Down for The Count — A conversation with Don Eminizer

Dave Scotese — Don Eminizer is a freelance writer with twenty years of writing, editing and proofreading experience. His life has been adventurous all along, starting at the age of 18 in 1988, when he ran away from everything that he knew to join a pro-wrestling school in Orange, Connecticut. By the time he was 20, he had his own television show on an East Coast cable network, a national magazine column in Wrestling's Main Event, and a syndicated weekly radio show in 81 markets on American Sports Radio Network. There has been no looking back since for Don. Currently, he mediates a writer's workshop called Litmocracy, and writes freelance articles, columns, books, and films. Author of the book Midnight in America (2007), Don has completed his latest book Down for The Count, currently available on Amazon’s Kindle. In the following conversation, Don talks about his book and life, and responds to some interesting questions.

Dave Scotese: Don, I recently got sucked into reading your book Down for The Count. Once I started, I had to keep going. Why did you write the book?

Don Eminizer: I felt a need to get things off my chest. I grew tired of writing things to make a living. I know you have to learn your craft and you have to put in time and effort, and so I wrote and still write until my eyes bleed. Sometimes, you just have something that needs to be said, and I felt like what I've been through needed to be exorcised from me. Never liked tattoos; don't have any; never will; so I removed that one from my soul.

Dave Scotese: Do you remember having a different character or outlook on life that you don't think is represented in the book, perhaps because it starts when you're 18?

Don Eminizer: Well, no. It's all real. But it's a capsule in time. The way I thought at 18 and the way I think now are different. In fact, they're different because of what I experienced at 18, in this book. I have kids now. I'm grown. I'm different, for better or worse, but that's who and what I was then. I don't regret my character then, though I do regret my knowledge of the world, and perhaps how I acted sometimes in a naive, immature way. But we cannot grow if we don't make mistakes.

Dave Scotese: From zero to 18, you grew, and that growth created this wrestler we meet in the book. Do you have plans to show that development from zero to 18?

Don Eminizer: Plans, no. Actualities, yes. I've already written a ton of stuff since then, and I'm working on writing what happened from then until now, and probably beyond, if there is a beyond. Everybody is different, and everybody wants different things. I want to leave those I love happy, and part of that is getting rid of demons that have taken root in my experiences. So I write.

Dave Scotese: Does Atom Smash, that is your pro-wrestler persona, ever come out nowadays?

Don Eminizer: No, he's buried in a mothball-filled closet with the tights I wore then. His attitude, however, gets me into trouble all the time, because that part wasn't an act. Funny thing. I was a babyface once and the crowd LOVED me. I got more fanclub crap and more correspondence and more mail from that one match, than I ever got from any other ten matches combined, and I hated it. Made me feel awkward. I loved people hating me, loved the boos and the biting and the cursing. There was something honest and liberating about it.

Dave Scotese: The book ends with the claim that the wresting career would continue downhill and off a cliff. When can we expect to read about that?

Don Eminizer: In the next book, Counted Out. My career actually took off after that, professionally speaking. I ran and hosted a TV show, got more bookings than ever; but it wasn't the same, and after a while, I just quit. The human side of it beat the crap out of me because I took it personally, the backstabbing, the BS. I think a point in time came where I realized what I was doing and that it really wasn't what I wanted. The wrestling was fun, awesome. Performing too. The people sucked. I guess I was becoming too skilled at sucking and it scared the hell out of me. So I quit. Started a band.

Dave Scotese: Your website, 99 burning, used to have a lot of writing of yours – just bits and pieces. 99 Burning was a band too, right? Where did you get the name?

Don Eminizer: From a story I created. I sold cars for a while. When you sell a car, in the business, they say it's burning gas. So if you sell 7 cars in a month, you have 7 burning. I always thought it would be cool to sell your soul to the devil for that hundredth sale.

I did more than write on 99: made some killer rudimentary animations, interviewed Hunter S. Thompson before he died and his wife after, bands like Clutch and The Mars Volta. I wish I could do that and make a living at it, introduce people to new perspectives, new ideas, and new creative entities, authors, creators, thinkers. What is life for really? To get stuff, or to do stuff? Maybe it's both. I don't know. Today one takes the other, I suppose.

Dave Scotese: What makes you happier, getting stuff, or doing stuff? Or something else?

Don Eminizer: Both I guess, because one takes the other. But mainly doing stuff and sharing stuff. You have to have a house to share Christmas with your kids, a car to take them to the movies. I think living free would make me happiest, but I'm not sure that's a possibility anymore.

Dave Scotese: That's right, Litmocracy has published some stories and poems of yours that suggest a pretty rough childhood. Do you agree with Nietzsche that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger? Have you figured out which effect that rough childhood will have?

Don Eminizer: Well, there's about 50 schools of thought on what effect my childhood will have on my life. 49 of them are wrong. I love my kids more than anything and they love me, and I never have or never will abuse them. I adore them; why the hell would I hurt them? So that's mainly bosh. I have an addictive personality. I won't blame that on my childhood though; blame is for the weak. But I can't honestly dispute the claim that abuse leads to addiction, and I won't lie, though I honestly think it has more to do with me.

There's no suggestion in regards to my childhood. Forget the physical abuse. It was rough. At 7, I'd walk to the sub shop through Baltimore with a steak knife cuffed in my hand in case we might get attacked, a real possibility, alone with my older cousin. She was a year older than me. We'd play Pacman and pick up dinner, then walk home scared to death. She was raped when I was 10. I was on drugs by 12; LSD by 15. If my kids did this, I'd freak; my parents never knew or cared.

But history is full of worse and people survive and move on. As for Friederich, I used to buy that. I still believe in his will to power, but the stronger part, not so much. What grows to bear more fruit? A plant that's ravaged by storms and starved with drought, or one that grows in a mild, nurturing climate. I think that Nietzsche suggested that weeds will grow and they can grow stronger, stronger than most plants in fact, but that doesn't make them bear more fruit, and it doesn't make them better for the environment. As for figuring out what effect that will have, I suppose I, and my work, are a testament to that effect. People will have to take what that effect was from there. I can only think for me. That's a tough enough job as it is.

Dave Scotese: Some of the passages in Down for The Count make you out to be quite the jerk, and you offer good reasons for this in the book. But nearly everyone in my life doesn't bother doing things when their only reason for doing them is that they want to. Little kids, not so much, but people grow up and it apparently makes them into idiots who avoid exercising the one pure capacity for joy that everyone has: the ability to do something simply because you want to. Do you agree?

Don Eminizer: Sure. We all want to do what we want to do, when we want to do it. Over time, by parents, by school, by society, we're trained to kill those urges. In some cases, that's good; in some cases, it's not so good. I didn't offer reasons. I was a jerk. Still am, most likely. I simply explained what I was thinking and why I acted the way I did. People don't have to agree with it. I don't agree with some of it. That's why I've grown and that's why I've changed.

Dave Scotese: I don't think it’s ever good. Foregoing the urge is good, but killing it is horrible.

Don Eminizer: That's where maturity comes in. I don't want to hurt anybody, so things that hurt people, that aren't in self defense, I couldn't and won't do.

Dave Scotese: Have you kept in touch with any of the characters we meet in Down for The Count?

Don Eminizer: Charlie, Jimmy, Steve. Lost track of Earl and Bounty, and most of the rest. The others I don't care so much about, famous or not, but I' miss Bounty and Earl. They were good people, and you only get to meet so many good people in life.

Dave Scotese: The book is currently available only in electronic form, but you've got a project going to raise money for printing hard copies, right?

Don Eminizer: Yes a kickstarter project that is more than worthwhile. You asked me about stuff and such. I'd like this book to get out there because it should, and that would help.

Dave Scotese: I've heard that you've been instructed to deceive just about everyone you know by the feds - would you like to say anything publicly about that?

Don Eminizer: Yes. The feds are the worst kind of sheep, because they betray their own flock and kill the rams, the ones that will further their own cause.  And like the KKK many years ago, they do it in the dark, with silent nooses, with gag orders and mandates. They neuter society to protect it from free speech and liberty. It's human nature to fear those that seem different; but Christ was different; Muhammad was different. Heck, Kurt Cobaine and Thomas Jefferson were different. If we silence all the unique voices, the ones that have differing views, all we have is a fascist state.

Dave Scotese: So what do we do when it seems like the sword is mightier than the pen?

Don Eminizer: Smart people kill many in movie theaters and schools for reasons we'll never understand, because we don't try and understand why they've been pushed to the edge. We find a new pen. A better pen, because throughout history, no matter how biting, a pen has always done far less damage and far more good than a gun or a sword.

Dave Scotese: Thanks for your time, Don!

Don Eminizer: Yerp. Martin Luther printed the Bible on a press, in plain German and changed the world. We can do the same.

What does it mean to be a Voluntaryist?

Dave Scotese — Voluntaryism is a purposeful misspelling of volunteerism or voluntarism (take your pick) because it is not founded on providing services for free. Instead, it's founded on the non-aggression principle. More precisely, it's founded on the idea of never threatening to violate another person's rights. That makes it sound very common, and I believe it is, but threats of right-violation can be hidden. For example a tax is a state demand for property, and if it weren't backed by the threat of violation of property (seizure) or movement (incarceration), then it wouldn't be a tax. Sadly, most people accept taxation while also remaining largely voluntaryist otherwise. I believe this duplicity has been a core reason for human suffering for many centuries.

I like to provide some work for free to new clients and allow them to encourage me to work more by paying me. If they don't like my work, they don't pay, and I don't work for them any more. This way, there's no contract. My view of contract itself has changed too because to me a contract is merely a written specification of an otherwise joint agreement, intended to nail down details that might otherwise be forgotten. I would never rely on a contract in court, but rather, if I have kept up my end of a deal but the other guy hasn't, that's my fault for trusting someone who is untrustworthy. If you read "Woe Unto You Lawyers" by Fred Rodell, you'll see that both myself and my clients are protected from the legal profession through this strategy.

About 20 years ago, my friend Brian Gladish suggested that when we vote, we are attempting to control the ways in which we can violate each other. One guy says we can take more money from everyone and spread it around to the less fortunate. Another guy says we can take more money from everyone and use it to spread Democracy. After thinking about it, I realized what he meant. Both of these guys want it to be OK to raise taxes and spend them on various presumably good efforts. But taxation, as described above, is stealing. Voting is generally just an attempt to control what we do with our plunder, which is managed by the state. He asked if I had read Atlas Shrugged and I said yes. He said that explained some of the advanced understanding I seemed to have.

A couple years before I met Brian, I noticed that the Internet was connecting people, which presented a tremendous opportunity for cooperation. The problem is information overload. I wanted to find or build a website that would allow the readers to increase or decrease the likelihood that other readers would see a piece of writing. That way, information that was useless would only have to be seen by a few people before it got filtered out. My friend Jeff Hardy said "Like slashdot?" I'd never heard of slashdot, so I checked it out. One of the posts I found there mentioned Condorcet Voting, so I checked it out. It is one of the best mechanisms for finding consensus, but it isn't used much. Brian and I shared an office, so I mentioned Condorcet Voting to him one day, and that led to his point about taxes.

I built my website, litmocracy.com, based on this voting method, used to accomplish my goal of filtering out the less appealing writing submissions. What it has taught me is highly instructive: When the Condorcet Method is used by a large group of people, the group naturally separates itself into multiple pieces, each with its own set of values. For example, women tend to like one kind of writing better than another, whereas men like the other. Democrats and Republicans do the same thing, and so does subject matter: funny, about food, about animals, philosophical, etc.; each has its set of followers. In terms of picking someone to rule you, the lesson is this: Every person who wishes to be ruled should choose his or her own ruler. No ruler should be imposed on someone who doesn't want that ruler to rule them.

The non-aggression principle is more important than filtering out low quality information, so when I think about what the Condorcet Method taught me through my website, I conclude that we don't need rulers - we need leaders. My friend Don Eminizer said I am one, but I don't have enough exposure. Another friend, Ernest Dempsey, said my writing is good and wanted to use it on a site he works with. Voluntaryism rejects electoral politics and so do I, but Ron Paul is a great leader and educator, and if you're going to keep trying to force me to obey rules invented by politicians, then I urge you to choose someone like Ron Paul (or Gary Johnson) to be the president. Just remember that you are supporting what Bastiat explained: "The state is that great fiction by which everyone attempts to live at the expense of everyone else." It is a tool of oppression and the more people stop using it and instead defend themselves and others from it, the better. And that means being a Voluntaryist.

Rite of Passage – Dave Scotese weighs power of pen against sword

Ernest Dempsey — Dave Scotese, founder of the online literary community Litmocracy, is a brain at work – whether online or offline. Dave is a software consultant whose interest borders on the language of advanced gadgets, philosophical matters, and the human situation in the broader context. Above all, Dave is a critic gifted with the faculty of looking beyond the obvious. No wonder then that a question I recently happened to ask him led us into talking about power and subordination. Dave pointed to Tolkien’s popular fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings in which the bearer of the ring is influenced by its immense power, compelling him to venture into dangerous situations. What parallels we find in our lives with the motifs of slavery, possession, and power are the central element of the following discussion with Dave Scotese.

Ernest: Dave, let’s get directly to “power”. What does it mean to you and how do you relate it to “authority”?

Dave: Power, to me, is the ability to intentionally cause change. Of course, there are uses of the word that attribute it to things that can’t have intention (powerful cars, powerful lights, etc.), but I’m assuming that you mean powerful human beings. So how does the ability to intentionally cause change relate to “authority”? Authority is two-faced. On one hand, the marriage of openness and intellect can make a human being into an authority on whatever subject the human wishes. I am an authority on the computer systems of my largest client. On the other hand, the marriage of secrecy and coercion can make a human being into an authority over other human beings. My father explained a distinction he’d heard from someone that this second kind of authority is “official” whereas the first is not. There is no office that recognizes the authority of an expert whose openness and intellect put him in the position he holds. Without an office to legitimize the use of coercion, however, the other kind of authority cannot exist.  How does the ability to intentionally cause change relate to these two versions of authority? Both kinds are effective at enhancing a human being’s power, but one leads to war and the other to peace. Since I believe that the pen is mightier than the sword, it follows that over time, we move closer to peace.

Ernest: What determines whether a relationship—particularly between humans—is one of “master” and “slave”?


Dave: There are many factors that contribute to the division of people into slave/master relationships and the, unfortunately, small minority who refuse the game. At the top of my list are the conditions under which one is raised. While good parents will help turn their children into creatures who will always struggle against slavery, “effective schools” can turn them into creatures who offer up their liberty for security. When such creatures have their own children to raise, the parental efforts to raise free people are much weaker and it takes a loud minority to remind them that individuals do not own each other, and that happiness flows from choice.

The Rite of Passage seems to me to be a point in the life of a child where they are to choose the mindset: Am I to remain a slave to whatever force I think can care for me, or become my own responsible party? I am an example of a creature who will always struggle against slavery, because I saw that choice after I finished college and took the second route. I have enough faith in myself to take the red pill, so I did. I was once an employee; but, since I wasn’t playing that master/slave game, I quit when I didn’t like the conditions. The same group of people still uses my services, but I have to please them, and they have to please me in return in order for us to continue our relationship. Many people with jobs have replaced their parents with their employer, or their government. They have chosen the blue pill, perhaps because their childhood drained them of faith in themselves. I think most people can see that happen a lot in schools.

Ernest: Let’s take the point a little deeper here. Do you see close similarity between the way a computer is programmed and how a child is led into, or away from, a particular way of living?


Dave: Certainly there is a similarity, but it’s quite shallow. The intent of the programmer is met to whatever degree the programmer follows the deterministic workings of the machine. The programmer aims to arrange the computer to exhibit certain behaviors. Likewise, a teacher or parent aims to arrange a child to exhibit certain behaviors – at least the poor ones do – but the crucial distinction is the will of the child.  Computers have no will, but children do. The better approach for teachers and parents is to guide that will in achieving whatever goals it sets for itself.

Ernest: How have religions—and I mean organized, institutionalized religions like Christianity, Islam, etc—used and still use the average human through  authoritarianism and dominance?

Dave: Your question makes an assumption with which I strongly agree, but which many people will find offensive. The trick here is to help them see freedom in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who wrote “the law of God is written on the hearts of men.” It’s actually right there in the book of Genesis too – to eat of the Tree of Knowledge is to claim for oneself a knowledge of Good and Evil. To avoid making a claim for yourself on such knowledge is to discard the gift of self-determination. This is what most religions unfortunately encourage by providing earthly authorities and books (books “authored” by God himself, according to… the books themselves…?) to interpret and explain “the law of God”. While religions attempt to make people better at living together in peace, the individual people need to cross that Rite of Passage: if you think a behavior will do more harm than good, but it is “evil” according to your religion, which will you follow, your reason, or your religion? Which does your religion tell you to follow? Don Eminizer interpreted Nietzsche as explaining it thus: Religion tends to replace the self with a godhead.

Ernest: Now from a political angle. In our contemporary, mainly democratic world, we choose our own leaders—at least it appears so—and determine our own laws. Are we “free” in this sense, like living in “self-rule”?


Dave: What the voters of democratic states choose are not leaders, but rulers. Choosing your master does not make you free. It makes slavery more palatable. If that is what we are doing, and many of us appear to be doing that, then it doesn’t make us free. “We” is not a conscious being, capable of intent, freedom, or “self-rule”. Individuals are required for that. Speaking of individuals and government, Bill Thornton (of 1215.org, an homage to the Magna Charta) explains that a plaintiff is someone who holds a court. A court is a place where the sovereign (aka plaintiff) explains his own laws and then proceeds to publish evidence (to those attending court – a jury nowadays) that a defendant has violated those laws. The jury then decides, primarily whether the laws are just and reasonable; and, if they are, whether or not the defendant violated them and therefore deserves to be coerced into making restitution. If we ran things that way, then we could choose leaders (who can offer guidelines, but not enforce rules), but we wouldn’t need elections (your leader doesn’t have to be my leader), and we’d still be sovereigns, able to determine our own (individual) laws, and be free. Some of us already do that, and we recognize the state as a criminal violating our laws, but we have no court because there aren’t enough of us. However, our number grows: Check out The Dollar Vigilante (http://www.dollarvigilante.com/), the Free State Project (http://freestateproject.org/), the Fully Informed Jury Association (http://fija.org/).

Ernest: In general, does contemporary education system—like that in America—serve to enable a child to grow into a truly independent person?


Dave: In general, nowadays, as I mentioned above, it tends to postpone or even suppress the Rite of Passage, leading to the slave/master mentality. However, for those with strong wills, either inborn or developed by wisely challenging parents (as I like to think of myself), school indoctrination can provide a child with opportunities for real learning about the mechanisms of the parasite (another term for “master”), as well as a bit of useful real-world knowledge. This, however, requires constant vigilance on the part of parents and students, lest they be sucked into the trap. For example, Student Body Associations (SBAs) are political organizations that students can apply for and possibly be accepted into, and then enjoy privileges that are available not through the efforts of the SBA, but through the efforts of those who support the educational institution (usually “tax slaves”). By providing the kids with benefits, this leads them to believe that such political arrangements are good. By letting them share in the perks of the master for a while, the slavery system buys their loyalty.

Ernest: Like the ring’s power in The Lord of the Rings, is the human fascination with power or mastery a burden that makes life difficult for some segment of our population on this planet?


Dave: I suppose it does, but a warm sun likewise comes as a burden to the vacationer who has finished off his soda. It dehydrates him and will eventually kill him if he doesn’t get another drink. If he does get another drink, the warm sun can be converted back into the pleasant life-giver it was in the first place. Likewise, the fascination with power is not the essence of the burden. The essence of the burden is an unwillingness to endure that Rite of Passage through which children become adults. The Ring encourages this unwillingness, either through coercion or the sharing of the master’s benefits, and so freer people, whose freedom, by the way, makes them far more prosperous, suffer from hordes of slaves/zombies who, rather than thinking for themselves (fruit of the Tree), follow orders blindly. The Power of the Ring is “evil”, but either Frodo or Smeagol could have tossed it into the lava before it took them over. Instead, they fought like children. Every individual has the power to enslave weak-minded people, and any concentration of such power (a state, the Ring) will attract those who wish to use it. Wars are fought in earnest for the tribute of the citizens (tax slaves) in the conquered territory. When there are no such citizens, there will be no point to (earnest) war. Dishonest war, on the other hand, encouraged by the sellers of arms, might still be waged. Better people discard the wish to use concentrations of political power because they recognize the much higher value of people who will always struggle against slavery.

Ernest: So can you think of some forms of power that are essentially constructive – that don’t cause people to compromise their freedom?


Dave: The pen, as an open expression of intellect. That better kind of authority leads to “essentially constructive” power. For example, Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet called Common Sense, which argued that the American colonies would be better off without Great Britain as a (parasitic) protector. His power came from his healthy understanding of things and his ability to write. Words themselves. Socrates, to my knowledge, never actually used a pen. He asked a lot of questions, and because his questions penetrated, he is regarded as an authority in philosophy. The names and ideas of the people who forced him to drink poison are all but forgotten, but the “Socratic Method” is still widely used to… free people’s minds. The essentially constructive forms of power don’t just avoid causing people to compromise their freedom, they actually encourage people to defend and strengthen their freedom. This power is based on the mind and its ability to reason, rather than the body and its ability to suffer.

Ernest: And my last question here: as I have read and experienced personally, in the state of creative imagination, we attain freedom—or at least have the illusion that we do. How do you respond to this view?


Dave: Watch the movie Brazil and pay attention to what the protagonist experiences at the end of the movie. His is the pinnacle of freedom. When you reach that place, you no longer have anything desirable to the parasites. When there’s no one left for it to live off, it will die. I can’t wait!

Ernest: Thank you Dave! It’s always a pleasure to discuss questions with you. Hope to have another discussion soon with another topic of human interest.


Dave: Thank you Ernest!  I enjoyed your questions.