A good time to be no one

Sometimes you wanna go where absolutely no one knows your name

“Finally a girl is no one.”

One of my favorite quotes from Game of Thrones. If you haven’t seen it and don’t know the context, don’t let that bother you.

When I first started writing in support of Israel and against antisemitism in my neighborhood of wacko anarchists and their white middle class progressive supporters, I was scared. I got icky notes on Facebook so I stopped posting my work there. I mean, who cares about these people, as long as they don’t physically attack me.

They do know who I am, but they just give me nasty looks when they see my Star of David necklace. Fortunately, they do not read either Substack or the moderate/conservative press. Today is a good day to be unimportant, unless you want to be shot.

Like you (I hope!), I am horrified at the excusing of the murder of Charlie Kirk. It’s bad enough that it happened, but to watch it being excused or even glorified?

I for one am not surprised. I’ve known these people for a very long time.

The anarchists and far left progressive activists I hung out with 25 years ago were mostly very nice, and were opposed to violence. There were exceptions of course, but the overall consensus was that peaceful protest was the way to go. Not “mostly peaceful.” Actually peaceful.

Inside the meetings though, the mindset was that conservatives or even “normal people” were not quite like us. Conservatives especially could be demonized, made fun of, and othered.

The way they talked about police officers was especially telling. These are people who glorified Mumia Abu-Jamal, who killed a police officer.

I understand being suspicious of police. My boyfriend 25 years ago was beaten by police during a protest and arrested, charged with felony assault of an officer (that 140 pound trust fund anarchist recent Columbia Law graduate couldn’t successfully assault a squirrel, I assure you). We went through a long and arduous process until he and his co-defendants were cleared of all charges in court. I get it.

But killing police, and killing outspoken conservatives, that is scary.

I figure that by the time I publish anything big enough for it to come to the attention of these crazies, I’ll live somewhere they can’t get me.

For now, it’s a good day to be no one.

Look at this pretty flower! Don’t shoot!