Sucker Punched in Cyberspace

The moment I saw his big, black, ugly mug I knew I was in trouble. He had that look of smoldering anger in his eyes; the dark, menacing look of a miscreant who'd slit your throat in a New York minute if you crossed him the wrong way. His unsmiling face was the kind you'd see on an FBI most-wanted poster for the worst kind of violent criminals. He looked like a pimp, a chump, and a thug all rolled into one. I'd seen his face before. It was the brooding face of the black American gangster, the cold-blooded hoodlum with the kind of twisted inward hatred reserved for incarcerated criminals from the mean streets of the concrete jungle.

I was writing and publishing some progressive essays on Associated Content when this brother from Detroit sucker-punched his way into my life. He hunted me down like fresh meat on his hit-list of liberals and then posted a comment on my opinion piece, "Why I Hate America," with some hateful remarks of his own. I'd made the mistake of culling the "H" word from a CommonDreams.org article entitled, "An American Icon: Gore Vidal on Italy, Iraq, and Why He Hates George Bush." The high-and-mighty poet from Motown evidently enjoys a sadistic pastime of cruising AC for easy targets and "telling off" liberals whenever he feels a little telling off is necessary. I was a sitting duck in his private shooting gallery and never saw him coming. Suddenly and inexplicably, this angry black man with an inferiority complex blasted me with double barrels of his excruciating audacity and arrogance.

I was mugged in cyberspace. The mugger told me America was the greatest country in the world and that if I hated America I should leave. He told me I was a loser who should kill himself because no one was going to miss me anyway. I wrote him back posthaste. I told him I understood his anger (I have strong opinions and I used the word hate) but I also told him I didn't appreciate being attacked on a personal level. I wondered why a black man in America would feel such a strong affinity for a white president and his jolly band of rich, white republicans. I told him I wondered what kind of job and education he had and why he felt he needed to include the name of another content producer as part of his initial attack on me.

My wondering ignited a powder keg of pure evil. I found out the emotional cripple is a gung-ho military man who thinks the war in Iraq is good for the country. Like stinging rain in a firestorm of explosive fury I was sucked into the vortex of racial hatred as our escalating free-for-all of strikes and retaliations quickly became a sick private war of words between two grown American men behaving like punks in a schoolyard.

The comments went back and forth. He told me my wife was a whore and I told him he was a black rapper who needed to take his ignorance and arrogance back to the ghetto. He told me I was a punk who was better off dead and I told him he was a disgrace to his race. He told me he was better than me, my superior rather than my equal, and I told him he was a dumbass nigga who represents one of the reasons I left America in the first place: to get away from the rapping, gangbanging, insult-slinging mentality of American pop culture. In my country, which is no longer the greatest country in the world, it's considered cool to be a black badass perpetrator with a white boy's chip on his shoulder.

I know I'm participating in an online race war and propagating racial hatred, but I don't care. The things this man wrote to me are unforgivable. I don't want to be the kind of man who holds hatred in his heart, but this is war. Things were written, horrible, mean, nasty, hurtful things were said and lines were crossed. I was raped by this big black motherfucker from Motor City. I was dick-slapped and left for dead.

Who is this indignant black soldier, anyway? Is he the same black man I grew up with in sunny and liberal southern California, where as a youth I body surfed in the pale green Pacific and played beach volleyball beneath the clear blue skies of paradise? There were decent blacks in my life during my San Diego school days. Back then, I was an all-star basketball player high-fiving and jiving with black kids from both sides of the railroad tracks. Is he the same dark-skinned brother I consider a friend in my liberal attempts to be a tolerant and respectful member of the open-minded white community? I think not. This big, black, ugly motherfucker is part of the "vulgar mob" in Henry Miller's novel "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare."

He's the worst kind of human being alive. He's an ill-informed, closed-minded hypocrite who thinks inner strength comes from brutality. He thinks it's cool to go around abusing and harassing strangers with his bombastic brand of ass-whipping. This violent man is lost in a delusional world of vulgarity and repugnancy. I'm guilty for playing his name-calling game. I brought myself down to his level and allowed my own suppressed anger and hatred to get the best of me. Hating people for the color of their skin is wrong. Hate turns us into despicable human beings.

I suppose I have only myself to blame for picking a fight with a big ugly black man who gets off by ass-fucking his way through the short list of liberal political writers at AC. I guess I have only myself to blame for getting sucked into such a reprehensible situation. The big brother from Detroit, Michigan, USA puffed out his chest and pounded it like an indignant schoolyard bully, barring his teeth with territorial grunts of fear and domination. My biggest mistake was acknowledging the beast. Now, I simply choose to ignore him.