I’ve stayed out of the fight so far but now I need to say: Dear Substackers, why do you want to moonlight as the night watch for objectionable stuff? Is that really what you want to do with your time and energy? Do you want to wander around the Substack warehouse with a flashlight in hand? Would you drive to the nearest bookstore and comb the aisles for objectionable writing? Would you go on Amazon and scroll through millions of books looking for Nazis? Are you going to keep careful paperwork about your hunt for the worst among us? No, you wouldn’t do any of that. Because you’re writers not bureaucrats. So, please, stop being bureaucrats. Close and lock the filing cabinets in your mind and walk away. Spend your time and energy writing your stuff. That’s where your love, compassion, power, obsession, anger, joy, skepticism, politics, exhaustion, spirituality, doubts, fears, and humor are gonna shine. And, yeah, go ahead and yell at me now because I won’t respond. I also won’t respond to any agreement. You see: I’m working on a short story that needs a better narrative jump than the existing one. There’s one sentence that’ll make the magic happen but I haven’t found it yet. Argggh. I need that sentence!