Image by G. Tod Slone

Can the nature of a rejection in a literary context ever be ruled objective? And if not, then what is the basis for its authority?

I once attempted to submit an essay dealing with the nature of irrational authority to a certain editor; who shall remain nameless, because it would piss him off. Once it was rejected on certain grounds, I attempted to push back on the objective nature of those grounds. Over the course of a vigorous debate, humorously, my opponent, said editor—who was from the start attempting to maintain that the rejection had occurred on objective grounds—later flip-flopped, saying of course that his judgment was subjective, and how in the hell could it ever be otherwise.

Regarding objectivity and subjectivity in art, I have long been interested in this idea expressed by George Orwell in his 1946 essay “Politics v. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver’s Travels.” To paraphrase, he puts it that it simply can’t be possible, that a work of art should seem good on one day, but bad on another day. Certainly subjective conditions will influence how one perceives a work of art, but there also must be an objective nature to the content of art that isn’t affected by one’s subjective experience. Quoting more of the idea in full from the essay: “If one is capable of intellectual detachment, one can perceive merit in a writer whom one deeply disagrees with, but enjoyment is a different matter. Supposing that there is such a thing as good or bad art, then the goodness or badness must reside in the work of art itself—not independently of the observer, indeed, but independently of the mood of the observer. In one sense, therefore, it cannot be true that a poem is good on Monday and bad on Tuesday.”

If we accept Orwell’s notion of objectivity in art, that, if a work was bad, there must be some way to determine this; then it would be fair to assert that the nature of a rejection of a literary piece, on certain merits, or through certain criteria, should also stand up to such an objective analysis. Again, a work couldn’t simply have one quality at one point, and another quality at another point, but that if it were say; lacking, inadequate, unclear, uninteresting, truly—and not merely at one’s subjective whims—this could be demonstrated through some objective process.

Let’s return to the position that the basis of a literary rejection could never be of any other quality than subjective. If we accept this as the case that, as a reminder runs contrary to Orwell’s notion, then in theory the only objects to go on in an assessment of a rejection would be the qualities that make up the nature of the subjectivity doing the rejecting. Firstly this would make it where the ruling of a rejection wouldn’t be because a work was bad, but because an authority felt it was bad. But secondly and most importantly, the only way to get to the truth of the matter from there, would again be to subject the qualities of that person to scrutiny. So that in effect, the only way to criticize the ruling, would be to criticize the authority in question. For said authority to then say that personal attacks on their character amounted to the ad hominem fallacy, wouldn’t then only make no sense, but also would amount to an immense degree of obfuscation, because it’s then rather implying that the nature of their rejection was in fact objective, as to criticize their character should somehow be irrelevant.

The original thesis of my essay to do with arbitrary and irrational authority, mentioned a quality that in its political manifestation I assert is the quality of autocracy, and that is. It masquerades its subjective use of arbitrary power is actually somehow objective. An actual instance of the ad hominem fallacy would consist in one party laying down an objective argument, and in the other party’s criticisms of that person’s character assuming fallaciously that somehow meant the argument had been disproved. But when you are dealing with the fact that the person is the argument, if they admit their ruling is entirely subjective, where at all is the ad hominem in criticizing the nature of their subjectivity.

It is not that I have a particular problem with the assertion that the nature of all literary rejection is subjective but rather the obfuscation of this fact, in the idea that somehow the subjectivities of authority figures are manifestly more objective than those of people not in positions of power or authority. If they could be, then this could also be objectively determined, but if they can’t be, then what is even the point of asserting it? Therein may lie the point of asserting it, precisely because it cannot be proved.

If a subjectivity, and crucially, only one subjectivity, is the sole determiner of some truth of a matter and thus its only or prime decision-maker, it seems only possible that to criticize their decision would be tantamount to ad hominem, if the fact of their authority to decide is literally all that made it true; if it was magically objective. Since this is ridiculous, it is also ridiculous to assert that the criticism of an arbitrary decision made by an autocratic decision-maker constitutes ad hominem.

If this essay really was tantamount to philosophical meandering, the truth of that statement couldn’t possibly be dependent on the subjectivity of G. Tod Slone.


What follows this brief essay is the immensely longer context from which it was produced. Namely, a 47000 word written debate that occurred between G. Tod Slone and I over the course of some 38 days. Published here in full, I give it the title: ARGUING WITH AN AUTOCRAT WHO CLAIMS TO VALUE DEMOCRACY.

Now a bit more on the context for THIS. I had produced an essay called “The Politics of Non-Response” that was catalyzed out of correspondence with G. Tod Slone of The American Dissident, in which he shared this unpublished sentence of his: “[N]on-response tends to constitute the prime modus operandi of predilection.” It was the idea of a correlation between “non-response” and “predilection” that really struck me, non-response in this context referring, at least in my experience, to that tendency in the literary pursuit, to often hear back no replies to one’s queries or submissions. Where my mind went initially within the genesis of what would become “The Politics of Non-Response,” is I wrote out in my working notebook, that I felt non-response was correlated with predilection, due to how it upheld a veneer of “objectivity,” while remaining an act of subjective power. That it also then, projected this downward, leaving those subjected to the silence of being ignored, with the false notion of their own “objective” inadequacy. In short, though the authority is wielding a subjective power, by never having to explain itself, their predilection, or subjective preference, takes on the appearance of being a true or objective measure of qualities supposedly lacking in what they have rejected.

The entire concept I think can also be summed up in a concise passage by David Graeber, after which the 47000 word debate follows. Finally, I do not envy, whoever would jn reading it in its entirety, submit themselves to such extraordinary tedium. But such is the nature of “vigorous debate,” one of G. Tod Slone’s famous phrases.

David Graeber on career advancement: “Sociologists since Weber have often noted that one of the defining features of a bureaucracy is that its employees are selected by formal criteria— most often some kind of written test— but everyone knows how compromised the idea of bureaucracy as a meritocratic system is. The first criterion of loyalty to any organization is therefore complicity. Career advancement is not based on merit but on a willingness to play along with the fiction that career advancement is based on merit, or with the fiction that rules and regulations apply to everyone equally, when in fact they are often deployed as an instrument of arbitrary personal power,” (from the essay, In Regulation Nation).

(Part 1)

A SCOTT BUCH: As stated in a previous message, I may have taken this concept in a direction that you necessarily wouldn’t have. I have also maintained the title, and the basic concept, to do with politics, as The Politics of Non-Response. I found a way to integrate its coming out of a formulation of yours, without needing to quote you directly. If I may, I would like to officially submit it to you for consideration to be published in the upcoming Amer Diss.

G TOD SLONE: I’d get rid of YOU in the 1st sentence. Also, the m.o. was specific to criticism aimed at the non-responder and/or those pushed by him/her. The last parag. was the best in my opinion. I did kind of get lost in the middle of the essay. And again it would be far more powerful with a few concrete examples from personal experience and names.

And your interest in the subject was sparked by your experience RE Rattle, for example. Also, the non- responders might argue, for example, that they receive far too many writings to be able to respond to all of them.

Also, I do not think there is a concerted politics of non-response. Rather the overt non-reaction tends more to be individualistic, even though it conforms to the general m.o.. And so, why the non-response? Well, one would have to admit a fault(s), something those in power positions generally have a difficult time doing. And what might they get from making an admission? Truth!

Also, there are exceptions… like The AD, for example.

A SCOTT BUCH: So regarding “The Politics of Non-Response,” are you passing on it?

G TOD SLONE: Thought maybe you might respond to the points I made with its regard.

A SCOTT BUCH: Well, I had intended to respond to your points, though it was unclear to me if you were rejecting it. I consider the piece finished, and your comments seemed more like the ones a writer’s group might offer, and not really a critique, or an addressing of the argument made. For me, its status as a published piece, is of more immediate concern, than aspects addressing its style. For ultimately, besides one general conceptual comment, or two, all you really seemed to offer up, was an assertion of your own predilections.

All right, so I’ll go through what you wrote, point by point.

“I’d get rid of YOU in the 1st sentence. Also, the m.o. was specific to criticism aimed at the non-responder and/or those pushed by him/her. The last parag. was the best in my opinion. I did kind of get lost in the middle of the essay. And again it would be far more powerful with a few concrete examples from personal experience and names.”

I’ll start from the bottom up.

“. . . it would be far more powerful with a few concrete examples from personal experience and names.”

There is an argument to be made against adding in more particulars, where it decreases the universal value of what is being said. The aim in this essay, was to try to universalize or abstract a general phenomenon, so that people could find in it that aspect which they relate to, and they are familiar with. This is clearly a difference in style. If I was writing an article of journalism, of course I would be particular, and not universal. But in a philosophical aesthetic essay like this, my choice, the deliberate style, is to try to abstract, in order to create a Model. A model is the opposite of a particular instance, like directing the whole piece at a specific editor. This addressed a generalized phenomenon, in its structural form, not a particular editor within that system.

“I did kind of get lost in the middle of the essay.”

This is another difference of style. If you got lost, then how about point out the specific place in which you did. Which paragraph was it? Which sentence? Which clause? Let’s go through the actual text. Because it can be objectively demonstrated, whether my writing is actually unclear, or whether or not your assessment of it might have been too cursory.

“. . . the m.o. was specific to criticism aimed at the non-responder and/or those pushed by him/her.”

This is where I made the choice, to take your formulation, and abstract it, as a model. I simply started from the ground of the correlation between Non-Response and Predilection. I understand that you might have, and probably certainly did, have a completely different concept in your mind when you formulated this. However, why it resonated with me, is because it resonated with thoughts of my own. So I ran with the thoughts of my own it resonated with. This was my perspective. It is the very essence of predilection to say, well, this isn’t how I would have done it, or what I would mean by it, therefore, it is wrong.

“I’d get rid of YOU in the 1st sentence.”

This is so much the epitome of predilection it is staggering. This is what I mean by, like getting feedback from a writer’s group. This is among one of the most pedantic bits of feedback one could offer. Who cares? You couldn’t get rid of simply the “you,” without the whole sentence having to change. I’m fine with how it begins. Okay, so you aren’t. Merely your predilection. To make a point of this, is the essence of pedantic and predilection.

“And your interest in the subject was sparked by your experience RE Rattle, for example. Also, the non- responders might argue, for example, that they receive far too many writings to be able to respond to all of them.”

This didn’t come out of being rejected by Rattle, I already wrote a piece which reflected that, which you weren’t that into. So I have left that on the cutting room floor. Now here is where, I feel like we have evidence that you didn’t read the essay carefully. You are making a point that shows you missed the part where I addressed what you are saying. The essay addressing the notion that there are too many submissions, too little time. In the fifth paragraph, starting at the sixth sentence of paragraph five: “To this some boot-licking sycophant might reply, ‘but not everyone can be responded to!’—as if this somehow pointed to some absolute fact. In precisely the vein as predilection, this is no absolute fact. The reason why ‘not everyone can be responded to’ is not, ultimately, some immovable, objective fact of reality. It is merely representative of certain objective material conditions which are ultimately reflective of some subjective preference or privileging, of one mode of social norms or conducting a society, and its codes, over another. It is a privileging of the autocratic.” So here, it would appear, you just totally looked over a central point this essay even brings up! A writer is only ever as good, as how much of a close reader they are.

“Also, I do not think there is a concerted politics of non-response. Rather the overt non-reaction tends more to be individualistic, even though it conforms to the general m.o.. And so, why the non-response? Well, one would have to admit a fault(s), something those in power positions generally have a difficult time doing. And what might they get from making an admission? Truth!”

As a politics, since the overall determining structure is autocratic, it affects the creative industries, out of which, non-response is, I argue, a function of the effect of autocracy here. It isn’t a “conspiracy” of non-response, but its being a norm, that is, coming out of the overall determining structure, makes it “concerted,” though it isn’t explicitly so. It is implicit to the structure.

“. . . the overt non-reaction tends more to be individualistic, even though it conforms to the general m.o.”

This would be more your take on the phenomenon. For me it is splitting hairs, because of course for each, it is an individual action taken. This is what I meant at the end saying that one could choose to go against the grain. But the point is, the overwhelming number of individuals act like that, because it is a norm. So this sense of it being a norm, comes before each individual’s predilection to act that way. Were it for instance a norm to respond, and also, a norm that in the creative industries, it wasn’t predilection itself which gets enshrined through the power of authority, then non-response would seem more clearly autocratic than it already does. A big point I am making is that, since it is a norm, its autocratic aspect is obscured, because people think it is simply the way that it is. This is all the more pernicious, when autocratic practices are a norm in a so-called democracy.

“. . . one would have to admit a fault(s), something those in power positions generally have a difficult time doing.”

Correct. They have a problem with it, because it is not a norm for them to have to. This is because they are accustomed to the privilege of climbing the hierarchy, to where once at the top, they have reserved the right to wield an arbitrary power. And this is what I mean by the non-response giving a veneer of objectivity, and then projecting the inadequacy downwards, where the person being non-responded to, is made to feel they are the one that is wrong. That as a norm, basically enshrines the right of an authority to be wrong, but not have to own up to it.

I think that should probably cover it.

(Part 2)

G TOD SLONE: My predilections simply reflect The AD’s. Perhaps the problem with too much abstraction and too little concrete realia is that readers will probably get lost in it, as I did, and end up wondering what the hell the guy is trying to say.
What precisely do you mean by the very vague term “aesthetics of writing”?
When I state “I got lost,” I mean that my mind simply wandered off elsewhere. The essay did not compel me to reread and reread in an effort to try to understand what you were “saying.” “Simplify, simplify,” had written Thoreau. You seem to follow in the opposite direction. Also, you expressed interest in RISK, yet where the RISK in the essay? Do you not have any personal experiences with that regard. If you do, please send!
And so, if you spelled YOU wrong and I pointed that out, you’d respond: PEDANTIC ?
If something ends up not interesting to me, I tend to turn elsewhere.
Non-response doesn’t really give a “veneer of objectivity.” From my experience, it rather presents a response of “how dare you!”

A SCOTT BUCH: “Probably. . .”

Or perhaps not. Again, there is a way to objectively confirm, whether or not my essay is unclear. Go through it point by point. I think I would simply look at this as analogous to say, why editors may often not publish your work. They would probably feel it would alienate readers. Here, you feel your readers will find it unclear. Well, what is the problem? An authority speaking on behalf of others. Print it, and let the people decide? And if a mass of people, all want to hang me for this lack of clarity, I have not yet begin to fight to show them, it is not unclear if you actually put the work in to think through the concepts!

“Aesthetics of writing,” depending on the context where I used this form; doesn’t seem vague to me, it seems another way of understanding style, and that there are so many ways of going about it. That aesthetics here implies artistic choices one makes. Just because one writer wouldn’t make the same choices, doesn’t make them “wrong.” But please point out the exact context in which I used this form, “aesthetics of writing.”

If your mind wondered off elsewhere, how autocratic is it, to take this, and blame it on me? When my mind wonders off in reading, the first thing I do is notice it, then go back, and make sure that I didn’t miss anything. The mind wondering off is a fault of the reader; this is deeply obvious. It is like saying a brainy professor is at fault for being boring. It is a combined effect of the professor having their mode of discourse and perhaps the student not being all that interested in it. But to say it was clearly the fault of the professor, is fairly arrogant.

“The essay did not compel me to reread and reread in an effort to try to understand what you were ‘saying.’”

This then, is you being autocratic. At least if you are then going to pass a ruling, and find the inadequacy within me as a writer; then you are no different than those you rail against.

“‘Simplify, simplify,’ had written Thoreau. You seem to follow in the opposite direction.”

Rather than quote a dead writer ideologically, you could understand that, there are different philosophies on aesthetics. I remember reading Walden, it is very DENSE and unclear almost throughout. But if you try to understand it, it is rewarding. In philosophy, unlike in poetry, there is no ambiguity here. The complexity of what is on offer, is simply a product of thinking through these ideas. They are either clear, or unclear, and this can be objectively determined. You though are providing clear evidence, that you did not try to understand what was on offer. Here then, the fault clearly lies with you.

“Also, you expressed interest in RISK, yet where the RISK in the essay? Do you not have any personal experiences with that regard. If you do, please send!”

I wrote the essay I wanted to write. I say, publish it, and let your readers decide, if they think this essay is up to the standards of the AD or not.

“And so, if you spelled YOU wrong and I pointed that out, you’d respond: PEDANTIC ?”

A spelling error? No, I would appreciate that. That is what an editor does, fix typographical errors. I noticed that the one error was that I put “outright” as “out right.” But you didn’t point that out. I didn’t spell “you” wrong. You weren’t saying anything to do with spelling, it was to do with style; your predilection. You wouldn’t have started the essay like that. Well I did start it like that. My issue is your acting like all the other establishment editors, who want to pretend that their predilections, somehow represent an objective ruling on how aesthetics should be.

“If something ends up not interesting to me, I tend to turn elsewhere.”

Okay; predilection, buddy! And all those who you claim are “censoring” you; how to prove it is simply that, they aren’t interested in your work, and thus simply turn elsewhere?

“Non-response doesn’t really give a ‘veneer of objectivity.’ From my experience, it rather presents a response of ‘how dare you!’”

As I said, we can have different perspectives on what Non-Response is and how it functions. It certainly does put out a veneer of objectivity, in the way I have formulated it. And you as well put out this veneer in your attempting to rationalize your dislike of my work, a predilection, as some kind of objective criteria.

You are also still being unclear, as to whether or not you will Accept or Reject this piece. Is not the point of Freedom of Speech, and democracy, that one would publish material, that they themselves do not personally agree with, or even much at all like?

G TOD SLONE: I didn’t want to piss you off. Sorry if I seemed a bit gruff. There’s 4 more months before next issue. So plenty of time still. Again I stress that rarely do I receive writing that risks with personal experience. The reason is usually simple: career vs truth. The two are generally at antipodes.

A SCOTT BUCH: My model of hierarchy, is a different, and I believe, ultimately more universal way, of understanding the same problem. You haven’t pissed me off, but rather frustrated me. For two reasons: one is that, since you do not offer paying gigs, (nor even a complimentary contributor copy!), the power imbalance is way off, especially in how autocratic you are being regarding asserting your predilections as somehow an objective criteria. For me, this essay established some concepts that I want to develop in further essays, so for me, the most important thing, is getting the essay published. Not to mention that, I had already submitted a past work, which you passed on. Which is fine. This one however, I stand by as a quality piece, and I find you have not given it a fair shake. Hence, my fire to battle you on this. Why I would like you to make a clear ruling, on Accept or Reject, is because, I will look elsewhere for a platform to publish this piece in. I would have to modify it, take out the bit where I wrote “this journal,” because it refers to the AD, and remove your connection to the formulating of Non-Response with Predilection. And then I will simply rewrite the opening ground of putting these two concepts together, in a way which removes you entirely from it. Not what I would prefer to do, because as far as I’m concerned, the spark of creativity was kindled by dialogues and writings with you. But since you can’t pay or grant a complementary contributor copy, having to jump through so many hoops to get my words in print, is enough of a feeling of injustice, that I am not losing any fire in battling quite hard on this issue of, are you going to pass on The Politics of Non-Response, or not.

(Part 3)

G TOD SLONE: It is odd to me that when I evoke lack of clarity to a contributor (you’re not the only one), the usual response is “how dare you!” What it seems you did was somehow turn “non-response,” which is actually quite simple, into a philosophical meandering. Please send the essay again. I hunted and cannot find it in my emails. Was it attached? If so, I cannot find it. I’ll locate when I began to drift off elsewhere, which was in the very beginning. And I did read through it twice. I read many articles on the internet each day, and there are a number of them that I simply stop reading bec. they fail to grab my interest. Again, it’s not you. It’s simply that your essay failed to grab my interest. Most readers do not comment on the writing in The AD, even though I urge them to do so. Now and then, I’ll get someone who comments but does not want me to publish HER comments. At the end of the issue, you can locate some critical comments.
It seems you are obsessed with the term aesthetics. Well, I certainly am not.
It is not a question of “standards,” but rather one of FOCUS, the AD FOCUS.
I did not state that everyone is censoring my writing. You seem to miss the entire point. Rare writing that harshly criticizes Rattle and its editor, for example, sent to Rattle and its editor is simply ignored or at best “ad hominized.” Each point of criticism made is simply not addressed.
Again, you choose to ignore the FOCUS of The American Dissident… then somehow insist I publish your essay. I don’t get it. Also, I’m not that focused on what readers may or may not like.
Regarding “you,” all I meant was that one ought to replace it with “one.” That is what editors would suggest.
Well, I have and do publish writing I do not agree with. But I generally do not publish writing that lacks clarity in a cloud of philosophy. That is not the FOCUS.
There’s plenty of time before next issue. So, please concentrate on the FOCUS and send something else. Surely, you must have had a concrete experience. Well, you sort of did with Rattle. Take it a step further and send your essay to Rattle, but mention Rattle helped turn your focus to non-response in it.

A SCOTT BUCH: “[Turning non-response,] which is actually quite simple, into a philosophical meandering.”

I think this is in fact a product of it being a norm, and one which you also abide by. You call it a philosophical meandering, I call it a critique of a structure which is contingent, though everyone treats it as immovable. It first generates a model, the structure behind the norm, then critiques it, and risks a lot in attempting to overthrow it as a paradigm.

I appreciate you read it twice. And, I understand, regarding published work, drifting off, not finishing. It is when it is unpublished work where I think it is more pernicious, because there is the danger of missing some true potential there. When it’s already published, its “quality” has been “authoritatively” established. That’s the “visibility” I was taking about in the essay. What isn’t visible, is more easily biased against, the prejudice being, if you’ve never heard of the writer, they must not be talented, or have anything to say.

“It seems you are obsessed with the term aesthetics.”

It’s merely a chief concern of mine. It is a subject of philosophy. For a poet, to not be concerned with aesthetics, is like an architect who has no base understanding of geometry. If we don’t have an opinion on it, then our opinions have surely been forged elsewhere. This is the mark of ideology, and not of free thought. Have your own opinion on the matter; or be subject to the opinions of others.

“It is not a question of ‘standards,’ but rather one of FOCUS, the AD FOCUS.”

Fair. I disagree though that this isn’t relevant to the focus. What you are objecting to, is on aesthetic grounds, not focus. I’m not submitting some nature poem, or an essay on literary theory. It is a critique of autocracy which permeates the creative industries, the dynamic of non-response a demonstration of a lack of democracy, through how it implicitly puts rebuttal off the table.

“I did not state that everyone is censoring my writing. You seem to miss the entire point. Rare writing that harshly criticizes Rattle and its editor, for example, sent to Rattle and its editor is simply ignored or at best ‘ad hominized.’ Each point of criticism made is simply not addressed.”

Non-response is a function of autocracy. Rattle can avoid a more clear establishment reputation, say in rejecting your criticism, by leaning on the VENEER, that it doesn’t publish essays, or criticism of its power dynamics. That isn’t its focus. That’s all, I’d imagine they’d say.

“Again, you choose to ignore the FOCUS of The American Dissident… then somehow insist I publish your essay. I don’t get it. Also, I’m not that focused on what readers may or may not like.”

I contend, it is perfectly within the focus. My insistence too, comes out of the tradition of challenging authority. Democracy is about, letting the people decide, to some extent. For themselves, not others. Elitism wants to make up the people’s minds for them. You should care about what your readers think, because that is a part of democracy.

“Regarding ‘you,’ all I meant was that one ought to replace it with ‘one.’ That is what editors would suggest.”

Okay, that’s fair. BUT, totally a rule, once and for all? Can you point to some objective rule of grammar that says this should be the case? Ultimately, I think it is still a pedantic concern; but I do get your point.

“. . . writing that lacks clarity in a cloud of philosophy.”

Using the term cloud, is still implying it is somehow objectively unclear. It is your predilection not to like this style of writing. Fine. Then you are objecting on very subjective ground, to which I make that imperative that you let your readers decide. If you charge $12 for the publication, then certainly you have to take into account what your readers think, no? FOCUS has to do with CONTENT. Style is not focus. Style is to do with predilection. The content of the essay is related to the focus of the AD. So the main issue, is your subjective feeling that the work is unclear. Well; let’s objectively determine if it is.

“There’s plenty of time before next issue. So, please concentrate on the FOCUS and send something else. Surely, you must have had a concrete experience. Well, you sort of did with Rattle. Take it a step further and send your essay to Rattle, but mention Rattle helped turn your focus to non-response in it.”

This is just more to do with your M.O. Right now, I am focused on the objective struggle of a writer. I need to place that essay. You already rejected a previous submission. I believe in “The Politics of Non-Response,” so I will struggle to have it placed elsewhere. It is only that, since it was composed with the AD in mind, that is for the moment, where I would prefer it found its “home,” as you editors like to say. I’m going to keep fighting for this. That’s how much I believe in it.

I will send the essay again; this one with the typo of “out right” to “outright” corrected.

G TOD SLONE: Well, frustrated is simply another term for pissed off. I would offer paying gigs and free copies, if the local cultural councils, NEA, Poetry Foundation, and other funding organizations would treat The AD fairly and accord it grant money now and then. Rattle gets a lot of money. Many other lit mags get a lot of grant money. BUT those orgs. refuse categorically! Thus, the only thing keeping the AD alive is my own money and that of subscribers and rare donators.
Every editor has “predilections,” which I prefer to call FOCUS. My FOCUS is on what the bulk of editors choose not to FOCUS on. You, like most writers, seem more focused on getting published and paid than daring to speak rude truths openly, especially the ones that carry a certain degree of RISK.  Criticize Rattle openly, for example, and RISK that Rattle will never publish you. I don’t think you understand RISK, even though you had said you admired it.

REJECT is the “ruling.” Now, I’d be interested in publishing a clear, concise essay criticism of that ruling and a clear mention of me, as the bad guy in it. You could title it, “REJECTED BY AN AUTOCRAT EDITOR.” By failing to mention me or The AD as the catalyst for the essay you wrote would be, in a sense, an example of ideological plagiarism.

A SCOTT BUCH: “Well, frustrated is simply another term for pissed off.”

Fair!

“I would offer paying gigs and free copies, if the local cultural councils, NEA, Poetry Foundation, and other funding organizations would treat The AD fairly and accord it grant money now and then.”

I couldn’t agree more! The essay I wrote, is within this focus, because I am trying to objectively analyze exactly what mechanisms are making it so that, a situation like this is a status quo.

“Every editor has ‘predilections,’ which I prefer to call FOCUS.”

This is an odd one, man. I would say that focus, has to do with content. Whereas predilection, is related to style. Is not one of your concerns, to do with why writing for the sake of writing is so widespread? I agree it has a pernicious effect. You here seem, perhaps not realizing it, to justify that element of autocracy in the authority of an editor. But you are that rare editor, who understands that authority, is the potential ground for autocracy, and thus, entertains rebuttals. To me, what I would like to see, is for that to become more of a norm, and autocracy to become less of a norm. But here you seem to be arguing in favor of keeping autocracy a norm.

“My FOCUS is on what the bulk of editors choose not to FOCUS on.”

I agree with this; but again, this has to do with CONTENT, not form. They aren’t fully separable. But that doesn’t mean they are the same, and can’t be differentiated. To go further with this; I think we can agree on the focus, but have differing philosophies on how to realize that. The conflicting perspectives on clarity and density seem to reflect that. If you would argue that it is an objective rule, that clarity means dissidence, broadly speaking, you would be wrong, or at least, wrong to the extent you tried to assert that was a universal. Dissidence can come in many forms. I do understand your connection with dissidence and clarity, what I have said, makes a lot more sense in the context of non-fiction; journalism. The major disagreement, to state it again, is, you seem to think philosophy = lack of clarity. It doesn’t. Philosophy = density. Here’s too the difference, between poetry and philosophy. In poetry, since it is more purely art, its density can serve ambiguity. In philosophy, it shouldn’t be ambiguous, because the point is to make an argument. But that argument very often may be very dense. In conclusion, again, it can be objectively determined whether writing is ultimately clear or not; it isn’t simply a matter of taste.

“You, like most writers, seem more focused on getting published and paid than daring to speak rude truths openly, especially the ones that carry a certain degree of RISK.”

This gets me deeply wrong, man. You don’t have a monopoly on RISK, though you have coined the concept. I’m battling you so hard, because you don’t seem to understand the way this is an essay of RISK. Just not in your aesthetics of it. It is perhaps since you used to be a member of the establishment, that you see RISK in this way. You are dealing with a person of the common rabble, who doesn’t brush elbows with the status quo. I need published and paid; like a homeless person needs food and a place to live. For me though, I’m not willing to put my philosophy and values, under climbing the hierarchy. I am opposed to it, and my struggle is to move this forward, while also establishing a way to eat.

“Criticize Rattle openly, for example, and RISK that Rattle will never publish you. I don’t think you understand RISK, even though you had said you admired it.”

Rattle will never publish me anyway. I don’t have the visibility to RISK not being published by them. I’m already unknown. And I do admire RISK. I admire your concept of it. And, I also had my own concept of it, before I ran into yours. And I continue to have my own version of it. This is good. Who wants obsequious boot-lickers who are simply trying to copy others, and follow precisely in their footsteps?

So, it then is a contradiction, finally, here at the end. In your previous writing, you said to send the essay again. Now here, you say it is rejected. Which is it?

I won’t send the essay again. What I will say is, I can remove all mention of you from the essay, and there is no plagiarism involved. This is clear in as much as you even reject that my concepts had anything to do with yours. I can very easily formulate the essay, where I simply combine the concepts of non-response and predilection. You don’t own those words. I will take out the notion of “M.O.” and put it in my own way. Yes; discussions with you catalyzed my thought process, and I may keep that aspect in there, mentioning I wrote the essay, after extensive literary exchanges with you, or I may not.

I put my foot down here, where I will not be producing work for the coming issue under these circumstances. At least, I’m not going to go on your suggestion, that I produce an essay from the result of this as a rejection.

So then to be clear. Please provide me with your final ruling that you are rejecting “The Politics of Non-Response.” The alternative is, I can send the essay again, and you could give it one more assessment, before finally deciding to pass or not.

I’ll wait to hear your clear decision on this.

(Part 4)

G TOD SLONE: The problem is that you are challenging authority, while failing to mention any specific authority. Thus, your challenge is directed to nobody per se… thus, it will not be received and questioned.  
What I clearly meant was that I do not tend to let what I think readers might think to affect that which I publish. My readers do not decide. As editor, I decide…. and in that light seek to remain within the FOCUS of the journal, which makes the journal unique.  
Just do a little research on YOU vs. ONE, and I’m sure you’ll come up with a grammatical answer.  
As for your “struggle” to get published, the term implies that you, unlike Orwell, write to get published.  That is a concept that I never liked, nor really followed.

A SCOTT BUCH: “The problem is that you are challenging authority, while failing to mention any specific authority. Thus, your challenge is directed to nobody per se. . .”

I don’t understand how you continue to overlook the fact that I have defended this charge by holding that the essay sets out to generate a model, and to deal with, in the abstract, a phenomenon that I deliberately wanted to try to look at more universally, and not in concrete instances. It also becomes a call to action, saying that those who view non-response as a norm, could go against the grain of that norm. It is not directed at nobody, but rather to everybody to whom it could apply.

“. . . thus, it will not be received and questioned.”

It is not meant to be received by any particular individual, but rather to be received by those who are conditioned to non-response in their pursuit of literary publication. To encourage them to think, ‘yes, why do we accept this as a norm?’ To call to action those to question the politics of non-response, the norm of non-response, but deeper, the norm of autocracy in the creative industries, a reflection of the norm of autocracy in the heart of our society.

“What I clearly meant was that I do not tend to let what I think readers might think to affect that which I publish.”

That’s fine.

“My readers do not decide. As editor, I decide…. and in that light seek to remain within the FOCUS of the journal, which makes the journal unique.”

Here then, is where you are an autocrat. No better than a Nancy Pelosi in principle. Democracy means that the people get a say, in this case, your readers. In this case, me. To be democratic here, means to admit that the focus can be objectively determined, and I appeal that this essay is within the focus of the AD. I have offered arguments why that is previously. And now I will offer another one. At least stylistically, this essay is no different than the one of mine you previously published, “The Trap of Elite Aesthetics And Judgment As A Paradigm For Quality.” That essay contained no specific mention of a particular figure or particular anecdotal instance, and said right from the start, that it was interested in exploring the concept of elite aesthetics, and judgment as a paradigm for quality, IN THE ABSTRACT, and yet you published it. In this way, that act established a precedent for this style of essay being within the focus of the AD. If it is simply that you decide, on a case by case basis, without allowing your authority to be appealed to, based on objective criteria, you are embodying the very essence of an autocrat. Thus we can see, what is really being risked here, is my ability to get published by you. I am directly challenging your authority. In this way, the concepts laid out in the essay, I am fighting for them in attempting to get this essay published with you. And your resistance to the facts of the matter, is betraying you to act like an autocrat. A figure who champions democracy no less, acting like an autocrat; you are no different than a Nancy Pelosi.

“Just do a little research on YOU vs. ONE, and I’m sure you’ll come up with a grammatical answer.”

Who cares.

“As for your ‘struggle’ to get published, the term implies that you, unlike Orwell, write to get published. That is a concept that I never liked, nor really followed.”

Orwell struggled for a better world, like his fighting in the Spanish Civil War demonstrates, a war that was basically, anarchists against fascists. You are no inheritor of Orwell if you think that what he was getting at is that, publishing doesn’t matter. The point is if you put getting published, before your message, that is selling out. Orwell wrote “to get a hearing,” to expose some injustice. But, no hearing will come, and no exposure will be enacted, if the words don’t get in print. I am fighting for my message. It is not getting published in itself that I’m seeking, but the getting published of my message. If you can’t understand that, then you are a mere ideological repeater of the messages of others. Taken out of context no less, that makes it even worse.

G TOD SLONE: To have a “predilection” simply means to subjectively favor certain things over other things (e.g., certain content over other content). Thus, my predilection is the FOCUS. The two are the same. Predilection is NOT restricted to style, as you seem to think or want.  
Autocracy seems to be another of your repetitive terms. If I did not manifest an iota of autocracy in line with so-called anarchy, then all poems/essays received would be published and no FOCUS would exist… with the exception of poetry for the sake of poetry and writing for the sake of writing.

As for form, I generally do not like rhyming, for the simple reason that rhyming tends to place focus on the frivolity of word choices, as opposed to what the hell are you trying to say? Anything? Or just rhyming?
Political hacks love DENSITY and hate CLARITY. DENSITY helps them avoid TRUTH… RISK… and enables them to climb the hack latter or get paid for their essays.
Can you write sentences with CLARITY and w/o DENSITY? If so, please do send an essay in that light.
The AD is not a journal of philosophy.
Well, then I objectively determined your writing not to be clear. And I do not seek ambiguity and word saladry. I seek clarity. DENSITY serves the establishment; CLARITY upsets the establishment.
Common rabble, as you call them, do not write DENSELY. In fact, they generally don’t write. So, how can you be of the common rabble? Clearly, you are NOT. Perhaps the anarchy ideology makes you want to be.
If you need pay, get a job at McDonald’s! You’d still have plenty of time to write, but write w/o beggaring for money. If you write to get paid, then inevitably you will drift away from TRUTH.  Writing careers and truth do NOT make good partners.
I simply asked you to resend the essay, so I could point out a few sentences that lacked clarity. But there is really no point in that because you seem to excel at skirting around all criticism. Hacks too excel at that. Not that I’m saying you’re a hack. I am not saying that.
Mention me in the essay or don’t. Your call.
Sorry to hear you will not be submitting anything for next issue. But that’s your choice. Sorry also that you rejected all criticism I made regarding your essay. So, the essay will not be published.

A SCOTT BUCH: “To have a ‘predilection’ simply means to subjectively favor certain things over other things (e.g., certain content over other content).”

Yes, correct.

“Thus, my predilection is the FOCUS. The two are the same. Predilection is NOT restricted to style, as you seem to think or want.”

I understand how this is correct; as I said, form and content cannot be strictly divided. You are biased towards publishing material which fits the focus of your journal. Like a Queer journal would be biased towards material which is centered around Queer experiences. If I was to send in some hetero romance, it would obviously be rejected, and the problem there would lie with me. Here, is what I am objecting to; and in the process trying to get a hearing, and to expose you like Orwell would. Either that focus can be objectively determined, or, it is not really anything objective at all, but just whatever you say it is. This is entirely what I am critiquing in the essay (perhaps why you object so much to it?) This is precisely what we are disagreeing about. It is exactly the phenomenon I am describing in my essay. You are trying to attach a veneer of objectivity, to a subjective ruling. When you criticized it in terms of its style, you were trying to act like your predilections towards style are objectively correct. For instance, that the essay is unclear. The essay is not unclear. You find it unclear. But I disagree. And as I have said, whether or not it is, can be objectively determined. Why do you keep avoiding going through that objective process? Secondly, you say it doesn’t fall within the focus. Well, here is where you contradict yourself. This essay is no different than the one of mine you already published in the AD. So that you would have to admit, if my first one fit the focus then; but this one doesn’t fit the focus now, there is nothing objective about your focus. Your focus is simply whatever you say it is. That is PRECISELY my definition of autocracy in the essay. So I assert again, you are no different than Nancy Pelosi. You are, indeed, like my essay railed against, an autocrat in disguise. You are a liberal autocrat.

“Autocracy seems to be another of your repetitive terms. If I did not manifest an iota of autocracy in line with so-called anarchy, then all poems/essays received would be published and no FOCUS would exist… with the exception of poetry for the sake of poetry and writing for the sake of writing.”

Autocracy is a major focus for me. If it tends to crop up a lot in this battle, it’s because it exists here, within this interaction. Your characterization of anarchy and autocracy is wrong. Are you saying that authority is necessary to establish order? Incorrect. You are saying that without the existence of arbitrary power—the type which you are wielding now—focus would be impossible? Incorrect. You are saying that the connection between writing for the sake of writing, is a lack of autocracy? Then; the creative industries should be awash with truly meaningful writing of the sort that Orwell produced. It isn’t. So truly, it is the opposite. The connection with writing for the sake of writing, is truly with autocracy. It is the existence of arbitrary power which creates that. Why? Because it is the arbitrary power of the sort of authority which you are wielding now, which can’t admit of fault, and abide by objective criteria. Instead, whatever their predilections are, is the criteria. So again, you are exposed for being the very type of authority which I was critiquing in my essay. It should not be hard to find some other publication which will put it in print.

“As for form, I generally do not like rhyming, for the simple reason that rhyming tends to place focus on the frivolity of word choices, as opposed to what the hell are you trying to say? Anything? Or just rhyming?”

You have these ideological blind spots though. While I agree that in writing for the sake of writing, rhyming happens just for the sake of it, it is also possible to rhyme AND say something. A ideologue authority who believes their ruling on aesthetic focus is objectively right, would then say, ‘I hate rhyming; it is ALWAYS an indication of writing for the sake of writing,’ very similar to how you treat instances of density. True, while sometimes it is the marker of obfuscation, it isn’t always. And to know when it is or isn’t, requires putting in the work to confirm that. Something which you are unwilling to do for an unknown writer. Well, writers who are truly outside of the establishment, tend to be unknown, until they aren’t.

“Political hacks love DENSITY and hate CLARITY. DENSITY helps them avoid TRUTH… RISK… and enables them to climb the hack latter or get paid for their essays.”

Your autocratic absolutism comes out here. There are many ways one can climb the hack ladder. Finally, and again, density isn’t obfuscation. Density actually implies there is clarity there, only packed quite heavily in. There is a difference between density and lack of clarity.

“Can you write sentences with CLARITY and w/o DENSITY? If so, please do send an essay in that light.”

I like density, so no. And why should I put in the effort to write an essay which fits your predilections. Give me one good reason. Because you can pay? Ha. Because I can’t see that density is wrong, and risks nothing? Please! My essays are dense, AND clear. In fact, this it strikes me, is also an element of excellent poetry. Clarity and density can coincide.

“The AD is not a journal of philosophy.”

Well, you published one philosophical essay of mine.

“. . . I objectively determined your writing not to be clear.”

You did? Okay, how? If it is objective, it can be independently validated. Which sections are unclear, and precisely how are you coming to that determination?

“And I do not seek ambiguity and word saladry. I seek clarity. DENSITY serves the establishment; CLARITY upsets the establishment.”

Since density and clarity can coincide, I reject your narrow definition of dissidence. Density doesn’t serve the establishment. What’s more, the predilection for clarity can also be wielded autocratically, which you are here doing. My essay wasn’t ambiguous; though my poetry often is. My essay wasn’t word salad. You call it that. You can have your opinion. But it isn’t objectively so, unless you can prove it. So go ahead and try. You can’t.

“Common rabble, as you call them, do not write DENSELY. In fact, they generally don’t write. So, how can you be of the common rabble? Clearly, you are NOT. Perhaps the anarchy ideology makes you want to be.”

I use common rabble, as that pejorative way that the elite view the masses. I am not of the elite, or the establishment. That is objectively true. Common folks when they write poetry, certainly may write densely. As it happens, that is one main characteristic of poetry, versus prose. It is dense. That common folks don’t write, isn’t a fault of theirs, but a socioeconomic problem that is a part of my focus. I am an anarchist. Unlike other ideologies, in anarchism, there is an emphasis on praxis. It isn’t simply about say, professing a belief in democracy, but not following it in practice. Those who claim to be democrats, but who are really autocrats, are the likes of say, Nancy Pelosi, and you, apparently.

“If you need pay, get a job at McDonald’s!”

So you would take someone’s labor (the words produced by a writer), and expect to have taken it for free? What’s more, also charge them, to see their words in print? That’s called exploitation, man! You think that writers should work, and just not be paid for it? What utter authoritarianism!

“. . . write w/o beggaring for money.”

So writers shouldn’t be paid for their work? Also, in this case, I’m simply fighting for publication, not even money. What I’m saying is, to whatever extent you can’t be bothered to read an essay closely; to that same extent, I’m supposed to put in all this effort to write an essay exactly how you want it, for no pay whatsoever?

“If you write to get paid, then inevitably you will drift away from TRUTH.”

I don’t write to get paid, I write for truth. I’m fighting for the truth of what I have produced, which you deny in your authoritarianism.

“Writing careers and truth do NOT make good partners.”

And why that is, has more to do with what I was trying to expose in my model, than any notion that writers should simply expect to work for free. I am fighting for a world in which writers can tell the truth, and get paid. At the very least, be able to have a decent living. I also extend that to all human beings, and not simply writers.

“I simply asked you to resend the essay, so I could point out a few sentences that lacked clarity. But there is really no point in that because you seem to excel at skirting around all criticism. Hacks too excel at that. Not that I’m saying you’re a hack. I am not saying that.”

You are doing what you are accusing me of doing. I am criticizing your criticism. Your criticism sucked! It was awful, and very insubstantial. I have been over and over asking you to be more clear and specific in your unfounded accusation of being unclear. So in this email, I will send the essay again in the body after my rebuttal here. Yes; please point me to where it is objectively the case that my writing is unclear! I have no problem with criticism. But I do point out phony criticism when I see it.

“Mention me in the essay or don’t. Your call.”

If it’s being published outside of the AD, I will go out of my way to remove all traces of you from it! Why wouldn’t I? If you were me, would you?

“Sorry to hear you will not be submitting anything for next issue. But that’s your choice. Sorry also that you rejected all criticism I made regarding your essay. So, the essay will not be published.”

I criticized your criticism. This is called rebuttal. For you, it did not seem like it was worth the time and effort, to deal with my criticism of your criticism. So you doubled down. My ultimate point is that, if you must wield an arbitrary power, in determining what you will and won’t publish, for me—a writer who wants to produce what he wants to produce—it isn’t worth the effort, going through such great lengths, to conform to your predilections, since (a) it is at the expense of mine. Therefore, it is a compromising of my own vision; (b) there isn’t some concession which would balance that out, such as receiving monetary compensation. However! Even if this was in the context of receiving monetary compensation, and you were pressuring me to make changes, and, I believed in what was there originally, I still wouldn’t cave!

So here’s the essay again. Really interested to see your objective demonstration of how “unclear” it is.

[Text of essay follows]

(Part 5)

G TOD SLONE: The FOCUS is objectively determined, BUT other factors enter including space restrictions and absence of conciseness (perhaps that term works better than clarity, though both could be used together). And yes, it is the editor who makes those determinations… and in that sense (your sense), that constitutes a form of autocracy. Relative to your example, the author of an essay on a “hetero romance” could argue it to fall within the FOCUS. The dude, for example, spoke truth to his female partner, who is an art apparatchik… and on and on. Just the same, I might be interested in publishing it, especially if it mirrors a certain inane insanity. 
Now, why not in a concise manner (as opposed to philosophical meandering) write an essay critical of my alleged subjective/autocratic determination regarding FOCUS? You could include my rejection of your article and the reason for it. I’d be apt to publish it as example of my openness to HARSH criticism, which is essentially the FOCUS. Be precise as to how exactly I subjectively manipulate the FOCUS.
Good point on forme and fond being exempt from separation.
The problem is that the editor is the decider. If he cannot decide matters of clarity and irrelevance to the FOCUS, then anything at all could be submitted with your argument that it somehow meets the FOCUS and in that sense ends up eliminating the FOCUS or extending it to the point where the FOCUS is no longer really the FOCUS.

As mentioned, I do publish writing that does not really fall into the FOCUS because rarely do I ever receive material within the FOCUS. BUT I generally do not publish writing that I find lacking in concision.
Well, thanks for the LOL RE that I am somehow a “liberal autocrat” a la Pelosi.
Again, one key element in the FOCUS you fail to address: naming names, criticizing actual individuals with actual names. Now, you do that with my regard, but not in the essay, which is why I’d like a new essay with that in the FOCUS.
Why do the bulk of poet/writers, you included, dare not criticize the local writers workshops, local poetry readings, local cultural apparatchiks, local banned books week library events, local poets laureate, local art exhibits, etc.??? That poet reality goes against the core FOCUS of The AD! It seems also to be the road you apparently want to walk down: CAREER vs. TRUTH; MONEY vs. TRUTH (e.g., naming names!).
And so I have “ideological blind spots,” but somehow you don’t? Are you Monsieur Parfait incarnated?  
In the old days, all poets tended to rhyme and follow strict verse regulations. And so when I read them, I do not close the book bec. of the rhyming. Today, the genre has obviously opened up.
Anarchy is a pipedream that seems to end up in socialist/communist authoritarian regimes. Methinks, no thanks! Anarchy is an ideology. Ideologies always end up countering reason.
“Well, writers who are truly outside of the establishment, tend to be unknown, until they aren’t,” you state. And yet you as a self-proclaimed anarchist seek to become known (published) and make money off your writing and thus become part of the establishment. Insanity rules!  
“Finally, and again, density isn’t obfuscation,” you state. “Density actually implies there is clarity there, only packed quite heavily in.” [Obfuscation 101!!!]
Unfortunately, I do not remember much of anything regarding your essay… on density. Now, perhaps you are projecting your own autocrat inclinations on me. Somehow, you have autocratically concluded your essay to be worthy of being published. And because I rejected it, somehow that makes me an autocrat. Hmm. Strange reasoning or rather “anarching” indeed.
“As it happens, that is one main characteristic of poetry, versus prose. It is dense,” you assert. So, then, why do you counter your assertion by writing DENSE prose? Again, reason often counters ideology (e.g., your ideology of density).
And so now I’m an exploiting authoritarian because I did not accept your essay and wouldn’t pay you for it. Hmm. I am against the writer notion that somehow writing is work. Hard labor is work, not writing. Or perhaps watching tv is also intellectual work… and why then don’t tv watchers get paid?  
Regarding your other essay, per usual, I was “desperate” to fill the issue, so I could publish it. Yours was indeed the last writing I put in it. As mentioned, I rarely receive writing within The AD focus, including your essay.  
“I am criticizing your criticism,” you note. “Your criticism sucked! It was awful, and very insubstantial.” Well, I like that. Please add it to a new essay. In fact, how can I NOT publish it in next issue? Our back and forth would indeed make a good dialogue de sourds! Of course my criticism sucks.  It lacked DENSITY! Absence of RISK (no names named) and concision were the essence of it. And so, you are really pro-Rattle and anti-AD.
“Mention me in the essay or don’t,” I stated. “Your call.” “If it’s being published outside of the AD,” you argue, “I will go out of my way to remove all traces of you from it! Why wouldn’t I? If you were me, would you?” Of course, I would NOT “remove all traces of you” because YOU instigated the very creation of the freakin’ essay! So, evidently we are quite different! I name names, you dare not!  
Did you not read what I wrote on no need to send the essay again? Any criticism I send you will inevitably suck, so why should I waste more time on reading an essay that did not interest me?

Good luck getting your essay published. I would be very interested in knowing who publishes it…

A SCOTT BUCH: “The FOCUS is objectively determined, BUT other factors enter including space restrictions and absence of conciseness (perhaps that term works better than clarity, though both could be used together).”

Conciseness! Yes, here’s another word for density. This is precisely what I mean when I say that clarity and density can coincide. It’s called conciseness.

“And yes, it is the editor who makes those determinations… and in that sense (your sense), that constitutes a form of autocracy.”

I understand these as clear limitations. So too, are the limitations of being able to pay. The operation won’t be able to pay everyone, so that makes who it chooses to pay, an important limitation. The difference here is transparency. Limitations are objective. However, in having such limitations, if one isn’t transparent about that, and rather says, well, actually, this work is inadequate in some way, it is unclear; that is the move of autocracy that I’m talking about, because it hides a subjective ruling behind a veneer of objectivity. To say, there simply isn’t enough space for this, is being far more honest. You didn’t say there wasn’t going to be space for my essay, you rather hid a subjective ruling behind a veneer of objectivity.

“Relative to your example, the author of an essay on a ‘hetero romance’ could argue it to fall within the FOCUS.”

No. The logic of the analogy goes like this. Sending a hetero romance to a Queer journal, would clearly fail to fall within the focus. But saying that there is no room for a hetero romance, in a journal who’s focus isn’t objectively queer—that it rather was the predilection of the editor, say, to favor queer romance—it would be a problem, IF the editor wasn’t transparent about it. Or if across the board, it was say a norm, to favor queer romance over hetero romance (or as it was in the past, hetero over queer); it would be fair dues to challenge such an autocratic norm, which I am attempting to do, with challenging the politics of non-response, and by extension, the autocracy within the creative industries. If a hetero romance was rejected from a journal whose focus was simply romance, full stop; say if the writer appealed the rejection decision, asked, how does this fall outside the focus of the journal?—in theory, it could be objectively determined if it did or didn’t. So to bring the analogy back around, in this case, the focus of your journal is literature, democracy, and dissidence. My essay ticks every single one of those boxes.

“The dude, for example, spoke truth to his female partner, who is an art apparatchik… and on and on. Just the same, I might be interested in publishing it, especially if it mirrors a certain inane insanity.”

So yeah, say it was a short story. But the narrative had to do, with as you say, these aspects. Democracy, dissidence. For is a short story not literature? An autocrat editor could come up with all kinds of excuses, to do with space, style. Be like, oh, no, we do more poetry, essays, whatever. My point is, why be so narrow-minded? And indeed; I would point to this being why your Free Speech oriented work tends not to get published by the establishment, when ultimately, they probably don’t realize how much they would have to gain, by going against the grain, and doing so. They can hide behind the same justification of focus as you do.

“Now, why not in a concise manner (as opposed to philosophical meandering) write an essay critical of my alleged subjective/autocratic determination regarding FOCUS?”

Because I hold that my essay is concise, and doesn’t meander. I also feel that my essay already does attack the phenomenon which you are currently submitting me to. Lastly, I don’t see why if you can’t take the time to objectively show me where my essay is unclear, where it “meanders,” why I should take the time to write an entirely new essay.

“You could include my rejection of your article and the reason for it. I’d be apt to publish it as example of my openness to HARSH criticism, which is essentially the FOCUS. Be precise as to how exactly I subjectively manipulate the FOCUS.”

It would make it all about you, I suppose. I actually see that exercise as ultimately, more frivolous, than what I was attempting in the essay. I would see this proposed essay of yours, as frankly much more tedious and in terms of content, more meandering. Because it would be so self-indulgent in its way. You would be more demonstrating your values if you published a piece you personally, really hated, than one that was more focused on you, and your propensity to publish pieces, that fit your own particular predilections. My experience with you here, isn’t making you out to seem all that different from an establishment editor.

“The problem is that the editor is the decider. If he cannot decide matters of clarity and irrelevance to the FOCUS, then anything at all could be submitted with your argument that it somehow meets the FOCUS and in that sense ends up eliminating the FOCUS or extending it to the point where the FOCUS is no longer really the FOCUS.”

One might say this is a meandering, philosophical point, but it makes sense to me. It is more debating a concept like this, that I am interested in, and not the tedious, more self-indulgent direction I feel your editorial bias is tugging in. Yes. I am attacking the notion of the editor as decider. At least, if their deciding power comes down to the wielding of an arbitrary power. For it not to be arbitrary, there should be an objective appeal process. I think the real problem is, that, matters of “clarity and irrelevance” can be objectively determined; they don’t need some final decider. As I have put it, with the example of a Queer focused journal; a journal of Literature, Democracy, Dissidence, focus, is objectively clear. Of course people can always debate exactly if this or that, truly meets the criteria or not. THAT IS THE POINT OF FREE SPEECH. That is why I said, let your readers decide. To me, what this battle is starting to reveal, is that you care more about the idea of free speech, than the action of it. Either the focus of your journal is Literature (philosophy is that), Democracy (a philosophical critique of hierarchy is that), Dissidence (a polemic against the current autocracy in the creative industries, is that), or; the focus is whatever you say it is. It can’t be both. One is objective, the other isn’t.

“As mentioned, I do publish writing that does not really fall into the FOCUS because rarely do I ever receive material within the FOCUS. BUT I generally do not publish writing that I find lacking in concision.”

So now my writing isn’t concise. You have shifted your goalposts, but in a direction that is even more in my favor. That is why my writing is so dense, because I cultivate concision. As well, again, you are showing your role as editor, is being an authority who makes subjective rulings, that should be taken for objectivity. I assert my essay is within the focus, and, that it is also a concise piece. The only argument you could have against it, is that you don’t have any more room WHICH I DOUBT because of how early it is before the next issue is published. Have you already received so many submissions that I’m just shit out of luck??

“Again, one key element in the FOCUS you fail to address: naming names, criticizing actual individuals with actual names.”

This isn’t focus, this is your predilection, and, again, the essay deliberately doesn’t set out to do that, and instead, to deal with models and norms. If you already had the issue full up with essays that named names, because you like that so much, fine. But do you? This I profoundly doubt, and thus can’t understand what you stand to gain from being so rigid and authoritarian.

“Now, you do that with my regard, but not in the essay, which is why I’d like a new essay with that in the FOCUS.”

I think the worst thing an editor can do is think they know better how to write a particular piece then the artist with the original vision. Now, if it was an assignment; if you came to me, and gave me the focus in advance, told me, Alex, write me this essay, or article. Say I do it. Then, since you are the originator of the vision, and I am trying to produce a piece that you in effect have pitched to me. It makes sense, such strong editorial control. But this is not how this has happened. (Nor can I understand how anyone in their right mind, would associate autocratic editorial control with democracy.) In this instance, I have had an original idea, that was kindled in discussions with you, and I wanted to submit it to you exclusively. I remain perplexed at what you stand to gain by fighting so hard to reject this.

“Why do the bulk of poet/writers, you included, dare not criticize the local writers workshops, local poetry readings, local cultural apparatchiks, local banned books week library events, local poets laureate, local art exhibits, etc.???”

I’m trying to get to the underlying model of why this is! You are biased towards the specific; but specific people, are very often, merely emblematic of their roles. You can obviously disagree with this, but the point is, our separate opinions can exist side by side, and would probably compliment each other if they were set side by side!!!

“. . . the road you apparently want to walk down: CAREER vs. TRUTH; MONEY vs. TRUTH (e.g., naming names!).”

In my formulation, what is corrosive of truth, is hierarchy/authority, as I put it in my model! You perfectly embody this, because you are putting your authority and privilege to wield arbitrary power, over the truth of whether or not my essay is adequate enough to appear in print.

“And so I have ‘ideological blind spots,’ but somehow you don’t? Are you Monsieur Parfait incarnated?”

Never said that. Though we are having a debate.

“Anarchy is a pipedream that seems to end up in socialist/communist authoritarian regimes.”

Incorrect. Like with your lack of knowledge on Israel/Palestine [brought up in the context of a separate email chain], I will just move on here. You’re incorrect. We can get more into it later, if you want, but I want to stick here with the focus.

“Anarchy is an ideology. Ideologies always end up countering reason.”

Reason too is an ideology. Ideologies are necessary, in the precise sense that thinking is necessary. With ideology, to get precise, we are dealing with two notions of it. One is the general notion of a way of thinking that doesn’t fit with reality, and yet is asserted as an authority above and beyond reality. (Ironically, this is the M.O. you are here demonstrating.) And another is that, it is merely a system of thought. You have a system of thought, I have a system of thought. The point is to find the one that most fits up with reality. Anarchy is also perfectly reasonably, a world in which there aren’t structures of domination. You may want structures of domination, or believe that a world without structures of domination is impossible. But whether or not this actually measures up with reality, is another thing entirely. And here you have a blind spot, as with Israel/Palestine.

“. . . you as a self-proclaimed anarchist seek to become known (published) and make money off your writing and thus become part of the establishment.”

It is insane, to write for no audience. The point of writing, is for another person to read. Even if it is only one other person. No, sir; to want someone to read, or publish your work, isn’t insane. And the idea that writers shouldn’t be paid for their work? How can that be justified?

“[Obfuscation 101!!!]”

Concision. Just because something is dense, doesn’t make it unclear. And this can be objectively determined. How does one determine if something is obfuscation? Well, precisely by analyzing it, and seeing that it objectively comes to nothing. If my ideas came to nothing, I wouldn’t be able to argue them without further obfuscation. They are built on a solid ground, and that is why I can continue and continue to argue them, and they continue to hold up.

“Unfortunately, I do not remember much of anything regarding your essay… on density. Now, perhaps you are projecting your own autocrat inclinations on me. Somehow, you have autocratically concluded your essay to be worthy of being published. And because I rejected it, somehow that makes me an autocrat. Hmm. Strange reasoning or rather ‘anarching’ indeed.”

The point is, it can be objectively determined. I asked you to objectively determine where my essay was unclear. I even sent it again. Have you done this demonstration? You haven’t. The only way to prove it, is to do the work. You are the clear autocrat here.

“‘As it happens, that is one main characteristic of poetry, versus prose. It is dense,’ you assert. So, then, why do you counter your assertion by writing DENSE prose? Again, reason often counters ideology (e.g., your ideology of density).”

Philosophy, as one genre of literature, is apt to be the most dense. This is obvious. This is where I think poetry and philosophy, are so similar. The difference being that poetry is more pure art, so it will tend to be more about showing, it may be ambiguous. With philosophy, the explicit point is to make an argument. Prose that should be at its most clear, is generally, non-fiction, journalism. Though even these may often be incredibly dense with facts! You really think I am some ideologue? These are fairly obvious categorical points.

“And so now I’m an exploiting authoritarian because I did not accept your essay and wouldn’t pay you for it.”

No. I’m saying that to think someone should do work, and not get paid for it, is exploitation. And the mode in which you’ve rejected my essay, is authoritarian, because it is all due to the wielding of arbitrary power, and you haven’t objectively demonstrated why my essay should be rejected, say on the grounds of being unclear.

“I am against the writer notion that somehow writing is work. Hard labor is work, not writing.”

So, this is just weird. Writing is not work? If not, then how would you justify something like copyright, intellectual property rights? It is just a bizarre notion; that writing isn’t work. There is simply no rational ground for this idea. You would do well to examine it.

“Or perhaps watching tv is also intellectual work… and why then don’t tv watchers get paid?”

First, watching tv is passive, writing is active. In watching tv, nothing is produced. In writing, indeed, something is produced. So this is just flatly a weird notion of yours. Further. I also would suppose, that for a writer of tv shows, watching tv really would be a part of their intellectual labor, because they would need to keep up with what was coming out, in order to stay fresh as a writer.

“Regarding your other essay, per usual, I was ‘desperate’ to fill the issue, so I could publish it.”

So then why such great pains to reject this essay, if previously, you were desperate to fill it up? The lack of logic is astounding.

“‘I am criticizing your criticism,’ you note. ‘Your criticism sucked! It was awful, and very insubstantial.’ Well, I like that. Please add it to a new essay. In fact, how can I NOT publish it in next issue? Our back and forth would indeed make a good dialogue de sourds! Of course my criticism sucks. It lacked DENSITY! Absence of RISK (no names named) and concision were the essence of it. And so, you are really pro-Rattle and anti-AD.”

This is just poor argumentation. The only metric I applied to saying your criticism was bad, was because it was lacking in substance, and objective evidence to your criteria of “unclear.” Again, it can be objectively determined. But for whatever reason, you don’t want to put in the work. You would rather put me in a position to produce as many words which could fill perhaps, an entire issue of your publication. And for what? Over a petty disagreement with a writer who ultimately has taken great inspiration from you, and considers you a kindred spirit!

“. . . evidently we are quite different! I name names, you dare not! Did you not read what I wrote on no need to send the essay again? Any criticism I send you will inevitably suck, so why should I waste more time on reading an essay that did not interest me? Good luck getting your essay published. I would be very interested in knowing who publishes it…”

It is odd to see you put it that I dare not name names. If I was writing a piece which required that, I would. I made the deliberate creative decision to write a piece that aimed to be more universal. You are hiding behind this notion of your criticism sucking, to avoid doing the work. I did a very close reading of a poetry manuscript of yours, some writing that you told me ended up attaining to a decent level of quality. If you say you are interested in who would publish my essay, I read a sarcasm that would seem to imply you find the work inadequate. I assert that the inadequacy lies with you, in your reading of it. The authoritarianism of the editor who plays the role of gatekeeper is a major reason I developed my own website, so that I can publish myself whenever I want. I will publish “The Politics of Non-Response” myself, after I find some journal for it, in the meantime. The exercise was largely a part of developing ideas that will also feature into an article about truth, aesthetics, authority, and propaganda, as well as Investigative Poetry, which I will pitch to a paying publication. For, getting paid, and telling the truth, need not be mutually exclusive. Because the real aspect required is the courage to stand up to authority. Because I do not read your notion of, “interested in who will publish it” genuinely, I suppose I don’t need to consider that some kind of obligation, like I should let you know where it is published, when that day does come. It saddens me that it can’t be published in the context which I desired, and so very likely your being removed from it will be a necessity. Not really how I would have wanted it. Truly, what I had hoped, was a more sincere reception from you. In the absence of that, I guess, I would have only asked for a fair shake. Out of your insistence that you are right, it has resulted in the generation of writing perhaps 10 times, maybe more, than the amount of words in the actual essay. While I consider it a worthwhile intellectual exercise; I still for the life of me cannot figure out, what you have stood to gain through your stubbornness in it.

G TOD SLONE: Abstracts and models are safe, not risky, and don’t upset the established order in the least. Where in your essay is there a “call to action”? And how will your concrete inaction somehow move others to act?  
Why therefore have you not sent the essay to those “conditioned to non-response”?

How can there not be a form of autocracy in the “creative industries”? You fail to stipulate. You also did not respond to the point I made that if I, editor, did not act with a certain degree of autocracy, I’d end up publishing anything and everything. Anarchy is an ideology that is intrinsically faulty, a virtual pipedream… just like the hippie bullshit of love. Sure, love, but don’t you dare touch my girlfriend!
Since I almost never receive essays and poems in The AD focus, I have to publish out-of-focus material… and thus at least get to pub. my own in-focus material. BUT still I have to find something of interest in the material. Your essay simply did not work for me.  Will it work for anyone else but you?  That’s a question that needs a response…

A SCOTT BUCH: “Abstracts and models are safe, not risky, and don’t upset the established order in the least.”

Says you. I am interested in deeper and more profound, enduring, and collective, transformation. What is your proof for this statement? How certain are you of it? Do you even believe it is possible to upset, upend, the established order? In previous discussions with you, I have seen you express your belief that it isn’t possible. My aim is to connect with a reader positively, not to critique some discreet figure negatively, with a piece like “The Politics of Non-Response.” I highly doubt your assertion that “models are safe,” and I would like for you to provide concrete evidence for why this is the case. You can’t do it, because it is your mere predilection.

“Where in your essay is there a ‘call to action’?”

The essay starts out addressing the general public, who may have some experience with non-response, in their pursuit of literary publication. It links the notion of non-response to a norm of autocracy in our culture, an experience that again, I believe most people will have. It is calling on us to push back against this idea as a norm. Like the essay establishes, it is not so much that it is a norm but that we accept it as a norm, that I find most pernicious. By the end of the essay, it is pointing out that there is nothing unchangeable about said norm, and so the call to action is for those not in positions of power, to stop accepting this norm; and for those who are in positions of power, to consider going against the grain, and rejecting this norm.

“And how will your concrete inaction somehow move others to act?”

That’s your characterization of my action, that it is an inaction. And precisely how am I not acting in this battle with you to see this piece in print? Perhaps a major place where we differ is that, I feel that inspiration is most effective, when it is free to be taken up as the person inspired sees fit. So a good example would be, if you were interested more in inspiring, than being an inflexible authority, you would want to maximize those who got something out of your message, though who might have ran with it in a different way than you necessarily would have. You are aiming to crush a new way of framing your focus because it deviates from how you rigidly perceive it. Not so much for me. In aiming to be more universal with the message, the idea would be that it maximizes the more diverse ways people could interpret the message that is getting laid down. If someone took a message from my work that clearly wasn’t there, I would push back against that. But I really think that you are splitting hairs in how much you are trying to demonstrate that there is nothing of substance within my essay that is to do with the focus of dissidence. You are fixated on the ways in which it doesn’t fit your, apparently, narrow view of dissidence. And this to me is a good way of crushing the potential inspiration, or concrete fuel for a call to action, that some work of art, or philosophy, could have. The aim of a work of philosophy like this, is simply to assist in putting out ways of thinking differently.

“Why therefore have you not sent the essay to those ‘conditioned to non-response’?”

I think this may just highlight a difference in our tactics. I am aiming to have a positive, rather than a negative effect. Both have their place. I’m not trying to do a negative critique of a figure—perfectly respectable. I am trying to do a critique of a norm by revealing or exposing it as a model, and thus in that action, trying to facilitate a way we could think differently about the problem and build a more effectively aesthetic movement going forward. As well, the idea of those conditioned to the norm, are precisely those folks who I imagine might read your publication. Again, it is not the figures who are the perpetrators of non-response, that the essay is addressed to, but to those who are conditioned to accept it. Although at the end of the essay, there is a bit which is railing against those general practitioners of non-response; what is practically most of the establishment journals. As the essay mentions, often as a part of the establishment norm, it is stated outright, that there isn’t enough time to respond to everyone, blah blah blah.

“How can there not be a form of autocracy in the ‘creative industries’?”

To me, this is tantamount to asking, how can there not be autocracy in general? A strange question for a fellow who believes so strongly in democracy to ask. Do you really think that order without autocracy is impossible? A bizarre belief, considering there are all kinds of different ways, political systems, social orders, which aren’t dependent on autocracy at their core. And so too for the creative industries.

“You fail to stipulate.”

How? Okay, for instance, one could move out of the paradigm of judgment by elite authority as the only way to determine quality, as I laid down in my first essay. Next, you could make the process of editing a journal, not be one solely dependent on the authority of one person. The making of art could become something more like a movement or community. I could stipulate the hell out of this. Would you like me to put together another model? Or are models pointless and tantamount to “inaction”? Now you are accusing me of NOT generating a model?

“You also did not respond to the point I made that if I, editor, did not act with a certain degree of autocracy, I’d end up publishing anything and everything.”

I don’t see why that would have to be the case. You are only an autocrat to the extent that, you end up wielding an arbitrary power. This doesn’t rule out making judgments. It becomes an arbitrary power though when wanting the final say, in despite of evidence that your ruling may be inadequate. Take the ruling that my essay is unclear. I hold that this can be objectively determined as false. Though it very well may be true. It could be, objectively, unclear; the demonstration of which, wouldn’t ultimately be the wielding of an arbitrary power. It would become a process that could, in theory, help me to become a better writer. Here’s the problem, the evidence points to you not reading the essay close enough. You admitted as much. You said, why should I read it closely? To me, these are the marks of being an autocrat. If you read it close, and objectively determined it wasn’t clear, in a way which was ultimately helpful to me, I suppose, that would be the clear difference.

“Anarchy is an ideology that is intrinsically faulty, a virtual pipedream… just like the hippie bullshit of love.”

Says you. What’s your evidence? I have put it like this before, it is as simple as asking the question. Do you think society is impossible without arbitrary power? Is freedom impossible? As well, regarding love, I don’t see that as bullshit at all. Hate is deeply operative in our society. It could just as well be love, and it would be better for all those involved, if it were love.

“Will it work for anyone else but you? That’s a question that needs a response…”

Yes, I imagine that it will. I had hoped that it would work for you however. It was you who asked me to write an essay for you to begin with. In turn, I asked for some kind of editorial commitment. I wrote an outline, then submitted it to you for your approval. You told me to go ahead. I have put a lot of effort into corresponding with you, and it is disheartening to see you more, it seems, focus on where our predilections diverge, rather than where they converge. I suppose if you had said something more like, okay, we could work with this (the second essay), but I think you need to write a second draft, that would be different. You made in my view, fairly superficial critiques of my work. All in all, I suppose the fault lies in me, in viewing this correspondence as something more cooperative, in which there was a kind mutuality going in, in providing inspiration in acts of affinity. No, I don’t doubt that I will be able to find another publication that will feature this essay. I only foresee that it will take an extraordinarily long time. Though it would be nice if it was no longer than May, 2024.

(Part 6)

G TOD SLONE: Verbosity, certainly not RISK and concision, seems to be your m.o.. I’m not even sure why you had said you liked the concept of RISK. Evidently, you probably never have RISKED, which is why you canNOT produce writing that clearly manifests a certain degree of RISK. You dare NOT even openly criticize, in an essay, RATTLE. Hell, you don’t want to RATTLE the establishment; after all, you want money from your writing. Also, you seem to believe that you are Monsieur Brilliant… and in that darkness, sure, you’ll easily get published all over the place whenever you want. Good luck!

A SCOTT BUCH: Dear Chairman Slone,

Your final sentence, makes it clear that you yourself believe, that in order to get published, you need to cozy up to authority. You are making it seem that I will find difficulty being published, due to not being obsequious to the demands of an editor. For, with “The Politics of Non-Response,” I never said it was brilliant; I only defended it against your cursory, petty, and ultimately inadequate criticisms. I insisted the work was adequate, not brilliant. There is a big difference there.

In this debate, which I have thoroughly documented, the onus wasn’t on me to prove the work was brilliant, it was on you to prove the work was inadequate. But you avoided proving your point, because you didn’t have a point to prove. This shows that you do not value truth any more than an establishment editor does.

This evidence is further seen in how your response here, neglects to address every single point I have brought up in the previous emails. Rather you resort to speculative attacks on my person; a tactic that you complain so much about when it happens to you from an establishment editor. There is therefore much evidence from this entire debate, to point to the conclusion that you are a very large hypocrite. You have an idiosyncratic concept that you refer to as risk in all capitals, that I used to admire, because I have my own version of this concept. A better one, I would say, because it’s more demystified and universal, and crucially, doesn’t depend on one person’s idiosyncratic conception that they become the gatekeeper of. It is, very simply, the challenging of authority.

The type of authority that is managerialism in the creative industries, which you are precisely wielding, is the role of gatekeeper. A not very discerning reader of you and of your interactions, might at first assume that your ideology was in opposition to gatekeeping within the creative industries. Turns out you are not against gatekeepers, but simply against certain gatekeepers. Hence, your impotent fixation on naming names. Impotent, and a fixation, insofar as you yourself, don’t even believe that your struggle is meaningful, or could meaningfully oppose what it stands in opposition to. And especially because, it also gatekeeps against alternative methods of opposing that structure, as somehow not being effective, which is again, profoundly ironic, coming from a person who doesn’t even believe their own methods are effective.

It makes you an absurd figure, at least especially to the degree you have pretensions as an authority. And it also makes you a hypocrite. Because again, while your complaints about the system at large are to me, obviously true, you nonetheless act no differently from the system you complain about. Your project is not one of true dissidence, but rather a narcissistic project which puts you at its center.

You show yourself, in the last analysis, to be a total hypocrite, and I have all the evidence to prove it. Luckily, you do not have a monopoly on literature, democracy, or dissidence, all deeply important values, concepts or subjects—your idiosyncratic definition of which, are not only wrong, but also irrelevant to those for whom these values truly matter.

G TOD SLONE: Well, since you won’t, maybe I will create an essay regarding our disagreements, an essential dialogue de sourds. Send the essay again and I will put it up on the blogsite as an example of a rejection!  
Evidently, you and I disagree on a number of concepts. For example, you don’t seem to understand the term “concise”: brief, clear and without “veneer”! That is the opposite of philosophical meandering, your forté!
Well, there is enough space for that essay of yours, BUT that essay drifted distantly from the FOCUS of the journal.
“the focus of your journal is literature, democracy, and dissidence. My essay ticks every single one of those boxes.” Perhaps so, though I’m not sure how it might be considered even remotely dissident… and again IT FAILS to manifest an iota of RISK and FAILS to present any concrete examples.
I am NOT “narrow-minded.” I have a FOCUS. There’s a world of difference between the two. Your essay FAILED to attract my interest. Non-response really has nothing to do with politics, unless of course you’re simply using the term as a synonym for simple decision making. And in that sense, well, when I buy a pie, that is an example of the politics of food choice. “Non-response,” a term which you took from me, is far more than your “politics” generalization. It is simply the disdain for criticism. No need to philosophically meander with that regard.
“You would be more demonstrating your values if you published a piece you personally, really hated, than one that was more focused on you, and your propensity to publish pieces, that fit your own particular predilections.” Your piece did not by any means evoke an iota of “hatred,” which is a strong reaction. Your piece essentially elicited no reaction with the exception of the reaction to simply stop reading it due to its meanderings and seeming dilution of the term RISK into non-RISK.   
“My experience with you here, isn’t making you out to seem all that different from an establishment editor.” It is mind-boggling to me that you absolutely reject any criticism regarding your essay. Since I didn’t like it enough to publish it, therefore I am of the establishment. The logic there is non-existent.  
“It is more debating a concept like this, that I am interested in, and not the tedious, more self-indulgent direction I feel your editorial bias is tugging in.” And so the FOCUS of The AD is somehow “self-indulgent.” Well, maybe you ought to ask RATTLE for an assistant-editorial position. Because that ad hominem would be something its editor would argue in an effort to dilute/eliminate dissidence in the realm of the academic/literary establishment.
“That is why my writing is so dense, because I cultivate concision.” Well, maybe then you’re next in line for the Nobel Prize! Again, you do NOT cultivate concision, but rather the perversion of terms.
And so anybody who does NOT like your manner of writing can be deemed by you as somehow “rigid and authoritarian.” Sounds like a highly egotistical conclusion!
Regarding your absence of having the courage to name names, criticize actual individuals with actual names, you note: ”This isn’t focus, this is your predilection, and, again, the essay deliberately doesn’t set out to do that, and instead, to deal with models and norms. If you already had the issue full up with essays that named names, because you like that so much, fine. But do you? This I profoundly doubt, and thus can’t understand what you stand to gain from being so rigid and authoritarian.”  
Well, I already told you that I rarely obtain writing that does have the courage to name names. But I have yet to encounter a person, besides you, who so adamantly argued to be within the focus, but failed to name names.  

“(Nor can I understand how anyone in their right mind, would associate autocratic editorial control with democracy.) In this instance, I have had an original idea, that was kindled in discussions with you, and I wanted to submit it to you exclusively. I remain perplexed at what you stand to gain by fighting so hard to reject this.” If one were to define democracy, as you do, as everything and anything, then I’d agree with you.

“Of course people can always debate exactly if this or that, truly meets the criteria or not. THAT IS THE POINT OF FREE SPEECH. That is why I said, let your readers decide.” And so then, what if readers decide in the same light as my decision?  

“To me, what this battle is starting to reveal, is that you care more about the idea of free speech, than the action of it.” And yet over the past few decades I have actually stood up in solo protests, here and there, regarding matters of free speech and the absence thereof. I HAVE RISKED JOBS, PUBLICATIONS, INVITATIONS, etc. WTF have you done? SILENCE!

Again, I eagerly await to see who is going to publish your essay, besides me. I will publish it on the website blog with a caveat on top of it!

A SCOTT BUCH: Dear Chairman Slone,

“. . . you don’t seem to understand the term ‘concise’: brief, clear and without ‘veneer’! That is the opposite of philosophical meandering, your forté!”

Kind of stupid to say I don’t understand the word “concise.” Perhaps contrary to your perceptions, I am literate. You have never proved my essay “meandered.” So at this point, you merely continue to assert ideologically, betraying your hypocrisy regarding the value of truth. You don’t value truth, as much as your own ego.

“Well, there is enough space for that essay of yours, BUT that essay drifted distantly from the FOCUS of the journal.”

The focus since you arbitrarily determine it like an autocrat, is the opposite of democratic. It would be acceptable for any other journal, but for yours, it isn’t, because you claim to value democracy. You are a hypocrite regarding democracy, because you act autocratically.

“. . . how it might be considered even remotely dissident. . .”

Dissidence being broadly defined, as the opposition to the status quo; the essay is against the autocratic model of the status quo. You are a true pedant, to the extent that for very obvious facts, which contrast with your ego, you “doubt,” them, as in your rhetoric, “even remotely. . .”

“. . . IT FAILS to manifest an iota of RISK and FAILS to present any concrete examples.”

Your concept of risk is idiosyncratic, and I refuse to abide by it. Why is because, in its idiosyncrasy, you become the gatekeeper of it. This is not democratic, and highly autocratic. So again, you are a hypocrite, and also, I no longer care one iota to hold myself to any standard of your concept of risk. I have my own concept of it, and it is called challenging authority.

“I am NOT ‘narrow-minded.’ I have a FOCUS. There’s a world of difference between the two.”

But since your focus is whatever you say it is, a writer has to submit themselves to your authority to determine what it is arbitrarily. So I reject it. I don’t care. And then in my concepts of literature, democracy, and dissidence, it does show you to be narrow-minded.

“Your essay FAILED to attract my interest.”

That’s fine, I don’t care. The real question is, does that then mean the essay is inadequate enough to require being rewritten? To which I would reply, no. I think it is fine the way it is. So I will publish it myself; after finding some other journal that will place it.

“Non-response really has nothing to do with politics, unless of course you’re simply using the term as a synonym for simple decision making.”

You’re just dumb here. I demonstrated the way that non-response, is connected to acting autocratically, which is a politics. Politics in its simplest form, has to do with the dynamic of a relationship. So it has to do with relationships, not decision-making. Although decision-making is not separate from this, in the sense that, some forms of decision-making are democratic, others autocratic. For an editor who claims to value democracy, to act like an autocrat, is a profound irony. That it makes you a hypocrite is undeniable.

“. . . when I buy a pie, that is an example of the politics of food choice.”

You could demonstrate the model of it, like in how for instance, for some chocolate, it can be determined down the line of its production, child slave labor is involved. So that to buy a product which explicitly makes a political choice, benefiting or not benefiting off of child labor, is a thing. Your example here is just dumb.

“‘Non-response,’ a term which you took from me, is far more than your ‘politics’ generalization. It is simply the disdain for criticism. No need to philosophically meander with that regard.”

Non-response is a mere word in the dictionary. You don’t own that. And then clearly, it meant something very different to me, than you. So in that regard, my concept for it is completely original. Your argument here doesn’t make sense, because on the one hand, you say it is more than politics, then you say, it is simply something, simply disdain for criticism, which is less, and not more. One could also say, that much of your entire oeuvre is a poetic meandering on your impotent fixation on naming names. The point I continued to emphasize was that, we could each have taken the concept in different ways. Your pretension to say that there was only one way to take it, your way, is not only arrogant, but also factually wrong.

“Your piece did not by any means evoke an iota of ‘hatred,’ which is a strong reaction. Your piece essentially elicited no reaction with the exception of the reaction to simply stop reading it due to its meanderings and seeming dilution of the term RISK into non-RISK.”

The piece wasn’t written to evoke hatred. Like I said, it had more positive intentions, to connect with people submitted to non-response, and not the practitioners of it. Though at the end, it does address the practitioners of it. Finally, I no longer care one iota about your concept of risk. It is an idiosyncratic concept, that you make way too much of, and which revolves narcissistically around you. It is very unclear, and obscurantist, in that only you can define it. I will stick with the more general, universal, and thus, available to all who would employ it, notion of Challenging Authority.

“It is mind-boggling to me that you absolutely reject any criticism regarding your essay. Since I didn’t like it enough to publish it, therefore I am of the establishment. The logic there is non-existent.”

You act exactly like the establishment to abhor that the bottom would criticize the top. The norm is, the one with authority knows better. I have challenged your authority, and you went berserk. Exactly like the establishment. How I challenged your authority wasn’t to reject criticism in itself, but to reject your cursory, petty, and ultimately inadequate criticism. That you keep getting this wrong is a great example of your ego, and your hypocrisy regarding truth, in not seeing it, when you don’t want to admit that you are wrong.

“And so the FOCUS of The AD is somehow ‘self-indulgent.’ Well, maybe you ought to ask RATTLE for an assistant-editorial position. Because that ad hominem would be something its editor would argue in an effort to dilute/eliminate dissidence in the realm of the academic/literary establishment.”

I don’t give a shit about Rattle. And yes, you are self-indulgent. The works of mine you want to publish, all would center around you, critiquing you in some sadomasochistic way. It is exactly like having an establishment poetry professor. They want you to produce work in their image. I want to produce the work that I want to produce. If you make it out to be objectively about quality, you would be wrong. You want work along a certain line, but then insist it is somehow the best representation of dissidence. But your concept of dissidence is self-indulgent and ego-centric. And so I no longer care about your idiosyncratic ways of construing literature, democracy, and dissidence.

“Well, maybe then you’re next in line for the Nobel Prize! Again, you do NOT cultivate concision, but rather the perversion of terms.”

No truly dissident writer would ever cultivate winning a prize, let alone the Nobel Prize. Your notion of “perversion of terms” is bullshit. It can happen, and is called obscurantism. It can also be proven. And you fail to prove it. Nor can you. You keep over and over again, failing to prove your point, but just name calling as if it were true. And it is because you know you do not have a sufficient argument.

“And so anybody who does NOT like your manner of writing can be deemed by you as somehow ‘rigid and authoritarian.’ Sounds like a highly egotistical conclusion!”

You can not like it. That is subjective. The point is to not like it, and to act as if it was an objective ruling. Your rigidness and authoritarianism comes from trying to act as if your subjective ruling, were objective, as in according to certain criteria. However, you fail to demonstrate this objectively. That is what makes you an authoritarian, but worse, also a hypocrite.

“Well, I already told you that I rarely obtain writing that does have the courage to name names. But I have yet to encounter a person, besides you, who so adamantly argued to be within the focus, but failed to name names.”

Your impotent fixation on naming names is a mask for the lack of efficacy within your own approach. You yourself admit that your approach isn’t effective. My point is you hide behind the idea of naming names as the only way to measure a certain criteria. I no longer care about your particular way of construing things. Not that I don’t think it is valid, but since you act as if it was the only valid way. This is just on its face untrue. So in this way, it is so pedantic of you to constantly assert that only your way is the correct way. I just don’t give a shit. And as it is on its face, untrue. Have your predilections, that is fine. I don’t conform to them.

“If one were to define democracy, as you do, as everything and anything, then I’d agree with you.”

I don’t define democracy as everything and anything. You, Slone, have a very idiosyncratic definition of democracy, which seems limited to freedom of speech. I believe in radical democracy, which is the flattening of hierarchies of decision-making. The most basic textbook definition of democracy, is that the people participate. That participation requires an equality of relationships. That democracy would be in opposition to autocracy is politics 101. You are the one with a very limited, and idiosyncratic definition of democracy.

“And so then, what if readers decide in the same light as my decision?”

Then so be it. I could still disagree. However at least it would have created a public conversation. Further, I doubt it would be split, 100 to 1, as it is now, with you holding all of the decision-making power, and me none of it. I bet that at least some people would agree with me. And then it could be debated. And that is the point of Free Speech. You as an autocratic editor effectively are trying to make up everyone’s mind for them.

“And yet over the past few decades I have actually stood up in solo protests, here and there, regarding matters of free speech and the absence thereof. I HAVE RISKED JOBS, PUBLICATIONS, INVITATIONS, etc. WTF have you done? SILENCE!”

I have told you that had I been in the position, I would have stood on your side. However now, you have silenced me, by at least, refusing to publish a piece that I believed very strongly in, for the sake of your own predilections. So in this way, you have not stood with me. So why should I stand with you? It strikes me you really care more about yourself than anything else. This can be demonstrated in how you have put your own ego before solidarity here with a person who had previously been on your side, and who has now, based entirely on how you have conducted yourself, considers you to be an enemy!

Overall not a productive project of dissidence! Just a self-defeating, self-indulgent project which is doomed to fail!

G TOD SLONE: Dear Anarcho Buchanan, the Brilliant,
So much over one rejected essay! Mind-boggling indeed! What editor out there would spend this much time discussing one of your rejected essays? Name one or two!!! How egocentric of you to proclaim that I am egocentric for formulating an idea for a journal in 1998, stemming from my personal experiences.
You perhaps did not say the essay was “brilliant,” but you sure as hell implied that it somehow was!
Am I supposed to be shaking in my boots because you “documented” my responses? Hmm. Send your shite to Rattle! Surely, the dude will publish it!
Too much blather! No actual experience! That is the crux of your problem, not mine!
And so anyone who rejects an essay from you is automatically deemed a “total hypocrite,” “absurd figure,”
and “narcissist with pretensions.” Bravo. Good luck on your ladder-climbing writer’s career path, not quite the path of a self-professed anarcho. Go figure!

A SCOTT BUCH: Dear G. Tod Stalin,

I’ll take Anarcho Buchanan, that’s fine with me!

“So much over one rejected essay! Mind-boggling indeed! What editor out there would spend this much time discussing one of your rejected essays? Name one or two!!!”

I don’t care. My project is to be in militant opposition to authoritarian editors, of authoritarians of all kinds. Since I happen to be a writer, authoritarian editors would just so happen to be, one of the main places where I would need to confront authoritarianism. But I confronted it a lot with managers in China. And in fact, your authoritarianism reminds me quite a lot of clashing with an authoritarian Boss I once had in China. It’s well within my focus, because your M. O. is a perfect representation of what I modeled in my essay. It just came as a shock that you of all people would turn out to be an authoritarian. You could just admit that you were wrong, you know.

“How egocentric of you to proclaim that I am egocentric for formulating an idea for a journal in 1998, stemming from my personal experiences.”

Blah blah, just lazily and uncreatively, turning my own criticism of you, back on me. Props for starting the journal; but since you claim to value democracy, I’m surprised you weren’t expecting a fight like this. Again, for other editors, it makes sense they would be secret authoritarians. But you? Just very ironic, and why you are a hypocrite.

“You perhaps did not say the essay was ‘brilliant,’ but you sure as hell implied that it somehow was!”

No I didn’t. My fight has merely been, that it is adequate.

“Am I supposed to be shaking in my boots because you ‘documented’ my responses? Hmm. Send your shite to Rattle! Surely, the dude will publish it!”

No. It’s just for the sake of truth. The truth of your hypocrisy.

“Too much blather! No actual experience! That is the curx of your problem, not mine!”

You don’t know me. As if this debate here, wasn’t an experience. It is the kind of experience that I happen to have over and over, because I am an anti-authoritarian, and stand up to unjust, irrational authority whenever I encounter it. It is just second-nature to me.

“And so anyone who rejects an essay from you is automatically deemed a ‘total hypocrite,’ ‘absurd figure,’
and ‘narcissist with pretensions.’”

No. Man, for a professor, you are quite shit at putting together sound arguments. I have made my specific arguments for why these apply to you. It is not to everybody. It is to you. Indeed, I am naming your name, G. Tod Slone. I’m calling you this, and I also have the evidence for it.

“Good luck on your ladder-climbing writer’s career path, not quite the path of a self-professed anarcho.”

Yeah, not trying to climb the ladder, just the opposite, critiquing the very structure of that ladder, and fighting anyone who acts out the structure of it. Perhaps most especially to people like you, who claim to be against it, but ironically act out the very structure they claim to be opposed to!

G TOD SLONE: PS: Look up the word CONCISE in a freakin’ dictionary!!! You are anything BUT concise…

A SCOTT BUCH: My essay was pretty short, given the largeness of the subject matter. My poems tend to be short, and that is because I treat each word like a singular value. My concise work, you mistake for unclear density. You are also not a paragon of truth, because you insist on seeing things more based on how you feel about them, and not in ways which could in theory, demonstrate the validity of what one claims.

(Part 7)

G TOD SLONE: Dense is NOT concise! How mind-numb can you get? There’s no point in continuing this, if you canNOT even admit that DENSE is NOT concise… or perhaps it is only for the DENSE. 🙂

A SCOTT BUCH: There are two levels to be dealing with, on the one hand, what these terms objectively mean, and on the other hand, subjective connotations of ours behind those terms. For instance, “dense” in itself, carries no value judgment regarding aesthetics, as in, dense is good or bad. You put that on it. Your rhetoric is also juvenile in using “mind-numb,” coming from the point of view of your egotism, in attaching some kind of objective metric to your subjective preferences. Concise implies that the formulation could otherwise be quite long, and so it is condensed. It’s just your predilection that you dislike density. All the judgment you add to that is really specific to you, and there is nothing objective about it. Lastly; if writing is dense in the sense of being unclear, that can be demonstrated. What I here keep having to remind you of over and over, is that you simply rule something is bad, without proving it. And then you avoid proving it.

G TOD SLONE: Send me your photo so I can sketch a cartoon on you and DENSE/CONCISE.

A SCOTT BUCH: Concise also implies that everything has been taken into account. Often you can be brief, but don’t touch on everything. If you want to touch on everything, and be brief, this is called concision. But in order to touch on everything, one can’t always be brief. To hit it home again; there is nothing objectively wrong with density. But in your authoritarian mindset, when you think something is wrong with something, that makes it objectively the case.

G TOD SLONE: Conclusion: You have zero experience standing up to authority. How sad.

A SCOTT BUCH: Since you don’t know me, and couldn’t have possibly come up with that conclusion using evidence, you are nothing more than a kind of impotent bully, trying to intimidate using juvenile insults. In my experience battling with authority, bosses, cops, what have you, this is how they always act. They go berserk when you demonstrate to them that there is no objective basis to their position. They regress into the status of a schoolyard bully.

G TOD SLONE: You, the self-professed anti-authoritarian seek acceptance (publication and money) from authority. How aberrant can it get? Only in the world of self-professed anarchists!

A SCOTT BUCH: Yeah, no. For me, as with Orwell, it is about exposing and revealing. I don’t need you to publish me. I can publish myself. I can also seek out many other publications. Writers should be paid for their labor. And it also can be done in a way which is anti-authoritarian. Your lack of a coherent ideology, ironically, makes you more susceptible to being an ideologue.

You could also try to address my arguments, rather than just attack my person, which you really know nothing about. Again it makes you a hypocrite, because you always complain this is what establishment editors do to you.

It’s like you are always in a mode of trying to expose and reveal hypocrisy, except rather suddenly when it is you being exposed and revealed, you have no strategy left. You can only hurl back at your opponent what they are exposing and revealing about you, except, mind you, with absolutely no evidence.

G TOD SLONE: You are cowardly and egocentric. You have a website: “A. Scott Buch.” I do not have a website: “G. Tod Slone.” You are cowardly because you do not have the guts to put your photo and real name on your website. And I erred by allowing you to use your pen name, something I specifically stated I was against. I will not make that mistake again…

A SCOTT BUCH: Here is the case and point about you just projecting. My website does have my real name on it, and photos of me. A. Scott Buch is a pen name. (Like George Orwell. Surely you know his real name was Eric Blair?) So you keep embarrassing yourself, thinking you are still exposing and revealing, when it is you being exposed and revealed.

The stupidity is kind of astounding. My name is Alex, and hence the A. stands for that. Just like G. stands for George. It is hard to believe a professor could make such “arguments”. . .

(Part 8)

G TOD SLONE: Orwellian indeed!  

Density Is Concision
Anarchy Is Democracy
Rejection Is Autocracy

Also, I’ll have to make a list of the ad hominem you’ve used with my regard! Your writing actually makes me LOL, as in wtf is he trying to say! You project yourself as some kind of Monsieur Parfait or lecturer of the tenured academic ilk. Insanity rules, my man! And in that regard, it would be tough as nails to beat you! 

A SCOTT BUCH: The point is you’re a hypocrite because you do exactly what you accuse others of doing. Since I know what I’m trying to say, it comes down to you finding it unclear, not that it is actually unclear. You could try to prove your point, but you can’t, so don’t. You keep repeating yourself pathetically over and over. Either prove it, or your words are empty. It is authoritarian to reject based on mere arbitrary power. Anarchy is direct democracy; the type of democracy you believe in, is of the liberal autocrat type, of which Nancy Pelosi is a prime example. It’s also easy to be concise when you have nothing of substance to say. I’m not saying density is concision; I’m saying that something complex if stated concisely will end up dense. That is a fairly obvious statement. And there’s really nothing ideological about it.

G TOD SLONE: Need I repeat: Clarity and concision are certainly NOT traits of your writing. Thanks for yet another LECTURE!

A SCOTT BUCH: The difference is I don’t go around autocratically asserting that there is only one correct way to write. If I had a style of writing which was more or less identical to yours, and you told me it was failing to meet up to that, I would adjust it accordingly. The point is I refuse to alter what in my style I hold is what makes it mine, and how I want to write. So the experience is identical to the one I had with a creative writing professor. They want you to write in their image. They also through their authority assert that the way they prefer writing to be, is objectively the way it should be. This is ultimately at the end of the day, objectively incorrect; there isn’t only one correct way to write. If there was, it could be taught. But there isn’t, so it can’t. So to me it is less precisely about whether or not my style is objectively good or not; I’m attacking the arrogance of being so certain that it is objectively bad. If we do stick to one metric like clarity—is this guy simply saying nonsense, or is what he is saying sound—this could at least be proven to a relative standard. If my writing was unclear, or made no sense, that could be demonstrated. How about instead of ideologically repeating over and over that you are correct, you actually attempt to prove what you are asserting with evidence? Oh yeah, because that would take work, and you aren’t willing to do it. You don’t even consider writing, and what you do, to be work anyway. Such an odd notion.

G TOD SLONE: And still you REFUSE to cite just ONE EXPERIENCE (naming names!) of you standing up to authority and not in some group chanting manifestation. NOT ONE!!!

Thanks once again for the LOL, as in I, schoolyard bully. Oh, my…

A SCOTT BUCH: I find your definition of dissidence completely inadequate. Why is because you don’t even believe in its own efficacy. You have an impotent and idiosyncratic way of defining dissidence which revolves egocentrically around you, and you gatekeep it with the zeal of those same types of figures who you rail against, a virtue-signaling apparatchik. Ask yourself if your tedious gatekeeping helps the project of legitimate dissidence in any way.

G TOD SLONE: To equate writing with labor is mind-numbing! I have never thought of writing as WORK. Hard labor is WORK. Writing is NOT WORK. Maybe you have never WORKED. Well, I have.
Well, you were beggaring me to publish your essay, which is why I finally offered to do so on the journal’s blogsite.
Sorry, Charlie, you are the ideologue, not I! Anarchy is a form of socio-communism, an ideology. I have no ideology. I seek truth and reason, not somehow within the confines of an ideology like anarchism.
I did not attack you. I criticized your essay in its utter lack of clarity. For you, somehow that was a personal attack. For that, you attacked my character as authoritarian, hypocritical, juvenile, and on and on. Projection 101!
You did not somehow expose me… because I do not hide behind an ideology. It is you, who was exposed as somebody who cannot bear an iota of rejection/criticism! Projection 101!

A SCOTT BUCH: “To equate writing with labor is mind-numbing!”

This is flatly stupid. How are you defining labor?  

“I have never thought of writing as WORK.”

So because you have never thought of it, it can’t be true. Staggering arrogance.

“Hard labor is WORK. Writing is NOT WORK.”

Based on what? A feeling? This assertion has no logic to it whatsoever.

“Maybe you have never WORKED. Well, I have.”

Interestingly, this comes right back around to your authoritarianism. To you, what is good, is what you say it is. And here, work is merely what you say it is. If you say it is work, it’s work. If you say it isn’t, it isn’t. This is the opposite of putting truth first, and is in every way the representation of a totalitarian way of thinking, which puts an ideology before material reality.

“Sorry, Charlie, you are the ideologue, not I! Anarchy is a form of socio-communism, an ideology. I have no ideology. I seek truth and reason, not somehow within the confines of an ideology like anarchism.”

To say one has no ideology, is like saying one has no thoughts in one’s head. (So this would actually make sense for you. . . Ha ha, just joking.) Did you not follow my previous differentiation of the two ways of thinking of ideology? One is that classic totalitarian sense, of putting an ideology before reality (which you actually do so much, it is staggering, and one can’t help but think, you are often criticizing in others what you can’t see in yourself). The other is merely a system of thought. You have a system of thought. Your notion of risk, and everything you believe in, that is an ideology, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Since you have created your own ideology, I actually respect that. Regarding anarchism, I don’t follow a party line (in case you didn’t know, anarchists don’t have parties). I have developed my own form of anarchist thinking, which is very much a part of anarchism itself because it is a political philosophy of freedom. Again, this is a domain where you want to talk as if an expert, but you are severely impoverished when it comes to the actual facts and aspects of the subject. Finally; your sense of caring about truth, is at least to me, severely ideological. Because when the truth contradicts with your own ego, you put your ego first!

“I did not attack you. I criticized your essay in its utter lack of clarity. For you, somehow that was a personal attack. For that, you attacked my character as authoritarian, hypocritical, juvenile, and on and on. Projection 101!”

You’ve attacked me over and over, without knowing much if anything about me, and here’s the point. You didn’t criticize my essay, you simply rejected it. I have been asking you over and over, for actual criticism, a demonstration of its “utter lack of clarity,” and you have avoided it over and over, instead, making personal attacks. I assert it is because you can’t prove the essay is unclear, and so rather than believe in the truth of what could be objectively determined there, you avoid over and over again doing the work. And this is because you have a bizarre, ideological, and not in sync with reality, way of defining what “work” is.

“You did not somehow expose me… because I do not hide behind an ideology. It is you, who was exposed as somebody who cannot bear an iota of rejection/criticism! Projection 101!”

It’s just pathetic, because all the evidence is right here in front of your nose. I will say it again, perhaps for over the tenth time. I’ve exposed you as a hypocrite, in at least two major senses, of showing how you are autocratic and not democratic, and how you are ideological and not committed to the truth. I have asked you to prove your accusation of the essay being “unclear,” and your avoiding of that is pathological within these discussions. I challenged the legitimacy of your rejection as being “objectively” right, and you have gone berserk. I can predict the future. I will ask you again here, to demonstrate how the essay is unclear. You will avoid doing so, and will continue to assert that you are somehow correct in all of this, through either some personal attack or another. But you will not objectively demonstrate the truth of what you are claiming, because you cannot demonstrate it. So that to continue to insist on being right, is the definition of being ideological, and authoritarian.

G TOD SLONE: And yet I cannot locate on your website (https://ascottbuch.com) your real name, Scott Buchanan, nor your real address, nor any concrete experiences whatsoever that you might have had related to your ideological direction. NADA! Just flaming hypocrisy, to use the word you like to project upon me: “NEVER SELL YOURSELF” in large letters you bellow on your site! And yet you are trying tooth and nail to freakin’ SELL YOURSELF (i.e., your writing). Go figure. Again, I have many actual experiences fighting authority, which I cite in detail on The American Dissident website.  You don’t seem to have any at all. Nothing is cited on your cite… just you. Ah, but I’m the egotist. Oh, yeah…

A SCOTT BUCH: So since you cannot locate something, it must not be there! You got me! I expect you took about, five minutes to look. So certainly it couldn’t be that you just glanced over it. Surely you must be right all the time.

I defined “sell out” in the essay of mine you published. To me, selling yourself, means to submit to the exploitation of capitalism. And it also means, to be obsequious to authority. I would be “selling myself” if I was trying to convince you of how great I am. I’m simply battling with you over the simple fact that I find my work adequate, and you don’t. Further, that if you would try to make some argument that my work was objectively bad, you would be committing an ideological error. But it could be to a relative degree settled, whether or not it objectively measured up to certain criteria, like being related to a focus, like democracy or dissidence. Or if it was objectively, an obfuscation or a sound argument.

Again, you are no model of dissidence, because you Slone admit, you don’t even believe it is effective. Unless you believe that you hold sole domain over the practice of dissidence—which would be profoundly arrogant—you would have to admit, there would be a wide range of potential strategies and tactics regarding dissidence. Why I accuse you of narcissism is because to you, unless it revolves around you, and around your way of defining it, it must not be legitimate.

My argument is that a more effective form of dissidence is that which can inspire, and be taken on by others, in ways which should be free to be modified by them. Your rigid and authoritarian way of defining the practice, I think, is one part of why it is so ineffectual. And again, you wouldn’t even contest that your way of doing things is ineffectual. You always start from the assumption that you are the sole one able to expose and reveal; so much that, you are at least in the case of dealing with me, needing to exclude so much of reality from the picture, to assert the ideological statement you want to assert. Finally, your neurotic way of thinking of everything as a contest, is also narcissistic, and ultimately a divisive and self-defeating tactic. I could if I wanted, come up with lists on lists of figures whose actions are far more dissident than yours, but I would never do that, because that is not how I construe the project of dissidence. I see it as a collective and positive struggle to which the more of us can contribute, the better.

G TOD SLONE: Perhaps if you made a little effort not to be so verbose in your writing and took a little lesson from Thoreau, as in “simplify, simplify,” you’d get a wee bit closer to the rude truth and consequent clarity, as opposed to the ideological and consequent obscurity… or density in your lingo.  Again, anarchy is an ideology, one that in reality ends up in anarchy, as in chaos… or at best socio-communist dictatorship. You are an ideologue; I am not. Enjoy the day. I sure as hell will…

A SCOTT BUCH: Your last little formulation here is very amateur. I dare say, childish. I can’t think of anything more authoritarian, and ideological, than for someone to think they had a monopoly on the truth. You don’t like my style of writing, and for you, that seems to mean objectively, that it is untrue. Prove that my writing is unclear. You can’t. To some extent at this point, it would appear that you want, and need it to be unclear. You define anarchy as “chaos,” which again shows how little you know about this subject, like Israel/Palestine. To me, it is one of the pinnacles of arrogance, to speak so authoritatively about something one knows so little about. I believe it is called the Dunning-Kruger effect, where the less one knows about a subject, the more one is apt to believe they are an expert in it. Anarchy means a social order in which there is no domination. That is all that it is in the simplest terms. Again, as I stress over and over, you may want domination, or believe a world without domination is impossible, but whether or not that its actually true, is something else entirely. Anarchists are the ones who get killed first in the generation of totalitarian dictatorships because we are the ones insisting that the social order be one free from domination. Bizarrely, you are here associating anarchism, with dictatorship, which is literally the polar opposite of what it is. But I suppose this makes sense coming from an autocrat in disguise, whose notion of democracy is really no different from that of Nancy Pelosi’s.

An ideologue is one who can’t amend their view of things when evidence contracts with it. Who insists narrowly on their own perspective, and can’t provide concrete evidence for it. At least in your interaction with me, this is precisely how you have behaved.

(Part 9)

G TOD SLONE: So, now you say density isn’t concision! And so finally we agree on that!!!  “I’m not saying density is concision; I’m saying that something complex if stated concisely will end up dense.” That sentence in itself is an example of verbose absurdity.
Anarchy is destruction and rioting like the BLM bullshit, BUT always with a hidden autocrat as conductor. Anarchy is NOT democracy. It is mind-numbing for you to argue that somehow it is.
Send the essay, so I can point precisely to examples of fluff and absence of clarity. Send it! How many times do I have to make that request?
Again, you fail to point out one, just one example of a successful anarchy society. Anarchy in essence is the opposite of society. Anarchy means confusion and chaos. Look up the word! Think!

A SCOTT BUCH: “That sentence in itself is an example of verbose absurdity.”

And this is an example of your inadequacy as a reader. You either willfully choose not to understand it, or dishonestly misrepresent it as unclear. There is nothing unclear about that sentence. Do you ever read poetry? You know when you can analyze one line, for an immense amount of aesthetic beauty? That is because, as a single line, it is concise. But as an aesthetic construction, it is dense, perhaps with meaning, alliteration, assonance, whatever it is. This is so uncontroversial that it seems a good example of your intellectual dishonesty.

“Anarchy is destruction and rioting like the BLM bullshit, BUT always with a hidden autocrat as conductor. Anarchy is NOT democracy. It is mind-numbing for you to argue that somehow it is.”

This is where you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about, like with Israel/Palestine, so it is embarrassing that you act as if you are speaking authoritatively. It goes back to your intellectual dishonesty, in not looking at facts and evidence, but definitions arising out of whatever you say they are. Anarchy is direct democracy. Are you even familiar with prominent anarchists or anarchist thinkers? Do you have a grasp of the history of anarchism beyond the propaganda about BLM you would hear on the news?

“Send the essay, so I can point precisely to examples of fluff and absence of clarity. Send it! How many times do I have to make that request?”

You have the essay. I also sent it twice, and then you said it would be pointless to have sent it twice. You have dodged around the issue. Check your inbox for the message “For Your Consideration: The Politics of Non-Response.” Don’t act like, “how many times do I have to say it.” You are the one who is clearly dodging around doing the work here. Don’t blame it on some technical error. The essay is in that email. It is also, if you were not so blind, in the body of this very email chain. So simply scroll down, it is contained in the email sent Friday, December 22, 2023 8:51 AM.

“Again, you fail to point out one, just one example of a successful anarchy society. Anarchy in essence is the opposite of society. Anarchy means confusion and chaos. Look up the word! Think!”

The stupidity of this is really staggering, especially when coming from a professor. I have never failed to point out an example of anarchism in practice, as I have brought up time and time again [within the context of email debates separate from this one], as homo sapiens, our species has lived in the absence of state structures for the majority of our existence. So anarchism has been the norm for human beings for nearly as long as we have been around. I’m talking about anarchy as a political philosophy, not anarchy in the crude sense like when used on the news to mean “chaos and confusion.” If you really think that what anarchists advocate for, is chaos and confusion, you would have to be either extremely naive or intellectually dishonest. And in fact it is precisely that idea as a slander which has grown out of the propaganda which gets put out about anarchists. You are the one who isn’t thinking. Your idea of anarchy is literally the strawman notion of it that is a construction of propaganda. As I have said over and over, anarchism is the theory and practice of society without domination. This has nothing to do with confusion and chaos. You are arguing with a strawman, and either out of intellectual dishonesty, or profound lacking in intellectual ability.

G TOD SLONE: The very absurdity of your conclusion is mind boggling: if somebody rejects your essay, that person is a hypocrite.

A SCOTT BUCH: I suppose you think you’re being concise, but in this case your pretensions to concision make you utterly intellectually dishonest. So what is your evidence for this? I have called you a hypocrite on concrete grounds, and I will gladly retread them for you. (1) You are autocratic, and not democratic; (2) You are ideological, and not committed to the truth. Finally, add here another one. (3) Intellectual dishonesty. The only way you can attack me is by creating a strawman, which is a move of intellectual dishonesty. Why you are a hypocrite, is because these are traits you rail against in the establishment, and yet you exhibit them yourself. Were my essay to have been rejected by an establishment editor, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. Further, it is not merely that you rejected the essay, but the manner in which you did. And that manner, is again, related to being autocratic, ideological, and intellectually dishonest. Bad enough on their own, but worse coming from a figure who pretends to be against these qualities.

G TOD SLONE: Your email goes on and on and on. I really have no more patience for reading your stuff, uh, WORK.

A SCOTT BUCH: Doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. You have shown your true colors in that regard. You think it’s not work, so it must not be. You will just not read it, and think that you somehow come across as being in the right for doing so. It is the M.O. of authoritarians to act like that. I could care less if you read it or not. Because then you have no right to an opinion on its contents. You can’t critique something, if you’ve never read it. That should be the most obvious thing in the world. And secondly, critique is superficial, and almost certainly wrong, unless one does a close reading. So fine, don’t read what I have written. I don’t give a shit. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

G TOD SLONE: You incarnate VERBOSITY.

A SCOTT BUCH: And yet you continue to respond. There’s a whole lot of words there, and that must be bad! That is mind-boggling. Now you can like a mind-reader, simply know what I’m writing is bad, without even having to read it. The arrogance is mind-boggling.

G TOD SLONE: Verbosity is your forte. You should be able to succeed in the capitalist writing industry, which is precisely what your goal is, with that trait. Bonne chance!

A SCOTT BUCH: The arrogance of a person who would not even read something, and simply call it verbose. It is the same as glossing over something, and determining it was unclear. You could simply not respond, you know. I suppose it is because you still want to be able to put on the air of being correct.

G TOD SLONE: PS: Try avoiding ad hominem. I make an effort to avoid it. Sometimes, I slip, but I make the effort. You don’t seem to be doing that. Take a course in clarity. Get out of the fraudulent anarchy BS. If I had to choose between capitalism and your socio-communist anarchy, I’d definitely choose the former…

A SCOTT BUCH: My attacks on your person, have come with evidence. My writing is clear, it is mind-boggling that you would still consider yourself to be an authority on matters of writing. A person who doesn’t read a text, but simply calls it verbose, as if they’ve made a legitimate determination. Same with calling anarchy “BS.” You can only do so out of your utter lack of knowledge on the subject. You may have a PhD, but your actions make you in every way an unjustifiable authority and I can’t imagine for the life of me why anyone would voluntarily listen to your advice. If merit was the only metric to determine one’s authority, you would not measure up. You arrogantly don’t read text, and call it verbose. You gloss over it, and call it unclear. You have your authority, but zero merit. At least in this encounter. And you are holding onto a thread of being the one who is correct in this argument. This is the M.O. of unjustifiable authority, in not being able to admit when they are wrong.

G TOD SLONE: Why do you seem to have NO PERSONAL EXPERIENCES regarding authority, which you as an anarchist are adamantly/purportedly against? That is a fundamental question, one you have yet to answer. And again. I’d definitely be open to publishing an essay from you based on a personal experience.  

A SCOTT BUCH: The arrogance of a man who because he can’t see something, assumes it must not exist. Like a child without yet having developed the concept of object permanence.

(Part 10)

G TOD SLONE: Well, here’s the beginning of the dialogue de sourds. Now for the tedious part, I’ve got to run through your many, many emails and pick out examples highly critical of me. It will likely appear in next issue. Bonne année !

A SCOTT BUCH: I’m not sure I accept, and rather reject, you publishing my work in this case. If the essay goes in, possibly. If not, only if you send the manuscript of what you intend to publish first, so I can see what gets included. And then in that case, I get one last say, in accepting or rejecting if it goes in. It’s my “work,” so these conditions are only fair.

G TOD SLONE: I’m not interested that much in ideologies, nor am I media-focused like you on the Gaza war, which you keep evoking. Again, you FAIL to mention just one personal experience! Again, you FAIL to mention just one successful Anarchic society! You FAIL.

A SCOTT BUCH: In the context of this discussion, you bring this up to divert away from what is relevant to the focus. It is your failure to prove why the rejection of my essay on the grounds of its being “unclear” was objectively correct. The subjects of anarchy and my personal history of dissidence are secondary concerns, and again, in this context, are brought up as a distraction, as if I was failing to provide evidence here, when you are the one avoiding needing to provide the relevant evidence. Though I will still assert here on these grounds, why you are wrong about anarchy and my personal history of dissidence.

I will start by saying first, that to truly attend to an argument, it requires being what an ideologue who didn’t want to engage with the actual substance of an argument—in a move of intellectual dishonesty—would refer to as “verbose.” Secondly, that I have answered your question about anarchy, I do not understand how you think you are putting together no less a sound but even coherent argument. Anarchism, or, in another way, society without the state, has been the normal mode of human existence for the majority of the time we have been around. Not only is this immensely clear, and I have repeated this over and over again [within the context of email debates separate from this one], but it utterly blows your idea of there being no such thing as an anarchistic society out of the water. Next, regarding my personal history of dissidence. I have written an entire novel on my dissident experiences in China. I have also been a political dissident, for nearly twenty years, and my commitment to that cause registers differently than the way you seem to construe dissidence as simply the matter of writing hateful poems, and then citing with tedious footnotes at the bottom the names of people involved. Furthermore, I criticize your very neurotic notion of like an impotent bully, demanding people write in the manner that you do, and if they don’t, it means they aren’t a dissident. This is why I brought up how I could list off people whose actions one could construe as more dissident than yours, but what would be the point of it? Because it isn’t a pissing contest, and to make it so, is not only neurotic, but also divisive and self-defeating for the project of dissidence. If you would like to continue this line of debate, then you must provide me with a more concrete definition of what dissidence means to you. Because if it means writing hateful poems that also include tedious footnotes, I don’t know what to say. Because that is fairly silly.

G TOD SLONE: To be an editor is to be a decider. For you, therefore, to be an editor is to be an autocrat. Fine. A-men. But in reality, you project your own autocrat nature upon me. In essence, you deem, as an autocrat, that your essay is good… and anyone who rejects it to be an autocrat. You need to examine your use of ad hominem… as well as your predilection for psychological projection.  
Again, anarchy is a pipe-dream, your pipe-dream of perfection. And again, you canNOT present one example of successful anarchy.
Again, I repeat that in each issue I include criticism with my regard. Again, you canNOT name another editor who does that. I also include opinion poems/essays that I do not agree with. How does that make me a hypocrite and autocrat? Oh, yeah, I forgot, if one rejects an essay by you, then he is an autocrat.  Mind-numbing indeed!

A SCOTT BUCH: “To be an editor is to be a decider. For you, therefore, to be an editor is to be an autocrat. Fine.”

Yes, thank you. I’m pointing out that there is already within the general role of editor, a latent autocracy. The point however is that there doesn’t have to be. A decision-making process is like relationships, a key part of politics. When the decision-making process is the sole domain of one person, even if others are involved and are affected to some degree, it is fair to call that autocratic. When the people who are also involved in what the result of the decision will be, get some proportionate say, this is fair to call more democratic. For establishment editors to follow the general editing norm, isn’t surprising in the slightest. But for a so-called dissident democratic editor, not only to follow that norm, but also fight very hard to uphold it, is odd. And I dare say fair then, to become the grounds for suspected hypocrisy.

“But in reality, you project your own autocrat nature upon me. In essence, you deem, as an autocrat, that your essay is good… and anyone who rejects it to be an autocrat. You need to examine your use of ad hominem… as well as your predilection for psychological projection.”

I think this is an inadequate analysis. You’ll have to elaborate with more evidence (in your intellectually dishonest terms, become more verbose) on why I am an autocrat. I’m defending myself vigorously, and there’s a difference. When you put it in these absolute terms, “anyone who rejects [my work is] an autocrat,” you are making a strawman of me. Again, my criteria isn’t the rejection itself, but the rejection on subjective grounds masked by an objective veneer. If you were to have demonstrated objectively why my essay failed to fit into the focus, or how it was unclear, I could’ve accepted that. But that isn’t how this interaction went. Your rejection carried with it the marks of an autocratic rejection, and not a fair one. Finally, again, had this come from anyone else, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. Since it came from you, a figure with a philosophy I respect (yes; philosophy, not ideology. Perhaps this is one way we could differentiate the positive and negative connotations of these concepts); based on what is to me, a higher standard of truth, democracy, dissidence, this is why I reacted with such force against you. Why it doesn’t make sense to call that autocratic, is because it is self-defense. I am not the one with the power in the dynamic if you abide by traditional autocratic editing norms. I would be autocratic I suppose, if I was trying to usurp your power. I’m not trying to usurp your power. I’m simply challenging it, and especially challenging it insofar as it is, at least from my perspective, an act of “self-defense.”

“Again, anarchy is a pipe-dream, your pipe-dream of perfection. And again, you canNOT present one example of successful anarchy.”

Hopefully you will eventually see how you are being intellectually dishonest here. I keep giving you a smoking gun example of how anarchy is not a pipe-dream. It also has nothing to do with “perfection.” It has to do with the absence of structures of domination. It is construed as a pipe-dream by those who can’t imagine that human society could ever operate without structures of domination. But whether or not it actually is is something else entirely, and in fact, the evidence doesn’t bear this out. So that our inability to imagine it, is actually a function of structures of domination that are deeply invested in making us believe it is impossible.

“Again, I repeat that in each issue I include criticism with my regard. Again, you canNOT name another editor who does that.”

That is as far as my knowledge, correct. And I do deeply respect you for that.

“I also include opinion poems/essays that I do not agree with. How does that make me a hypocrite and autocrat?”

That is fair too, and I respect you for that. As well, at the end of the day, it is your journal, and for you not to have featured an essay of mine, is of course your right.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot, if one rejects an essay by you, then he is an autocrat. Mind-numbing indeed!”

Just please understand, you are getting this wrong about me. It wasn’t, again, the rejection itself, but the manner of the rejection. That is, one that didn’t meet my standards of objectivity and fairness, as to the precise nature of the rejection. For you, it fell out of the focus, and was unclear. If you had more concretely demonstrated it, I could have accepted it. Instead, you skirted around the issue, often digging a trench out of unrelated aspects to the topic at hand, to attack me since I was attacking you. But probably it is also related to how much I at least cared that you had rejected it, that is why I fought so hard. In other words, it at least shows I had a strong passion to try to prove to you why you were wrong. I see that as a positive, but I have no idea how you would see it.

G TOD SLONE: Well, I’ve been responding because you have not stopped insulting me. It is you who are incredibly childish/juvenile, to use your terms, in your total inability to accept rejection! Projection!  

A SCOTT BUCH: I apologize for the insults. In my defense, they aren’t insults for the sake of insults. I feel they are related to the points I am trying to argue. (You dismissed this as mere verbosity.) I don’t claim that these insults are a true characterization of you. But I feel my vitriol in the context of this argument is warranted given the situation. It is not rejection itself I reject, but rather that autocratic form of rejection which is the objective mask of a subjective power. It is the norm in the creative industries. But it is a norm I am trying to battle and change. Of course it would be impossible for one person to do that on their own. Hence my emphasis on trying to build movements in which there is freedom for people to interpret the message and carry it out as they see it.

G TOD SLONE: Never have I written that I am some high and mighty authority on writing! All I did was express my personal opinion, as an editor, that your writing is far from being clear and concise.  My advice to you: Get off your arse and get some freakin’ experience of fighting authority, which you as an anarcho despise!

Uninteresting is another adjective I used to describe your chef d’oeuvre. Often lack of clarity provokes uninteresting.

A SCOTT BUCH: But then here you are gesturing that you are trying to give me advice. I have been writing for long enough, and reflecting on the act of writing, and creative activity, for long enough, that I have developed some insights into the practice and its implications. When we are younger, with more the desire to be a writer, and less experience with writing itself (a labor; yes), we are often seeking validation from external authorities to sanction our desire to write. In this period, we are very vulnerable to outside influence. While there is nothing wrong with influence, I think that we are perfectly capable of cultivating it voluntarily, and so there are more coerced forms of influence. I give you the example of a creative writing professor who critiqued my work, when it was more in the style I preferred, and he despised, and gave me high marks when it was more like him, but (this is, to me, psychologically interestingly) less liked by myself. It goes like this. If there was objectively one way it could be determined that writing should be, the good way, then it would make sense that we should all just abandon our bad ways of writing, and turn to the good path. Since this isn’t the case, there is always the chance that what for you is uninteresting and lacks clarity, is for someone else, something else entirely. Perhaps even, dare I say it, interesting and clear. I have been writing for long enough, that I know when something measures up to my personal standard, and when it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, it is often very helpful to get an outside opinion. But when it does, and others still criticize it, I’m very interested in figuring out precisely why that is. The answer however isn’t to alter my writing, because that would be ridiculous, because it isn’t something objectively in the writing, but rather subjectively in the different persons. And on a structural level, this often too seems to be reflective of what norms are at work in the society. You would probably think that I’m being verbose, and unclear here. You would be wrong, but I will go ahead and end this. I can try to make it more concise and clear later, if you really cared. But I think the gist here is sufficient.

Lastly, it is patronizing to keep telling me I have no dissident experience. It is arrogant and patronizing. Again, I reject your view that dissidence = writing hateful poems with tedious footnotes. But if that is not how you define dissidence, then please, enlighten me.

(Part 11)

G TOD SLONE: Actually, I do not need your permission since I am taking from the emails, not from your hard-labor work. It is legal to publish emails. I did a check on that a while ago.

A SCOTT BUCH: Not that I would sue you of course, that would be ridiculous. I don’t mean legally, I mean ethically. Like from man to man, it would be a jerk move not to get my permission to use my words.

G TOD SLONE: “Unclear” is obviously a subjective determination, one made by an editor. I do LOL at your litany of ad hominem, which I will feature in a cartoon. Once again, YOU FAIL to mention ONE successful anarchic society and ONE dissident experience speaking truth openly to power. Instead, it is you who divert away via ad hominem, as in neurotic, tedious, and hateful.

A SCOTT BUCH: I’m not trying to divert away from anything here, I simply find the subjects of anarchism and my history of dissidence tangential.

If you can at least admit here that your ruling of “unclear” is subjective, and that objectively speaking, it could be determined whether or not it truly was, then I will rest on it.

But to answer to the tangent on anarchism and my history of dissidence, you are being dishonest. Your inflammatory rhetoric then becomes a hindrance to honest debate. As for anarchism, how do you keep evading this point? Stateless societies have been the norm for humans for the majority of time we have been around. Answer to this. If not, you are being dishonest and hiding behind ideological rhetoric. The same with my history of dissidence. I have told you, I have written an entire novel on the subject, which is—perhaps it should not be all that surprising—proving very hard to get published. Answer to this too. I have answered you on both of these charges, and you keep pretending like I haven’t. Where is the honesty in that?

G TOD SLONE: Insults do not really bother me at all. From that dross, I create. Thus, for me, insults often serve as fodder for writing and cartooning.  

You note: “It is not rejection itself I reject, but rather that autocratic form of rejection which is the objective mask of a subjective power.” That sentence of dismal lack of clarity seems to incarnate your writing in general: intellectual verbosity! All rejection is by nature autocratic. No need for any objective mask! Of course, it is subjective. Never have I ever said that when I reject a submission that it is somehow an objective determination. Absurd! Your submission failed to interest me. Period. And of course that is a subjective determination. Period. 
Again, name ONE society that did not have a power hierarchy. Inuit? Nope. Innu? Nope.

A SCOTT BUCH: “‘It is not rejection itself I reject, but rather that autocratic form of rejection which is the objective mask of a subjective power.’ That sentence of dismal lack of clarity seems to incarnate your writing in general: intellectual verbosity!”

This is more fair, to highlight a specific sentence of mine, and to attempt to prove your point about either lack of clarity, or verbosity. Now we have something concrete to go on. Though while at least I think it makes a good start, nonetheless your charge holds no water. First off, (1) it makes no sense to call this sentence, which is a mere 23 words, “verbose.” Or, to call something “intellectually verbose,” I think runs the risk of committing the very “error” you seem to here want to call out. What does that mean “intellectually” verbose? You do not have very sufficient ground to call this sentence verbose, due to its shortness, and furthermore, you muddy the waters of your own debate, by using an idiosyncratic formulation like “intellectually verbose.” Would you like to point to a sentence of yours, that is an intellectual, or philosophical statement, and is somehow not “verbose”?

(2) A “dismal lack of clarity.” Is it really “dismally” unclear though; is it even unclear at all? How so. What is unclear about the notion. It goes back to one of the central claims of “The Politics of Non-Response.” We are talking about an “autocratic form,” that is autocratic, because it is arbitrary. Though this is obfuscated; it purports to not be arbitrary. Hence, this purporting, or pretense, is what is captured by the notion of a “mask.” It puts on an “objective mask,” that conceals the arbitrariness of the action, that it is the employment of “subjective power.”

“All rejection is by nature autocratic. No need for any objective mask!”

I mean here, you then make a provocative point. I’m interested. Though, it doesn’t really disprove what I’m saying. But to pursue it further; I challenge your assertion on two grounds. (1) There is a need for the “objective mask.” (A concept, “objective mask,” that seems to then make sense to you here, to be perfectly clear—curious.) There is a need for it; namely, justification. It is like with the idea that Response (in the context of Non-Response) carries with it the possibility of rebuttal. A rejection demands its justification. Say for instance if you were rejected for tenure, or a professorial position, you would to some extent, demand the justification as to why the rejection occurred, no? I think it is wrong on its face to say that there is no need for the “objective mask.” There is clearly a need for it. Otherwise, it would be an Anarchy of people going around challenging the use of arbitrary power all over the place, asking for its rational justification!

(2) I believe there is a non-autocratic form of rejection. One form of this might be of the constructive kind; where the rejection is the objective demonstration of why the rejection has occurred. If there are objective reasons, then these can be quantified, and qualified, which in theory can help in the future to get an acceptance rather than rejection. Or, if the criteria for rejection failed to measure up, there could be an appeal process. These two examples seem to me, clear indications of where a non-autocratic form of rejection is possible.

“Never have I ever said that when I reject a submission that it is somehow an objective determination. Absurd! Your submission failed to interest me. Period. And of course that is a subjective determination. Period.”

You have shifted your goalposts here though. If you had simply said it failed to interest you at the start, that would have been different. You didn’t. Your pretense was due to “lack of clarity.” You have only now dialed this back, to it being a mere subjective preference of yours. On the one hand, I’m okay with that, because now you are just being more honest. But if you go back through all this writing, you will see, you kept trying to maintain my writing was unclear, and this was the main criteria I pushed back against. Finally, now that you are embracing how arbitrary and autocratic your role is, this then becomes the next question. It goes back to why I should put so much time and effort say, into writing an essay which pleased you. Or, the danger in a writer internalizing there is something objectively wrong with one’s work, when it is a mere arbitrary, autocratic preference. What then makes your arbitrary, autocratic preference, the standard we should all measure up to? Why should I put in all the time and effort to try to measure up to it? Why should I alter my very essence and style, for the sake of yours. When after all, it is merely, the assertion of an arbitrary, and autocratic preference. That is the whole of it, sir. There is no good reason. And that actually, the right, true, and good path to take, is to resist such arbitrary injunctions of power against us. The world would be a better place without the enshrinement of such arbitrary, autocratic authorities.

“. . . name ONE society that did not have a power hierarchy.”

Yes, let’s talk about it. First; do you think that societies without power hierarchies are impossible? What then is it about the nature of a power hierarchy which makes it so essential? By the way, I have brought up in previous discussion with you, that many of the Amerindian societies were those which deliberately structured their societies such that there were no power hierarchies. Always there were nominal chiefs, yet they lacked the true power of coercion over their fellows. A good example would be to look at the war chief. This was the figure who had proved himself through merit that he would be the one to lead others in battle. However, if there was going to be a battle fought, the war chief had to convince his fellows that fighting was in their best interest. In short, there was no mechanism for coercing others to fight against their will, as could be contrasted in mechanisms of conscription. I don’t mind getting more into the empirical details with you. Only if you were truly interested, and not merely ideologically committed to maintaining the fiction, that society without power hierarchy is impossible. It’s like saying patriarchy is the only way to structure society. Most societies are structured that way, but that doesn’t prove it is impossible to structure them otherwise.

G TOD SLONE: Yet another example of your projecting: “writing hateful poems with tedious footnotes.” You fail to stipulate precisely what is hateful and tedious! Recall my lack of clarity and intellectual meandering comments. BTW, you did not thank me for providing the two examples to back my conclusion.

A SCOTT BUCH: “. . . ‘writing hateful poems with tedious footnotes.’ You fail to stipulate precisely what is hateful and tedious!”

Fair! Yes, I don’t even really feel this way about your work, which as you know, I like. This is an example of where rhetoric can take over. But, the truth of what I’m arguing here is that, you often posture as if your style, was the only valid style. Do you not? Is it fair to call an attitude like that, arrogant?

Let’s follow this one up. Did I overlook your examples? If I did, then I would like to take a more serious look at them again. What examples do you mean precisely? Can you point me to where they crop up in all this text? (It would be funny to calculate how many words have been expelled in this entire email chain.)

(Part 12)

G TOD SLONE: Fair enough, but I might run it anyhow, but with a reasonably brief comment by you with its regard.

A SCOTT BUCH: If you ran it without my permission, it would certainly impact how I viewed you going forward. Perhaps that doesn’t matter to you. Obviously I would like to see what you intend to run before it runs, and get a say in the shape that takes.

G TOD SLONE: Of course my decision on lack of clarity and intellectual meandering was/is subjective! Never did I state it was objective.
I love your constant use of ad hominem like “dishonest” and ad hominem’esque terms like “inflammatory rhetoric.” They make me LOL.

YOU FAIL to mention one anarchist society! JUST ONE! Native American societies all had hierarchies!
YOU FAIL over and over to mention just ONE of your precise dissident personal experiences.

A SCOTT BUCH: In this case dishonest is not an empty insult, it is the nature of your behavior in this exchange. It demonstrates again your hypocrisy. Nor is this an empty insult. You are a hypocrite because you claim to value the truth, but don’t bear that out in your behavior. To value the truth, would mean that to rule something unclear, carried with that as much objective evidence as was possible. In this case you are demonstrating that you don’t care to try to be objective—that you don’t care about truth—for you it is as good to rule something is unclear, but in a totally subjective manner. That is, without any evidence. Here then too it seems the only reason I can see for you continuing to be so intellectually corrupt, is because you can’t admit that you’re wrong.

“YOU FAIL to mention one anarchist society! JUST ONE!”

Homo sapiens have been around for some 100,000 years, and the first states arose some 6,000 years ago. So that living in the absence of state structures has been the norm for humans for the majority of our existence. You fail to answer to this in a manner which looks, a great deal like sticking your fingers in your ears.

“Native American societies all had hierarchies!”

No they didn’t, this is absolutely wrong. Your confidence in being so wrong is very telling. It strikes me because in this interaction, you are more concerned with being right, than what the truth is. Anthropologists have studied especially the records left from first contact in which a sharp difference was found between societies like the Aztec and Inca, with steep hierarchies, and other Amerindian societies which had none, “neither god, law or king.” Europeans were more comfortable with what they saw of say, Aztec society, because that degree of hierarchy was familiar to them. They didn’t know what to make of the stateless formations in which—yes it may have appeared there was a hierarchy— but in point of fact, it was not one which could be enforced. This is why I gave you the example of the war chief. It was same with the basic chief as well. The power of the hierarchy had not been institutionalized in the sense that the chief could actually coerce others in the society to do as he said. I don’t mind to keep arguing this with you; it is only that it is fairly clear to me that you are less concerned with the truth, and more concerned with your subjective ego.

“YOU FAIL over and over to mention just ONE of your precise dissident personal experiences.”

I have written a novel that contains a very wide range of dissident experiences. Why you fail to take this into account, could be for a number of reasons I would speculate on. But the first one which doesn’t need much speculation, is to reinforce that you in this interaction, it would appear don’t care so much for the truth, as with how you appear as being correct. I also think that from what I know of your dissident experiences, they could be seen as utterly trivial in comparison to say, the life of Julian Assange. If you want to keep overlooking the fact that I have written a novel about my dissident experiences, then I will attempt to move this section of the battle over to confronting why I find your precise “definition” of what constitutes “dissidence” to be severely lacking.

G TOD SLONE: I like your shorter responses. This one goes on and on and on. 

A SCOTT BUCH: That’s because, perhaps in my estimation, you are not a very good reader. I also think you might be slightly arrogant, to the extent that you prefer to listen to your own voice, and not hear others. I think to have a truthful debate, one certainly needs to listen to what their opponent is saying, and answer to exactly what they’re saying. You fail spectacularly at that.

G TOD SLONE: Regarding your aberrant assertion that somehow I expect everyone to write like I do, I just wrote a long counter-essay in French yesterday and the day before, which I’ve sent to 10 of the targets in Quebec. So far, as expected not one responded. Here are the last two sentences, which I’ll translate: “Je ne souhaite pas que toute la poésie soit critique ! Au contraire, ce que j’aimerais, c’est que l’industrie de la poésie y compris le festival s’ouvre un tantinet—un tout petit peu—, à la critique à l’égard de l’industrie littéraire elle-même y compris de son parrain. Rêve fou ? Chimère ? Pipe-dream ? Sans doute…”

I do not desire that all poetry be critical! On the contrary, what I’d like is that the poetry industry, including your poetry festival, open itself to a bit, even just a tiny bit, to criticism regarding the industry itself as well as its purported “godfather of poetry.” Crazy dream? Chimera? Pipe-dream? No doubt…
As for your long email, are you aware that angelic native Americans held slaves and that tribes murdered tribes before the arrival of the bad, evil white man? And are you aware that if we lived in an anarchic society, we would not have laptop computers and cellphones, you know the things you depend on. Reason is often simple; ideology is often complex… in an effort to skirt reason.
Read Rushdie’s famous BUT BRIGADE quote. It seems to pertain to you.
Then two examples, which perhaps I forgot to send you are in the following draft of the dialogue de sourds:


A Dialogue de sourds
I, Editor—Autocrat, Hypocrite, Egotist, Childish, Juvenile, Arrogant…
(Quote Rattle editor)

Alex Buchanan (aka A. Scott Buch) sent an essay, “The Politics of Non-Response,” for publication consideration. As editor, I rejected the essay due to its lack of clarity and concision, as well as absence of personal experience examples. Moreover, it simply did not interest me. Its philosophical meandering ended up losing me in the middle of it, so I stopped reading it. And that was what I told Buchanan, who did not like the rejection at all, arguing that I was autocrat, hypocrite, egotist, childish, juvenile, arrogant, and on and on (see below). To paraphrase Greta: how dare you… criticize my essay!
From the dross, I create. Thus, the idea for a dialogue de sourds and cartoon arose. Why a dialogue de sourds? Well, Buchanan could not/would not accept an iota of criticism regarding his chef d’oeuvre. I suggested he send another essay critical of my decision, but he refused the suggestion. I then offered to place his essay on the blog site, as an example of a rejected essay. Again, he refused the suggestion. Instead, he insisted I publish the essay and let the readers decide its merit, something editors do not do. He also insisted that I reread the essay and point to several precise examples that illustrate my argument. Finally, rather than reread it, I skimmed over the beginning and quickly came up with several examples from it to back my criticisms of lack of clarity and intellectual meandering:

“This mode of authority to which I’m attempting to refer, is one in which predilection—another way of thinking about a subjective preferencing or privileging—becomes an institutionalized force, such that its subjective preference ends up taking on a material force, of inequality, though sanctioned through the veneer of objectivity which authority grants. The inequality, or arbitrary privileging, takes on the veneer of being correct, through our generally tending to conflate the existence of authority with the existence of merit.”

That kind of prose, one might find in a sociology journal, something The American Dissident certainly is not. Here’s the other example:

“In this way it is possible to assert, that the processes through which authorities are made, have less to do, or are less primarily to do, with the objective ontological content of what is on offer, but more to do with the successful integration into the hierarchical structure which eventually guarantees one’s role as an authority. To abstract this to merely the model of a hierarchy itself, one that puts its abstract structure before the real material needs of people, the model might go: Climbing a hierarchy is essentially, the process of earning the privilege to wield what is ultimately, an arbitrary power.”

A dialogue de sourds, by the way, is essentially a discussion between two people who will rarely, if ever, agree on anything. Below are some direct quotes from Buchanan, a self-proclaimed anarchist, and my responses. Many emails were sent back and forth, so I cannot include everything. If I did, it would likely fill up the 56 pages and then some.
……………………………………….
GTS: Why do you seem to have NO PERSONAL EXPERIENCES regarding authority, which you as an anarchist are adamantly/purportedly against? That is a fundamental question, one you have yet to answer. And again. I’d definitely be open to publishing an essay from you based on a personal experience.

SB:  The arrogance of a man who because he can’t see something, assumes it must not exist. Like a child without yet having developed the concept of object permanence. [Yes, that was his response!]


A SCOTT BUCH: While you give some evidence here, that is good; but here’s one reason why it’s irrelevant, or, why it doesn’t actually answer to the charge of hypocrisy. Because I am talking specifically about this interaction with me. You may publicly say this, as your essay in French demonstrates. But here with me, your behavior says otherwise. This is why I’m accusing you of being a hypocrite. In this argument with me, you often show yourself to not care about truth. You could have your subjective feelings about art; that you then tried to back up objectively. You aren’t doing that. With me, you’re telling me that my work has something wrong with it. Except that you can only say that from your own subjective feeling. This is hypocritical from a figure who claims to value truth, because truth means nothing if it is not the attempt to back up subjective feelings with objective facts.

You fail to get my point about Amerindian societies. I’m not saying they were angelic. My point is that it can be demonstrated that in a great many of them, they had dismantled the potential power of hierarchies and the state. That they were stateless societies. It is to answer empirically to the fiction that societies without the state are impossible. They demonstrably aren’t.

There is also no reason at all to claim that laptops and cellphones would not exist without the state. However, I suppose if you wanted to press it and say, that, without slavery—in China, for instance; to produce all those complex little parts our technology requires—that, without authoritarianism, society would not have cheap available products within capitalism. Well; I would say that society, and people in general, would be way better off, without cheap available products; to the extent that they are better off not being enslaved. To me, it is almost as if you are saying, slavery, in China, say; is necessary to produce the type of society that I like.

“Reason is often simple; ideology is often complex… in an effort to skirt reason.” This is truly laughable to me, because you do not at all come across as some master of reason in your writing. You are a person who wouldn’t read an entire piece of writing, and then claim that you knew it was unreasonable, through some apparently telepathic sense.

Lastly, I appreciate you sending me what you have of the work in progress on whatever you are producing with me as a subject. Here are my thoughts on it:

– The way you frame it reminds me of how a propagandist might frame their subject. What you exclude demonstrates your bias. You would appear to exclude the brunt of it, for being too long, but really what you are doing is making it look like my reaction against you was to do with you simply rejecting the essay, and not on the grounds of your rejection of it as “unclear.” So you make it look like the charges of autocrat, hypocrite, egotist, childish, arrogant, were simply put out subjectively, without their objective context. (That I called you these things, simply because the essay was rejected, and not for specific reasons within the manner of the rejection.) If you believed in truth, you would show my arguments for why you are an autocrat, why you are a hypocrite, why you are an egotist, and so on. Instead, you narrow it down to that final exchange at the bottom, attempting to make it look like I would avoid providing evidence to a claim about dissidence. In short, you exclude all the evidence I provided for why I called you an autocrat, hypocrite, egotist, and so on, but then include the irrelevant bit where you are asking me about my personal history of dissidence.

My response, that was a poetic insult at your intellectual dishonesty, is also related to the fact, that you are hypocritical in claiming to value the truth. I have answered your question as to my personal history of dissidence. I have written an entire novel on the subject which I am attempting to get published. Lastly, I think it is somewhat funny, because you even admit in this piece that you didn’t really read my essay carefully. The selections you provide, don’t show a lack of clarity, beyond what might be confusing in their being taken out of context. Saying that it might show up in a sociology journal is odd too, because it implies the essay makes sense, and isn’t unclear. I think that ultimately you would need to provide the essay in full, to be intellectually honest. Then you could write a full critique of why it is so bad. If you simply take selections of it like this, and take it out of context, and also, exclude the majority of my writing criticizing your rejection—where I actually provide reasons for your hypocrisy, and being an autocrat—then you commit an act of intellectual dishonesty no different from that of a propagandist. It all seems to narrow down to not wanting to critique the essay on its merits, and rather to simply come from a biased starting position that the essay is just bad; requiring to depict me in a dishonest way to maintain that image.

(Part 13)

G TOD SLONE: Will do. Did you not see the two examples in it?

A SCOTT BUCH: Yes, I saw what you included of your dishonest work in progress.

G TOD SLONE: Never did I say that my experiences fighting power were more dissident than Assange’s. You have yet to provide JUST ONE of your experiences!!!

A SCOTT BUCH: Your neurotic way of construing it as a pissing-contest naturally lends one to then point out figures whose dissidence, is REALLY dissidence, and not farting in Walden pond because you saw a trans person, and writing a hateful poem with a tedious footnote about it in which you have written that person’s legal name. I have written a novel about my dissident experiences.

G TOD SLONE: You certainly win the prize for extreme outrage at having one little essay rejected. It is mind-numbing, to say the least. The list of your resultant insult words is astounding. It is as if somehow that essay of yours was even better than one of Orwell’s! Mind-numbing indeed!

A SCOTT BUCH: It’s my pleasure to numb your mind, because proving the autocratic nature of your rejection process, and how it demonstrates your hypocrisy—in claiming to be for democracy and truth, when not manifesting that in your real actions, in this exchange—is better than the essay itself; because it manifests what the essay was modeling, in the real action of standing up to your “authority.”

G TOD SLONE: More lengthy philosophical meandering from you. Suggestion: Write a harshly critical essay on [Evergreen magazine] using [examples of poems that had been published in a prominent literary magazine by a credentialed authority on writing, the nature of which were in truth, immensely unclear and lacked significant objective content] to illustrate it. Stress clarity, and avoid lengthy philosophical meandering. Can you/will you do that? Nope! HYPOCRITE seems all you can bellow. HYPOCRITE. HYPOCRITE over and over again. Are you somehow Monsieur Parfait? Well, I guess so… and in that sense how could I or anyone else (with the exception of Assange, of course) be anything but HYPOCRITE?! Well, you are the anarchist without any precise anarchist experiences. Go figure…

A SCOTT BUCH: I have evidence for my claim of hypocrite to the degree that you act exactly as those you claim to be opposing, especially in being autocratic, and also enshrining it, while claiming to be a democratic dissident. You rule me out without such evidence, and rather try to hold me to a standard that you Slone have admitted, is arbitrary and autocratic, and so can’t give me a good reason why the type of essay you might write, is superior to the type that I would. What to you is an “anarchist” experience?

G TOD SLONE: OK. A cartoon it shall be. I’m thinking about sketching you in a costume as ANARCHO AD HOMINEM MAN.

A SCOTT BUCH: Hilarious!

G TOD SLONE: Is this the first time you’ve been rejected by an editor? Wow. Well, of course, I’m probably the only editor who would continue this back and forth with someone whose essay was rejected. Again, those two examples from your essay illustrate the lack of clarity and intellectual meandering, which inevitably provokes lack of clarity and inevitable disinterest.  
Still NOT ONE personal experience from you… and yet you worked in a communist dictatorship country for five years. How aberrant indeed! Anarchism is a pipedream and sure as hell was in China where you worked.

A SCOTT BUCH: No. And again, it is not the rejection, but the nature of the rejection, the autocratic nature of the rejection, coming from a figure who claims to be a democratic dissident. I think you are indeed the only editor who would tolerate these kinds of shenanigans. If you were the CIA, and I was Assange, you would undoubtedly be plotting to assassinate me. Flip it around, and there is probably not many unpublished writers who would continue to battle so long on a fight which is obviously unwinnable, and even if they had won it, wouldn’t have won anything nearly worthy of putting in all the effort. So why do we? Perhaps an interesting “philosophical” question that I won’t pretentiously attempt to answer in pointless meanderings.

As you return to attempting to critique my essay again, you flip-flop, because now you are trying to hold to your original claim, of it being objectively bad, when just earlier you were admitting the rejection was completely subjective, and even mocking the idea that a rejection could be anything other than subjective.

“Still NOT ONE personal experience from you… and yet you worked in a communist dictatorship country for five years. How aberrant indeed! Anarchism is a pipedream and sure as hell was in China where you worked.”

I need to dismantle the corruption here point by point. If I felt more solidarity with you, I would share more of my personal life with you. Regarding “NOT ONE personal experience,” have you heard, that I have written a novel, which contains a very profound expression of my dissident experiences? I worked in China for 4 years, Myanmar for 1. You don’t understand the difference between anarchism and the type of political and economic structure in China. Only a literal fool would think that China manifests anarchism. Anarchism is the polar opposite of dictatorship.

G TOD SLONE: Now how many of the many editors, profs, chairs, college deans, poet laureates, journalists, local hacks, library directors et al who I’ve openly criticized in essays and cartoons would have accorded me permission to do so? Zippo!

A SCOTT BUCH: Here is the immensely silly part. How do you lump me in with them? The bizarre aspect of this exchange, is it’s as if you’re turning it into a situation where, I am somehow the one to be reacting against “dissidently.” As if I am the one trying to squash your freedom of speech. It is bizarre that you would try to turn me into some bad guy. I’m not the one with the power here. You rejected me—and couldn’t end up truthfully coming up for a good reason for it!—and not the other way around.

(Part 14)

G TOD SLONE: You fail to be precise. What precisely was dishonest??? You have a tendency to do that.

A SCOTT BUCH: It’s a work in progress, so yes, I will suspend my judgment of “dishonest” until it’s done. It was dishonest insofar as how much it excluded of the full context. You would portray me as insulting you simply because you rejected me; rather than the specific evidence I cite as to why the nature of your rejection was autocratic, and why that is problematic if we as writers are to value democracy.

G TOD SLONE: LOL! Yeah, a NOVEL, certainly not a non-fiction piece on your alleged dissident activities! Are you a member of Antifa?

A SCOTT BUCH: It’s a novel that uses a conceit of espionage, to do social, political and cultural critique. Deception is a major theme of the novel, as the difference between art and propaganda; a theme I became deeply interested in as I studied Orwell’s essays while I was in Myanmar. (Myanmar, formally known as Burma, is where Orwell spent time as a colonial policeman, and which became the subject of his first fictional novel, Burmese Days.) Such that the nature of fiction versus non-fiction is a major theme of the novel. One thesis of mine, is the reason propaganda works, is because it is presented authoritatively to us as non-fiction. The difference with fiction is it doesn’t purport to tell the truth. However, just because one is dealing with fiction, means art can’t communicate something which is truthful? I suppose Animal Farm, and 1984, these are dissident works of non-fiction, are they?

Lastly, I am an Anti-Fascist, if that’s what you’re asking. Anarchists are anti-fascists.

G TOD SLONE: Again, Antifa comes to mind with its chaotic burning, looting, destroying et al.

A SCOTT BUCH: I won’t fault you for that coming to mind. But then, I will bring back up Israel/Palestine. And I will close again with the idea that, if we do not independently try to come to understand the truth of a subject, we will be forced to simply accept whatever “truth” is given to us on “authority.” For real anarchism, I would cite examples of folks like, Percy Shelley, William Godwin; Peter Kropotkin; Noam Chomsky; David Graeber. For the anthropological stuff, I have been drawing off of Pierre Clastres.

G TOD SLONE: Good! We finally agree! The cartoon it shall be! 

A SCOTT BUCH: Hee hee. I would never clamp down on your freedom of speech man, you can make fun of me as much as you like. I’m like you in that regard. All that I object to is portraying me in a way which is propagandistic, that is, bending the truth in regards to representing me, as if it were fact. But satire isn’t non-fiction; it is art!

G TOD SLONE: So, not the rejection, but the “nature of the rejection.” Wow. Where do you get this shite from? NEVER did I ever write that your essay was OBJECTIVELY BAD! Of course, my determination was SUBJECTIVE! How could it be anything but subjective? Mind-numbing indeed, Alex!  
The reason I keep responding to you is quite simple. I respond when criticized, especially with tirades of ad hominem, which seem to be your predilection.

All I did was provide two examples of why I personally (SUBJECTIVELY!) found your essay uninteresting and thought illustrated my SUBJECTIVE conclusion that it lacked clarity, lacked concision, lacked personal concrete experience, and intellectually meandered.
NEVER did I write or even imply that China was an example of your anarchism. What I implied was how could a courageous anarchist like you NOT criticize the Chinese dictatorship even and especially on the low trickle-down end where you worked in China.

A SCOTT BUCH: Insults aren’t my predilection. They seem more to be yours, and since I’m battling you, it seems I have tried to draw on your own ways. Yes, the nature of the rejection as autocratic; not all rejections must by their nature be arbitrary. You call something “unclear,” one must prove it. Why is it perfectly okay for the editor to criticize the writer, but a taboo for the writer to criticize the editor? This goes back to what I was writing about in “The Trap Of Elite Aesthetics And Judgment As A Paradigm Of Quality,” which now I realize, you published simply to fill up space! Here I was under the impression that the content resonated in some way.

That further, your criticisms of “The Politics of Non-Response,” could also apply to “The Trap Of Elite Aesthetics And Judgment As A Paradigm Of Quality.” What this seems to imply is that, it is at least, one way of writing an essay; though this doesn’t rule out a different possible version of the essay, which takes all of your feedback into account, and creates an entirely different essay. For me the question is—or rather, a somewhat new, related question, is; what is to be gained, or possibly even lost, by undergoing that operation?

Finally, regarding my novel; yes! Indeed! Imagine me, an anarchist in China; and that is very much what you would expect from what my novel is. It is rebellious and romantic. I push back here against the idea that since it isn’t published, that must somehow prove that the contents of it aren’t dissident, or worth being regarded. I understand the demands for evidence; you have no reason to trust me, and so doubt is good. But to keep saying I fail to provide you an example is dishonest. I’ve given an example; but now one would need to evaluate the precise contents of the example. There’s the first chapter on my website if you were interested. Though I don’t think you will probably like it. I can imagine you will find it meanders, and all that. But it is FILLED with realia. They simply come on as poetic impressions within a fiction novel. However, have you ever read Burmese Days? That was sort of a model for me.

G TOD SLONE: Well, you do have ONE example now of questioning authority: me. But of course, I am by no means a sizeable authority like your boss in China. The RISK with my regard is that I might never again publish you because of your criticism. BUT that won’t be the case. Indeed, as mentioned, I’d like to publish a highly critical essay that actually criticizes me or better yet another editor like the one at the helm of Rattle, who of course you dare not criticize. Where the courage, man???

A SCOTT BUCH: This might more reveal the precise nature of the situation. Why would you think I don’t dare criticize Rattle? For me, it is more my current lack of information about Rattle. I would love to investigate it more. I care deeply about getting facts right, or getting a dynamic right, as in a philosophical critique of a model that I stand behind as a fair assessment of some aspect of reality. I don’t want to get things wrong, which means needing to be in position of more facts. I write about what I know and have experience with. So in short, I would love to do a deeper dive into Rattle; but I can’t help but be at a point where, I have to be discerning in how I use my time and resources, because I’m in the tough position of being a dissident first, and writer second; which means that I will never sell out for the sake of a dollar. And yet, I’m in a deeply precarious economic position. Sir, I swear that one day, if I have an essay much more like the kind of one you like to publish, I will send it exclusively to you. It’s just not what I’m capable of yet, until I could afford to say, get out into the world and investigate. These require money for hotel rooms, food, and the like. But this is why I believe there’s a lot that anarchism and anti-capitalism can offer. It seeks to establish models in which we can put truth, and dissidence first, but can also try to figure out ways we can still survive, and live somewhere, and eat.

G TOD SLONE: Well, you failed to understand the point made. I am NOT lumping you with those authorities I’ve openly criticized. Absurd for you to think that! My question is why have you apparently NOT criticized any such authorities where you live and or with whom you’ve had contact?  
And of course I did come up with a good reason for not wanting to publish your essay:  UNINTERESTING! UNCLEAR! LACKING IN REAL EXPERIENCE EXAMPLES! How did you miss that? Mind-numbing, Alex! 

A SCOTT BUCH: “My question is why have you apparently NOT criticized any such authorities where you live and or with whom you’ve had contact?”

Got it. I mean I have, that is why your concept of RISK resonated with me. And it has put me in a position where I am socially ostracized, and economically precarious. It’s only that I didn’t necessarily produce non-fiction work out of it, which could then be referred to in the manner that your struggle is well-documented.

“And of course I did come up with a good reason for not wanting to publish your essay: UNINTERESTING! UNCLEAR! LACKING IN REAL EXPERIENCE EXAMPLES! How did you miss that? Mind-numbing, Alex!”

It’s okay. It’s fair man. I accept it. While I hesitate to think the essay was shit; I have already put it behind me. Right now I don’t want to put the resources into rewriting it, only because I see it in the same category of the essay of mine you previously published. May I submit two poems to you here, and then you can let me know if you think these risk anything, or if they are “too general”? I feel they aren’t, but go on. Give them the old Slone dictatorship of the literary criticism.

[Sends poems about Julian Assange]

(Part 15)

G TOD SLONE: Lacking in clarity and uninteresting to me. Then a load of adhominem from you. How many times need I repeat that regarding the rejection? Mind-numbing indeed!  

A SCOTT BUCH: You fail to describe our disagreement accurately. What can provide a truthful check on that, is for the exchange of ours to be published in full.

G TOD SLONE: No precise experience! Period. Anarchists can be quite fascistic in their actions, as in the summer of love riots.

A SCOTT BUCH: You’ve lost me. You would also run the danger of being Orwellian if you are expressing a notion that, “anti-fascists are fascists.” This is exactly like saying, 2+2=5. Also, you aren’t precise a lot, like when you tried to claim Nancy Pelosi was a “socialist,” [in a previous email]. The Summer of Love riots? Anarchist? Seriously, what are you talking about?

G TOD SLONE: Chomsky was a tenured academic who did not make any waves at MIT and is now living in a very wealthy area on Cape Cod. How does an anarchist accept the professorial hierarchy at MIT. Again, hypocrisy seems to reign in the realm of so-called anarchists, including the BLM leader who bought a mansion.

A SCOTT BUCH: Chomsky is a remarkable dissident. There’s no question about that. You have a skewed view of what an anarchist is. You seem to think that anarchists are rioters. There is I suppose a very counterproductive form of dissidence. This would not be of the sort of Chomsky’s.

“. . . the BLM leader who bought a mansion. . .”

Yeah, good job naming names there. What precision!

G TOD SLONE: You made fun of yourself. I am simply depicting that in a cartoon. Your uproar over the simple rejection of one of your essays illustrates the point…

A SCOTT BUCH: “You made fun of yourself.”

Classic logic of authoritarians. Yeah; the dissident killed himself when the dictator shot him.

What you call “uproar,” I call the mere contestation of a rejection on arbitrary grounds that you later admitted was entirely arbitrary. Again, the publication of the exchange in full can demonstrate this.

G TOD SLONE: And yet a long list of insults were spewed from you! They will be highlighted in the cartoon. I at least make a cogent attempt to avoid ad hominem. Please do note what precisely I wrote as ad hominem.  
And yet I did point to several of your paragraphs as lacking in clarity and intellectual meandering, something that seems to be your writer’s m.o.
Again, not sure what the hell you’re talking about. NEVER did I say thou shalt not criticize I, the editor! Also, I have openly criticized numerous editors.
I don’t recall the content of that essay I published. I cannot recall every piece of writing I publish.
I have read perhaps all of Orwell over the years. I cannot recall everything I’ve read over the years.
Present one SIMPLE example with REAL names regarding your challenging power. JUST ONE!!! As you know, I have a rather long list of such examples on my website. You do not provide ONE such example on yours, so please don’t shoot out another fluffernutter with that regard…

A SCOTT BUCH: As I have already gone over this exchange entire once, I find myself being insulting perhaps most egregiously in regards to insulting your intelligence. The charge of “autocrat” isn’t an insult, but the crux of what is being examined here. However, since you eventually openly admit that your rejection was arbitrary—and laugh at the very idea that it could ever be otherwise—that one becomes fairly open and shut. Another “insult” was of egotist, which I will bring up in the fresh context of questioning the efficacy of your notion of dissidence. You Slone have admitted that you don’t think that your form of dissidence gets anywhere. To this one could very, very easily compare that, to Chomsky’s brand of dissidence, which is in my view, profoundly effective. I think you commit a very obvious blunder in suggesting that you have somehow been more charitable than myself in throwing around insults. I’m not trying to make fun of you, but you are very clearly trying to make fun of me. When you are always asking for an example of this, an example of that, it is usually in the context of a kind of—not to get psychoanalytical here—but kind of that shy bully who stands in the corner, trying to egg other people on to get a rise out of them. If this is what “dissidence” is to you, then I am almost making a kind of psychoanalytical statement, to call it “juvenile.” Again, not trying to insult. I’m trying to describe.

G TOD SLONE: Well, investigate Rattle then! Don’t just jabber about it. The Rattle editor actually earns an annual salary! I get nothing but a few subscriptions. No freakin’ salary. And so who pays his salary? Investigate! Don’t just meander intellectually!  
Your anti-sell website seems to counter your reality of wanting to freakin’ sell your writing! Mind-numbing indeed!
If you’re in a precarious economic situation, as you stipulate, then get off your arse and find a job. Work at McDos. Hell, I once did and I also worked as a submarine radiation monitor, cabbie, carpenter, mover, census taker, grape picker, painter, landscaper, teacher on two destroyers, etc.
Live in your car! Shit I’ve done that.  

A SCOTT BUCH: I at least went this far in the investigation, because when I did put together that piece [regarding a different essay previously rejected by Slone], which found an irony in poems about homelessness in California being rejected, when the patron of the magazine is a real estate agent, it’s investigation 101 to know that the Editor-in-Chief is Alan Fox. He is president and founder of a real estate company in California called ACF Property Management. My lead on this was reading your email exchanges with Rattle Editor Timothy Green in full, and closely. You pointed out the hypocrisy of his patron being a wealthy capitalist, it would appear in the context of challenging the notion of Rattle as perhaps a kind of hip, anti-establishment sort of magazine. Though you Slone have in our exchanges told me that you would rather live in capitalism than a world free of exploitation. Not sure where you necessarily get off finding yourself more high and mighty than Green. You’re more cantankerous than him sure. But it’s not entirely clear that cantankerous = dissidence. The extent to which I would have hypothetically criticized Rattle, a California publication—the state in which the problem of homelessness is at it most emblematic—is the same as criticizing you for being autocratic when you claim to value democracy. Finally, I don’t know if Rattle hasn’t published poems to do with homelessness. It very likely might have. There’s no reason to suspect that the poems were rejected due to their subject matter. Perhaps they were ruled “unclear,” or “too general,” as you yourself ruled them.

“Your anti-sell website seems to counter your reality of wanting to freakin’ sell your writing! Mind-numbing indeed!”

SEEMS to counter. As I said, in the essay of mine which you published, which you have forgotten, I defined selling out, selling yourself, as being (1) exploitation under capitalism; (2) domination by authority. Similar to how not all rejection need be autocratic, or that society need not be premised on domination and exploitation, there is a way that one could be paid for the labor which they voluntarily choose to do. I could get paid for “The Politics of Non-Response,” or, it could be the condition of payment, that I would have to rewrite it to suit the whims of the editor. If one went along with the injunction of authority, especially if it was the arbitrary injunction of authority, then this would be “selling out.” Many if not most if not all of us, all of us, must do it under capitalism, because it is by its nature exploitative. A system which you Slone—autocrat or not autocrat—desire?

“If you’re in a precarious economic situation, as you stipulate, then get off your arse and find a job. Work at McDos. Hell, I once did and I also worked as a submarine radiation monitor, cabbie, carpenter, mover, census taker, grape picker, painter, landscaper, teacher on two destroyers, etc. Live in your car! Shit I’ve done that.”

You would seem to make a virtue of it. All based on the notion that writing isn’t work, and also it would appear, on the notion that work must be compulsory, in other words, if one voluntarily engages in it, then it must not be “work.” Perhaps you have never stopped to realize that this is actually a picture of work which is fully ideological.

I can also take this slightly further, whoa whoa, wait, “painter”? I’m assuming you mean like, painting a house and that, and not in the creation of art. Because if painting as in making art was considered work, it isn’t clear how writing wouldn’t be considered it. But then even this notion is nonsensical; painting a house is work, but somehow painting a nude is not? How? How? How? This is deeply, deeply nonsensical. Indeed; ideological.

Also, let’s just take McDos. What in the flying fuck is so socially valuable about McDos? Nothing. The world would be a better place if McDos was no longer in it. I would much rather the flood of poems written by all the amateurs in the world who would be working at McDos, than its god awful garbage it serves up.

G TOD SLONE: Normally, I sketch cartoons on those who hold power, even just a little. Well, I also do them when those with platforms make weird or downright foolish statements. I’m now working on an aquarelle that will depict a handful of museum directors in the area where I live. The question I pose in it is why they will NOT permit any criticism of museum directors on their walls.  
As for you, I’m only doing a cartoon on you bec. of the constant tirade of ad hominem you’ve spewed upon me. By far, you’ve beat others in that sense. What is needed is an ad hominem award with a stipend, then since you’d likely win it, you’d have a little cash…  

A SCOTT BUCH: This made me genuinely laugh.

Except to me it seems you clearly exaggerate, as again for example, the notion of autocrat, is not an insult. It is the very truth category up for debate. And you admitted basically, that you are an autocrat, or acting autocratically.

G TOD SLONE: [Sends his cartoon]

A SCOTT BUCH: Interesting.

I suppose I would have two separate opinions.

The first would be, regarding the work itself. The second would be regarding my interpretation of the work. Regarding the work itself, I like it in so far as it provokes me to have a response. Though my response would be to challenge it. Not on its status as art, but on the status of what I interpret of its errors regarding truth.

There would be two elements of truth here at stake. The first would be, the truthfulness that underlies what inspired this work of art, namely our correspondence. I never said Density = Clarity. I did however, challenge your notion that Density = Obscurity. I said it can be, but isn’t always. Anarchy = Democracy. Okay, yes. And perhaps this is the most interesting part of the debate. To make it more concise, Anarchy = Direct Democracy. Radical Democracy. So that to me, Radical Democracy and Democratic Dissident, are very, very similar. Synonyms, if you like. Not a precise equation, but synonyms.

Same with Rejection = Autocracy, I never said that. I never said Density = Clarity, nor Rejection = Autocracy, so to claim I did, is false. Rejection on subjective, arbitrary grounds, with no room for a rebuttal, is autocratic. You have given me a rebuttal though, which I would say is a very strong argument in favor of your not being an autocrat.

Lastly, to wrap this up. Anarchy is the possibility of a social order without exploitation and domination. If you define ideology as, I’m guessing, the opposite of the truth, then are you saying that a social order without exploitation and domination is impossible? If so, how is that not an ideology, if it can be empirically demonstrated, that a social order without exploitation and domination is possible? A correlated question would be, is capitalism not an ideology in your mind?

Finally, it is not clear to me how rejection = democracy. Care to elaborate?

(Part 16)

G TOD SLONE: Anarchism is a pipe-dream. Anarchism simply cannot/will not succeed. But, well, I’m talking to the winter wind here. Equality cannot/will not succeed. Would Chomsky and Bernie give up their millionaire mansions in the name of equality, anarchy, and absence of hierarchy? Of course not.  Chomsky is an armchair anarchist; in essence, a fraud. If anarchy means no hierarchy, then again how not to cite your idol Chomsky, who is at the top of the professorial and wealth hierarchies. REASON will always be the enemy of IDEOLOGY. Anarchy is an ideology.

A SCOTT BUCH: “Anarchism is a pipe-dream.”

Anarchy = Ideology. In other words. Your argument is that anarchy; that is, a society without domination and exploitation, is impossible. Your evidence? Because states have always been around? Well, they haven’t. So, you’re wrong.

“Anarchism simply cannot/will not succeed. But, well, I’m talking to the winter wind here.”

I like your poetic of “talking to the winter wind,” but ask yourself if it is objectively true, it can’t or won’t succeed, or if it is merely that in your mind, you don’t believe it can or will succeed; or perhaps even sadder, don’t wish it would or can. Are you really of the opinion that freedom is impossible?

“Equality cannot/will not succeed.”

Freedom and equality require each other, sort of like democracy and freedom of speech. It is not equality in the sense that this value has been propagandized against, as in, people are equal. It is that their relationships are equal. That there is an Equality of Relationships. All this means is that there isn’t one class of people who gives orders, and others who take them. It isn’t that we are literally equal people. It is that the relationships between us are flattened, or equal.

“Would Chomsky and Bernie give up their millionaire mansions in the name of equality, anarchy, and absence of hierarchy? Of course not.”

A weird statement to make which obviously needs qualified. But this betrays that faulty, ideological notion of equality again. It isn’t that people would have to give up their mansions. It is that people with mansions wouldn’t be able to tell other people who didn’t have mansions what to do.

“Chomsky is an armchair anarchist; in essence, a fraud.”

I strongly disagree with this. Further, you do not have a coherent definition of anarchist. Therefore, you are not in a position to define what an anarchist is or isn’t.

“If anarchy means no hierarchy, then again how not to cite your idol Chomsky, who is at the top of the professorial and wealth hierarchies.”

I would argue that Chomsky is there from merit. In fact, he isn’t treated like this by the status quo establishment you know. He is simply beloved in dissident and radical circles.

“REASON will always be the enemy of IDEOLOGY. Anarchy is an ideology.”

Reason is also an ideology because it is a way of thinking. There are at least two ways to define ideology, in a positive and negative sense. Negative would of course be that it is a false picture of reality. Positive would be that it is simply a system of thought.

G TOD SLONE: And so once again a meandering response/deflection away from the prime question: why have you NOT been able to provide just ONE example of personal experience regarding RISK???

A SCOTT BUCH: Because I trust you about as much as you trust me. This is the absence of solidarity. This lack of trust occurred over the course of this debate.

G TOD SLONE: You ought to write a novel on what it’s like being an ARMCHAIR ANARCHIST. In fact, that’s probably a better title for the cartoon.
Rattle is hardly portraying itself as some kind of hip anti-estab. mag. Absurd! Green does not portray it thusly. So, where you came up with that notion, I don’t know. My only complaint with his regard is the same regarding 99.9% of poetry editors: absolute refusal to publish any criticism with their regard. My back and forth with Green occurred quite a while ago. Thus, I do not recall the details of it. Why not?  Because I have engaged in many, many other conflicts since then.  
“A world free of exploitation” is yet another of your pipe-dream fantasies. I live in reality; you do not.
The many experience examples on my website point out reality DISSIDENCE, something apparently you completely lack which is probably why you seem to have a need to diss me.

Reigned-in Capitalism seems to be the best REALITY system. Here in America, I can at least speak and write what I think. Sure, I might be banned and even arrested and incarcerated (yes, that happened to me!), but not executed. Do that in socialism-bent Canada and Europe, and face arrest and incarceration for a far longer period than my (and Thoreau’s) one day in a jail cell. And in communist countries face death, which I suppose is why you kept your anarchist-mouth shut when you worked in China.
How not to LOL at your non-response circumlocution to my get a freakin job statement!
Yes, housepainter for chrissakes! You should be a cocooned academic a la Chomsky. Did your idol ever have a labor job? I’m amazed that you never have had one!
At least if you worked at a McDo, you could write reality poems critical of McDo, instead of unreality novels on anarchist pipe-dreaming. Again, you seem to excel at NOT RESPONDING DIRECTLY TO QUESTIONS. A veritable circumlocutionist wordsalad chef indeed! Why not apply for a White House spokesperson position?  

A SCOTT BUCH: “You ought to write a novel on what it’s like being an ARMCHAIR ANARCHIST.”

What the devil is an armchair anarchist? Again, coming from a person who doesn’t even have a coherent definition of what anarchist is, it holds no water.

“My only complaint with his regard is the same regarding 99.9% of poetry editors: absolute refusal to publish any criticism with their regard.”

Okay, well I recently did do a close reading of the correspondence between you fellows from I believe it was 2007 or 2008. In it, Green seemed to have for the most part a fair justification as to why they don’t publish the type of essays that you write. In fact, the entire ordeal seems quite like this one if you really break it down. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t publish critical essays, it was that they were going to be no longer publishing essays at all. In short, your work failed to fall within the Rattle focus. So that by your logic, anyone who rejects your essays would apparently be a part of the establishment? [Slone had previously claimed, in a separate email chain, that the literary publication Rattle was, emphatically, of the “establishment.”]

“‘A world free of exploitation’ is yet another of your pipe-dream fantasies. I live in reality; you do not. The many experience examples on my website point out reality DISSIDENCE, something apparently you completely lack which is probably why you seem to have a need to diss me.”

I don’t have a need to diss you. I object to the notion that a world free from exploitation is impossible. You would act as if it were, which is ideological, because it isn’t true. It makes me wonder if you like the world as it is, and therefore desire it to remain this way. That you desire a world which is premised on exploitation and domination; not that such a social order is inevitable, but that it is inevitably the type of world which you want. If your Rattle correspondence from 2007-2008 is supposed to be an expression of “reality DISSIDENCE;” it’s not clear to me how that is more dissident than say, the experiences of the dissident journalist Barrett Brown. Of the folks who organized Occupy Wall Street, like David Graeber. Like WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Chelsea Manning. To me, this is as much, if not certainly more so, an expression of what dissidence is. Lastly, it is profoundly arrogant to think that one could have a monopoly on something like dissidence. Dissidence broadly speaking is opposition to the status quo, so there are a lot of ways this could be potentially qualified. I think that it is almost certainly the case that it is counterproductive to a project of real dissidence to try to gatekeep it and act like one had a monopoly on it, and neurotically bully people from the position of thinking that one’s experiences were so much more real and legitimate from those of other people.

“Reigned-in Capitalism seems to be the best REALITY system.”

Okay, Liberal.

“Here in America, I can at least speak and write what I think. Sure, I might be banned and even arrested and incarcerated (yes, that happened to me!), but not executed. Do that in socialism-bent Canada and Europe, and face arrest and incarceration for a far longer period than my (and Thoreau’s) one day in a jail cell.”

Thoreau was an anarchist or proto-anarchist. And his theory of civil disobedience, was inspired by Percy Shelley, another anarchist or proto-anarchist.

“. . . in communist countries face death, which I suppose is why you kept your anarchist-mouth shut when you worked in China.”

I certainly didn’t put anarchist on my resume to get a job there if that’s what you mean. This feeds into the conceit of espionage at the core of it.

“How not to LOL at your non-response circumlocution to my get a freakin job statement! Yes, housepainter for chrissakes! You should be a cocooned academic a la Chomsky. Did your idol ever have a labor job? I’m amazed that you never have had one!”

I have worked at McDonalds. I was also an ESL teacher in China and Myanmar. You are now non-responding to the argument I made in counter to your work ideology. It is ideological to the max to assert that working at McDonalds, or being an English teacher, is work, but that writing poetry, or writing articles or essays isn’t. How is being a housepainter work, but painting nudes isn’t? Explain that to me? You can’t, because it’s ideological.

“At least if you worked at a McDo, you could write reality poems critical of McDo, instead of unreality novels on anarchist pipe-dreaming.”

This one is really weird. If I worked at McDo, I would be labor organizing. Very real possibility they wouldn’t hire someone who was openly a labor radical. So to you here, dissidence would appear to be precisely, working a job but NOT being dissident in one’s actual actions, rather writing poems about it on the side, which is somehow more dissident than being a militant labor activist? My novel is also the account of my labor struggle within the industry I was employed in. So it isn’t pipedreaming; it is a fictionalized account of a real occurrence. The occurrence happened first, and I wrote about it later. Although as I was writing about it, the events were also still transpiring.

“Again, you seem to excel at NOT RESPONDING DIRECTLY TO QUESTIONS. A veritable circumlocutionist wordsalad chef indeed! Why not apply for a White House spokesperson position?”

Throughout this debate, you very often do not respond directly to facts I bring up, and keep acting as if they were never brought up.

G TOD SLONE: You damn well did state that density somehow meant clarity and concision!!  
The sign is simply a reflection what you wrote to me. It is certainly not a direct quote! And obviously it mimics Orwell’s famous sign (statement): war is peace…
In essence, to reject Alex is an example of autocratic decision-making. And autocrat does have a NEGATIVE connotation!
In essence, my right to reject is permitted in the realm of democracy… in the same light as your right to reject my rejection…

A SCOTT BUCH: “You damn well did state that density somehow meant clarity and concision!!”

This is the more tedious part of the debate, but I’m willing to get into the details of it with you.

“. . . to reject Alex is an example of autocratic decision-making. . .”

To reject arbitrarily.

“. . . my right to reject is permitted in the realm of democracy… in the same light as your right to reject my rejection…”

That is correct.

(Part 17)

G TOD SLONE: My evidence? Where the hell is your evidence? Name one anarchy society today! Just one!! Nada! Just like your absence of experience. Nada! Pipedream and you can’t see that egregious reality. When someone shoots someone in the head, that is hierarchy. Hierarchy is all over the place, but you can’t see it. Instead, you prefer cloud-nine spouting unreality.
People with mansions have housekeepers, who are told wtf to do. Wake up! 

A SCOTT BUCH: “My evidence? Where the hell is your evidence? Name one anarchy society today! Just one!! Nada! Just like your absence of experience. Nada! Pipedream and you can’t see that egregious reality.”

Our dynamic here is a good example of how this dialogue can keep going round. You regard me as having no personal experience based on a lack of evidence. This in itself is fine, because evidence is necessary. Except this echoes how I asked you to provide evidence as to why you found my essay unclear. You make the assumption that since I won’t share personal experience examples with you, I must be lying about that, when in truth it is because I don’t trust you enough to share them. The lack of trust comes from you demanding of me a standard which you don’t seem to be applying to yourself. I understand that it might look overwhelmingly like all the evidence is in your favor that society without the state is impossible. But I am pointing to how actually the time within which living under states has been the norm, is actually a small fraction of how long we have been around. That is a profound paradigm shift in our way of thinking about how society can be organized.

“When someone shoots someone in the head, that is hierarchy. Hierarchy is all over the place, but you can’t see it. Instead, you prefer cloud-nine spouting unreality.”

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying what you think I’m saying. I know that hierarchy is all over the place. Our world is one of absolute domination and exploitation. However, it doesn’t HAVE to be this way.

“People with mansions have housekeepers, who are told wtf to do. Wake up!”

I would never have a housekeeper. Are you saying you think Chomsky and Sanders are secret authoritarians with their housekeepers? How do you even know they have housekeepers? My point about mansions and telling people what to do is—and I brought this up in my essay you published—it’s not about wealth inequality, it’s about the historically unprecedented situation in which money has become a form of power. It wouldn’t really matter if some people had more money than others, if it didn’t ultimately translate into that meaning they held a command relationship over others. It’s not that I’m in need of “waking up” here; it’s that the elements of what we are really talking about here would come more into relief.

G TOD SLONE: Again, you deflect! You should be a politician!

A SCOTT BUCH: So it would be wise if you didn’t trust somebody, to give them personal details about yourself? What foolery. This is what I mean about that “bullying” quality, or trying to egg people on. From me it is the detection that you don’t have my best interests in mind when asking. It is like calling someone chicken, in a way which then gets them to act very foolishly.

G TOD SLONE: An armchair anarchist is someone with zero anarchic experiences fighting hierarchies.

A SCOTT BUCH: “An armchair anarchist is someone with zero anarchic experiences fighting hierarchies.”

Okay! I accept this definition.

G TOD SLONE: If reason is somehow an ideology, then for you reality must also be an ideology. And so for you unreason and unreality form your ideology of preference. And so, welcome to insanity, a form/ outcome of anarchy…

A SCOTT BUCH: Reality to me is not an ideology. Reality to me is more what we mean by objective. Reason is an ideology, a way of thinking, which helps us to arrive at a more empirically verifiable picture of what that reality is. Trying to be more objective. For me, what you call “unreason,” I would call irrationality. I believe the type of hierarchy I’m battling is one premised on an irrational authority. An irrational authority can’t be justified. Regarding anarchy, or freedom from domination and exploitation, it isn’t an ideology, it is a social possibility. Maybe you’re right, maybe it’s a pipedream; but this would have to be proven. I believe that it is every bit as much, if not certainly more so, an ideology that it isn’t possible. And that is because in the social order we grow up in, we are indoctrinated into the ruling ideology.

(Part 18)

A SCOTT BUCH: Okay, here’s the rub. I’ll pitch you the essay you would prefer your contributors to write. I’ll write it on the condition that you pay me $12 and a complementary contributor’s copy. I’ll pitch you the title, thesis, and a proposed first couple of paragraphs. These can then be critiqued by you, rejected if necessary. Finally, if an agreement can be reached, I’ll put together a draft, to which I’ll make all necessary edits pending editorial feedback.

Pitch follows below.


Title: Subjective Power Is An Objective Ruling, Autocracy Is Democracy, Arrogance Is Truth

Thesis: If a ruling is subjective, ad hominem can’t apply, because there is no objective basis which personal attacks are besides the point from.

[Proposed first paragraphs follow of “Subjective Power Is An Objective Ruling, Autocracy Is Democracy, Arrogance Is Truth.”]

G TOD SLONE: Why would I pay you money for more blather without experience? Insanity always rules in the heads of ideologues! Again, I do not pay contributors. Why not? Because I receive zero money in government/cultural council/NEA grants, whereas many other mags receive plenty of money. Good luck on your quest for MONEY!

A SCOTT BUCH: This is where I would say to you; OH BOO HOO! GET A JOB AT MCDONALDS, OR EAT ONE LESS HAPPY MEAL AND SAVE THAT $12 that you could pay to a contributor. You can’t afford to pay $12 for a piece of writing? Don’t blame the system for that man, blame yourself!

G TOD SLONE: Unlike Rattle or Poetry mag, for example, The American Dissident is not a job and has never been a job. As editor/publisher I do NOT make money. If you were to consider all the “work” (cartooning, aquarelling, writing, formatting, etc.) that I put into each and every issue, I definitely lose money…

A SCOTT BUCH: Well, I DO consider all of your art to be work. That is why I had no qualms of being paid nothing to appear in your journal, and rather paying $24 for two copies of your journal. I do value what you do. I do value what you do as labor. And I do think that you should be able to make a living off of it. What you produce is at least as valuable as being deserving of the means to live IF NOT CERTAINLY MORE SO

G TOD SLONE: And never did I even want to turn the journal into a money-making machine, something you clearly seek to do with your writing. Perhaps you are a closet capitalist like mansion-dwelling millionaires Bernie and Chomsky…

A SCOTT BUCH: I wouldn’t call Bernie and Chomsky closet capitalists. (But we should probably acknowledge that there is the stereotype of “champagne socialist” for a reason.) To be clear, I am an anarchist.

Can you at least permit that there is a difference between a money making machine, and simply being provided the means to live?

G TOD SLONE: Actually, I don’t think you ever wrote that you had any experience fighting hierarchies. Now, you imply that you have, BUT you don’t trust me to reveal it. Well, once again, you deflect. Fighting hierarchies as I’ve definitely done takes courage… trust is NOT a requisite at all.  Apparently you lack courage. Hopefully, you are at least aware of that, though ideological adherence can certainly blind… 

A SCOTT BUCH: Why do you start from the presumption that a person must necessarily be the opposite of what they claim?

Here is where I would call you an anarchist (in a good way!) due to the fact that what you are now saying you do, is battle hierarchies.

Originally [in some of the first emails between the author here and G. Tod Slone], I told you that the concept you refer to as corrosive to democracy and the truth, as CAREER, is what I rather think is HIERARCHY.

We might understand this model of irrational authority I want to describe, as the negative version of this (hierarchy for the sake of hierarchy; in other words, unjustifiable). What you have shown in your work, is that career bears this out. This is precisely that “objective” mask to a “subjective” phenomenon. If people were where they are out of merit, there would be no need for the hierarchy which makes it an authoritative claim that they are there because of merit.

I brace myself for you to call this “unclear,” but I give not a single fuck. . .

Now I also brace to be called “verbose,” because I want to address everything that you bring up here. The “neurotic” “bullying” part, is calling everyone chicken. I think that we could make ourselves more courageous through greater solidarity. Calling everyone chicken; well, it’s a bit like a kind of paranoid, Stalinist move, is it not? Everyone besides ME is a COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY!

G TOD SLONE: More blather… without experience.

A SCOTT BUCH: I reject your perspective.

(Part 19)

G TOD SLONE: Well, then, why do you start with such an immense generalization with my regard as to people?
Yes, career is inevitably hierarchy. We agree here.
Well, then maybe you should give it a double fuck!
Hierarchy is natural. Anarchy is NOT natural/cannot be natural. That said, I am not a fan of hierarchy. BUT eliminate all hierarchy as your dream seeks to do would be to eliminate civilization, which is built on hierarchies. No mo’ laptops; no mo’ cellphones!
Again, you generalize. NEVER have I called or implied all people chicken. Absurd, mon ami!
Not sure where you come up with this stuff, including my somehow proclaiming that everyone besides me is a counterrevolutionary. Not sure what the hell that statement even means. Mindboggling indeed!

A SCOTT BUCH: I would say that hierarchy is no more or no less natural than non-hierarchy. It is like the classic debate about human nature and whether or not people are naturally bad or good. It’s not inherently either, we have the capability for both. Further, that I believe we tend to hierarchy under conditions of higher stress, in the cases of say, needing more to survive, a scarcity of resources. There is also evidence to go along for this idea too. The main idea that I keep stressing is that these ideas regarding anarchy can be empirically verified; so there is no reason to reject them ideologically outright, if there is no evidence for it, and ESPECIALLY if one is no fan of hierarchies.

I’m fascinated by the idea that we have which views hierarchy and civilization as identical. I assert that this is an ideological move. I am trying to develop a psychoanalytical theory based on the work of Wilhelm Reich which bears this out. In short, the type of civilization we have is one that he would view as authoritarian civilization. But we could have a different form of civilization. To be brief here, civilization and hierarchy aren’t precisely the same thing. And to answer what you say of laptops. I would say that, if in order to have pyramids, we need slavery; if in order to have laptops, we need slavery, I would say, we are better off without pyramids, we are better off without slavery. I also don’t see the logical connection between laptops and slavery. I don’t think we need slavery to produce laptops.

And sorry; in my ad homineming, often it becomes a rhetorical exercise. I’m not making the claim that these actually apply to you, but that they could, in the context of this debate, depending. Regarding that Stalinist idea of calling everyone a counterrevolutionary, just trying to point to what I see as an authoritarian trend in certain personality types where they cannot abide by a difference of opinion regarding, say, in our discussions, a difference of opinion in what amounts to dissidence, what amounts to an adequate style of literature, and so on.

G TOD SLONE: For a purported anti-capitalist, you are nonsensical, beggaring for $12 for a piece of writing that was essentially an example of intellectual meandering! And how puerile of you to somehow curb my rejection into my somehow whining that I don’t have moolah to pay for your writing. Insanity rules! Some people, Alex, including myself, write not for money, but rather to expose untruths, hypocrisy, inanity, lies, ideological vapidity, and on and on. In fact, some people write because that’s what they like to do. Should I somehow beggar the city to pay me every time I walk on its sidewalks? Mind-numbing!
From the dross, I create. 

A SCOTT BUCH: Though wouldn’t you have to admit, that if you could receive money to publish The Amer Diss, you wouldn’t turn it down? In this line of thinking, I’m simply trying to separate out—like hierarchy from civilization—the notion of money and control. I think that if people could be paid to do what they liked voluntarily, or at least, weren’t forced to seek money through the coercion of compulsive labor, the world would be a better place. There isn’t any logical connection between speaking the truth and not being paid, unless of course, you are dealing with that place where money and power intersect, and therefore, power will not pay you to criticize it. And why would it? But that doesn’t mean that being paid to write necessarily means one is speaking lies. There are a lot of models of independent media out there which shows it’s possible to speak truth to power and still have the means to live.

G TOD SLONE: Nobody’s paying me for 99% of my writing… and I didn’t ask anyone to pay me… and I didn’t write in the hope of getting paid. Doing so would seem to be an example of capitalism on steroids.
Now, how could I possibly make a living from my creative “labor,” when most of that “labor” is exerted against the machine that pays (e.g., the cultural councils, the colleges, the salaried editors and publishers)?  

A SCOTT BUCH: That is correct. That is the problem of it. But in this case, there is the anarchist notion of mutual aid. So for instance, you might not be able to get the establishment to pay you to criticize it; again that would be nonsensical. But you could probably find a way to be able to do your art and not starve, like through the kindness and mutuality of others where they like what you produce, and want to donate a bit of money to you here and there so that you can continue to sustain yourself.

G TOD SLONE: Perhaps too many people are on government welfare. When I was on it briefly several decades ago, we had to hunt for work and prove we did that. It doesn’t seem like that’s a requisite any more. So, I am against “simply being provided the means to live,” that is, for those who are capable of actually doing manual labor. In your case, I assume you are thusly capable.

A SCOTT BUCH: My argument would be that a lot of great culture was produced by folks who were precisely on government welfare. This is indeed the idea I was putting forward in the poem you published of mine, “Why Music Sucks These Days.” I also think that it is an authoritarian ideology which says that there must be an environment of coercion in order to get the working class to perform all of the manual labor that the ruling class doesn’t want to do itself. Why is it perfectly normal for the ruling class to get a passive income doing nothing but sitting on investments, but the idea that the working class might make a basic universal income so that it might spend more time writing poems, and less time polishing the silver of some champagne socialist, is an unthinkable taboo?

You also have to ask yourself, sure; I may be thusly capable, of working at McDos. But is that really the best way that I should spend my time? Again, I see absolutely nothing socially valuable about McDos. I don’t see how working at McDos is somehow magically, hard labor, but writing hard hitting articles about corruption in our society isn’t?

The hard labor ideology really seems like something more befitting of a Stalinist, and not of a political dissident.

G TOD SLONE: One might look at career—academic, literary, etc.— as a hierarchy. What I don’t like about career/hierarchy, from my personal experiences in academe, is the inevitable intellectual corruption/cowardice that those who choose career, including academics like your anarchist Chomsky, seem to willingly accept as an inevitable prerequisite for hierarchical success. In essence, to climb the hierarchical ladder, one must inevitably turn a blind eye. Perhaps reducing hierarchies—and enforcing free expression to the point where one cannot be punished for NOT turning a blind eye—might be more practical than eliminating them. 

A SCOTT BUCH: This is a very solid paragraph.

Although it lacks concrete evidence for the claim that Chomsky sells out to hierarchies. He compartmentalized his career it would seem. His career in linguistics has nothing whatsoever to do with his political dissidence. In his political dissidence, he strikes me as one of the most respectable social critics that we have had.

(Part 20)

G TOD SLONE: And yet animals clearly have hierarchies from elephants to bees and lions and wolves and on and on. So, that fact clearly contradicts your statement… and would back my statement that anarchy is a pipedream.

A SCOTT BUCH: But you commit the naturalistic fallacy which would assume that because a factor is natural must mean that it is right or good or necessary or inevitable. Culture or civilization is nothing if not the counterforce against that. Humans are natural creatures but also able to step above our mere natural inheritance to become aspects creatively different than that initial condition. Finally, as Kroptkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution asserts. Cooperation is as much a factor in how animals naturally organize themselves if not more than hierarchies and dominance patterns.

G TOD SLONE: As noted on my website, I have actively sought money from cultural organizations that dish out money. So, of course I would not turn down a grant!
What happens when many people are paid for doing nothing, which is what they like? Welfare, tax increases, bigger separation between the top end of the hierarchy and the middle!

A SCOTT BUCH: Well, I think you deserve grants, and it is bollocks that you don’t get them.

“What happens when many people are paid for doing nothing, which is what they like?”

I don’t think that what people like to do is nothing. I think it is not only a stereotype but simply factually untrue. I think that psychologically we are actually happiest when we feel we are doing something which matters, and so, doing something that matters, is the true opposite of doing nothing. To me I think the key is coercion versus voluntarism. It is not that people should get paid to do nothing; it is that people should be the ultimate determiner of how they want to spend their time, energy, and life.

“Welfare, tax increases, bigger separation between the top end of the hierarchy and the middle!”

I think this is a fair argument to make. I do think though that there should obviously be a much higher tax on a certain cap of wealth. There is an empirically understood phenomenon where there is a threshold of money that one needs to simply be comfortable. And then after this threshold, it becomes never enough. I think there should be a tax which effectively controls for greed in our society. That said, I also think there is an argument to be made about how welfare can be used to create dependence on the state. As such, I would advocate for something more like a universal basic income than welfare.

G TOD SLONE: Work at McDos, then write about your experience! I’ve written tons on my diverse work experiences. So, there is something a writer like you could get from working at a McDos! If you need money to eat and cannot make it via your writing, then work at a freakin’ McDos or deliver mail like Bukowski or weld at a shipyard like me. It is quite simple, but you seem to have an intrinsic need to “densify.”

A SCOTT BUCH: Hee hee. Come on man, let up on the density bit. Okay, but here’s the thing, what you’re putting out is how I already saw things. This is why I didn’t pursue more education after I graduated and rather went abroad to teach for many years, I wanted to get out in the world and get work experience and write about that! Where I’ve gotten hung up is because I am trying to publish the fruit of that experience. Moreover, I think what I am saying though too is that to be a true dissident eventually spills out from the page, into action. It isn’t enough to simply work a job, and then write about how bad it is. You need to actually clash with the hierarchy of management and eventually the entire structure of our authoritarian society. I think that the two of us are actually far more on the same page than it may initially appear. Finally, I want to share a David Graeber quote with you, because it is hard for me to imagine that you could disagree with it. It comes from an essay “In Regulation Nation.” But he’s recorded expressing a similar concept at talks. This is the passage:

David Graeber on career advancement: “Sociologists since Weber have often noted that one of the defining features of a bureaucracy is that its employees are selected by formal criteria— most often some kind of written test— but everyone knows how compromised the idea of bureaucracy as a meritocratic system is. The first criterion of loyalty to any organization is therefore complicity. Career advancement is not based on merit but on a willingness to play along with the fiction that career advancement is based on merit, or with the fiction that rules and regulations apply to everyone equally, when in fact they are often deployed as an instrument of arbitrary personal power.” [from In Regulation Nation]

G TOD SLONE: Chomsky was a tenured academic. That’s on the high run of the professorial ladder. I’m certain that as he climbed the ladder shit was happening here and there at MIT and he chose to turn a blind eye. I say this from experience at other institutions of higher ed, where I observed shit happening right and left, BUT chose NOT to turn a blind eye and for that was not rewarded with tenure. 

A SCOTT BUCH: From personal experience, I would not doubt that. Though for the sake of the truth, it would really require an investigation to know for sure. We can’t just make assumptions. As I put it in that rejected essay, hierarchy may not exclude the fact that someone might be in their position due to merit, but it certainly isn’t the objective expression of that situation in all cases, and in many others, may not be the case, and may simply be more the indication of that person’s ability to rise, and not precisely due to the quality of their work.

(Part 21)

A SCOTT BUCH: The other issues aside, are you at least interested in knowing how that proposed essay ends, because I did finish it.

G TOD SLONE: Likely not, for I cannot even recall what it was about. Again, try sending essays to sociology journals, which would be more likely to publish experience-absent writing.

A SCOTT BUCH: This is the essay which came directly out of this experience arguing with you. It is the one called, “Subjective Power Is An Objective Ruling, Autocracy Is Democracy, Arrogance Is Truth.” So if you are rejecting it on the grounds of not having come out of direct experience, then that would be completely absurd.

I also have another pitch, to explore the way that arbitrary power cowardly hides behind a veneer of “objectivity.” It takes for its realia from this article published yesterday [1/21/2024] in The Dissenter. “In Assange’s Darkest Hour, Committee To Protect Journalists Yet Again Excludes Him From Jailed Journalist Index.” Here’s the link to the story: https://thedissenter.org/assange-darkest-hour-cpj-yet-again-excludes-jailed-journalist-index/

The article would ask (1) why Assange would be denied the status of a journalist. (2) Through what sort of process is that status denied. And (3) what does that say about the operations of arbitrary power.

I would refer to David Graeber’s quote on career advancement, and his claim that hierarchies don’t represent objective merit, but rather a subjective ability to act as if they did. I would take some of the ideas in the rejected essay, and fit them in with this realia to do with how arbitrary power, or the state, is destroying Assange. It does this by denying him the objective status of journalist, when it is the clear subjective prejudice against him to be denied that status. Really it is for having revealed the rude truth that no one in positions of arbitrary power want to hear or have others hear, for it undermines their “legitimacy.”

G TOD SLONE: You seem to excel at diverting away (intellectual meandering) when I point to a reality that contradicts your unreality, as in hierarchy being a natural trait.

A SCOTT BUCH: That seems to be very uncharitable, and more so a very subjective, characterization. There is no diverting away here. I address hierarchy as a natural trait, demonstrating though that how you are using it in your argument is an example of the naturalistic fallacy. Then I talk about the dynamics of nature and culture which shows that because something is “natural” doesn’t mean it is unchangeable. Finally, I demonstrate evidence to the contrary that hierarchy is only natural, and provide the concrete source of scientific work pointing to indications of the strong presence of cooperation in nature by animals. In truth there is a clear ideological bias in the picture of nature we are taught as “survival of the fittest.” For example we can look at that notion of Social Darwinism which has been used to justify social inequality for centuries. As well, we could look at notions of eugenics that also come out of a fraudulent use of science to try to justify social inequality, and political horrors. What you demonstrate here is your own diverting away from the point, by not addressing anything I mention concretely. You simply “ad hominem” by claiming that I “intellectually meander.” This is dishonest. (Next, you will then continue this ad homineming, by accusing me of becoming “verbose.”)

G TOD SLONE: How to spend ones time, energy, and life… something that matters and something that one likes… like smoking dope all day, while getting welfare checks?
What difference between a universal basic income (free money) and welfare (free money)? Pipe dream away!

A SCOTT BUCH: “like smoking dope all day, while getting welfare checks”

This would reveal a clear stereotypical bias. You think this is the common human condition, to want to sit around all day smoking dope? Even if for some people this would be what they wanted to do, there is no way you could argue this is what the majority of people would want to do. As I have stated previously, there is empirical evidence which shows that what actually makes us most content is a sense of purpose. Work certainly gives us that. There is no evidence to suggest that allowing people to decide how they want to live their lives would result in the majority of people smoking dope all day. Finally, it reveals an authoritarian mindset (not accusing it of being yours; it is the dominant ideology) which basically says people can’t be trusted to decide how they want to live their lives. You think that people can’t be trusted to decide how they want to live their lives? This is effectively an ideological perspective which denies that freedom of any sort is actually possible.

Your notion of free money is somewhat interesting. May I ask you what you think that money objectively is? Where does is come from? Is it an objective resource such as oil, which doesn’t so to speak, “grow on trees?” Or is it LITERALLY created from nothing, because the value of money in our society is a function of debt? Its value is created when the bank makes a loan. It didn’t used to be like this, as it used to be tied for instance to gold. And also, there is a whole history of how money has functioned throughout human history. If you object so much to a notion of free money, then what about the passive income of investments of capitalists, as I mentioned before. This bothers you none? A capitalist can earn “free money” simply by owning say a factory, an Amazon warehouse, when in effect the real Labor, is being done by workers. Yet this is perfectly acceptable to you? The point of a universal basic income is that it takes out that element of coercion which means that if people want to live and eat somewhere, they must do work which they absolutely despise. The universal basic income makes it so that they can at least live and eat, so then after that, they are free to determine where they want to seek employment in order to generate more money after that basic level of income. It seems the extent of your argument would be, Oh no, we can’t do that, because otherwise people will sit around smoking dope all day?

G TOD SLONE: Well, that’s a big difference between us. I never thought or said to myself: hey, I wanna be a writer and make money from it. Never! It was always experiences that pushed me to write.  I never took writing courses and workshops. Thought you wrote you spent 5 years teaching overseas, not many years.  
Well, I have gotten off my arse. I’ve solo protested in the street a number of times. I’ve gone over to the local cultural council and personally asked why the hell the director would not permit my art on its walls. I’ve knocked on many library doors. I was incarcerated for a day for protesting solo. I was the only poet out of 150 paid poets to stand up and openly criticize the festival director regarding his prohibition of debate at the festival. For that, I was never invited back. And I can go on and on. So, I agree with you… but how about you?
Well, the quote certainly holds true for academic and cultural bureaucracies. Yes.

A SCOTT BUCH: I don’t really see the clear difference. Why did you get a PhD—in French, no?—because you assumed that by becoming a Professor of a Language, that was worthy of getting paid? But one could never be worthy of getting paid as a writer? This idea of yours I will never understand because it makes no logical sense. Your protesting also seems to be restricted to the domain of art. Nothing wrong with that, but again, it seems to be a part of your ideology that you don’t even think that art is a worthy way of spending one’s time. To you—it seems to me—spending time doing art, is the equivalent of smoking dope, and therefore, people should never be paid for it.

Being a professor of French is somehow having gotten off one’s ass? I don’t think that people who say, work in an Amazon factory (the working class), would necessarily think being a professor of French is more hard labor than what they do. And further, I doubt they would object to receiving a universal basic income, if it meant that they had more leverage in challenging the brutal hierarchy of management they are submitted to. Furthermore, I certainly think the working class, of which both of us are a part—unless you are some secret capitalist—would object to categorizing labor, as that which one is forced to do (and making a virtue out of it). I think that overwhelmingly those who are forced to work hard labor and constantly submitted to a brutalizing hierarchy would much, much rather prefer if they got a say in exactly how they had to work under those conditions. (That is called democracy in the workplace, also know as socialism.)

I didn’t attempt to climb a career hierarchy in order to become a writer, I learned how to be a writer through experience. The results of this are adequate enough to be able to make a living off of it. Your notion that true writers actually work jobs that have nothing to do with writing because writing isn’t real work makes not one iota of sense.

G TOD SLONE: Assumptions based on actual experience are likely more often true, than not. It is really quite simple: do not criticize the college president and deans if you want tenure and emeritus status. Thus is Chomsky!
Sounds like you’re against DEI, which has reduced merit as a necessary qualification for success.

A SCOTT BUCH: I think that Graeber is onto something. And it is the same general notion that I modeled in the rejected essay. Hierarchies aren’t a measure of merit, but rather a measure of one’s ability to climb a hierarchy.

Regarding truth, yes, experience is like the equivalent of empirical evidence. Though only for ourselves. You can’t have an experience, and then assume it necessarily applies to everyone. As I said, you would have to investigate the exact situation of Chomsky, to verify your claim. Otherwise you just make a very obvious and intellectually dishonest error in making assumptions.

(Part 22)

G TOD SLONE: And yet earlier you had stated hierarchy to be UNnatural… which is why I evoked your diverting away…

A SCOTT BUCH: As I stated on January 17, 2024 8:25 AM, “hierarchy is no more or no less natural than non-hierarchy. It is like the classic debate about human nature and whether or not people are naturally bad or good. It’s not inherently either, we have the capability for both.”

Where do I say, in such “concise” terms, “hierarchy is unnatural.” There is no diverting away here. It would appear to be your dislike to follow the nuance, or treat me charitably as an opponent.

I can restate my general argument, if you’d like. But I anticipate you’d rather be spared the “verbosity.”

G TOD SLONE: I wrote the dope thing as an example of reality, not as a generality. Who knows what the majority of people want to do? You don’t and I don’t. If given free money, free housing, free food, perhaps most would prefer to do as you do: sit and write… and/or smoke weed.
I’m all for letting people decide how to live their lives… as long as I don’t have to pay for their housing, food, iphones, debit cards, transportation, college education et al. If you want to pay, go ahead. But don’t force me to pay.
Clearly, owner vs. worker is not as simple as you state. The owner, for example, will have to supply (pay for) the building and materials. The product (profit) is not free to the owner, as you state. The owner can lose money in the process. Again, your notions are a pipe dream, perhaps communist in nature (but let us not forget the inevitable gulags!).

A SCOTT BUCH: Who’s asking you to pay for it?

Really, when you take a broad look at social inequality, what happens is that over time, it is that freedom is taken away from people, and then when they want it back, this is put ideologically as if it was going to have to be on somebody else’s dime. Regarding who “pays” for free housing, really no one pays for it. It is a matter of not enforcing that all of the homes which are currently available, couldn’t be occupied by those who need them. Regarding food, it would for instance come down, to no longer enforcing the insanity that say 40% of food must be thrown away; that it couldn’t for instance be given away. The reason why it isn’t given away is because that would establish a precedent of basic socialism, that the ruling class simply can’t abide by.

The only way you would somehow “pay” for it, would be if the way you made your living, was effectively enslaving others, or denying them the basic rights to life.

“Clearly, owner vs. worker is not as simple as you state. The owner, for example, will have to supply (pay for) the building and materials.”

I don’t see how that would apply if the building already existed. Or for instance, in simply owning a piece of land; all ownership does is effectively keep other people off it. Talking about the owner, and worker division, let’s merely take Amazon. Bezos simply by owning it, makes an amount of money vastly disproportional to the amount of value he puts in by simply owning it. In truth the ongoing value is produced by all of the workers who keep the operation going on a day by day basis. The mere act of “owning” something produces no value in itself, is what I’m getting at here, especially in proportion to how much one makes from that, compared to how little a worker makes who is doing the actual hard labor of keeping the operation in business.

“The product (profit) is not free to the owner, as you state. The owner can lose money in the process.”

The profit is free to the degree that it is being produced by workers and not through the action of ownership itself. Just because the owner can lose money, doesn’t mean they are putting in any hard labor. All that they are doing is taking on risk. Risk of what, you may ask? Risking that they may lose all their capital, and effectively become a worker forced to sell their labor to survive!

What produces gulags is authoritarianism, dictatorship. Also, given what workers are submitted to in Amazon factories, you would be lying very deeply to yourself to say it was much better than a Stalinist gulag. Indeed; what America has is authoritarian dictatorship in the workplace. There is really no arguing against that.

G TOD SLONE: My doctoral degree is in Canadian Studies. It cost me $75 because I was teaching at the university (in the system). And I did not really know what I wanted to do at the time. My boss made the suggestion, so I went for it.
Getting paid for writing and/or painting et al is fine. But to write and/or paint et al in an effort to get money is NOT fine… at least to me… because it limits what one can write and/or paint et al… in accord with the capitalist/government money distributors. There’s a big difference.
And again NEVER did I write… that being a professor was somehow hard labor. It is NOT. And I have been critical openly of the professors.
And again NEVER did I write… that my “notion that true writers actually work jobs that have nothing to do with writing because writing isn’t real work makes not one iota of sense.” That makes no sense.
What I stated was that rather than becoming a paid writer lackey, work at a McDos and write hard truths while doing so, the kind that writer lackeys do not write. But you want to become a writer lackey.  That’s your choice, certainly not mine…

A SCOTT BUCH: I agree with you mostly here. Except I’m obviously against being a “writer lackey,” so that is the part I don’t get.

And I disagree that being a professor isn’t labor. Of course it is.

G TOD SLONE: The obvious norm is: criticize the boss (e.g. college president) and the ladder is taken away (e.g., tenure). Chomsky not only got tenure but also emeritus, which essentially is a designation for those who have kissed their boss’s arses… or at best never questioned and challenged them. Chomsky is certainly NOT perfect. You seem to adore him as a god.

A SCOTT BUCH: I’m simply defending a figure who seems to be getting unfair criticism. If you had concrete evidence to point to, I wouldn’t try to deny that. What I’m pushing back against is the intellectually dishonest way you are making an assumption with no concrete evidence.

G TOD SLONE: What essay? You did not send it, unless you’re talking about the one I rejected.
Well, I agree with what your Graeber wrote! I’ve also written. Et alors?
Assange. There are others out there who deserve attention, but aren’t getting it. Just Assange. Why not do a little research and also evoke others. Otherwise, it sounds like Assange, Assange-gate, as in Russia, Russia-gate.

A SCOTT BUCH: It was the proposed first paragraphs of an essay I sent in the email of Jan 13 at 10:04 AM, called “Essay Pitch to the The American Dissident.” The title: “Subjective Power Is An Objective Ruling, Autocracy Is Democracy, Arrogance Is Truth.” You have still been arguing with me through that exact email chain.

I said I’d write it for $12 and a contributors copy, which seems to be the part you reacted most strongly against. That’s why I sent a follow up email, saying the issue of payment aside, what are your thoughts on the content of the actual essay. And furthermore, what I sent you of some proposed paragraphs, I have now completed.

So other than going berserk over the idea that a writer might ask for compensation for their work, you didn’t clearly reject that essay merely on its merits as a literary piece.

And then you would reject the idea of a story on Assange, because apparently he seems to get too much coverage? Okay, where are the publications which seem to be writing so much about him? Who are these other figures who are the ones who should be written about other than Assange?

G TOD SLONE: Work tends to be something that one would NOT do unless getting paid for doing it. Thus, when I write, that is not work. When I garden, that is not work. But when I shingle the house, that is work because I am getting paid indirectly by doing it myself rather than having to pay someone else to do it.
Would I be a French professor w/o getting paid? No. And when I was a French professor, I was openly critical of the faculty. For that, the ladder was taken away. And I’d have it no other way…

A SCOTT BUCH: Nonsense.

G TOD SLONE: Rather than Assange Assange, why not find someone less famous to write about? Menzies of Rebel News, for example, was just arrested in Canada for asking a socialist hack a simple question. It’s on video. So, the hack in question cannot worm out of it!

A SCOTT BUCH: Someone less famous? So was this Rebel News hack of yours, imprisoned in Belmarsh Prison, where they are currently languishing, and have been languishing there for 1746 days as of the date of this email?

(Final Part)

G TOD SLONE: BUT absence of hierarchy, as I pointed out, is definitely LESS natural (perhaps even nonexistent) in the animal world! Again, ideology always takes precedent over reality, which is why I tend NOT to be an ideologue.

BIG Gov is demanding I pay for it!
Now, it doesn’t get any more absurd (ideological) than your statement: “Regarding who “pays” for free housing, really no one pays for it.”  
Your “basic socialism” is always a road to a class of wealthy elites, a class of paupers, and enhanced free-expression restrictions. The Soviet gulag serves as an example of your “basic socialism.”  
Now, you’ve reached the point of insanity by stating: “Also, given what workers are submitted to in Amazon factories, you would be lying very deeply to yourself to say it was much better than a Stalinist gulag.”

By “writer lackey,” I of course mean a writer who dares not question and challenge the very hands that feed him!
The concrete evidence that I have is my experience, something you apparently lack. Chomsky seems to be a socialist of the nomenklatura, of course.

“Going beserk”? I don’t go beserk. Perhaps you also have a certain expertise in psychological projection? Regarding that essay clip, perhaps I responded, as in where the personal experience?
As for Assange coverage, try Google. Do you know about Google? Also, I provided an example of somebody else, who does not get much coverage. Did you simply ignore it? How about you, as an example? Nope.

Your response is “nonsense”!

A “hack” of mine? No. I just provided alt-possibility. How the hell did you turn that into a “hack” of mine? Mind-numbing indeed. BUT thus is the m.o. of ideologues…

A SCOTT BUCH: If arbitrary lines must eventually be drawn—and you’ve certainly drawn yours—then this is where I end the saga. Within one consolidated piece of writing, I provide here my rebuttal of your recent remarks.

Starting with the subjects of hierarchy and the natural world, I’ll begin by again noting how throughout your arguments, you are always very concerned about the problem of ideology, and yet the great irony of this is of course, in how ideological you in fact are. To answer to what you say about hierarchy, the natural world, and claiming not to be an ideologue, I must suggest again that you aren’t a very good reader. And that you don’t argue at least in this debate, from a good faith position of attempting to reach what the truth is. You have a very strong bias, an ideological bias, and it prevents you from really engaging with what your opponent is saying. You also often do not have a very solid basis for your arguments, and when they fall apart, you flee from these in knowing your mistake but not owning up to it. This is clear within the whole of this debate, where you started out claiming your rejection of my essay had objective criteria but later admitting it was totally subjective. You even laughed at the idea that a rejection could ever be objective. This is a notion that I demonstrated is against what Orwell would have said about art in the second essay I composed, “Subjective Power Is An Objective Ruling, Autocracy Is Democracy, Arrogance Is Truth.”

I’ve stated regarding hierarchy and non-hierarchy, that it isn’t that one is more natural than the other, but that human animals have the capacity for both. You get my argument regarding this completely wrong, I assume because you aren’t paying all that much attention to the actual details of the debate. I give you scientific evidence from the notable work Mutual Aid, by Peter Kroptkin, that makes a case for the existence of cooperation in nature. It is an ideologically fictitious idea that nature is a field of total competition and hierarchy, and that on the contrary, it’s very obvious, at least especially in the case of humans, that our capacity to work together cooperatively, is a major if not the major factor in our being able to thrive so much on this planet, to evolve and survive. One of the most obvious aspects of this written debate between us, if one was to read it from start to finish and assess it as a whole, would probably be to see the demonstrable irony in your claim to be against ideology, when you are in fact an extremely ideological person. Your inability to really engage with the points of the debate on hierarchy, and anarchism, demonstrates that you simply start from the premise that you are correct, and this is the opposite of using reason.

When you talk about “BIG Government,” this makes me laugh. It’s a good example of you being ideological, because this is one of those ideological phrases akin to “woke,” which one sees all over within conservative, reactionary and far-right ideology. When I first noticed you used terms like “CRT” and “woke,” in your essays and letters, this was the first red flag to me as to the reality of your ideological nature. Take your denial that working conditions in the United States, say, in an Amazon warehouse, are barely better than in a Stalinist gulag. This is another extraordinary example. You refer to the idea that workers in an Amazon factory are hyper-exploited and submitted to brutal authoritarianism, as “insanity.” As if this was absurdly false. How familiar are you with how dictatorial and authoritarian the working conditions are in an Amazon factory? It would appear not at all. And that it would reveal an incredible ideological blind spot of yours, also betrays the ridiculousness of the idea that what you embody is real political dissidence. In point of fact, based on your predilections, it seems clear that what you are rather than a political dissident, is a political reactionary. As you champion a reactionary, far-right news outlet such as Rebel News—that, I’m going to assume got into speech trouble for using racial slurs and bullying trans people—over the ongoing situation of the torture of Julian Assange, really reveals the absurdity that you take a position favorable to freedom and democracy in the protection of free speech. Rather you would appear to be under the delusion that the real political horrors in western countries today consist in the inability of folks to freely use racial slurs and bully trans people, rather than in the concrete authoritarian reality of immense political oppression and economic inequality, as in say, the totalitarian nightmare of working in an Amazon factory. What an absurdity is the position that goes berserk over the problem of compelled speech, while giving not one iota of a fuck for the fact of compelled labor!

People spend most of their lives working, thus the degree to which a people are free at work, is a strong measure of the degree to which they are free in general. In the United States, in the workplace, people must submit to conditions which are no different than that of a dictatorship. They must do what they’re told, be under constant surveillance, and suffer consequences that make them unemployed or homeless, if they would resist this coercion. It would appear for you, it’s enough to simply muse on the authoritarian problems of countries you’ve never been to, or, which as in the case of the Soviet Union, don’t even exist anymore, rather than look at the true economic authoritarianism which exists in the liberal “democracies.” You are victim or perpetrator of an obscurity here by being under or propagating the quixotic delusion that where the real risk to political freedom consists is in somehow not being able to use racial slurs freely anymore or to bully minority groups like trans people. An ideological reactionary position that is also utterly out of touch with reality, it obscures the fact of real authoritarianism in exaggerating the fact of political correctness to be some kind of totalitarian imposition, when compared to what freedom of the press is truly meant to protect, and that is speech the nature of which Julian Assange is being tortured for at this very second. That you would consider Assange somehow “too famous,” to be concerned about, really betrays in the most disgusting way, an immense narcissism, and again delusion as to which problems are really authoritarian impositions we must resist, and which others are mere ideological and propagandistic hysterics over political correctness meant to galvanize the forces of reaction. Reactionaries aren’t dissidents, because they don’t resist the status quo; in fact, they act to keep the status quo precisely the way that it is.

I can expect there is a high chance that you won’t even be reading past this point, but it doesn’t matter because when this literary debate between us is published in full, an audience or reader can certainly make up their own minds as to whether or not they think I am really verbose or unclear; and whether or not you really come from a place of reason, or in fact are a strong reactionary ideologue. For now I will address what you say about challenging authority, in the context of criticizing Noam Chomsky. As I have said before in this debate, what you advocate for, say compared to Chomsky, or David Graeber, or indeed Assange, has no universal relevance beyond your narcissistic bubble. Your method of challenging authority doesn’t get anywhere, and you wouldn’t even try to argue that it did. This becomes especially most absurd when you consider how much you vigorously try to argue as if you were correct. This vigor would seem to benefit only yourself and the delusion one would need to develop around themselves if they thought they had a monopoly on important values such as truth and democracy. Chomsky’s dissidence, Assange’s dissidence, Graeber’s dissidence, is inspiring, positive, and has the potential to push the world forward in a desired direction. Yours it goes without saying, not only doesn’t have this quality, but in fact, has opposite qualities I would say, in having the capacity to cause more chaos, more division, and ultimately—as I finally come to assert in a penultimate analysis—serves the forces of reaction. It serves the forces not of dissidence or democracy, but of reactionary politics.

Google doesn’t cover stories. Google isn’t a publication but a search engine. This is technology 101. You might be trapped in the past, say one decade ago, when everyone was writing about Assange, but they aren’t anymore. And they especially haven’t been since he was captured and placed in solitary confinement back in 2019. Regarding the problem of freedom of speech; there is really no story more critical to that value right now than in what is happening to Julian Assange. His case more than any other in the history of press freedoms has the capacity to define how this essential right is treated in the west going forward. Your ignorance of this subject is staggering and again goes back to how your definition of democracy and freedom of speech seems to hinge on the reactionary hysterics regarding political correctness, and not on the concrete essential right and need for a press to be able to tell the truth about the status quo pertaining to something so hugely critical as the capacity to reveal horrors of the state such as war crimes.

To think that I would listen to the suggestion to cover a far-right media establishment like Rebel News over a truly courageous hero in the history of press freedom and political dissidence, Julian Assange. To me I would say it seems clear you now reject my submissions and pitches purely arbitrarily, say out of not liking me, or my political position, and not even attempting to go for a pretense of having assessed my work on its own merit. This brings this all back around to what started this debate in the first place. You rejected an essay I wrote, and I attempted to get you to justify why you had on objective grounds. You later admitted your process is not objective. Much of the substance of this debate I would say, centers around the attempt to demonstrate the ways in which you are ideological and autocratic, thus demonstrating hypocrisy in claiming to value truth and democracy. Lastly, were your hero Thoreau to be around today, a proto-anarchist, I do wonder what his opinion would be on you, and your work. I do wonder how he would feel about you quoting him all the time, and claiming to really live up to what he established with his life. You always claim that you have so much experience fighting “the system,” but based on how you’ve come across in this situation with me, portraying me as if I was “the system” in some way, or that I am the ideological one, I think does speak to a profound inability to really see things as they are, or to be able to put what is truly a political problem into perspective. You would reverse it that I am the one who should be under the microscope regarding dissidence simply because an anarchist has come along to reveal your position of claiming to value truth and democracy to be a sham, and to show in a prolonged literary debate strong evidence for your being a hidden ideological autocrat who demonstrates far more arrogance than courage, and certainly not the same kind of courage exhibited by say a real hero of freedom of speech, such as Julian Assange.

Though I can’t expect you will simply accept to end this saga here, as I am now doing—and nor do I also think you will take the time to really read what I have written here, and attend to everything I have written—I must draw the line somewhere. I ultimately think it is very much human nature to care more about appearing right, than necessarily being right, as in valuing the truth. Just as the way hierarchy is deeply ingrained in our potential for behavior; this is too. But that doesn’t mean that we are trapped in this sole dysfunctional way of doing things. To really value the truth means to take the time to engage with all the relevant facts and to be able to reassess our position when it seems we have gotten something wrong. And indeed, to admit when we were wrong. You have never been able to act like that here with me.

You say that in challenging your authority, I didn’t risk that you wouldn’t publish me on into the future. But I think that is fairly clearly a lie. You are as prone to personal prejudice as any editor that would make the subjective decision not to publish your work out of not liking you or finding your work falls outside the focus of their journals. Your rejections carried with them as much non-response and predilection as any establishment editor. Therefore, and especially, because, you offer no benefit at all in writing for your publication—certainly not truth; because you show yourself to be an extremely ideological guy—there is no reason to continue communications with you.

While I would of course always stand up for your freedom of speech, I would not make any arguments in favor of your general character. I think you are, in my humble opinion, arrogant and autocratic, two traits that I see as being the opposite of truth and democracy. Your literary predilections tend to the capricious, and this wouldn’t be a problem, were you not claiming to be a publisher of material to do with democracy and dissidence. In closing, I will quote a real hero of freedom of the press: “You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon a lie or ignorance can’t lead to a good conclusion.” —Julian Assange