Digging My Way Out Of Prison

I'm ranting today, and there's some swearing involved, but hey, it's warranted.

So here I am again, locked out. Or locked in, depending on your point of view.

I’m in Facebook prison. Again. The latest occasion if you keep track of them as they go by.

This of course has happened before. I log in and get a brief message with the one comment that I got flagged for, and the message tells me I’m suspended for thirty days because I’ve violated their “community standards.” There is no appeal. There is no response from Facebook when I complain. And in each case, I have always strongly felt that I never came close to actually violating their precious “community standards.” The remarks I got flagged for each time were snarky, but never crossed the line.

I put those in quotation marks, because frankly, they’re a joke. Facebook claims it wants a respectful community, and yet it tosses people out for not really violating their joke of a standards list, while letting others get away with things that do cross the line. They not only cross the line, they stomp all over it, kick it in the arse, and set it on fire.

This time it happened in late July. Here in Canada, there was a news article about one Michael Ford, the nephew of the late and utterly unlamented crack smoking drunken bastard of a former mayor, Rob Ford. Michael (Mikey, as I’ll hereafter refer to the twit) was elected by the demented constituents of Ward 2 in Toronto to serve as their councillor. I call the constituents there demented for good reason- these are the people who have elected the Fords in one form or another for over ten years.

First it was Rob himself, serving as city councillor for years on end, regularly putting his foot in his mouth, sneering and showing himself totally unfit for public office. Then when the big thug won the mayorship (which still baffles me to this day), his brother Doug was city councillor for that ward. Doug was just as dumb as Rob- which of them was the stupider pretty much depended on which of them was speaking at any given moment. Both of them were sneering, uncouth, vile bullies, socially inept, filled with loathing and bigotry, and totally lacking in self awareness. For years on end the Ford boys made a spectacle out of Toronto, from Doug’s excuses to Rob’s addictions to their mutual verbal vomit.

These two, like the rest of the family, would be absolutely nothing if their late father hadn’t made himself a whole lot of money. They’d have ended up being nothing more than the drunks at the corner bar, griping every night about how everyone else was getting ahead in life but them. They showed no sense of real talent, skill, or intelligence, and spent time alienating pretty much every other member of council, to the point where Rob’s mayoral powers were largely shifted to the deputy mayor.

Flash forward to the re-election campaign. Rob was diagnosed with cancer- while usually I might feel sympathetic in such cases, the way he and his family blatantly used cancer to score political points was for me the absolute last straw. It was a slap in the face to anyone who's lost family to cancer. Anyway, he got sidelined, Doug took on the mayoral campaign himself, and blissfully lost, while Rob still ran for his old council seat. Which of course he won. Mikey, their useless prat of a nephew, changed his surname before the campaign to make himself a Ford, and ran initially as a school trustee. And with Rob’s death this past spring (he’s presently in Hell, complaining about how there’s no crack, vodka, or hookers), Mikey decided to drop out as a school trustee (I wonder how someone who probably didn’t even finish high school and shows next to nothing in the way of being literate is actually qualified to even run for a school trustee) and ran in a byelection to fill his uncle’s council seat. And of course he won.

So that was that. The day or two after that, I left some snarky comments about the Fords and their demented cult of followers at a couple of spots on Facebook. Ford Nation, as they like to call themselves, is nowhere near what it once was. And yet the stupidity of the die hards remains firmly in place. This is the same pack who spent years blindly following two brothers who showed themselves time and time again unfit for office, whose family thought of themselves as a dynasty instead of the inbred pack of drunks and druggies that they are, who brought repeated embarrassment to not just a city, but an entire country. They supported with absolute conviction a man who was a misogynistic bigot, a wife beating bully, a thug who misused and abused the office of mayor. And they never learned one damned thing along the way.

Ford Nation is, well... stupid.

There are some people in this world who aren’t that bright. But they know they’re not that bright, and so they get by through life being generally quite pleasant and affable.

And then there are the blithering idiots.

Ford Nation is full of blithering idiots, totally incapable of seeing reality for what it is, having no idea what fitness for office means, and spending their days wasting perfectly good oxygen, all while utterly convinced they’re right. Despite the evidence and the proven record that shows they’re wrong. I wonder what the colour of the sky is in their world. Probably soaked in booze and illicit substances.

I can think of another such blithering idiot. I’ve occasionally referred to my idiot ex-brother-in-law in comments. Cro-Magnon Mike, as I think of him. No doubt Mike thinks the Fords are wonderful. Mike is the sort of guy who surely never got out of high school with a diploma. He’s a perennial moron, but he has no idea of that simple fact. He’s a bigot, a loud mouth, an argumentative jerk, and a blowhard who turns everything into an argument.

I spent years on end biting my tongue, keeping my mouth shut while Mike would blather on about whatever, all in the intent to keep peace in the family, as opposed to telling that particular sister’s bad choice in spouses just what I thought of him. I made the same mistake for the same reason with my other sister’s seemingly endless string of degenerate boyfriends, each one this month’s latest love of her life, each one a variation on the same theme of jerks, drunks, and loud mouths. I kept my mouth shut, and ultimately it was a mistake- one that cost me dearly in the long run. I’ve learned quite a lot from that mistake.

Mike and the string of degenerates were all variations on that very same theme. They were the same thing that the die hards of Ford Nation are: assholes.

Which brings us to the asshole in question who I was arguing with. One Robert Cadden of Brampton, Ontario (Brampton being a cesspool of stupidity in my province- Cro Magnon Mike lives there). He’s a big Rob Ford fan, and took objection to my pointing out some simple facts. Such as the fact that Mikey Ford isn’t qualified to be a city councillor or a school trustee, not even to hold a door open. Such as the fact that he’s nothing more than a puppet for his thug of an uncle Doug and demented grandmother Diane, both of whom still think the Fords are destined for political greatness. So I got snarky. And I got turfed for something that didn’t even come anywhere near the “community standards” Facebook boasts about.

What else is one to say about a person who’s blind to years of proven stupidity by a high profile clan of crackbillies who have shown time and time again that they’re incompetent and an embarrassment? What can one say, if that person continues to believe they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread?

Well, I’ll sum him up in four words, albeit four words I didn’t use at all in the comment that did get me sidelined.

Robert Cadden: fucking idiot.

Yes, that’s right, that’s exactly what he is.

Not that he’d ever see this. I doubt Cadden reads anything more complicated than the sports page of the Sun “newspapers.”

The writer in me wouldn’t mind making use of the name for a waste of space character, perhaps with the name Ronald Cadden, all while maintaining the fucking idiot aspect of the real Cadden as I go along. Never annoy a writer. They’ll write you into a novel someday and kill you off.

And so there we have it. I’m turfed until at least the end of August, though the last time I got suspended, I was still out long after it was supposed to end. Meanwhile Facebook lets white supremacists, general bigots, and other hate mongering pricks get away with, well, whatever they want.

Case in point: one Real Christopher D’Cruze, a loudmouth racist bastard who fancies himself an “immigration consultant” in the United Kingdom. That’s listed in his LinkedIn profile. A business with his initials in the title, which to me implies he’s the sole employee and he runs it out of his garage.

D’Cruze is a known dirtbag with a history of racist remarks, particularly around the Facebook page for the Toronto Star. I have repeatedly reported bigoted remarks that he has made down for a long time. Each and every time, the same automatic reply has come back that Facebook doesn’t feel that remark violates their community standards. Among the worst of his remarks was about the death of a toddler, who fell out of an apartment window, when his sneering remark was “who cares? He’d have just ended up a ghetto rat like his kind does.” More recently, in regards to an ongoing situation in South Sudan, his remark was “it’s their culture. You can’t expect any better from their type of human.”

And this hate mongering rat shit of a man is an immigration consultant?

I use the word man very loosely- D’Cruze is a despicable excuse for a human being.

Surely there’s a professional body for immigration consultants in the United Kingdom who’d like to know that one of their own is an outright bigot who spends his time spewing his loathing about other races.

Anyway, Facebook claims that the racist bullshit that comes from a guy like this (and so many others) doesn’t violate their “community standards”, while tossing out people who have never once violated their community standards.

With no appeal, no opportunity to defend themselves, and no response.

I’ve said it before- Facebook is nothing more than bloody hypocritical.

Crap like this is going to destroy the site in the long run.

And so there we have it. I’m stuck in Facebook jail for the time being. I might be back at the end of August. Or the end of September if the bloody site decides I should do twice the suspension time again.

In the meantime, I’ve met this old priest in Facebook jail. He’s told me he’s digging his way out, and mentioned something about treasure and a place called Monte Cristo. We’ll have to see where that goes.