Seething, Boiling, Burning, Hysterical! (Mad Max: Fury Road, With Spoilers Galore)

So, yesterday, I had the chance to see Mad Max: Fury Road.

Prior to that, I had heard that there was a bit of uproar surrounding the movie.

So, for background, I own the original three Mad Max movies, and have watched them many times. These are films I grew up with, a franchise for which I hold a deep, abiding affection.

Accordingly, I was going to see this movie whether or not there was controversy.

Now, I said in my spoiler-free review of the movie that it was perhaps the best action movie I've ever seen, and I will stand by that.

I talked about pacing, cinematography, scripting, and all of those things are true and relevant.

But I didn't talk about anything that would give away the storyline. I'm going to do that, extensively,  not only for Fury Road but for the entire series here, so if you haven't seen it, stop now and go somewhere else.

So.

After watching Fury Road, I was even more mystified by the reports of people being upset about the movie.

Upon finding out it was a small but apparently vocal men's rights group, I was even more mystified. Then I actually read what they were complaining about, and then I was actually angry.

You douchebags, you haven't even seen the other movies! Or you didn't bother paying attention, either way.

So let me clear things up in context of reviewing the movie.

This group's complaints, as a whole, revolve around the fact that Max Rockatansky is not the main character of the movie. He is the viewpoint character, true, and his is the narrative voice relating the story, but he is not the prime driver of the action; that honor belongs to Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron.

How dare George Miller write a sequel in which there is a strong female lead! This is MAD MAX, his name's right on it!

How dare they make a movie where Max shares the title card with a person with a vagina!

Let me first begin by saying that "cars exploding are only cool when there are only dudes in them" is a ridiculous, stupid statement.

Cars exploding are always cool unless YOU'RE in them.

It has nothing to do with plumbing and everything to do with explosions.

Especially since George Miller has always focused on practical effects wherever possible, using legions of stuntmen (and women) and spending the massive majority of the film's budget on 150 post-apocalyptic dieselpunk nightmare cars that all actually work.

This group of idiots was especially incensed by the fact that at one point, Furiosa yells at Max, something that is apparently on a par with anal rape of a chicken in Times Square for offense value; you just don't yell at MAD GODDAMN MAX.

So, returning to my original point: you just haven't actually watched the rest of the series, have you?

Mad Max is an everyman. In the first movie, he is explicitly offered the hero role by his boss, MFP captain "Fifi" Macaffee, and explicitly turns it down. He's not an anti-hero; he simply rejects the role of hero entirely.

In the eponymous movie, Max is brought into opposition to a sadistic, drug-crazed biker gang run by a lunatic known as the Toecutter (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also plays Immortan Joe, the main antagonist in Fury Road.) The true driver of the action in the movie is clearly Toecutter; Max's actions are entirely reactive.

And this brings me to my several points about Max.

Max is a cipher. As the viewpoint character and narrative voice of all four movies (with the exception of a small voiceover at the tail end of each movie,) he is essentially a passive character. He acts, but he either acts in response to someone else, or in furtherance of someone else's plans; his own agency in the movies is very subdued. Max exists in a kind of twilight world of survival, and Fury Road spells this out in a way the earlier movies didn't.

Now, those of you who have watched these movies may be scratching your heads a bit, at this point, but think.

The only reason Max took direct action against Toecutter's gang is that they killed his family. If they had simply ridden on, he wouldn't have pursued them; despite his friends' anger at seeing Johnny the Boy released from jail, Max was the voice of calm, the voice of reason and restraint, right up until Toecutter killed Jessie and Sprog.

At that point, Max kills Bubba Zanetti, Toecutter, and Johnny the Boy, and runs several other members of the gang off a bridge, and then disappears into the wasteland.

But Max doesn't actively pursue the gang, doesn't act in any way heroic; he simply responds with violence to the deaths of his family.

Move forward to The Road Warrior, and Max is existing as a scavenger in the desert; he's not a hero, or a wandering vigilante, he's a guilt-wracked, hollow shell of a man who simply exists.

He's scavenging, and staying clear of the skirmish, as he watches an attempt at escape by the crew of a besieged oil refinery by the forces of The Humungus; he only steps in to rescue one of the survivors as a means of trading for a tank of gas.

Once inside the compound, the survivor dies, and the leader of the compound's forces, Pappagallo, reneges on the deal; Max offers to retrieve a big rig he saw abandoned on the road at the beginning of the movie in exchange for fuel.

He retrieves the rig, then attempts to escape, and is caught and nearly killed; he is rescued on the way back to the refinery by the Gyro Pilot, and once in the compound agrees to drive the rig as it is the only way for him to escape the forces of The Humungus.

The Humungus and his forces pursue the rig, allowing the rest of the refinery personnel to escape in a caravan. After the rig's defenders are killed, Max is able to destroy the Humungus's vehicle, but this overturns the rig, at which point it becomes clear that the entire run was a sham; the rig is filled with sand, not oil, and Max was strictly an unknowing decoy. Max wanders off into the desert.

In Beyond Thunderdome, the entire first half of the movie is orchestrated by Tina Turner's Aunty Entity character; once again promising Max fuel and resupply in exchange for a task, this time killing off a political rival in single combat. Max agrees, but once he actually confronts Master and Blaster, he realizes that Blaster is developmentally retarded and not responsible, and refuses to kill him, resulting in banishment from Bartertown by Aunty Entity.

Max then encounters a group of lost children, stranded by a plane crash, and attempts to lead them to safety, but is forced to steal vehicles from Bartertown to do so; he runs interference to allow the children to escape, and at the end of the story wanders again into the desert, once again alone, after Aunty Entity - victorious - allows him to live.

Which is the whole point. At what point, in any of that, is Max the primary driver of the story? He is the window through which the audience experiences the story, clearly, but at no point is he the primary actor; his exercise of agency, throughout the series, is only to ensure his own survival.

As Fury Road begins, Max is wandering the desert as a scavenger, haunted by his past - stop me if you've heard this - and is captured by the forces of Immortan Joe, a despot who rules The Citadel, the only source of water for miles around. Immortan Joe has created a pseudoreligious cult called the Warboys, all of whom have been taught that Immortan Joe is the arbiter of the afterlife, and the guardian of the gates of Valhalla.

Joe happens to have a harem - the Wives - who are unwilling to continue to exist as objects.

Which brings us to Furiosa.

Imperator Furiosa is Joe's most trusted lieutenant, and she is entrusted with the task of taking a tanker truck to a nearby refinery for refueling and supplies. In fact, this is a ruse on her part; her intent is to smuggle the Wives out using the rig, and once Joe figures out the trick, he rouses the entire army of the Citadel in pursuit. Max is carried along, literally chained to a car, as he is being used as a blood donor for a Warboy named Nux.

As Furiosa's run continues, the escort forces become suspicious, and then attack her, and the pursuit forces catch up enough to engage in combat; Max is freed when Nux's vehicle is destroyed in an attempt to stop the rig. Max then hijacks the rig, but as the pursuit forces catch up, he joins forces with Furiosa, supporting her in the escape attempt.

Nux also eventually joins with Max and Furiosa, after seeing how cavalierly his efforts are dismissed by Immortan Joe, and how the Wives react to him and to Max.

The story turns when Furiosa finally makes contact with the forces guarding the place she had planned to use as a safe haven, only to find that the haven itself has been destroyed, and only a few warriors remain; at that point, Max makes his first actual plan of the entire series, convincing Furiosa that it's possible to block off the Warboys from returning to The Citadel long enough for Furiosa to actually take it over; they return to The Citadel by reversing the chase right back through Joe's forces, ultimately succeeding in returning to The Citadel; Max then disappears into the desert again.

In Mad Max, the primary narrative driver is Toecutter.

In The Road Warrior, the primary narrative driver is Pappagallo.

In Beyond Thunderdome, the primary narrative driver is Aunty Entity.

In Fury Road, the primary narrative driver is Furiosa.

Notice something in common?

Max isn't the primary actor in any of them.

Sure, his name's on the door, but that's because he's telling the story; these are things that happened to him, but he's not the motivating force behind any of those stories. In that way, Miller is able to draw in the audience, letting them identify with this ragged, desperate survivor, who is unable to control the events around him, and merely clings to survival when nothing else matters.

So, in fifty percent of the Mad Max films, the primary narrative driver is a villain.

In fifty percent of the Mad Max films, the primary narrative driver is a woman.

Why are we suddenly pissed about this?

I can tell you why.

It's because Fury Road is a much, much better movie than the ones that went before.

It's better scripted, tighter, better paced; it's Mad Max stripped to its bare essentials and painted chrome.

The script draws you in; the characters each experience noticeable growth, in particular Max, Furiosa, and Nux; you invest in these characters, in their situation, in their hopes; the moment when Furiosa discovers her long-lost haven is gone forever is a crushing blow, especially since Miller drove the narrative right past the location of the fallen haven without taking particular note of it.

That past is gone so thoroughly that you drove right through the middle of it without ever noticing, Furiosa.

Do you feel that?

That's pain.

That's loss.

That's despair.

And that's the moment - the first time in the series, really - when Max himself steps forward as a driver of the narrative, when he becomes more than a passenger, more than a bystander, more than only a survivor.

That's redemption.

That's hope.

What about that do you find to be negative?

You're mad because a girl yells at Max?

You didn't get mad when a girl yelled at Max in The Road Warrior, did you.

You didn't get mad when a girl yelled at Max in Beyond Thunderdome, did you.

So what's different now?

Furiosa is the difference.

From start to finish, it's really her movie, and she sells it completely, believably, and you invest in her, in her hopes and her success, because of it.

You care about her.

Max is the shell you use to ride along with her.

And for the first time in the series, Max lets you be more than a passenger.

There is nothing wrong with this movie, and everything right with it. I'm not going to try to deconstruct tropes, or break down gender roles, or talk about how the movie itself uses the story as a vehicle for reversing everyone's expectations...

...Wait, at least for a bit, I will.

You invest in this movie.

It's that moment when Splendid goes under the wheels of Immortan Joe's car, and you see the fury and heartbreak as he carries her body out of the wreckage. It's so, so much worse, knowing that he cares as much as he knows how to.

It's that moment when Rictus stands up, with tears in his eyes, and announces to the waiting Warboys that he had a baby brother. One perfect in every respect.

It's the moment when Nux realizes his only way to redemption is death. "Witness."

It's the moment when Furiosa knows her past is lost.

It's the moment when...

...you know that even if they're wrong, even if they're crazy, there's no-one in this movie who doesn't care.

And that makes you buy into it.

That makes YOU care.

That's a level of heart rarely seen in any movie, much less in an action movie; much less in a two-hour car chase.

I know why those peabrains are protesting the movie, and it has nothing to do with it being bad.

It has to do with it being fucking artwork. And making you care.

I can't wait to see what George Miller does next.

Fury Road, Spoiler-Free!

I will be writing a much more in-depth article about this movie later today, which I will link when I'm done. That article will be spoiler-tastic, so be aware of that before clicking. (The spoilerriffic version is available here.)

Having said that, I felt like I should say something about it for the no-spoilers people who haven't seen it.

So here it is..

GO.

FUCKING.

SEE.

IT.

Ahhhhh, that feels better.

So, Fury Road is the best action movie I've seen, maybe ever.

The cinematography is astonishing - it conveys vast expanses of post-apocalyptic landscape with wide, sweeping shots, while keeping the action sequences tight, focused, and personal.

It's utterly relentless in pacing; literally thirty seconds into the movie, a chase starts, and after that point, there is never more than five minutes of the two hour runtime at once where there's no action.

Brace yourself.

The screenwriters did a stellar job in developing character with minimal dialogue, and Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron absolutely knocked it out of the park; both their characters are fully realized, fully voiced, and neither of them has over a hundred lines of dialogue in the entire movie. The smaller characters have in some cases as few as six lines, and yet carry distinct personalities; this is professional-grade screenwriting.

The story is cohesive, intelligent, and compelling - and there is one, which may surprise people not familiar with this franchise.

But nothing matters more, in this movie, than the stunts, and I want to say something here.

CGI is great for fire.

CGI is great for backgrounds or artwork.

CGI is not great for stunts.

The Kennedy / Miller production team just proved that in a defining way.

If your eye looks at a fire effect and sees CGI, it doesn't take you out of the story; you look, realize it's augmented, and go "ok, but there's fire there."

If your eye sees someone catapulted out of the back of a moving vehicle and you detect CGI, your brain rejects the impact of the whole scene.

Doing the stunts for real makes the whole movie have far more dramatic impact, and draws much more visceral response from the audience. When someone falls under the wheels, your whole body clenches in sympathy.

Prepare yourself.

Because nobody, nobody, ever, has done a car chase the way George Miller does car chases.

This movie is twenty minutes of story, character growth, and high-concept discussion of how to regain a foothold for civilization in a world gone insane, and an hour and forty minutes of the most screamingly testicle-or-ovary-as-applicable-shivering car chase ever filmed.

I expect that nobody will ever do it better.

Go see this movie, even if you're not into action movies.

It's worth your $8.

"What Just Happened?!" (The UK Election)

So, as many of these articles do, this begins with Lovely Wife asking me a question. In this case, "why is everyone so upset after the election in the UK?"

Now that's a complicated one, but to give off a good TL: DR; for everybody, it comes down to surprise, and sore losers.

The British government works differently than does the government of the United States. Superficially, they're similar, in that Parliament has two houses, like Congress, and an executive, but the similarities stop there.

Parliament has two houses, the house of Lords, and the house of Commons.

Those names are mightily descriptive.

The Commons are the "Members of Parliament" that make up the bulk of the government. They are elected.

The House of Lords has two types of members: the senior bishops of the Church of England, known as the Lords Spiritual, and members of the peerage appointed by the ruling monarch, known as the Lords Temporal.

All government ministers must come from Parliament; they can't simply be brought in from the outside.

Like the United States, ministerial positions are generally taken by the members of the coalition currently in power in the UK.

Now, in the U.S., that doesn't mean a whole lot, as there are only two significant political parties, which means that whoever won the last election controls all the cabinet positions. But in the UK, where there are four parties big enough that their results mattered in this election, ministerial positions are typically put together from a coalition between two or more of the existing parties.

But this election was a weird one.

See, the UK has weathered some financial crises, as well as diplomatic ones, over the last few years. (Their biggest ally, the U.S., spying on them being high among that number.) Accordingly, the coalition government made up of Conservative and Liberal Democrat members that has been serving, has become steadily more unpopular, and the left wing of British politics has been getting louder and louder in their determination to take over.

Don't get bent out of shape. The British "conservatives" are center-rightish in American terms, while the Liberal Democrats are centrists. They're not nearly as far apart in the UK as the groups living under the same labels do here.

At any rate, the Labour party, specifically, has been agitating heavily, and was openly predicting a huge victory in the elections.

Since the BBC and most of the British media outlets available to the U.S. are also pretty solidly left-wing, they were too.

And that's not what happened.

To understand the true depth of the upset, there are a couple of other factors that need to be brought in.

Scotland is one.

Labour has traditionally counted on Scotland as a bastion of votes. Scotland, however, has experienced a strong upswing in nationalism just recently, going so far as to have a losing, but hotly contested, plebiscite in September; a vote that would have split Scotland off into an independent nation.

The Scotland National Party or SNP, which had previously held 6 seats in Parliament, took the Scots' Parliamentary seats by storm, leaving Scotland represented by one Conservative, one Liberal Democrat, one Labour, and 56 SNP members. Scotland sent a powerful message that while they may not be ready to exit the UK yet, they're very unhappy with Labour and its representation of their constituencies.

That right there was a disaster for Labour; previously, they would have been able to count on another 46 members in Parliament, seated and voting for their agenda, but the loss of Scotland's seats was crushing.

The end results of the election were that the Conservatives won, not only over Labour, but enough of a majority to form a government all by themselves, which is very rare.

To put in perspective how rare, only one other Prime Minister in history has been re-elected after a full term with even more seats under their control than in the previous term; that was Margaret Thatcher, who was also a Conservative.

The problem for the media in the UK, and the Labour Party, is that the majority held by the Conservative Party is a definite mandate from the people. They put their hopes and dreams behind the idea of removing Prime Minister Cameron, and failed miserably, as well as potentially losing Scotland for Labour permanently.

But in fact it is worse than it at first appears, because it wasn't so much the fact that the UK government is now 330 Conservatives, 232 Labour, 59 SNP, 8 Democratic Unionists, and 8 Liberal Democrats; it was the fact that of the 46 seats Labour lost, and the 48 seats the Liberal Democrats lost, they lost several of their parties' major leaders.

Labour lost the party leader from Scotland, Jim Murphy; the party campaign manager (who seems to have been the wrong man for that specific job,) Douglas Alexander, and Ed Balls, former Chancellor for the Exchequer. (Treasury, in the U.S.)

The Liberal Democrats lost Danny Alexander, their Treasury Secretary; Vince Cable, the Business Secretary; Charles Kennedy, a former party leader; and Simon Hughes, their deputy party leader.

Apparently - and who knew this from their tv shows, media, fiction, and every other cultural touchpoint - British citizens prefer to keep their views private except at the actual election booth; the polls showed a much more even split between Labour and Conservative right up until Election Day.

And this whole thing has made many, many people who are really invested in the success of the political left very upset.

Predictably, they're screaming that there must have been some kind of fraud.

Not so much, guys. You had 66% voter turnout, and of the voters, the Conservatives got slightly over 11 million votes, versus the Labour Party's 9 million.

So...

I understand that it stings.

I know losing a cherished belief hurts.

But unfortunately, a wiser course, instead of bewailing your fate, is to adjust to the new circumstances and move forward.

The new circumstances are that the Conservatives have an all-Conservative government for the first time in 18 years.

They will be responsible for the formation and operation of policy for the UK until the next election at least.

They will, however, be responsible; if you want success going forward, hold them to it.

Biting Down Viciously With Teeth Like A Lion...

So, I'm gonna get all kinds of spoilery talking about something old enough that spoilers shouldn't matter.

Have any of you ever read the book "IT" by Stephen King?

If you have not, you're going to get a bit of an education about it today.

See, the powers that be in Hollyweird have decided to "remake" IT into a pair of theatrical, hard-R-rated movies.

And suddenly there was an outcry, because "No Tim Curry? Booooooo!"

Wait, wait, back up.

OK.

So, the book came out in 1986.

In 1990, there was a TV miniseries, adapted from the book, that starred Tim Curry in the role of...

Wait, wait, back up.

OK, so the book, at its base, is about a small town built on top of an extraterrestrial crash site. The creature - otherwise known as "IT" - which came to earth in prehistoric times, is a psychic predator, which is able to shapeshift, control minds, and project hallucinations, among other things.

It likes children, as they are easy prey.

Kids are scared of clowns.

So, one of ITs favorite forms is "Pennywise," the most terrifying clown in, well, ever.

No, really.

In the TV miniseries, Tim Curry plays Pennywise, and does so quite well.

But it's important to distinguish that from playing "IT," as in the book, IT takes on many, many forms.

So, I'm going to delve into the book a bit, and in the process, explain a bit about why the miniseries, while enjoyable in its own right, was a fucking terrible adaptation of the book, and why A remake is a great idea. (Emphasis because I have no idea how THIS remake will turn out.)

I will note that at this point, there isn't enough information available to know whether this remake will be what's needed, or any good at all, although the hard-R and runtime makes me think it at least has a shot.

So.

In the book, the eponymous creature wakes every 27 years, feeds, and returns to slumber. During its waking periods, the town of Derry, Maine, undergoes a series of disasters, disappearances, bizarre murders, and general mayhem...

...And then IT goes back to sleep, and the town forgets.

The novel heavily implies, but doesn't state outright, that the alien projects forgetfulness of its attacks onto the townspeople as part of protecting itself while it sleeps.

The novel is quite rightly considered a classic of horror, but for those of you who have never read the book, you may not understand quite why it was, and is, such a big deal.

So here goes.

The book is constructed as a paired narrative; following a group of kids who call themselves "The Losers' Club," during one of IT's waking periods, in 1957, and then following those same people as adults, during IT's next waking phase, as they try to finish what they tried and failed to do as kids - killing the creature and ending its cycle forever.

As such, it acts as both a coming-of-age novel, and as a parable about returning home; finding both in a single narrative is already a step above most novels full stop, much less above most horror novels.

But beyond that, the shifting, fear-based nature of the creature gives King an opportunity that maybe no other single narrative could have, which is that it let him create vignette after vignette of wildly different horror, and present them all in the context of a single story.

Human fears are often irrational; often unconnected; often simply nonsensical.

And IT appears as whatever you fear.

For a small child, it may be a clown hiding in a storm drain, with teeth like a lion.

For a teenage pyromaniac who kills animals by suffocating them inside an abandoned refrigerator, it may be a cloud of flying leech-wasps that drain you of blood.

For a young man unsure of his sexuality it might appear as a leper, propositioning him in a way he doesn't even understand yet.

For another kid, the Mummy.

For another person, the werewolf.

For another, a giant, hungry bird.

For another, an abusive husband who is utterly unstoppable.

And IT gives King the opportunity to tell all those stories at once.

As an anecdotal aside, I used to have a good friend whose daughter Katie, at age 12, was quite intelligent and precocious. Said kiddo decided to tackle this book, and I advised against it, and told her and her mom that I thought it was a bit above her readiness. She insisted, and I volunteered to act as a sounding board if she needed to talk about anything she read in the book.

She got her copy from the school library, and dived in, and a few days later, told me "I don't see what all the fuss was about."

Upon my inquiries ("Seriously? You weren't bothered by the flying leechwasps?" "What flying leechwasps?") I got to witness a truly epic tantrum, as it turned out that the school library had a heavily sanitized, heavily abridged edition that was deemed "safe" for the kids.

After a fairly extended bout of screaming at the school librarian, Katie procured an unabridged, complete edition of the book.

Three days later, she gave up and told us she thought she would never sleep again.

Never even made it to the leechwasps.

So.

As kids, the Losers' Club face the indifference - and baffling lack of involvement - of adults; powerlessness; other kids, who can be manipulated not only by their environment but by the creature as well, and the built-in trials of growing up.

As adults, returning to Derry years later, they face middle age; the knowledge that they tried and failed to kill this thing once before; the fear of the consequences of returning, which as kids they never had to face; they face greater doubt, no less fear, and a firm awareness that this is their last chance, because in 27 more years they will simply be victims.

It is a magnificently, brilliantly constructed, hallucinatory meditation on the nature of fear itself, on friendship, loyalty, sacrifice, and the meaning of courage, and it's one of the greatest novels ever written.

When the miniseries was made, it was constrained tremendously by network TV. If it had been released as a movie, it would mayyyyybe have managed a PG rating.

"They left out a lot," to put it mildly. Being on TV meant that virtually all of the really scary bits, and a huge majority of the story, were simply abandoned as unsuitable for family audiences.

The novel's enormously controversial sex scene - in which the Losers' Club's one girl, Beverly Marsh, "bonds" the club together by having sex with each male member, in sequence, in a sewer tunnel, just before they confront the creature in its lair, at age 12 - was removed entirely for obvious reasons. (And likely will be in the remake, as well.)

The majority of the monster's appearances were also removed.

As a result, the miniseries is left with one face, for the "ultimate faceless monster that can be anything" - Pennywise.

It's no wonder the fans of the miniseries think Pennywise is super-de-duper important.

But in the book, Pennywise is a minor part; primarily, the creature uses Pennywise as a way of appearing to the kids when it isn't going to directly attack them.

I understand that you can't really represent IT - a being composed of several glowing orbs of sickly orange light that drive people instantly insane to see them - in its "natural" form, and that Pennywise is a recognizable face to put on the villain.

But this is a creature of immense power; a villain of subtlety, terror, and mystery; a creature that is thousands if not millions of years old and comes from a place outside our universe.

The most important thing about IT is not the actor playing the fucking clown.

A proper treatment, with more of the story intact, more of the monster itself intact, more of the scares intact, and a generally improved sense of fidelity to the original, could be amazing.

No offense, guys, but as much as I also think Tim Curry is awesome, I'm totally not going to miss him for this one.

Perspectives And Viewpoint (Possibly Part One, If I Can Organize This Mess Better Later)

This is likely to be a bit unorganized utterly chaotic and without any internal logic that will make sense to anyone, and will almost certainly make people angry.

So, having said that, fair warning: if you are incensed with anger upon reading this article, congratulations; you're perfectly normal. I expect no other response, because I know that viewpoint bias is a stone-cold sonofabitch to overcome. And this will likely be quite long.

That said, here goes.

It's really hard to walk in someone else's shoes, either literally or figuratively.

I mean, I have damn big feet. Trying on other people's shoes hurts.

I know, obvious, groan-worthy bad joke, but it will become relevant later, I promise.

See, something I think about a lot - a lot more than you might expect - is how to do that in a figurative sense.

For example, I have a fairly gruff set of features, and a similarly gruff voice. Despite that, I am basically a pretty laid-back guy, most of the time. This blog may not give that impression - in fact I am certain it gives the impression of endless, fulminating fury - but that's because I use this forum to vent, when something really bothers me; it's not what I'm like all the time. Shut up, Thomas, I am not.

Because of my face, and voice, most people, meeting me the first time, have a really difficult time parsing my sense of humor. They tend to react to me as though I am verbally assaulting them, especially when I open with stuff like "good morning," or "how are you today," or even a fist bump.

So, I have developed habits to compensate for that. Pretty routinely, when I meet someone new, I will tell a joke that relies on comical, stupendous exaggeration of some obviously minor thing, and then conspiratorially tell my hopefully new friend, "You can laugh. That's a joke. I know I look scary, but I came from the factory like this. They didn't give me an option package."

I'm pretty sure most of the people I meet have no idea how honest I'm being right there.

So, in the past I have written articles about a host of sensitive topics, and some with a fairly rough tone.

Rape.

Racism.

Gay marriage.

Abortion.

I'm not exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to tough conversations to have, ok?

But here's the thing. Regardless of my opinion, regardless of your opinion, one thing needs to be perfectly clear, in everything I write, everything I say:

I am not you.

Watching the way the discourse on practically everything has changed over the last ten years, as I have been blogging that long and goddamn does that make me feel old, I am keenly aware that we've forgotten that critical point.

I am not you.

You are not me.

We share commonalities; we're both people, fifty percent or so of us are the same gender, most of those people have the same orientation and gender identity I do within that subset, many of them are the same race I am, a lot of those people are from similar economic circumstances, some of those people are even from the same town, and share similar early family life.

You know what?

With all that in common, they're still not me, and I'm not them.

Some of those people from my same town, who grew up in a split, sometimes abusive home in greater poverty than they knew, who are the same race, gender, and orientation I am, also like the same music I do, eat the same kinds of food I enjoy, and like the same movies I do.

You know what?

They're still not me, and I'm not them.

And generalizing experience is a fool's game.

It seems these days, every issue has to come with an endless, heckling circlejerk about the "correct" viewpoint.

So, I'm here to break that myth.

There isn't one.

The "correct" viewpoint, does not exist. If you think it does, you are simply wrong.

There are, for example, perfectly valid arguments on either side of virtually any point of politics, social life, religious belief, or literally any other human experience you can have.

What viewpoint any individual expresses, and supports, depends almost entirely on that person's individual human experience.

I tend to disagree with some kinds of ideas fairly violently. I do so because my experiences, and my understanding of those experiences, leads me to seeing those things in a negative way.

I'm not you; you may not see those things in that way.

Ronald Reagan once said, in a speech, "facts are stupid things."

He was right, because facts don't contain a moral component. They don't make decisions; they simply exist. Something either is a fact, or it is not. No amount of argument turns an opinion into a fact, and no amount of argument turns a fact into an opinion.

You can, for example, say that something is categorically wrong when it comes to the legitimacy of the facts.

Anthropogenic Global Warming is a case of this; and frankly as long as the world takes its climate data from the NOAA, there's going to be significant argument about whether or not the facts support the idea, or don't.

You can argue facts.

What you cannot do is argue viewpoint.

I see a lot of that, and it's stupid, and needs to stop.

For example, you have white people, who have not grown up black (obviously,) saying "all lives matter!" in support of protests against police brutality.

And black people, who have not grown up white, telling those white people to shut up because they don't understand the struggle.

Fair enough. I'm not black, and I'm 100% sure that I never will be, either. It's not like I was suddenly dipped in bleach on my 18th birthday and magically thereby made immune to jackbooted thugs.

But you know what? I'm also 100% sure those black people telling white people to shut up are also not white. They have totally different life experiences, and you don't get to, in the same conversation, say "you don't know my life experiences so shut the fuck up," while blithely ignoring the fact that you also don't know theirs.

That particular example is funny to me, because the anger over "#alllivesmatter" is so badly misplaced.

Do you seriously not get the irony of your own anger, here?

Let me break it down, black people.

You go on about how white people are immune to police brutality, and unaware of your life experiences, all the time. It's literally impossible to be on Facebook or Reddit these days without seeing something about how white folks just don't get it.

So, these people, who have lived in this magical immunity bubble their entire lives, not sharing your experiences and not suffering the same circumstances, are aware there's a problem, and have stepped outside of their life experiences enough to agree with you that something is deeply wrong and needs to be fixed, and your response is to tell them to shut up because they're not angry enough?

Not focused enough on you?

Guess what? They're not. Because - just like you said - they don't have your life experiences. They have different ones, instead, but they've managed to step outside that just enough, and just long enough, to at least try to identify with you.

Don't tell them to shut up. If you want to educate, educate. But don't tell them to shut up. When you do that, you confirm the exact type of negative stereotypes you're telling them they have in the first place.

When you've fallen, and you're lying in the mud, and someone offers you a hand up, you don't bat their hand aside indignantly because they don't also want to hear your entire life story after you're on your feet.

You gratefully accept the help, and maybe you can engage them in dialogue.

Maybe get a new friend. That'd be awesome.

This happens a lot with gender identity, too.

"Shut up, cis-people! You're just a shitlord!"

Way to educate a huge swath of society that doesn't really understand your experiences because they fucking can't.

Transgendered people have an opportunity to take life experience from the other side that is literally unparalleled in human terms.

It's not TRUE transformation - until genetic engineering and genetic surgery gets a bit better, anyway - but at least you can try out the other team's hormone loads.

Try this out, womenfolks.

Think of how many times you have said, of a male you know, that he cannot understand you because he doesn't have your plumbing.

Do you honestly think that doesn't apply in the other direction?

I assure you it does.

I see, a lot, women complaining about being "overly sexualized" by men while wearing perfectly innocent clothing that reveals most of their bodies.

I hate to break it to you, but to most men, the act of looking past your sexuality when you are dressed in revealing clothes is either a constant effort, or flatly impossible. It has nothing to do with your clothing, and everything to do with our hormones; but that doesn't actually change the fact that no matter how offended you are that someone stares you in the cleavage, your cleavage is a fucking eye magnet that is practically impossible to resist - and the act of resisting that magnetism is such an effort for most guys that if they put in the effort to manage it, it actively detracts from their enjoyment of their time with you.

You are thinking that I am just a complete idiot, right now.

Surely it's not like that!

We're not just great swarthy beasts, unable to control ourselves!

This is true, we're not. But this is why rape is a crime that draws some very different responses from people. Rapists make men furious in very different ways, and for very different reasons, than they do women.

See, for a woman, or at least most women, this is a tremendous trauma. Your autonomy has been violated; your sense of safety in your person has been violated; your body has been possibly injured, and in a lot more cases than people admit to has betrayed you by responding sexually to the act of rape, which can double down on the emotional trauma and damage; you could be facing an std, or an unwanted pregnancy; you could - most likely will - suffer tremendous difficulty with intimacy with your partner going forward, not to mention nightmares, panic attacks, and years of therapy.

Compounded by which, you have - and I am using this term advisedly, as you will soon see - people who are not you - offering advice, unwanted "comfort," and intentional or unintentional offense in a myriad of ways as they try to comfort you.

Not fun.

Of course, to be fair to them, a lot of those people are trying to reach across that divide in experience, trying to offer you support in any way they can find that they think you will take positively.

They may be absolutely wrong in their assessment of your needs. But they're trying to support you.

"Fuck off!"

For most men, there are three primary traumas associated with rape.

You have the obvious health risks; you have the obvious potential monetary risks - because courts will quite happily award child support to a woman who got pregnant by raping a man - your autonomy has been violated, as a result of the actions of someone you and other men perceive as weaker than you. This does catastrophic, horrifying damage to your internal concept of autonomy and self, and literally every interaction you have from then on with other males who have not had a similar experience is tainted; on their end if they know about the event, or on yours, if they don't, by shame.

How could you have been raped?

What, did that 100-pound girl overwhelm you?

How did you get it up, if you didn't want it?

See, if these things happen to a woman, the assumption is that she was unable to protect herself.

You're welcome to think that every person on earth who thinks that is a condescending douchenozzle.

But that's the assumption, nevertheless.

And you know what? Guys, who have an organ that quite visibly responds to such stimuli as a passing pretty girl, a vague daydream while distracted, a stiff breeze, being in a pool, being out of a pool, standing up, sitting down, or seeing new eye shadow on your wife, will assume that you couldn't have had a physiological response that you could not control.

So, when these things happen to a guy, other guys, who have that same organ, will sympathize with that aspect alone, and totally bowl you over with how utter their contempt is for the idea of you having been overpowered by a mere girl.

And girls, who have an organ that responds with much less visibility but no less demand to such stimuli as "two hot guys in a movie kissing," that cologne some rando on the sidewalk is wearing, or someone firmly gripping your upper arms (or, as Lovely Wife just said a second ago while looking at houses, "that kitchen almost gave me an orgasm,") will assume that you have perfect control over that organ of yours at all times and therefore you must have wanted it.

Because none of us, not one, can step outside our experiences to see what, in that, we share with others.

And we mostly don't try.

And we mostly don't think about it.

How fucked is that?

Stepping outside your experiences is hard.

Think about what people call "the cycle of abuse," because the label makes it easy to reduce. Someone gets beaten as a kid. They grow up, they have kids...

...And most of the time, they beat their kids.

Does anyone here honestly believe that those people, when they found out they were going to have a child, said to themselves "I can't wait to whip my kid's ass until they go to the hospital!"?

Of course they didn't. But that's the example of parental discipline they had, and it takes years of therapy to overcome it.

Years of effort, to change that response.

Viewpoint is a hard goddamn thing to break.

I have big feet. If you have more normal feet, you don't know my struggle. I have to go to a very limited number of stores, and buy custom-fitted shoes, for my giant-assed feet. Normal shoe stores always, always, always try to suggest smaller sizes, because after 40 fucking years I have no idea what size my feet are, and must be making it up. It's so outside their experience, as people who don't have similarly-sized pontoons on the ends of their legs, that they not only don't understand but can't believe it's real.

I have a hard time imagining what life would be like without feet this big.

And that's something minor.

Something simple.

Something, relatively speaking, that's easy to look past.

None of us is exactly alike.

We're not supposed to be.

We're not capable of being exactly alike.

We shouldn't want to be.

What we should do, and mostly don't, is two things.

We should, always, try to step outside the cage of our experience and see things as much as we can from the viewpoints of others.

And we should, always, try to accept people's efforts in that regard no matter how successful they are. 

Or aren't.