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a military leader, especially of a warlike nation.
a military commander who has seized power, especially in one section of a country.

^{Source: Warlord by Rob-Joseph on DeviantArt}

Warlord Mentality

This warlord mentality has permeated the world we live in far more ways than we may sometimes realize. We live in a post 9-11 world where tyranny reigns in many ways more supreme than ever. Ironically, they take away our freedom in more and more ways in the name of "Freedom". The 21st century has been a real disappointment so far to many dreams people had hoped for. President Bush was in power at the time of the 9-11 attack and within weeks began the longest U.S. war ever in Afghanistan; and just a year and a half later on the pretense of false intel, invaded Iraq to begin his second war.

Just like Obama before him, and Bush before him, President Trump has both continued, and even escalated, America’s war for the Greater Middle East. Long gone are the critiques of “stupid” interventions, amidst a barrage of "clickbait" and "Fake News" used by the powers that be in PSYOP (psychological operations) to warp and manipulate the American psyche into, if not supporting, at least going along with more and more of this "Warlord Mentality". And what do those wars do - drop bombs and destroy the lives of millions and millions of people, whether they are the targeted "Bad Guys" or collateral damage. The U.S. Air Force has admitted that Bush dropped approx. 40,000 bombs in his 8 years (i.e. approx. 13 bombs/day), Obama dropped approx. 70,000 bombs in his 8 years (i.e. 23 bombs/day) and Trump dropped approx. 44,000 bombs his first year (i.e. approx. 120 bombs/day). It's so sad, but true.

^{source: BLI | Hiroshima in 1945}

The word "warlord" can be traced back to 1856, when Ralph Waldo Emerson used it in a critical piece on the aristocracy of England. He said, "Piracy and war gave place to trade, politics and letters; the war-lord to the law-lord; the privilege was kept, whilst the means of obtaining it were changed." He was an American philosopher, poet, lecturer, essayist and the leading exponent of New England Transcendentalism from that system.

Emerson attempted to lift up an idealistic philosophy from the turmoil of the 18th-century by focusing his attention on the human ability to transcend the materialistic world's experience and become more conscious of the universal potential of true human freedom. He espoused that looking inward into one’s own self, one’s own soul, and from such an enlightened self-awareness would in turn come freedom of action and the ability to change one’s world according to the dictates of one’s ideals and conscience. This is ultimately the direction where I would like to go with this discourse.

This brings me to the point of this post.

"WARLORD DOWNVOTES - The Number One Steemit KILLER"

@mistermercury in another post said,

"It's all an interesting study in human dynamics and relationships. It seems we have our own little mini-country here where we are not entirely free, at least if you want to thrive."

This social network, Steemit, in many ways is it's own little world or country. It reflects much the same realities of the 21st century world that we live in, including, unfortunately, what I would consider to be a system that empowers the same "warlord mentality". In just over a month of being active here the biggest killer I have seen on Steemit has been the weaponization of the power of the downvote, the limits of which entirely depend upon how much SP (Steem Power) one can buy and has at their disposal.

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron, is known for saying,

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

It is one thing to allow people to buy power to do good, such as the main point of steemit to begin with, which is to reward talented authors for great content; but another thing to allow them to buy power to do harm to one another. Freedom loving Anarchists believe in doing no harm to another either to his/her person or possessions. This is what I truly believe, as Libertarian/Volunteerism believes. I'd like to think that steemit was based on a similar belief, but it just doesn't seem the case with respect to the topic of this post discussion.

My Story

It all started, as I explained in my post "Steemit's Malicious @steemcleaners downvote ATTACKS". To sum it up 5 of my posts were downvoted for plagiarizing what was essentially my own material. 3 of which were all the way down to negative territory in revenues, which turned off all pics and made them nearly invisible. I wasn't able to get any replies for days and resorted to making that post to make my case. I was able to make resolution headway with @steemcleaners on all but my most valued post of my own poetry, which he could no longer do, because of the steem system that removes edits and make permanent after 7 days (one of the many lessor faults of the steem system). This was extremely frustrating, knowing it had tweeted and shared with around 16,000 people on Twitter and Facebook.

I was also frustrated with how, even if I am verified, I was told the best way to stop so many members from reporting to steemcleaners when I use my own pics normally, is to find another site, (ANY SITE) where a picture which I have full legal rights to happens to be on (even if it is stolen from me) and place a link to that site as source. This was essentially encouraging the exact thing that @steemcleaners was supposedly intended to stop. This ate me up inside, especially given I had invested several hundred steem into steemit.

^{source: pexels.com}

The next morning was Easter Sunday. First I fell for a very clever April-Fools joke post, were a member admitted to being hired by Big Pharma to spread lies on Steemit. Being that I have worked with all things media for a good 33 years now and actually have had several friends die in somewhat similar circumstances, one just in the past few months, that I still hadn't fully digested, it hit a trigger in me and I blew my lid.

Then I saw where Steemcleaners still had 5 of my posts listed on a black listing post accusing me of "Plagiarizing my own pics that I had removed before", after thinking that was all resolved, I literally started feeling symptoms of a heart-attack, as I completely blew my lid, threatening if he didn't remove my links that I would have no other choice than to seriously CONSIDER taking legal action for Defamation of Character.

^{source: pexels.com}

The next day, just over a week ago now, I got nuked down from nearly 47 to 4 on those 2 comments @adm didn't like, by virtue of him having well over a million dollars in SP. I apologized and edited it to no avail. To the credit of @guiltyparties and @steemcleaners I do believe I understand much better why they aim to cleanup steemit of so much abuse and copied spam. I tried to get @guiltyparties help, who runs @steemcleaners and was the person my original comment was addressed to at a time I was really distressed and I must say he really did try to help; but nobody knew who @adm is, who finally posted something, which didn't help much to resolve anything. To which I apologized again and what did @adm do?

He reposted my original post that I had edited, for all to see, because as he said,

"didn't acknowledge the edit in this apology".

Yes, I admit again that I really lost it, being human, removed one, edited the other, tried my best several times to explain and apologized. I still don't totally get why he had to repost the very thing he punished me for so severely, if as he said before,

"Threats are not a socially productive way to get what you want."

Apart from my emotions getting the best of me, I really only put it there to get steemcleaners attention when I was blowing my lid and completely intended to edit it once I had cleared it up. Even that option had been taken from me when it was reposted by him.

I posted a video of @ned and @dan in an interview and to quote Ned, the CEO of Steemit Inc. on the question of "downvoting" he said,

"One thing we have learned is Downvoting is BAD. The only thing they should be used for on the platform are to moderate spam."

Dan added,

"and Abuse"

and Ned agreed and went on to say,

"Because what we realize is there's a really strong humaneness to the platform and down voting is a sort of action that represents you know a real heavy hand you know in the real world."

It's at 41:00 on this video:

Then I tried to appeal to @adm's humaneness to no avail and never got any other comment back from him at all.

Earlier in I believe it was that same interview above, I herd that a downvoted low reputation DOES in fact effect one's ability to regain their reputation on steemit and earning rewards. The last post I did afterwards proved, after doing the math, that I now have to get 5 times the upvote revenues to gain the same upward gains in reputation as before. Not to mention I have to double that because the original 25 is about halfway back to nearly 47.

It still amazes me that a million dollar+ (WarLord) whale is allowed so much power on steemit to sit on someone with probably somewhere between 500 and 700 total upvotes to crush them to such a huge degree, even after squealing apology after apology like a pig. It's PTSD to the 9th degree all over again.

There are countless other stories I have seen as example of this "WarLord Downvote Mentality". It's really become a war zone here in many corners of steemit that I happen to wonder into.

This screenshot above is one extreme comment (far worse than mine) on someone's post I follow, which was a fairly nice post too, but this guy, @berniesanders completely lost it. I was in shock to see it, because he was the first to welcome me to steemit with an upvote on my very first comment just over a month ago. Clearly, someone has pushed his buttons to the extreme for him to make such a comment. Maybe the recipient, @tysler, was tied to why @berniesanders got nuked beforehand big time to a -16 reputation who knows. But still that threat with some extremely fowl language is still up untouched by anyone after 6 days now with 14 upvotes to my amazement. My point here is not to say attack him. Then we are just falling into the same "Warlord Mentality" power game. But to suggest the whole problem is way steemit is giving the ability to those who can afford it to arm the "downvote" into a true weapon of mass destruction that can literally nuke minnows like me into leaving steemit all together. After all, I see 416 people have viewed that threat comment and imagine how many were literally terrorized by seeing it.

There are so many other examples too I've seen recently that would make this post too long. No matter how anyone looks at it, because of the warlord downvotes, Steemit has become a war zone of Warlords and this huge issue is the Number One Steemit KILLER by far.

So I raise the white flag to ask for a truce, @ned and @dan. I'm trying to crawl out of the ditch where @adm tried to bury me. Give us all a break and please stop empowering an arms race here of warlords with the power of the downvote, battling it out and destroying the very steemit community you created and so many of us have invested in.

^{source: pexels.com}

In Conclusion:

Despite all the damage, feeling like this account is pretty much dead-in-the-water and seeing steemit become a war zone to so many, I do believe there has to be a better way than this current system, which empowers such a "Warlord Mentality". I do believe in the human ability to transcend the materialistic world's experience and become more conscious of the universal potential of true human freedom. I do believe we can do better than this. Do you? In practical terms it seems to me that Steemit, with all it's issues and problems, of which there are many, that downvote damage should be limited to at the very least NOT to how much Steem Power one has, but to maybe at the very most even a fraction of a reputation point per downvote; or maybe even do away with the downvote (whip) altogether and focus completely on the upvote (carrot). My vote would be for the latter.

Please share your thoughts and ideas on how to resolve this mess. If we get a descent enough discussion going, maybe I'll do a part 2 to really discuss the best possible solutions.

Some other posts I've shared on steemit:

Have an nice day :)

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