Thomas Wictor

I’m a toad. Like the poet Stephen Crane.

Social media is the playpen of mental patients. Today someone who followed me on Twitter sent me this.

You can tell a lot about people by what they find attractive.

Sinister, mannered, bitter, hostile, grim, pompous old men don’t do it for me.

Denise A. Rubin and I had an exchange.

Do you remember this?

In my opinion, the president didn’t “ridicule the handicapped.” He used the language of most able-bodied people, without stopping to think about how it would impact those who are handicapped or have handicapped relatives. Nearly all of the pious outrage was phony. Partisans who were predisposed to hate the president seized on this comment the way those predisposed to hate Donald Trump claim that he “ridiculed the handicapped.”

Both groups are arguing in bad faith.

Toad doesn’t like to be insulted

My exchange with Denise A. Rubin continued.

She was a big fan when I was defending Israel and Jewish people every day. Now? Not so much. This has happened to me several time since the end of the Gaza war on August 26, 2014.

But you know what? The terrorists didn’t go away. I think Israelis and Jewish people should be aware of the price I paid and continue to pay.

Toad is a marked man

The Islamic State has threatened to kill me multiple times. I’ll bet you any amount of money that Denise A. Rubin has never had to report terrorist death threats to the FBI. Terrorists also threaten people associated with me. I now carry firearms with me at all times. Whenever I leave my house, I pause and listen, making sure that nobody is in the bushes. I stop thinking about being killed by terrorists only when I’m asleep.

Then I dream about it.

What makes the Islamic State threat so pernicious is that all they need to do is have a lone wolf come after me. He doesn’t even have to be a Muslim. There’s no defense against bloodthirsty lunatics, especially if they’re suicidal. The only reason I continue with what I do is that I’m already seventh-eighths out the door. My guns aren’t to save my life; they’re to take as many of the bastards with me as I can.

So when Jewish people call me a fascist because I disagree with them politically, I can’t help feeling a bit…resentful. I didn’t sign up to be murdered. Not only that, an Israeli bilked me out of a gigantic sum of money by telling me he’d make a documentary about Ismail Bakr, Mohammed Bakr, Ahed Bakr, and Zakaria Bakr, slaughtered by Hamas in order to frame the IDF.

Toad once loved a hippie

In 1999 I lost my heart to a hippie.

She thought Al Gore was a deity. We disagreed on literally everything.

It didn’t matter. Neither of us were threatened by dissent, and neither of us wanted to convert others to our way of thinking. We talked about music, art, hang gliding, dance (she was a ballerina), travel, absurdity, films, food, the future…

It could be that in the US, the era of respectful disagreement is over. That’s fine. If we choose to become a moronic failed culture, there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t actually care. My heart is with the Arab League strategic special operators removing extremely evil people from this plane of existence. I’ve been lucky enough to speak to some of them. Words can’t express my admiration.

Although these men and I disagree on a lot, their actions create in me a huge reservoir of goodwill. That may be another concept that’s vanished from our culture. It seems that we live in the present. Every morning we wake up with amnesia, having put out of our minds what someone did to make things better for us.

Toad could’ve continued hating

Like Bill Moyers, Denise A. Rubin hates people who disagree with her. She feels white-hot loathing. I was once a creature of pure hate. Unlike Denise A. Rubin, I didn’t hate dissent. I hated life, humanity, happiness, love—everything that was denied to me. It took incurable illness to make me stop hating.

Recently I rediscovered the progressive-rock band Yes. Here’s a clip from the song “Close to the Edge.”

It’s got a great lyric.

I crucified my hate and held the world within my hand.

This actually works. When you stop hating, the world becomes accessible. Hate is a set of chains that bind you. A life spent hating is a life wasted.

Toad doesn’t want contact

There’s no other way to say this: I’m in a different realm. When you call me a fascist because I’m not in love with a ridiculous, alien assemblage that goes on TV and makes promises that it will never leep, it just makes me regard you as an imbecile. And in actual fact, you are an imbecile. You’re not supposed to fall in love with politicians.

It’s said that the closest thing to love is hate. I agree. People inclined to feel mad passion for an illusion are not the most stable of individuals.

Tracey Ullman once did a sketch in which she introduced her pals to her new boyfriend Lenny, who she says is Mr. Right, the perfect man.

After listening to Tracey go on and on about how wonderful Lenny is, someone finally works up the courage to confront the truth.

“Um, Tracey, he’s made of wood.”

“DON’T EVER SAY THAT!” she screams.

Politicians are made of wood, Denise. And check this out. Here you are.

And here’s the ringleader of the pro-Hamas degenerates who harassed me without letup in 2014.

You’ve become what you hate, Denise. You and that Hamas groupie are twins.

Toad learned a lot

This is where I went after the Gaza war ended.

I had to be filled with morphine to stop the gastritis attack.

That’s never going to happen again. My parents are already dead, I don’t get involved with fake book publicists or filmmakers anymore, and now I instantly write off people who are beyond redemption. I never give anyone a second chance. In that way, I’m not like Israelis. It’s true that the Israeli approach is more constructive.

But as I said, my heart is with the Arab League strategic special operators. They don’t agonize over what has to be done. But they also don’t hate. They’re businesslike, as is one of my heroes, Saint Michael the Archangel.

Saint Michael the Archangel destroys. He does so because destruction is often the only answer.

Even a toad knows that.