I have been given wise advice by several internet savvy folks. “Allow unrestricted comments on your blog and you will have more readers,” they tell me. I think I’ll pass, again.

I don’t want comments on my blog. I think about what I write before I write it. Anyone can send me an e-mail in rebuttal, but as far as a public rebuttal, let them do so on their own blog. I will not allow my blog to devolve into vulgar, vicious name calling. I am shocked every time I go to a comments section on Politico or some other widely read site, and more than dismayed at how quickly things deteriorate to the lowest common denominator. Were the lowest commoness a tone, it would ring in at about 15 hertz. I can’t hear that. It’s just as well.

“But those people who do that are just trolls,” it was suggested back to me. “No one pays them any attention.”

I do. And I don’t like them or what they post, nor do I want to constantly monitor my own blog posts to remove the excesses of trolls. Nor will I defend my own writing on my own blog. One of the wonderful things about the written word is that it does not change in the face of an argument. One’s opinion may change over time, but the written word stands all abuses and never waivers from what it said.

I don’t doubt that there are many times that folks think I don’t know what I am talking about; occasionally I am inclined to agree with them. I make up my own facts as I go along, but do so with a warning to the reader. Everyone’s got their own unassailable facts anyway, so why not just invent them when you can’t seem to locate the ones you are looking for? Facts never got in the way of a good argument, or sales pitch.

No one is willing to be persuaded anymore. Everyone is as sure an expert as the Ph.D.’d expert speculating on the nightly news shows about all he things that they don’t know for sure…I suppose that’s a benefit of their training and education…to be allowed to have their speculations taken credibly. I can speculate nearly as well as anyone and my speculations are just about as accurate as anyone’s, too; of course, I am speculating about that. I like to be persuaded. I can be; you just have to be a good persuader. Calling me obscene names never helps to persuade me of anything but your boorishness.

If your goal is to rebut what I’ve written, then write your own blog. If your goal is to disprove what I’ve written, then you need some direction in life since a lot of what I write is fictionalized narrative, which needs no disproval, nor approval. All it takes to write your own blog is your time, and I have found it extremely helpful to have something to say. The reader will determine if anything here is worthwhile, though it sure felt worthwhile while I was writing it.

If you do undertake to write your own blog then you, too, can be rebutted at the leisure of others. Everyone has an opinion.

Me, too. Mine is posted here.

©2014 Mississippi Chris Sharp