none of us know the whole story of our times. We are all part of the great narrative that is history, but we have no way of knowing what – if any – influence we will have on it. An ethics that focuses on consequences only is pointless. Because we have no way of knowing the consequences. And sometimes our actions are of importance for entirely unintended reasons. For good – or for bad.

Merry and Pippins actions are of pivotal importance for the victory over Sauron, but they cannot know that as they enter Fangorn – or as they meet Treebeard.

Neither can we know the ultimate consequences of any single action.

All of this just to state my annoyance at Peter Jacksons’ movie. There are three things in the movie that still annoy me. One is the compressing of time at the beginning, where 17 years turns into a few months. Which means that a lot of things go slightly unfocused in the story.

Like Saruman, who uses those 17 years to go from bad to worse. Or the ring wraiths, which must already be at the gates of The Shire as Bilbo gives Frodo the ring (by way of Gandalf). Or Gandalf himself, who should have spent some of those years to uncover the secret of the ring – and now has to do it in mere months.

It simply doesn’t add up. And all that Jackson had to do was put up a poster that said “17 years later”. He could even have kept Frodo looking like a German disco kid, as he doesn’t age much in those 17 years – thanks to the power of the ring.

The two other tings that really rile me about the movie, is the treatment of two of its heroes: Faramir and Treebeard.

Faramir, who in the book is a noble man – one of the few that instantly sees the dangers of using the ring – in the movie becomes a silly, scared kid. And all because they needed a cliffhanger to end the second movie.

It is an ending alien to the book – that also gives us the unbearably stupid scene were Frodo actually waves the ring in front of one of the ring wraiths. So much for a secret mission.

And poor Treebeard. He is the tree herd. OK, we have to repeat that: He is the tree herd of Fangorn. He knows what goes on in his own forest.

Instead of deciding to go to war at the entthing, they decide to stay away. And Treebeard only changes his mind after Pippin (all of this is done simply to make it seem like Pippin is getting smarter) lures him to follow them towards Isengard. Only when he comes to the edge of Fangorn does he see the destruction which has been done to his forest.

He roars with anger, and seconds later a whole gang of ents (that have no reason whatsoever to be there) come out from Fangorn and they march towards Isengard.

His anger tells us one thing: That he didn’t know of the destruction until this moment.

Once again: He is the tree herd. And he doesn’t know that thousands of trees have been cut down to fuel Saruman’s war machine? That is utter nonsense.

I can forgive the compression of time at the beginning. I dislike it, but I realize that it was important for creating the urgency that drives Jacksons’s version of the story. I can almost forgive what is done to Faramir. It is a disgrace, but I understand the need for a cliffhanger at the end of the second movie – even if it is a stupid one.

But I really can’t forgive what is done to Treebeard. Ents have been in Middle Earth almost since the world began. They are a proud race and a truly original one – together with hobbits one of Tolkien’s great feats of true sub creation.

To imply that Treebeard doesn’t know what is happening in his own forest – he has, after all, known some of the cut down trees since they were acorns – isn’t merely to change the plot a bit. It is to fundamentally change one of the races in Tolkien’s world.

It’s an insult to Treebeard, an insult to ents and an insult to Tolkien. It is, in truth, quite unforgiveable, Mr. Jackson.
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"ALBUM", BY R.S. THOMAS

My father is dead.
I who am look at him
who is not, as once he
went looking for me
in the woman who was.

There are pictures
of the two of them, no
need of a third, hand
in hand, hearts willing
to be one but not three.

What does it mean
life? I am here I am
there. Look! Suddenly
the young tool in their hands
for hurting one another.

And the camera says:
Smile; there is no wound
time gives that is not bandaged
by time. And so they do the
three of them at me who weep.
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WAHRHEIT MACHT FREI

As the evil conspiracy of Illuminati and their, ehr, Zionist allies, tries to poison us all with the ”vaccine” against the swine plague – a disease every thinking person knows was invented in the basement of the UN building – it is heartening to see that someone is willing to stand up for truth.

Today 70 brave friends of freedom marched in the streets of Oslo, carrying torches to bring light to our darkened hearts, speaking out against the lies of our government, and their jewi…, sorry, Zionist puppet masters.

The Dodologist raises his hat to such bravery. And heartily recommends extinction.
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ZE GERMAN PROFESSOR

Man, this is annoying. The Dodologist was writing this great post on one of his favourite recording artists, and then he figured out it was even better suited for this blog magazine of which he is the editor. It’s called Knokkelklang, which in English means something like Bone Song. Though, being a word play on the Norwegian title of a rather famous Christmas tune, it’s better translated as Jingle Bones.

As the post has been in progress for a few days, it has effectively eaten up all the time The Extinct One had for meaningful posting, leaving only time for YouTubeing and junk blogging. Something has to be done. It has to be done right now.

What is one to do?

Oh, bugger it, another Benny Hill video will carry us over to a new shiny day of blogish geniusness. Meet Ze German Professor:




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HOW TO PLAY THE RACE CARD

The Dodologist knows a thing or two about being a repressed minority. No one is standing up for the rights of the extinct these days. Bloody vitalism, that's what it is.

Anyway, well … it’s not too fond of racism either. And on the third hand, neither is it all that fond of accusations of racism being used as a stick to beat ones opponents with. How then is one supposed to discuss racism without falling into the trap of stick beating? Here’s how:



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ONE READS MORE

Three very different blogs have been added to the list of What One Reads. They are A little ray of sunshine, the blog of English pagan folk musician Paul Newman, Nothing To Do With Arbroath, one of the greatest purveyors of nonsensical news on the infamous internet, and Magia Posthuma, a blog dedicated to the traditional vampire, written by fellow Scandinavian Niels K. Petersen. They are all well worth a visit.
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RIP EDWARD WOODWARD

Must watch out for the danger of YouTubeing. But still, there really is only one way to mark the death today of Edward Woodward. Sending you on, ladies and gentlemen, to The Death Scene from Wicker Man.
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POETRY, HILL-STYLE

Due to popular demand, more Benny Hill. This time in a poetic mode ...


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THE VAMPIRE AS VICTIM

The vampire lecture I’m giving this Thursday carries the title “Poor Vampire. The bloodsucker’s development from monster to victim” (it sounds better in Norwegian). I will air some of the things I’m going to talk about here, to see if I actually agree with myself when I see my opinions published.

The subject is one that has interested me for some time. It is the logical conclusion of a development that started with Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire: When the vampire becomes the protagonist (or a close ally of the protagonist) only a short step is necessary to see it as a victim.

It can be seen as a victim in two senses: Because it is an addict and simply because it is a vampire.

The vampire as addict
The vampire as addict is among the metaphors I find most interesting of all things vampirological. The vampire is not simply addicted, as an alcoholic or a drug addict desperately needs his drink or her fix. Its addiction runs deeper – because it is fatal. Without blood, it will die. This makes it the perfect metaphor of drug addiction as many see it: The moment you are “addicted” you are lost.

For the vampire there is no way out. Except through death, of course. It is best seen in my perhaps favourite vampire movie: Lost Boys (or “The Just Say No”-movie, as I sometimes call it).

It is a schizophrenic movie indeed: The vampires in the movie are the cool guys (being fought by nerds), who “sleep all day, party all night, never grow old and never die”. But they have to feeeeeeeeeed. And that makes them, after all, the bad guys. Cool, but bad. And always “the others”. To become one of them is to be lost. They are, as the title says, Lost Boys.

When they finally die (for instance by being burned to death in a bath tub filled with holy water), they revert from grown, cool men into innocent boys. In death, they are once again human.

Being addicts, it is in this day and age natural to focus on vampires as victims. And they are the perfect victims, as they cannot stop being addicts. There is (outside of Terry Pratchett’s books) no Anonymous Bloodsuckers, for those who want to overcome their addiction. It can’t be done. There is no point in talking about personal responsibility. They either feed, or they die.

The dilemma is very well shown in the South Korean movie Thirst: A priest becomes a vampire, a very introspective and ethical vampire. But he makes his lover a vampire too, and she is anything but introspective or ethical: She is a jolly vampire, a vampire that enjoys her vampirical existence to the full. She is, in other words, a lunatic killer – a vampire that kills for food, but also simply because she can. She is lost anyway, so why not enjoy the ride?

Hers is an impossible existence. A vampire that fully enjoys “life” is simply too dangerous to exist. She has to die. And she does (sorry about that, but it’s not much of a spoiler really), in one of the most elegant endings of any vampire movie I have seen.

The vampire as victim of abuse
But there is also another sense in which vampires are victims: They are victims merely through being vampires. Or rather: Through having been made vampires.

If we accept the premise that being a vampire is a bad thing – you do, after all, have to cause other people’s deaths to stay alive – then being made a vampire must be considered a rather extreme kind of abuse. And every vampire has at some point in its history been made. Which means that the lot of them are abuse victims.

They are predators. But once they were prey. They are murderers. But once they were themselves “murdered”. In this sense, vampires are parallel to sexual offenders, who often themselves have been victims of sexual abuse.

The one exception to this rule, are vampires like the woman in Thirst: She is made a vampire at the point of dying. Making her a vampire is a way for her lover to “save” her life (and boy, does he regret).

The book (and movie) which takes both these concepts of victimhood the furtherest, is the Swedish Let The Right One In, where Eli is both a victim of vampiric violence and abuse and very obviously an addict. She is a killer, but argues that she is not any different than the rest of us: She simply does what she has to in order to stay alive. Wouldn’t we all?

Like the female vampire in Thirst, Elis existence is an impossible one. You simply cannot kill that many people in a fairly small area and expect to get away with it. She has to stay on the run more or less constantly.

The absurdity of it all
And here we approach the absurdity of seeing the vampire as a victim. Because even if it is one, it is also by nature (or un-nature, if you prefer) a killer. People must die for it to stay alive. Others may murder for them, but they are still, essentially, responsible for their deaths.

In my neo-reactionary view of the world, this is where the vampire teaches us something about ourselves. We may all be victims, one way or another. But we are still responsible for our actions. We may have reasons for hurting others, reasons related to our own claims for victimhood, but we are still hurting them. It is still wrong.

It is no point in feeling sorry for the vampire, even if what brought them to their present situation was a road of pain and hurt. Because they are, by their very nature, murderers.

All of this is of course a fairly ridiculous line of reasoning. They don’t actually exist. They are figments of imagination.

True enough, but entertainment – even slightly arty entertainment, like True Blood – tells us something about ourselves. Because entertainment, unlike art, appeals to what we hold dear, rather than, like art, challenging our view of the world. And what we seem to find entertaining these days, is to feel sorry for the vampire. They are the ultimate bad guys, but, we seem to ask ourselves, maybe – just maybe – they are redeemable after all.

This is absurd. Vampires are what the Victorians thought them to be: Demonic murderers. We may no longer fear that they will cost us our salvation and eternal life – which was the real horror of the 19th century vampire – but they want our blood. No, more than that, they need our blood.

There is just one thing to do. We must bring out the hammers and stakes. We must light the pyre. We must defend ourselves. That our entertainment tells us otherwise, tells me that something is truly rotten at the very centre of our culture.
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THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF BENNY

As the news arrive that the Royal Mail have found Benny Hill unfit for a stamp, because "... concerns were raised by our public relations team as it was in direct opposition to company's policies on harassment in the workplace", it is as good a time as any to remind oneself of the greatness of one of the funniest men in television.

Here is the wonderful avant garde cinema sketch:



What is of course really funny about it, is that it is not making fun of French movies, but of the pretentious drivel fans of such movies come up with to "analyze" them. It is not the director, but the journalist that is the laughing-stock of the sketch.

And just notice, at 1 minute and 37 seconds, how he ...

True genius!
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THE DODOLOGIST, VAMPIROLOGIST

Not only is The Dodologist well versed in the way of dodologism, he is also a folklorist by education and a (self declared) vampirologist.

Back in the early years of the decade, he wrote a book on vampires in his native Norwegian, and, as the bloodsucking monsters once again are frolicking on a screen near you, his publisher has, in their infinite wisdom (i.e. need to make some money), decided to release it as a paperback. Which is nice.

That again means he has to do things like debating vampires in a panel at the Oslo Science Fiction Festival (which was fun), talk to journalists (which mostly isn’t) and give talks (which very well may be, at least for him).

Being a board member of Oslo’s Heretic Basement, he said yes to himself when he asked if he would like to give a talk there. So he will. This thursday, November the 12th, to be precise.

In the words of the formidable C.M.O.T. Dibbler: “Bee there orr bee a rectangular thyng!”
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The picture, by the way, is from the Spanish language version of the classic Dracula, filmed at night at the set where the English one, with Bela Lugosi, was being made during the day. Carlos Villarias is Draula.
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"WE HAVE MADE FICTION TO SUIT OURSELVES"

"... a man with a definite belief always appears bizarre, because he does not change with the world; he has climbed into a fixed star, and the earth whizzes below him like a zoetrope. Millions of mild black-coated men call themselves sane and sensible merely because they always catch the fashionable insanity, because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom of the world."

"Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves."

Quotes from G.K. Chesterton: Heretics, chapter 4
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SUPPORT THE GREATEST SWIM TEAM!

As a man of class and style, The Dodologist obviously prefers cardigans, tweeds and bow ties. But sometimes, just once in a rare while, he puts on a t-shirt. And as he enjoys supporting great athletics, there was no way around ordering this one:


There simply wasn't.

Click pic for a chance to support some really great athletics. Like running for your life ...
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THE FALL AND RISE OF THE WALL

The Dodologist is a lover, not a hater... Yeah, right!

Well you wouldn’t be all that perky yourself, if extinction was a fact of your daily life. And, after all, being a neo-reactionary is more than simply being gloomy. It’s being gloomy with an axe to grind.

Whatever. The Dodologist loves irony and hates – and he really, really means hates – those Irish wannabe messiahs – U2. You know, the great enemies of greed and capitalism that fled Ireland to skimp on taxes. Smug bastards.

Now, this is wonderfully absurd: Because U2 are such great lovers of freedom, they celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by playing a free concert for 10 000 people in front of the Brandenburg Gate. And for safety reasons they obviously had to put up a huge fence around the bloody thing, blocking the sight for everybody else.

So, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, they … put up a new wall!

Oh, the irony.
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THE BIRD SEX SONG

The Dodologist presents an old favourite, by the veryveryfunny Garfunkel & Oates.

It is hardly strange that it is a favourite: Beautiful women singing about sex with birds (even if they’re not dodos). What’s not to like?


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IRONICALLY SPIKED

The Dodologist is listening to classical music. Judas Priest, to be precise. Something he is hard-pressed to do without being reminded of one of the great jokes of rock´n´roll couture. To quote Wikipedia:

"Distinct aspects of heavy metal fashion can be credited to various bands, but the band that takes the most credit for revolutionizing the look was Judas Priest, primarily with its singer, Rob Halford. Halford wore a leather costume on stage as early as 1978 to coincide with the promotion for the Hell Bent for Leather album. In a 1998 interview, Halford described the biker and leather subculture as the inspiration for this look."

Anyone who has seen pictures of the performers of that great Norwegian cultural export, Black Metal, knows where this would end: In sheer, ridiculous absurdity. The spiked leather gauntlets grew steadily spikier, until they were more than sufficiently long to spike their leather clad, vampiric looking wearers.

Now, you can say a lot about the Black Metal scene – most of it strongly sarcastic – but they do, like many of their metal cousins, tend to be more than a little bit homophobic.

And here’s the joke: Halford, who came out as gay in 1998, was rightly inspired by the “leather subculture”. And though that subculture was not exclusively homosexual, to a large extent it was. Which means that when the homophobic metal-heads of today prance around in leather and metal gauntlets, they are sporting a style largely taken from the homosexual leather scene.

Now, how is that for irony?
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THE DYING SPIDERS

The spiders in our basement are dying.

They are young males, I hear, gone astray on their search for a mate. And they are, at least for Norwegian spiders, big fellows. They show up every year, signalling the end of summer.

Mostly, it must be said, they are dying through unfortunate run ins with The Dodologists wife. But even if they manage to steer clear of The Wife – and whatever she may happen to, eh, drop upon them – they are dying.

We find them crouched up, with their legs pulled up underneath them; very, very dead. Which means autumn is coming to an end.

Not that I need the spiders to tell me winter is on its way. A week ago, the trees were yellow. Now it’s the ground underneath them that is. The trees are almost naked; skeletons awaiting the inevitable cold.

I like this time of year, even if I’m not all that fond of the spiders. It’s a time of death and decay. But it’s also a time of hibernating indoors, with a pot of tea and 39 Chesterton-books on my Kindle. It’s a good time.

Unless you’re a spider of course.
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THE DODO DECLARATION

The dodo bird is extinct.

It was a big, slow and peaceful pigeon – entirely unable to fly – that had adapted perfectly to the conditions on a group of islands where it didn’t have a single enemy.

Then humans showed up. They brought dogs and pigs.

And suddenly it was a really bad idea to lay one egg, once in a rare while, directly on the ground – and then mock about doing other stuff while it hatched itself.

Suddenly the dodo bird was extinct.

The Dodologist is a project in the spirit of the dodo. While reality runs its course around us, we drink our tea and take note of the sufficiently unimportant with our virtual fountain pen.

These notes may cover a large area of subjects, but stuff like music, literature, religion and politics may show up.

Consider yourself warned.

The Dodologist is male and middle aged, rude, annoyed and elitist. He does agree than no one has invented a better political system than democracy – but still doesn’t like it.

The Dodologist is a self declared reactionary, but realizes that the best thing about the past is that it is past. It's not that they did everything well back then, but the past being past means we can focus on the good stuff.

And at least they didn’t have gangster rap. Or “psychics” solving crimes on television.

People are people, and mostly annoying, but if you have the dignity not to reduce yourself to a group membership or your own victimhood, there is every chance we may interact in a civil way.

This being the internet, though, the chances are good that we won’t. That is probably for the best.
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