Former enemies find common ground
Channel: Jon D Barnett
Date: 17/05/2014

J Todd DeShong was my online nemesis for years. His blog, dissidents4dumbees (no longer online) was devoted to "having fun with AIDS dissidents". It really more about making fun of people who were and are part of my own community.

When he tried to engaged me, I went into combat mode and a series of blog posts ensued between us, as well as emails and comments. It got ugly. It got nasty.

More than a year ago, JTD and I finally agreed to discuss our differences during a telephone visit, which I wrote about last November (http://rif.reaids.com/aids-dissident-crosses-enemy-lines/).

Yesterday, May 16, 2014, DeShong visited me in my home in Kansas City. This is the conversation we had.

I wanted to document this encounter as evidence that people with very different points of view and opinions can sit down together and discuss those differences. In our case, we discovered that we shared far more common ground than differences.

This never would have happened had we not lowered our pens (weapons), ventured into enemy territory and sit down to talk, face to face.

Read the accompanying blog post at http://goo.gl/1QnfVo

Notice: If I put my name and face on a video, the least commenters can do is use their real identities too. Comments from sockpuppet accounts are far less likely to ever see the light of day here.