The Devil Went Down to Georgia...

On the Internet, you're never really forgotten. This is pretty much okay, if you have athazagoraphobia, like I do. It could kind of suck, though, if you find yourself committing acts of fiendish dickery that you might not realize the consequences of. Namely, if you go around sending glib little Op-Ed pieces to newspapers about how poor people are like wild animals. That's a major dick move.

Like this:

You may have seen this on your FB feed, and likely reacted with the same bemused disgust that I did, at first, shaking your head and thinking "Oh, [insert misguided friend who posted it here], when will you learn?" Then, you probably let it go, like a rational and sane human being, chalking it up to the kind of hyperbolic drivel that constitutes so much of the Internet.

Unless you're me. Something about the sanctimonious air of it just got to me. Then, seeing it reposted and roundly criticized by another friend forced me to look at it again, and ruminate on exactly what it was saying. This man is *literally* dehumanizing people who are getting the very government aid that their taxes paid for, and to which they are *rightly entitled* as residents of the United Sates. He's suggesting that their unemployment, disability, or advanced age denotes a failure of their frontal cortex, and that they be relegated to the status of feral beasts, deserving neither the dignity of direct address nor the basic human right of subsistence without having to forage through dumpsters for castoff McBurgers. This man is espousing Social Darwinist propaganda as casual breakfast-table chuckle-fodder, and he signed his name to it, to make sure he got credit.

His name. For proper credit.

Well, Billy Fleming - this is me, giving you the credit you deserve.

The first thing you have to do is find out where the original clipping came from. Fortunately, things this myopic and hateful tend to become pretty popular, so it wasn't hard to stumble upon this forum of self-congratulatory hypocrites bandying about the one-step-short-of-eugenics quip like it was the greatest thing since George Will:

Fantastic! This guy had done the hard part already, and all I had to do was continually swallow the bile that kept rising to my throat while parsing through the painfully misguided extremism. Now that was done, it's just a process of recursive Google searches.

 

 Weather, gardening, and comparing the impoverished to hungry bears. And this is the Miller County *Liberal*?! What the hell does the Miller County *Conservative* look like?!

Okay, so maybe that is "liberal" in Georgia. Maybe they never got the memo about that ideological switcheroo after the Civil War, and they're working with antebellum definitions... either way, we now have enough to match a name to a geographic region. Let's see what that gives us:

Hmmm... interesting; he appears to be a Rotarian, if it's the same one.

Oh, this is much better. A listing with a P.O. Box and e-mail. Guess he wanted to know about his ancestors (I won't make the joke - you already have in your head. We're both guilty now), and didn't realize that their genealogical inquiry would become a matter of public record. Of course, considering that he refuses to acknowledge the difference between people on welfare and vicious forest creatures, that shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

Would they even get the Miller County Liberal in Bainbridge, though?

It's pretty likely.  Thanks, Google. So, we've established a fair amount of certainty that this is the guy, and that he's married, and that his wife's name is Shirley, and that she has a genealogy interest and an email address. That couldn't possibly produce an actual, physical address, could it?

Oh, my. Internet, I have underestimated you. This is still sort of a dead-end, though, because I'm unwilling to spend the $23.70 for 6 months of access to the full records. Someone else might be, though.

Before you start a vigilante pool at work, though, we should verify with a little more certainty that we have the individual in question. More Google results provide this:

Ohh... feelsbadman.jpg. It would appear that he is a pall-bearer for one Margaret Branch Lorenz. Now, I can be a pretty mean person, but even I wouldn't be so heartless as to make light of the bereavement of a passed-on family member. That's out of bounds.

But, since it is the Internet, I *have* to at least find out more.

... Phew - at least he wasn't a direct relative. It was probably his wife's side of the family, which explains that "Branch" part of the email address. That means, though, that it's also pretty likely to be his wife's church, and therefore his church as well (unless he's a lot more progressive than his rhetoric would suggest):

Okay. So we have the Colquitt connection corroborated, and a whole lot more information about this guy than we ever really wanted to know. This doesn't really make his case any better, though.

For example, shouldn't someone who ascribes to Christian doctrine be at least a *little* more understanding to the poor and meek? I mean, I'm no biblical scholar, but I do seem to recall some words (written in red, even, because god was totally pissed off when he said that part) about treating the poor as you'd treat others, and clothing them, and... what was that last part? Oh, yeah. FEEDING THEM.

To be clear, I'm an non-theist (which is the word for an atheist who doesn't want to argue). I don't believe in any such stuff as divine authorship or holy scripture, but I can recognize a good idea when I see one, and it doesn't take a vessel of the almighty creator of the universe to see that *feeding hungry people when they don't have food doesn't make them animals*! It doesn't give you the right to be smug about it when you *do* feed them, either; and it *definitely* doesn't give you the license to go around debasing the idea of doing so. It almost makes me want to conjure some belief in divine justice, just to be able to imagine that it will be doled out eventually... like food stamps, maybe, but with a boot to the head for people who were being dicks.

But, since we have no cosmic arbitrator to delegate the wages of righteousness in the perpetual divorce-case between ourselves and the universe, we need only to look toward more human sources of wisdom. I believe it was said by Mel, the cook on Alice: "The best defense is a good offense."

Well, the poor and needy of this country can hardly be expected to defend themselves against the kind of sidelong, mincing attacks from the likes of Billy Fleming, so I would prefer if someone, on their behalf, locate the exact whereabouts of this man and do him the favor of giving him a "lesson" a bit more memorable than an inappropriate analogy.

They would gather as many feral woodland creatures as they could, and release them on his property. Then, they'd leave a large chunk of raw meat on his porch - but put a very heavy lid over it. Inside this lid, they would write the following note:

"Dear Mr. Fleming, you appear to lack understanding of the difference between poor people and wild animals. You will find that, while people on food stamps tend not to claw and bite at your ankles while you stare in disbelief, the critters you're about to be introduced to very likely will. That's one difference. There are many others, but I know you're a busy man, writing letters to newspapers and hopping around kicking at badgers and all. By the way, poor people don't have rabies - that's another difference. Rest assured, though, should you be cast into bankruptcy by the medical bills, you can always apply for food stamps. Good luck!

Best of wishes,

Anonymous"

Because we wouldn't want to go around signing our name to something that causes so much distress, would we? Who knows *what* could happen?