Bye, Bye Medium, A Retrospective (Part 3, 2021–2023 /The End)
I’m leaving for Substack because my heart-based perspective is, apparently, out of alignment with Medium’s perspective
I’m leaving for Substack because my heart-based perspective is, apparently, out of alignment with Medium’s perspective
Intro: I’m A Lover, Not a Fighter (Or, We Are All Unique Equals, Deserving of Love and How I’ve Shared This Perspective Over the Years)
For as long as I could make words with my mouth or fingers, I’ve used that skill to stir things up. No, not in an aggressive way — I’m much more Lover than Warrior — but in a way that can, indeed, cause people in positions of power to feel threatened by me.
Especially when the person wearing the Suit of Power is in that position for all the wrong reasons. Such reasons include many aspects, but I’d suggest they can usually be boiled down to one thing: Identifying with the ego and its false belief of “I’m not just different from you, I’m better than you.” This is what Australian Indigenous scholar Tyson Yunkaporta, in his book Sand Talk, calls the “first evil thought,” which is “that original sin of placing yourself above the land or above other people.”
I’m not better than you; you’re not better than me; we are unique equals, each and all deserving of love.
You see, now that I’m on the precipice of my 51st birthday, I’ve grown in all sorts of ways, but one thing has been consistent in my life: I’ll speak up for “the little guy.”
By the time I was a teenager in the late 1980s in the Seattle area of the United States, I began to start seriously questioning the nature of the government I then lived under. By my high school years, I was writing articles in my high school newspaper about how horrified I was by the actions of the U.S. government in Iraq under the first President Bush.
Then, right after 9/11 in 2001 and under the second President Bush, my speaking up got me into a bit of trouble at the office. After our boss told us we weren’t allowed to “talk” about politics in the office (mostly because my comments were riling people up because they weren’t aligned with the general sentiment of “let’s kill the bastards that did this to us!”), I wrote an essay that I put on the corner of my desk for anyone to take.
In that essay, I questioned President Bush’s notion that there were “evildoers” that “hate our freedoms” and suggested that, at our core, humans were the same everyone: we all want to live safely and happily and do what we can to provide such a life for our loved ones, and, on a more base level, we all eat, sleep, fuck, poop and pee.
Isn’t it odd how seeing our core humanity — and speaking up for it — can make us a threat to the System?
A few years later, I joined millions around the world in the leadup to the second Iraq War in late winter 2003, marching against the Bush Administration’s dangerous notion of “preemptive war,” where a government could merely claim that an “enemy” meant them harm and then be justified to attack them before the “enemy” acted on that perceived intent.
(An aside: Please don’t get me wrong when I put enemy in quotes. I recognize that most people, including those in positions of power, earnestly believe there is an enemy. I earnestly believe there isn’t, so I must put the concept in quotes to share my perspective, and I stop to point this out because believing there is an enemy is connected to this dangerous “I’m better than” notion. I believe that if we, as a species, stop believing in enemies, we might, a century later, truly bring that Promise of World War I: “the war to end all wars.”)
Over the next decade, I wrote a long-but-not-wordy, Big-Idea novel set during that critical era in US history of 2001–2003, raising many of my concerns from my love-of-humanity perspective.
And finally, over the past several years, I’ve done everything I could to talk (and write) off the ledge people of all political persuasions their contribution to what seems to be a brewing American “civil war.”
“What’s so civil about war, anyway” — late 20th Century American prophet.
My sense of what 2024 — and the several years after it — is looking like tells me that my work is far from done.
In fact, if I held a place of judgment for my actions over the past few years, it’s that I haven’t done enough, that after a great start to my blogging and podcasting career in 2020, halfway through that year I withdrew, and, despite intentions to get things going again, the next three years have had, for various reasons, many more stops than goes on this journey.
All that said, there are some reasons why I stopped, which this, my last official “For Medium Only” blog post of this five-year journey on this platform, will attempt to address while also sharing some links to stories that may not be so related.
Why I Slowed Up My Writing Here, Why I’m Leaving
You see, a strange thing happened over the past several years. I believe my social media record — -not just my blog posts and podcasts, but the many interactions I’ve had on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and various messaging services — is clear and convincing evidence that, even when I sometimes felt myself out of my head with frustration or anger, I’ve remained focused on and dedicated to a heart-based perspective.
That perspective had, over the years, always won me more liberal friends than conservative ones, but thinking about it now, I think that may have been more of a reflection of shared interests than shared values. I say this because not only have I had some very dear conservative friends in my life who have loved me despite our different political perspectives but because, over the past several years, I watched in wonder — and often sorrow — as many of my former liberal pals started to turn on me.
Some of that turning on me was based on legitimate critiques of my perspective, which I always do my best to remain open to. However, some were critiquing a strawman version of me, and all too often, their critique turned into hatred.
Those fractures in my relationships were hard enough.
But what made things harder, and what has led me to decide to move on from Medium, is, unfortunately, the policies and behaviors of Big Tech companies began to reinforce this divisive, and yes, sometimes hateful, worldview that my liberal friends were projecting onto me — usually all in the name of safety and protection, mind you — and well, it put me into a conundrum: How can I keep writing/speaking from the heart and hopefully building my blog when to do so might lead to that very blog being canceled?
Or worse, threatened with legal action, such as what’s happening to the hilarious and astute satirist C.J. Hopkins, a fellow Yankee expat based not in Japan but in another Axis nation, Germany? (CJ’s “Consent Factory” has been required reading for me since I discovered it in spring 2021 through one of my favorite current-events writers, Matt Taibbi. I podcasted about it then.)
Hell, if what’s happening to CJ is any indication of where things could be going, even writing those sentences that way, were I to live in Germany or, God forbid, were the Japanese to ally themselves with the Germans again, could get me into trouble.
For those unaware, I’ll share the nitty gritty: CJ published a collection of the essays he wrote during the COVID-19 years, which he called “The Rise of the New Normal Reich” and which, like me, are consistent with his lifelong values of speaking up for a humane world and against fascism. In those essays, he made comparisons of the modern New Normal Era German government with their World War II Era fascist Nazi predecessors.
His intent was obvious: to fight fascism in all of its guises, yet the state of Germany in their infantile wisdom — “Hey, Bryan, babies have wisdom! Leave dem babies alone!”—well, that German government is prosecuting Hopkins for precisely the opposite of what he did, claiming he broke the law against “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.”
As I understand it, his trial begins in early 2024, and he could end up serving time or paying a hefty fine. Of course, he’s already “served” — i.e. wasted — time fighting these absurd charges, securing legal representation, writing about this enraging situation straight out of Kafka, and losing sleep.
Bringing this back to my concerns about Big Tech companies aligning themselves with governments, before the German government prosecuted Hopkins, in the fall of 2022, Amazon banned his collection of New Normal essays in Germany, Holland, and the Netherlands.
Strike One Against Me From Medium: Sharing My Outrage About the Way the Government/Media Restricted Information in 2021
So, what happened to me on Medium is not nearly as extreme as what happened to CJ.
What happened, you ask?
Well, first and foremost, Medium removed a blog post I wrote in June 2021 about my frustration that governments of the world, including Japan, were promoting only one solution to COVID-19 (“vaccines”) and not allowing others, such as ivermectin.
Now, reading over this June 2021 blog post (which, as of this writing, unfortunately, you, dear reader, are not considered strong or wise enough to read yourself because it’s still banned), well, I will admit I may have been a bit too certain in my language. Still, in trying to understand exactly what policy I violated and where in my post I violated it, Medium was less than forthcoming, so I’m only guessing here in my attempt to steelman their perspective.
However, I was, by no means, writing with the intent to “promote pseudoscience, disinformation, or other content that is contrary to public health or safety,” the policy I believe they feel I violated. Oh, sure, my perspective was contrary to the policies of those in charge of public health or safety,” but that’s not the same thing as being “contrary to public health or safety.”
No, I was sharing information that, if the person reading it wanted to, might have followed up on and protected both their health and the public’s health.
In addition, from where I sit here at the end of 2023, the public health officials and the Rachel Maddows and Stephen Colberts of the world did a heck of lot more spreading of dangerous medical misinformation in 2021 than I ever dreamed of. Yet, the Big Tech companies have yet to come down hard on any of them.
As someone who chose not to get any COVID-19 medical treatments, I can say that the government/media/Big Tech campaigns of 2021 that this video reminded us of were extremely painful for me and, yes, did contribute significantly to some challenging mental (and physical) health issues I went through in 2021.
Medium, why don’t you care to protect me (and people like me), as you claim you are saving others from me?
Or, as I asked that boss back in September 2001 who yelled at me, “why do you care?” when he wouldn’t let me share my loving perspective that Arabs were people too and we shouldn’t “bomb them back to the stone age,” “Why don’t you care?”
In short, folks, and this is the crucial point here, from my lifelong, heart-centered perspective, the public health response and the many people who took to social media to shame, bully, and chastise those of us who questioned that response have very little heart. Thus, when they claim that they are motivated by care, well, that’s just not how it feels to me.
I wouldn’t have spent so much time on this if I felt like this issue was in our past. Unfortunately, this topic of top-down, one-size-fits-all public health impositions may be on pause, but it is far from over, judging by the World Health Organization’s proposed amendment to their 2005 International Health Regulations. In my read on them, it seems the people at the WHO believe the mistake they made in handling COVID-19 was that they didn’t go far enough in becoming single-minded and oppressive in their solutions to complex public health matters. (For a good breakdown of this topic, watch this video.)
To finish this section up, it strikes me that perhaps all this time I’ve spent trying to be thorough and broad-minded in sharing why I’m leaving Medium, well, it’s possible Medium will find something to nitpick in what I’ve shared, and, ironically, will ban this article, too.
Folks, I can’t write with that sort of metaphorical gun over my head.
Thus, bye, bye Medium, I hope you change, but I won’t be back any time soon because I’ll always fear that you’ll revert to your old, threatening ways.
Strike Two Against Me: Spreading Love In A Comment Section of a Popular Medium Writer’s Post
The second strike against me occurred in early 2023 when Medium removed a comment I made in the Comments Section of an article by Umair Hague where I was trying to get him to open his heart and broaden his perspective so that he could see authoritarianism is rising from both the liberal and conservative sides of the aisle.
Again, these experiences are nothing compared to what C.J. Hopkins is going through.
But here’s the thing: CJ is going through what I feared I would go through if I kept writing and speaking my true feelings and thoughts.
And folks, as a person who is just about a free-speech absolutist, I think if we’re going to work our way through this challenging era of human history, the only way we’re going to make it is if we‘re even more diligent in protecting the rights of everyone to speak, not less.
So, as a guy who has often written “I’m from the Left” (i.e., a classical liberal), well, seeing how the biggest threat to free speech over the past few years has come from my side of the aisle and how they have justified it using the very heart-based values I’ve been living — and demonstrating through my media — all these years, well, that’s been one of the biggest shocks and disappointments of my life.
But there it is. I see it, I’ve experienced it, and millions of others have, too. And I can’t unsee it, so again, bye, bye Medium.
Now, before I close this main part of this article and share a few links to some random articles I’ve written over the past few years that aren’t so related to this topic of why I’m leaving Medium (but are still good in their own right!), I want to be clear: I see serious problems from the conservative camp, too. I deliberately wrote that over the past few years the biggest threat to free speech has come from the liberal side of the aisle, but that doesn’t mean this will remain the case.
This is one of the problems with building new bureaucracies of power: if your side loses power, the other side now gets to run those systems for their purposes and will likely turn them on you.
Over the past few years in state governments and from conservative media, we’re already seeing conservative manifestations of the will to censor. In short, the liberals have been censoring “medical misinformation,” which can be loosely translated as “threats to our established position on COVID-19,” and those who have serious questions about things like Russia Gate and other Trump-related news (i.e., what happened before the 2020 presidential election with the Hunter Biden laptop story), while the conservatives have been calling for censorship about social justice issues they find threatening, which include transgender rights and the plight of the Palestinians.
(I’d bet there are more examples from the conservative side; I’m just not aware of them. Feel free to share them with me in the Comments or through my Contact Me links at the end of this article!).
This is one of the many reasons I think, no matter who claims the presidency going forward from 2025, authoritarianism, with all of its disrespect for us as unique equals, is a serious threat, and why I’m not going to invest myself in promoting any presidential candidate in my media work in the future.
Okay, this article turned out differently than I expected. Unlike the first and second articles in this “Bye, Bye Medium” series, it was less of a run-through of articles (with links) I wrote in the past three years. However, I’ve used it to hone in on why I’m leaving and am satisfied I’ve done that to the best of my ability. Hopefully, Medium (or a reader with censorious tendencies) can see my heart and the hard work I’ve done to write and speak as clearly and honestly as possible, and this post won’t get censored.
All of that said, for those interested, I’ve linked some of my favorite articles of the past few years with a brief description and, well, they cover a wide variety of topics, some unrelated to the hot-button issues I’ve been addressing here. Those topics include, but are not limited to: astrology, rock music, my love of trees and my biography.
Some of My Favorite Articles From 2021–2023, Pt 1: Why I Stopped Writing in 2023
I published 40 articles in these three years, and the following are 13 of my favorites. Picking them was not easy, and this was partly because I feel like I took very seriously my commitment to not “pollute the information ocean,” which I wrote about in my second-to-last post of my string of intended weekly posts in 2023 back in March. Thus, I stand by all of my articles.
Before I go on, I want to address why I didn’t fulfill that intention of one post per week in 2023. Well, folks, the long arm of the law busted into my bedroom on a lovely April morning — somehow, eight Japanese police officers fit into this 9-foot by 12-foot room, with five more out in the hall, ostensibly to prevent this dangerous “criminal” who had unintentionally run afoul of a gray area regarding ordering a medicine which had been helpful to me in my past in working with my very interesting neurochemistry — and, well, I was whisked away to a local jail for 45 days. To get released on bail, I had to say I wouldn’t fight the charges, and I wouldn’t speak/write publicly about the situation. (Now that I’m free on a suspended sentence, I’m free to speak and write about it, but I remain nervous doing so.)
That whole mindfuck of an episode led to the most severe case of writer’s constipation I’ve ever experienced, even “bleeding” into my ability to speak and think clearly as the hottest-in-history, always-muggy Japanese summer decided to stick around until early October.
So, if anyone is reading this and has wondered what happened and why I haven’t written about it publicly, there you go.
I plan to write one of my annual “What This Year Taught Me” posts and write more about that experience there in the next few days. Before I get to sharing some posts, the other big event of this year was losing my beloved father in early August after a two-year battle with a mysterious neurological condition that turned a previously perky, healthy mid-70s man into a zombie version of himself.
Those two events packed a serious punch so 2023 turned into a year of deep introversion and introspection. Fortunately, in late November, I prayed to the Universe to open me up to some of the energies I’d heard were now moving over the planet — I was skeptical! — hoping to get some of my spunk back. Well, the Universe has responded in spades, resulting in a December that will rank as one of my favorite months ever.
Okay, that’s enough — again, look out for the “What 2023 Taught Me” post in the next few days (or perhaps you’re reading this after it’s already been published, and you can click on the link I’ll put in that title there). For now, let’s get to my greatest hits from 2021–23.
Some of My Favorite Articles From 2021–2023, Pt 2: The Best of the Best
2021
I freakin’ love music, especially rock music. And I was blessed to be an 18-year-old college freshman in 1991, “Rock’s Last Great Fall,” when a bevy of albums that would become classics were released and shaped the sound of rock music in that decade. Hint: grunge! Plus, if you’re a person who likes to pass away an evening rabbit-holing with music, there are lots of excellent links in this one that will bring you back to the early 1990s. No flannel required, but you’d be extra cool if you wore it anyway.
Addiction has been a part of my life, and so has a lifelong connection to trees. Somehow, I managed to connect the two in this personal essay, “How Grieving Over Trees and Facing Addiction Gave Me New Life,” where I shared a personal story that gave me a new appreciation for the death/rebirth cycle that is everywhere in Mother Nature and the human experience.
June 2021, ah, how I don’t miss you. That was the month Medium banned my article and one of my dear college friends “put me on sleep” on Facebook, which I guess means blocking me and never speaking to me again because we had a different approach to what should be done regarding COVID-19. Regardless, I persisted, coming at the issue in the form of this short parable, “Kassandra and the Cure,” hoping that it might help those who were strongly pushing the “vaccines” to empathize with those of us who were on the other side of that ugly (and silly) debate.
If you want to get to know me better in a rapid, fun fashion, a friend inspired me to write “25, err, 30 Facts About Yours Truly,” and I’m glad he did because it was not only fun to write, it’s still fun for me to read.
Perhaps the 2021 post with the most potential for longevity, “The Two Questions I’d Ask Bill Gates,” is a creative way of diving into the topics of misinformation, so-called conspiracy theories, and my wish that media members would ask these mega-billionaires with designs to change the world about whether or not they ever work on their inner world, and why that answer matters.
2022
Speaking of my love for trees, sometimes the poet in me comes out, and in early 2022, I overheard somewhere the words “tremendous” and “trees mend us” and got inspired to write this poem, “Trees Mend Us.”
Since May 2019, almost every morning (even in jail!), I do a version of the Wim Hof Method, and in early 2022, I wrote three posts explaining my process, ending with this one, “How I Do the Wim Hof Method: Cold Exposure.” (At the top of it, you can find links to the first two in the series). It’s my honest-to-goodness belief that if the public health officials of our world spent more time sharing simple yet effective (and free!) ideas like the Wim Hof Method, well, COVID-19 never woulda happened. But hey — when the health care models are, like just about everything else, based on a growth-based profit system, the last thing I’d expect is for these captured-by-industry individuals to promote something that’s free!
Since I’m on my soapbox, I can’t resist sharing what is probably my favorite post of 2022, “The Value of Safety Third Vs. The Smothering Mother,” a personal reflection on why “safety third” creates stronger individuals and better societies in which I take on the rising authoritarianism-in-the-name-of-safety by sharing deeply about my life and tying it all in with some archetypal perspectives and, again, some love of music. This is the sort of post I plan to write in my upcoming Substack blog, “The Archetypal Lens.”
2023
On a cold mid-winter night, as I was about ready to turn in, I looked at YouTube for a video to listen to as I drifted off and, well, I found this reaction video from the always entertaining Justin Hawkins to a song — and artist — who simply took over my world. The result was a three-part deep dive into not only this song and how I saw it as a brilliant expression of the Native American concept of Wetiko but how watching reaction videos to it had reinvigorated my love for the diversity of humanity.
Ren Gill, brother, thank you. And thanks to everyone — including many members of the online community I’m involved in — who went along the journey of Ren with me in 2023.
That ride is far from over as Ren continues to push the boundaries in his music, videos, and how he speaks about extremely challenging cultural issues. My article, “Hi, Ren (The Full Series),” was only the tip of the iceberg but, according to Medium, is a 39-minute read and was described (accurately) on a Reddit channel for Ren as “a rather dense read fair warn, however, if you are a masochist with a split lip who loves to read I’d wager it worth a glance.”
LOL — -a labor of serious love, this series was inspired by recognizing just how hard Ren had worked, not only on his “Hi, Ren” song, but on being a productive, extremely positive, and profound member of society despite some debilitating health challenges.
Again, much love, Ren!
(Phew, that section alone almost clocked in at 39 minutes, time to wrap this sucker up!)
As I mentioned in the Ren section, the Native American concept of Wetiko is an extremely interesting and, IMHO, helpful one for understanding our times, so after the Ren piece, I decided to use the language of poetry to describe it in “What Wetiko Is and What We Can Be.”
Speaking of poetry, “Saturn in Pisces Poem” is an epic storytelling poem — with some of my first attempts creating AI art-generated images — using astrology archetypes to invite the reader into understanding Saturn’s three-year transit through the sign of Pisces. We’ve got two whole years left, folks; there’s still time to read this one!
It’s time for a shorter piece, eh? Request granted! “How Belief in Reincarnation Fuels My Love for Life” is a keeper.
And last but not least, to sort of bring my Medium blogging era full circle, I returned to politics in “My Many Minds About RFK Jr. For President,” suggesting that not only can’t I make my mind up about the fascinating-yet-sometimes-contradictory man and his run for president, I have no intention to in 2024. Vote for whoever you want to, my fellow Yanks; just remember to love each other as you do so!
And, on that note, thank you again to anyone who has read this piece all the way through and to anyone who has joined me at any time along my journey. I’ll catch up with you over on Substack, okay?
Thanks for reading! You can support me simply by sharing my stuff, by buying me a coffee, by linking to me on Twitter or Facebook by checking out my old blog, by listening to my podcast, The B&P Realm Podcast, or by reading my 2015 novel, “The Teacher and the Tree Man.” You can also find that book in full here, or broken down into four shorter books (book 1, book 2, book 3 and book 4) or you can listen to it for free.