I was lynched recently by a small group of my oldest friends. It was not the traditional necktie party of places like Texas and Louisiana where a worked up crowd grabs you, puts a rope around your neck, tortures you a bit and lets you hang, sometimes burning you afterwards, sometimes before. My lynching was conducted in slow motion, over the course of months, with many a twist and turn as the rope was tightened, and loosened, and I managed to forget about it for days at a time, hoping for the best. Fortunately for me, when these righteously aroused fucks finally pulled the rope tight I survived.

It may seem offensive to describe my sudden and unanimous ostracism by friends of five decades as a lynching. Lynching is offensive, one of the most disgusting things humans do to each other. Perhaps we might better think of it as a pogrom, a worked up crowd comes to your neighborhood, breaking windows, plundering, setting things on fire, beating, killing and showing perfect contempt all around. There is no anodyne image to conjure being put to silence forever by a group of your closest friends.  

You may not speak about it with any of them, which feels like a great betrayal. since these are people you used to have heart to heart talks with. They will not listen, do not care about your feelings, since they’ve already blamed you, convicted you, excommunicated you and felt perfectly righteous doing so. A secret trial is all a despicable criminal deserves when the crime is so hideous, inhuman, unforgivable. 

You will undoubtedly feel a strong urge to defend yourself, set the record straight, correct outright and obvious lies told about you, but let me assure you, as I would have assured myself had I known sooner, nothing you can say will change an outcome that has already been agreed to. You can’t unsee the face of contempt and the firm intent to make you shut up forever if you have a problem being treated the way you are lyingly complaining about being treated.

Human society functions by believing stories, sometimes absurd ones, that explain the world in a way that makes emotional sense. Love is the highest value, and kindness to others, and forgiveness. Makes a lovely story to believe in., to live by. Someone who does not love, is cruel to others and can’t forgive is clearly beyond redemption. Tell that story about someone with enough passion, get a length of sturdy rope, let the guilty party talk his head into the noose and the rest follows naturally.

Live and learn, to me, is a much better formula for a good life than live and be enraged and never take a single lesson from anything painful. Many people are average, many below average, many are emotionally incapable of anything beyond the superficial performance of friendship. As long as everyone is smiling, joking, hugging and laughing, everything is fine in a group of old amigos. As soon as conflict arises and one accuses another (usually behind their back) of being a vicious, sadistic, unloving, unforgiving Nazi the real fun begins, masks come off and you see what your friends are actually made of.

We have a strong need to belong to a group, to be attached to people who love us, think like us, understand and forgive us. This attachment need explains the enthusiasm of sports fans, fans of angry politicians, cults, militias and so on. We are also born with a strong need to be authentic, to be listened to and heard, to be allowed to express things that trouble us, talk about things that need to be fixed going forward.

As I have learned, in my seventh decade of life, there are people who grow up with no tools to resolve conflict, no way to compromise. When you get into any kind of conflict with one of these super-competitive, hierarchy-embracing folks good will, extending the benefit of the doubt, demonstrations of friendship, patience, kindness etc. are of no use. If you have done all these things and are treated like a monster, it is not you, trust me. It is right to extend loving indulgence to friends, until they demand that you shut the fuck up about what you claim is your hurt and accept that they have every right to do the same whenever they want and to shut you up any time you make them feel bad about themselves. Fuck those putos.

And a very happy, productive 2024 to all!