The Mean Streak

I have a mean streak. I did not always have this mean streak in me. It has grown in me as I have dealt with a dishonest and crooked world. I have been fucked over more times than I can count, and it has taken a toll on me. I am becoming just like the people I despise.

The other day I took a parking spot from a woman at a restaurant. She was waiting patiently for someone to get out of their car, and I tore ahead of her and took the spot. Angry, she tooted her horn at me. I responded by giving her the finger. Inside the restaurant, the woman approached me and said I was very rude. I glared at her and told her I didn't give a fuck. She was eighty years old.

Has it come to this? Am I this person? What has happened to me? What has made me this way?

There was a time when I would patiently explain my atheism to a religious person. Now, I just call them shitheads. There was a time when I would make a reasoned defense of my libertarian viewpoints to people who mock me as a "teabagger." Now, I just bash them as leftards and fasctards before I escalate to calling them cocksuckers, sons of whores, and utter pieces of shit. Even in my work, I got so mad at a coworker that I told him that I wished that his cancer would come back, so he would hurry up and die.

I feel like Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi when he whips the piss out of his dad, and he looks at his robotic hand and sees he is on the same path to the Dark Side as his father. But Luke tosses his lightsaber away and refuses to fall like his father.

This mean streak is not who I am. It is my reaction to all that has been done to me. I have gone from bearing the bullshit with equanimity to reacting fiercely against it to now taking preemptive actions. My view of humanity grows dimmer and dimmer as misanthropy and nihilism eat away at me. I am becoming what I do not want to be.

My hero is Ron Paul. The thing I admire about him most is his honesty and decency. He never stoops to name calling or the angry rhetoric I employ. He is always insulted, lampooned, and vilified. But he bears it all with good cheer and no anger. He speaks the truth and never wavers. The result is that he grows in stature and respect. This is important to me because it shows that being nice works.

I struggle with this. People that know me wonder why I am not more bitter than what I am. I don't care to portray myself as the victim because it implies weakness. I feel that I am somehow responsible for the ill treatment that I have received, and my mean streak is my defense against this. Even now, the debate rages among the atheist community over whether to be mean or nice. I have fallen on the mean side of that debate.

It is easy to be mean. It is hard to be nice. I see this debate taking place in other venues. Should Israel be mean or nice? Should a NASCAR driver be like Mark Martin or more like the late Dale Earnhardt? Should we be Reagan or Nixon? I don't have the answer to this question. What I do know is that no one fucks me over anymore.

My current mean streak is about three years old. It came from one fuckover too many. In the story of my life, it was a minor thing all things considered. But it was the straw that broke this camel's back. I changed that day and took on a darker tone in my life. Before that day, I was amazed at how popular I was with people, and this was because I had a distinctly sunny outlook on things. I mocked no one but myself. I believed that all problems had solutions to them. I had no antagonism to others because I knew I could shrug off anything that came my way. But then, the darkness came. I didn't want to admit it, but it was there.

I don't know what to do. I don't want to be a victimizer, but I don't want to be a victim either. I am like a savage animal ready to hurt anyone who fucks with me. What should I do?

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