This is a populist blog. Deal with it!

I now remember the elusive fourth dream I had yesterday morning. The dream featured this very blog, which someone in the dream flooded with bigoted propaganda. My response in the dream influences this entry, so here goes it...

A lot of folks don't understand me, my record, or this blog. I've been somewhat eminent for 15 years as a populist newsletter publisher. When some in this supposedly learned world hear of populism, they think that gives them an opening for attack.

I'm not talking about attacks from those who admit to being on the right; I'm talking about assaults from those who claim to be on the left. In the Internet world that flourished from the mid-'90s to mid-'00s, left-leaning economic views were often viewed as a sign that one was right-wing overall.

Got that? As the band Chicago might say: It's a paradox, full of contradiction.

The more left-wing I appeared on economics, the more I was falsely accused of being a racist, order-crazy right-winger, even though my posts usually had nothing to do with racial matters or culture war items. The truth is, I detest racism, and I'm highly permissive on personal freedom. But the online world - and some sectors of the offline world - were so out of step that they'd never conceptualized a progressive populist.

For them to claim I've ever been right-wing in my adult life is preposterous. There's no contradiction in the twin legs (economic and social) of the left.

I might just ignore this criticism except it hindered my efforts to fight the truly malicious activities I've seen. More than once, some asshole has distributed bigoted crap under my name. For a while, there were quite a few disgusting Internet posts designed to make it appear as if I wrote them. When I correctly denied posting them, critics pointed to my economic populism as "proof" that I'd post bigoted tirades. To them, economic left = social right.

And so, the fix was in.

This stigma on my record hasn't been fully erased. Even on this blog, when I used to link directly to Wikipedia photos, there have been problems because of right-wing fanatics uploading vile pictures to Wikipedia to replace those items.

What was I supposed to tell people when they saw that? Many folks aren't technologically savvy enough to know it was a hoax. If not for others deliberately trying to drag my good name and that of populism through cess, I could tell my side.

This is a populist blog. Not just populist, but progressive populist. And it's in Kentucky!

Deal with it!