This week, I saw a wonderful video clip of an interview Willie Nelson did on the TV show “The View.” Willie shocked Texas recently by agreeing to sing at a fund-raising benefit on behalf of Democratic Senatorial Candidate Beto O’Rourke, to whom  I have donated $25.

Many of Willie’s fans are outraged by what they consider a betrayal of their conservative values, and are sending him the outraged and nasty messages that are now a hallmark of public discourse in America, and that I get every day, in much smaller numbers than Willie, I am sure.

In America, thinking for yourself is considered treasonous, it was once considered sacred.

Disagreement is a capital crime here in the birthplace of democracy, punishable by banishment and flogging, mostly digitally. Whips have been replaced by tweets and texts and FB messages.

People tell me all the time I should be ignoring these messages, not writing about them. I disagree. These people should be called out, and this issue squarely faced, it is literally choking free speech to death.

Willie was asked on The View how he felt about all the heat he was taking – O’Rourke’s opponent is Republican Senator Ted Cruz. “I don’t care,” he said on TV. “I really don’t care.”  I give my opinion, he said, and other people can give theirs.

This plain response was considered so shocking it made news all over the country, and went viral on social media.

I needed to hear this this week, and I was grateful for Willie’s directness and clarity. I needed some myself.

The week was very interesting, in a perverse way. It started with the Vulvas. Every time I write about Maria’s Flying Vulva Potholders, i seem to unleash a storm of outrage and invective from the people I call Stuffpots and Fuddy-Duddies.

It’s curious, few of these people go after Maria, they seem to focus on me.

I think the reason for this is obvious.

Maria is nicer than me, more polite than me. And much more tolerant.

I am happy to be the lightning rod for her Flying Vulvas. She wouldn’t call anyone a “Fuddy-Duddy,” as I love to do, and perhaps this is one reason I love her, and the reason why few people  send her nasty messages or fight with her.

But the problems this week went well beyond the Vulvas.

I admit that I love to stir the pot, and I also agree that I have great fun writing about the Vulvas. I like a storm. I feel like Clarence Darrow in Dayton, Tennessee in 1929, he wasted little time worrying about the dunderheads who put a school teacher in jail because he taught the theory of Evolution.

He didn’t care what the righteous thought of him, and they didn’t think much of him. When I was 10 years old, I ran away from home to Boston to see Inherit The Wind. I’ve seen it about 100 times since.

I’ve loved poking stuffpots ever since. Kids are impressionable.

I have little patience for people who find artistic representations of Vulvas disgusting or revolting or immoral or who tell other people what to think. I don’t really care what they think, and they don’t really care what  I think.

Why pretend? In America in 2018, almost no one changes their mind, they just choose a label and stick to it.

I would never deny them their right to express themselves. I want the same for me.

Willie gets it. Maria is entitled to her art. They are entitled to their opinion, I am entitled to mine. Blogs are easy to start, don’t mess with mine. We don’t need to be beating up on each other.

No  one is forced to come here and read my mumblings and rantings. If they find me offensive or combative or stupid, all they have to do is go somewhere else. It’s easy to do and absolutely free.

“Your post was intentionally antagonistic so people would reply,” wrote a Vulva Critic. “Then you criticized a post for not containing “thoughtful criticism” I give you “thoughtful criticism” and your response is it (the Vulva potholders) is “no big deal.” So I can only conclude that you don’t really want to discuss an idea, you simply want people to agree or put them in their place. Very manly of you.”

I missed the thoughtful criticism part, perhaps I just didn’t see it. I had no desire to be antagonistic, just honest. Is it really the same thing?

What can I say, really?

In America, there is this  deepening idea that everyone must want to be agreed with in order to state a belief, and that anyone who disagrees is somehow an enemy or villain or traitor.  Why on earth should Willie Nelson be under siege for choosing a candidate to support?m Is he being antagonistic?

I will be truthful, I have little appetite for discussing this issue with every uptight person in North America.

My ideas about opinions have always been shaped by the Revolutionary firebrands who created this country and the very idea of free thought, people like Thomas Paine,  an early hero of mine, who makes me look like a hanging plant, or Thoreau or Emerson,  who cared nothing about whether people agreed with them or not and did not spend their days arguing with angry strangers from unknown places.

Being provocative was the point.

Their idea was that a good writer challenged and stirred people,  they did not not bow to them or seed agreement or kiss asses. And their ideas were their own, not community property. Their ideas weren’t devoured or trampled upon in seconds by hordes of angry and self-righteous ants.

Over the years, I have come to feel this way about Willie Nelson, a much more talented man than me, but very much his own person. He just doesn’t care what other people think of him, and he isn’t afraid to say it. That is the the mark of an original thinker, or artist, and the only way to be one.

That’s my idea too. I don’t care if people like me or agree with me, I am not one who only talks to those who think like me, God help all of us. I learn much from people who disagree with me, as long as they are not pompous or rude. On social media, so many of them are.

I care that I am true to myself. Anybody can start a blog, they don’t need to come here and try to tell me what to write, especially if they don’t like me or find my ideas worthwhile.

The truth is, this has been something of a nasty week, even by my standards.

I got into a brief social media cat right with someone named Lynne who corrected me for saying that donkeys had been working with people longer than dogs. She was correct about that, which I readily admitted. But she also scolded me for being a lazy writer and failing to read the World Atlas.

“You as a writer should know better than to make such a broad statement as this,” she huffed, “especially when it is not based in fact.” I told her I would rather be wrong than rude, and I accepted the correction, and corrected the piece, I  also said didn’t need the scolding.

She got in the last word, and is welcome to it. Turns out she was ticked off at much more than my thoughts on donkeys, as I suspected: “Your generalizations of life in New York State are not necessarily representative of the whole country, colorful & entertaining as they are.”

Now I get it. She doesn’t like my politics, or what she thinks my politics are.

I’m supposed to somehow represent the whole country, not me or even New York State. That would sure be interesting to read. I think we all know what she means.

This morning, another angry warrior suggested I did nothing in the world of value without using other people’s money. She called me “sweetheart,” so I know she was a bit creepy.  I think we all need to think about turning off cable news for awhile. Lots of people are starting to sound like the people on those panels.

There is something in the air this week, perhaps it is the awful and inescapable news we see and hear every day. The angry and disconnected are aroused, they are crawling out of their shadows like the zombies in Night Of The Dead and come out of the mist to yell at me and scold me.

I must have gotten on somebody’s list – it might be those cursed Vulvas, or my troubled ways.

The Kabbalah says that when the energy field around us is charged with negative or stressed out energy, we find ourselves in a lower state of being, suffering from depression, anger, fear, hostility.  Angry people violate our personal space, we become “low-hearted.”

So I need to change the energy around me. I am low-hearted this week.

Or it might just be that I am the arrogant asshole these people think I am. If so, my own punishment will come soon enough.

It’s not for me to say what I’m like, you can each make up your own mind. The irony is that I am just starting to like me and know me. A bad time to discover I’m a jerk.

I am sadly no Thoreau, but I share his idea that ideas are personal and precious, they have a right to live in peace for at least a few seconds before all sorts of people rush to their smart phones and accuse me of not agreeing with them, or of not representing everyone in the country, or of  being an awful person.

Ideas are fragile, and personal and individual. They don’t live by polls or popular opinion.  They don’t always need to be agreed with instantly and universally. They need time to grow and evolve.  They are easily undermined or lost or drowned out in the din. Like angels, they stand or die on their own, given a chance. They are easily killed, and so many die.

Thoreau didn’t have to deal with Facebook Messenger or comments. He would have hung himself in that cheap little cabin.

I have no desire to represent anyone but me, and that is sort of the point, and the reason for returning to this issue, as I do.

It is important to me, and that is a good enough reason to write about it. I will keep raising it because it so directly affects free speech and thought. People very much want the right to be rude, they have come to see it as a birthright. I don’t.

Identity is precious. I have always had to fight for it, I always will. So does anyone who wants to swim in these waters.

People who seem to need enemas have found in the last few days. If you are public, you just have to put up with this in America. But I can write about it.

I want to say something shocking and blasphemous:  No matter what people think,  I have no wish to argue my beliefs on Facebook or all day or anywhere else.  My ideas are my ideas, they are no better or worse than that, and like the great Willie – he is my brother this week – I will keep expressing my beliefs, right down to my last one,  and everybody else is free to express theirs.

I’ll be happy to stand or fall with Willie.

What I admire about Willie Nelson – he is a pre-Internet public figure, as am I – is his ownership of his ideas, for better or worse. He doesn’t really care what other people think of his opinions, he is free to have his, and they are free to have theirs.  He came to his ideas before a thousand people could e-mail or text him in macro-seconds to tell him they are all wrong, or that they don’t agree.

So did I.

What people rarely learn to do on social media is listen or contemplate.

Charlotte Bronte, who wrote Jane Eyre, wrote “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

Go, Willie.

Audio: I Don’t Care