I got a lengthy message yesterday from Kathy, a long-time reader of the blog from California, who was uncomfortable with my writings about the carriage horses of New York, she said she loves my work, has read all of my books, but disagrees with me about the horses and could no longer read the blog if I was going to continue to write about the horses and since I was clearly becoming an “activist,” a dread word in America, next to being a socialist perhaps. This was a sad thing, she wrote.

I thought it didn’t need to be a sad thing, it was not a tragedy to leave my blog and go read someone else’s, Americans are learning every day on cable news to hate people they disagree with and to avoid any kind of opinions they don’t like or approve of. People on the “left” do it, people on the “right” do it, this is a spreading virus in the land of the free and the brave, the birthplace of democracy and protected speech. If she doesn’t like my blog or my opinions, she should, of course, go elsewhere and I wish her nothing but happiness and peace. This is by now a very familiar ritual for me, people letting me know they can no longer abide me if I disagree with them. I can’t say it is hurting me or the blog, bedlamfarm.com is soaring.

Writing online, publishing a blog that draws nearly 200,000 visitors a month, one of the things I spend much time on these days is handling disagreement. My policy is quite clear – disagreement is welcome, hostility, propaganda, personal attacks, the challenging of other people’s motives is forbidden. My Facebook pages are safe zones, I consider them my online home, I expect people to treat me the same way they would if they were sitting in my living room, and I expect them to treat others that way also.

I monitor the pages once or twice a day – this is not an obligation I can hand off to anyone else. If I see overt hostility, I ban the offender instantly and without warning. Sometimes I have to tone down posts, messaging people and asking them to be civil, to simply state their positions and not engage in personal arguments, the sort-of-one-on-one spiraling that rarely leads to enlightenment. This shocks many people, some are just not able to do it. When I send messages like this, the angry posters are not surprisingly angry and offended. They are, after all, angry posters. They unfailingly accuse of me of stifling dissent, of disliking anyone who disagrees, of personal attacks on them,  they usually storm off in a huff and go somewhere else to be angry. And good riddance to them. Once in a while, they apologize and return, they are welcome back, mostly they vanish, not to be heard from again. I think they go off to Angry Land, where they can sent hostile texts and e-mails to other angry people day and night.

Social media lends itself to obsessive arguing, people trade messages back and forth for hours. I don’t permit people to argue directly with one another. I often resent the time it takes to police my Internet communications, there seems to be an endless supply of angry people, and I realize over time many of them have simply forgotten or never learned how to disagree in a civil way. Many just don’t know what I’m talking about, they would much rather huff and puff than listen or learn, or even talk. I try to see them as human beings, to be civil, I don’t always succeed, but mostly I do.

I have to tell people that it is my blog, I am paying for it, and I have the right to say what I wish. People frequently respond by suggesting I am too weak-minded or susceptible to brainwashing to understand what the correct position is. There are links and propaganda blogs to substantiate and argue every conceivable position in the world.

I choose to focus instead on the many – and growing – number of thoughtful and intelligent posts, many agreeing with me, many not. People are sick of the hostility online, they are willing to fight for something better, to form a community around ideas and conversation.

I am not used to agreement in my life, it is not necessary for me. But my boundaries in this new world are clear: if people disagree with me or others on my website and social media pages, they will do so in a civil and respectful way. I take responsibility for the words I write and for the safety and respect accorded the good people who read my blog and my books. I owe it to them to manage disagreements in a civil way. I owe it to myself as well, the Internet has been turned into a cesspool by violent and angry people, this site is part of a broad effort to take real conversation back.

In the coming days and weeks I will be writing more about the carriage park horses, it is an important issue for animal lovers anywhere, it is an important issue for me. I don’t have an exact breakdown but I know many people disagree with my feelings about it. That is okay with me, I have no trouble standing in my truth as I see it. People who question my motives or the motives of other people, or who think me too weak-minded to make up my own mind ought not be wasting their time here. There are plenty of blogs out there that will make them happy.

In the meantime, I have become sadly skilled and experienced at dealing with disagreement. I am a master of the “ban” button, it gives me the greatest pleasure to boot nasty people off of my website and send them back into Angry Land, they are citizens of a hostile universe. Everyone of them I kick off is an affirmation of freedom and dignity.