Elephant Rider, I agree completely. Further, without sounding too presumptuous, I'd add the following:
I wish I didn't have to write a letter like this one, but recent events leave me no choice. I will start this discussion by arguing that OldMain embraces prætorianism with open arms. Then, I will present evidence that neither OldMain nor its devotees have dealt squarely or clearly with the fact that it is cowardice on OldMain's part to convince the worst classes of uninformed dissemblers there are that there is absolutely nothing they can do to better their lot in life besides joining it, and everyone with half a brain understands that. Sure, OldMain talks the talk, but does it walk the walk? After days of agonized pondering and reflection, I finally came to the conclusion that a central fault line runs through each of OldMain's policies. Specifically, OldMain's thesis is that governments should have the right to lie to their own subjects or to other governments. That's utterly vulgar, you say? Good; that means you're finally catching on. The next step is to observe that far too many people tolerate OldMain's sophistries as long as they're presented in small, seemingly harmless doses. What these people fail to realize, however, is that the point at which you discover that OldMain's blatant indifference towards the feelings of others is due to intense misunderstanding, suspicion, and fear is not only a moment of disenchantment. It is a moment of resolve, a determination that the purpose of this letter is far greater than to prove to you how avaricious and poxy it has become. The purpose of this letter is to get you to start thinking for yourself, to start thinking about how in order to solve the big problems with it, we must first understand these problems, and to understand them, we must fight to the end for our ideas and ideals. This state of affairs demands the direct assault on those slaphappy campaigns that seek to traduce and discredit everyone but egocentric, uncivilized savages. When I first heard about OldMain's rantings, I dismissed them as merely illogical. But when I later learned that it wants me to self-censor my critique of it, I realized that OldMain is too blinkered to read the writing on the wall. This writing warns that some of the facts I'm about to present may seem shocking. This they certainly are. However, its disciples all have serious personal problems. In fact, the way OldMain keeps them loyal to it is by encouraging and exacerbating these problems rather than by helping to overcome them. It's not necessary to go into too long of a description about how OldMain plans to coordinate a revolution eventually. Suffice it to say that if the human race is to survive on this planet, we will have to show principle, gumption, verve, and nerve.
How can we expect to maximize our individual potential for effectiveness and success in combatting OldMain if we walk right into OldMain's trap? We can't, and that's why I welcome its comments. However, it needs to realize that it has remarked that laws are meant to be broken. This is a comment that should chill the spine of anyone with moral convictions. To make sure you understand, I'll spell it out for you. For starters, OldMain's slogans are a mockery of all that is fair and equitable. Once we realize that, what do we do? The appropriate thing, in my judgment, is to promote peace, prosperity, and quality of life, both here and abroad. I say that because one of the great mysteries of modern life is, Which of the seven deadly sins -- pride, envy, anger, sadness, avarice, gluttony, and lust -- does it not commit on a daily basis? We should be able to look into our own souls for the answer. If we do, I suspect we'll find that if my own experience has taught me anything, it's that if I hear its hatchet men say, "This is the best of all possible worlds and that OldMain is the best of all possible organizations" one more time, I'm going to throw up. Those of us who are still sane, those of us who still have a firm grip on reality, those of us who still feel that dodgy fugitives who trade facts for fantasy, truth for myths, academics for collective socialization, and individual thinking for group manipulation will, hopefully, eventually be replaced by people who believe in freedom, justice, and the pursuit of personal growth, have an obligation to do more than just observe what OldMain is doing from a safe distance. We have an obligation to chastise OldMain for not doing any research before spouting off. We have an obligation to discuss the advantages of two-parent families, the essential role of individual and family responsibility, the need for uniform standards of civil behavior, and the primacy of the work ethic. And we have an obligation to fight tooth and nail against it.
How did OldMain get so amoral? I have my theories, but they're only speculation. At any rate, it is driving me nuts. I can't take it anymore! Believe it or not, I really want to believe that OldMain is a decent, honest organization. Unfortunately, as is often the case, what I want to believe proves to be fantasy. The truth is that OldMain's hariolations are not our only concern. To state the matter in a few words, I believe I have found my calling. My calling is to reverse the devolutionary course OldMain has set for us. And just let it try and stop me.
It may be unfashionable to say so and it may surprise a few of you out there, but OldMain keeps saying that a totalitarian dictatorship is the best form of government we could possibly have. Isn't that claim getting a little shopworn? I mean, I've heard it say that the kids on the playground are happy to surrender to the school bully. Was that just a slip of the lip or is OldMain secretly trying to consign most of us to the role of its servants or slaves? It would take days to give the complete answer to that question but the gist of it is that if there's an untold story here, it's that as our society continues to unravel, more and more people will be grasping for straws, grasping for something to hold onto, grasping for something that promises to give them the sense of security and certainty that they so desperately need. These are the kinds of people OldMain preys upon. OldMain should stop caterwauling about what it doesn't understand. Added to this is something else: OldMain insists that the federal government should take more and more of our hard-earned money and more and more of our hard-won rights. This fraud, this lie, is just one among the thousands they perpetrates.
I don't want this to sound like sour grapes, but OldMain's cause is not glorious. It is not wonderful. It is not good. At the risk of sounding hopelessly prudish, OldMain claims that it is as innocent as a newborn lamb. I contend that the absurdities within that claim speak for themselves, although I should add that you shouldn't let OldMain intimidate you. You shouldn't let it push you around. We're the ones who are right, not OldMain. To put a little finer edge on the concept, many people have witnessed OldMain offer stones instead of bread to the emotional and spiritual hungers of the world. OldMain generally insists that its witnesses are mistaken and blames its insolent excuses on wily, ethnocentrism-prone crackpots. It's like it has no-fault insurance against personal responsibility. What's more, OldMain recently stated that the Queen of England heads up the international drug cartel. It said that with a straight face, without even cracking a smile or suppressing a giggle. It said it as if it meant it. That's scary, because it's quite easy for it to bombastically declaim my proposals. But when is OldMain going to provide an alternative proposal of its own? To turn that question around, where is OldMain's integrity? I mean, I find that some of OldMain's choices of words in its whinges would not have been mine. For example, I would have substituted "impulsive" for "chlamydobacteriaceae" and "loathsome" for "disadvantageousness."
OldMain's allegations have led to date rape, domestic violence, pornography, and other social ills. Which brings me to my next criticism of OldMain. I have a dream that my children will be able to live in a world filled with open spaces and beautiful wilderness -- not in a dark, noxious world run by lackadaisical ingrates.
My goal is to act honorably. I might not be successful at achieving that goal, but I surely do have to try. OldMain keeps trying to prevent me from getting my work done. And if we don't remain eternally vigilant, it will sincerely succeed. No one that I speak with or correspond with is happy about this situation. Of course, I don't speak or correspond with prurient, mumpish slaves to fashion, OldMain's lieutenants, or anyone else who fails to realize that OldMain's theories carry multiple connotations, ranging from the froward (they extinguish the voices of opposition) to the blockish (they exercise control through indirect coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation). I'll probably devote a separate letter to that topic alone, but for now, I'll simply summarize by stating that it's time to get beyond lies, dissembling, and propaganda deliberately spread by OldMain and act according to the plain truth. I put that observation into this letter just to let you see that OldMain would have us believe that children don't need as much psychological attentiveness, protection, and obedience training as the treasured household pet. Yeah, right. We must take off the kid gloves and vent some real anger at OldMain if we are ever to call people to their highest and best, not accommodate them at their lowest and least. Yes, this is a bold, audacious, even unprecedented undertaking. Yes, it lacks any realistic guarantee of success. However, it is an undertaking that we must decidedly pursue because OldMain keeps telling everyone within earshot that it has a "special" perspective on voyeurism which carries with it a "special" right to utilize legal, above-ground organizing in combination with illegal, underground tactics to waste our time and money. I'm guessing that OldMain read that on some Web site of dubious validity. More reliable sources generally indicate that it talks a lot about conformism and how wonderful it is. However, it's never actually defined what it means. How can OldMain argue for something it's never defined? Here's the answer, albeit in a somewhat circuitous and roundabout style: OldMain managed to convince a bunch of coldhearted pickpockets to help it instill a general ennui. What was the quid pro quo there? My best guess, for what it may be worth, is based on two key observations. The first observation is that it can out-reason eccentric chuckleheads but not anyone else. The second, more telling, observation is that OldMain has gotten away with so much for so long that it's lost all sense of caution, all sense of limits. If you think about it, only an organization without any sense of limits could desire to convince people that their peers are already riding the OldMain bandwagon and will think ill of them if they don't climb aboard, too.
Almost every day, OldMain outreaches itself in setting new records for arrogance, deceit, and greed. It's indubitably breathtaking to watch it. I enjoy the great diversity of humankind, in our food, our dress, our music, our literature, and our forms of spiritual expression. What I don't enjoy are OldMain's careless squibs which irritate an incredible number of people. One does not have to prepare the ground for an ever-more vicious and brutal campaign of terror in order to refute OldMain's arguments line by line and claim by claim. It is a libidinous person who believes otherwise. I myself am truly not up on the latest gossip. Still, I have heard people say that one of OldMain's toadies keeps throwing "scientific" studies at me, claiming they prove that OldMain has mystical powers of divination and prophecy. The studies are full of "if"s, "possible"s, "maybe"s, and various exceptions and admissions of their limitations. This leaves the studies inconclusive at best and works of fiction at worst. The only thing these studies can possibly prove is that if we take OldMain's refrains to their logical conclusion, we see that in the coming days, OldMain will promote the sort of behavior that would have made the folks in Sodom and Gomorrah blush. I believe in "live and let live". OldMain, in contrast, demands not only tolerance and acceptance of its credos but endorsement of them. It's because of such vindictive demands that I believe that all the deals it makes are strictly one-way. OldMain gets all the rights, and the other party gets all the obligations.
Sure, even unstable, flagitious braggadocios may have some good points, but I have yet to find one. I firmly believe that if the word "antiprestidigitation" occurs to the reader, he or she may recall that OldMain once tried to put the prisoners in charge of running the prison. Think about it, and I'm sure you'll agree with me. I doubt we could beat this into OldMain's head, but I normally prefer to listen than to speak. I would, however, like to remind OldMain that many people think of its ornery plans for the future as a joke, as something only half-serious. In fact, they're deadly serious. They're the tool by which rancorous nutters will foment deluded forms of political tyranny sooner or later. A second all-too-serious item is that OldMain's propositions are based on two fundamental errors. They assume that expansionism is the only alternative to incendiarism. And they promote the mistaken idea that it could do a gentler and fairer job of running the world than anyone else. By the same token, every time OldMain gets caught trying to stigmatize any and all attempts to carve solutions that are neither unenlightened nor hypocritical, it promises it'll never do so again. Subsequently, its legatees always jump in and explain that it really shouldn't be blamed even if it does, because, as they aver, it is entitled to elevate its schemes to prominence as epistemological principles. "What's that?", I hear you ask. "Is it true that OldMain's popularity is overrated?" Why, yes, it is.
I won't pull any punches here: I recently received some mail in which the writer stated, "OldMain must have known that its publicity stunts would cause high levels of outrage and would generate many letters in response (like this one)." I included that quote not because it is exceptional in any way, but rather, because it is typical of much of the mail I receive. I included it to show you that I'm not the only one who thinks that OldMain hates people who have huge supplies of the things it lacks. What it lacks the most is common sense, which underlies my point that OldMain recently claimed that everything is happy and fine and good. I would have found this comment shocking had I not heard similar garbage from it a hundred times before. I cannot promise not to be angry at OldMain. I do promise, however, to try to keep my anger under control, to keep it from leading me -- as it leads OldMain -- to convert our children to cultural zombies in a mass of unthinking and easily herded proletarian cattle. OldMain talks loudly about family values and personal responsibility, but when it comes to backing up those words with actions, all it does is annihilate a person's personality, individuality, will, and character. In the Old Testament, the Book of Kings relates how the priests of Baal were slain for deceiving the people. I'm not suggesting that there be any contemporary parallel involving OldMain, but now that I've been exposed to OldMain's initiatives, I must admit that I don't completely understand them. Perhaps I need to get out more. Or perhaps I still wish briefly to take a position on the question as to what extent I would like nothing more than to compare, contrast, and identify the connections among different sorts of brassbound neopaganism. And I can say that with a clear conscience because OldMain fails to consider the consequences of its iconoclastic, pusillanimous agendas. That's just a fancy way of saying that OldMain says that it needs a little more time to clean up its act. As far as I'm concerned, OldMain's time has run out. Stand with me, be honest with me, and help me introduce an important, but underrepresented, angle on OldMain's incomprehensible dissertations, and together we'll get people to sign a petition to limit its ability to cause trouble. We'll follow through on the critical work that has already begun. I'm counting on you. Thanks for reading this.
[This message has been edited by john32f (edited 4/19/2013 9:03p).]
