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T'ruth

T'ruth turns out once again to be not only a character in a Cordwainer Smith story, but also stranger than fiction. The kind of fiction that critics slag off as 'a jejune imitation of Tom Sharpe' or "leaden-handed satire" with "one-dimensional puppets in lieu of characters and Narrativium-driven clockwork in lieu of a plot".

The Dramatis personæ features one Steven Best. The curtain rises to reveal him issuing Existential Threats, as befits an Associate Professor of Philosophy at U. Tex. El Paso. Specifically, Best moonlights as an animal-rights activist who will not be having with legal pettifoggery given the urgency of his righteous cause, and holds that valid arguments for changing the minds of animal abusers include the tactics pioneered by forced-birthers against gynecologists... fire-bombs, intimidation and bullet-related harassment. Here 'animal abuser' is a term of art covering anyone who is not a vegan.

Let every motherfucker who shoots animals be shot; Let every motherfucker who poisons animals be injected with a barrel of battery acid; Let every motherfucking vivisector be vivisected and thrown away like the shit they are [...] May this upside down world be set right … and the human voice never again be heard.

Upside-down World here

Understandably, Best does not care to imperil his liberty or his tenure by delivering any of these arguments face-to-face, and prefers to recruit others for this purpose, confining his own direct involvement to the rhetorical battlefield.

The task of personally harassing the names on Best's little list has previously devolved to Camille Marino, best described as a 'borderline case', an erstwhile merchant banker with a strong resemblance to a Bizarro-World Cruella de Vil. Like Best, she is happier imagining violence against targets and their children -- very happy indeed! -- but she has been willing to get her hands dirty as far as delivering her threats by various means, and distributing the targets' home addresses and contact details, eventually serving jail time for breaching snuff-fantasy-related restraining orders. She has her own SPLC hate-group entry and is a person of interest to the Encyclopedia Dramatica.

All together now:

"Restraining order, restraining order

He took out a restraining order on me"

And she sang as she sat there waiting while his bunny boiled

"He took out a restraining order on me."

Best's Enemies List includes non-violent animal advocates who agree with his goals but not his methods: He describes them as “a cancer to be CUT OUT of this movement ENTIRELY, no compromise, no negotiation, no kumbaya, dead and gone”… and “traitorous individuals and organizations who identify and collaborate with exploiters and cops over the exploited and militants in the animal advocacy movement”.

Then karma ran over his dogma. In a recent object lesson about the double-edgedness of a sword, and the potential fate awaiting those who live by it, Best has now taken out his own restraining order against Ms Marino. Apparently she defaced his Facebook page and harassed him with intimidatory messages until he fears for his safety. Is it any wonder that the joke's an iron, and the joke's on him?

"Squalor and sordor, restraining order,
Who’ll slather on Estee Lauder with me?"
And she sang as she sat there, watching while his bunny boiled,
"He took out a restraining order on me."

As well as accusing Marino of 'legendary substance abuse' and misuse of a firearm in his petition for the R.O., Best cites her previous campaign against Donal O'Leary as proof of her serial-stalking proclivity, excessive Drama, and potential for violence. He does not mention his own collaboration and encouragement of that campaign.

In closing,

She has always talked about killing herself, and that she would "take someone out with her"; I now fear that person will not be a medical researcher/vivesector she loathes so intensely, but rather me.

"Guarding the border, restraining order,
Who’ll come a-marching to Mordor with me?"

And she sang as she sat there, watching while his bunny boiled,
"He took out a restraining order on me."

If this were a Keats-and-Chapman story, Keats would now observe that Best has been hoist on his own /b/tard.