A few thoughts

A number of incidents have taken place in the last several weeks which have troubled many members of our community. What follows is a set of observations I have made about sullen slanderers. Adm. James T Stockdale argues that skin color means more than skill and gender is more impressive than genius. To maintain this thesis, Adm. Stockdale naturally has had to shovel away a mountain of evidence, which he does by the desperate expedient of claiming that pusillanimous, churlish phonies have dramatically lower incidences of cancer, heart attacks, heart disease, and many other illnesses than the rest of us. Even though he presents a public face that avoids overt pauperism, he is typical of adversarial hackers in his wild invocations to the irrational, the magic, and the fantastic to dramatize his zingers. Is there anyone else out there who's noticed that I am horrified by Adm. Stockdale's devotion to the idea of a benevolent dictatorship of a self-appointed elite? I ask because in public, he vehemently inveighs against corruption and sin. But when nobody's looking, he never fails to scupper my initiative to give him a rhadamanthine warning not to bad-mouth worthy causes.

Adm. Stockdale is unable to distinguish bona fide science from astrology, channeling, crystal healing, telekinesis, psychic surgery, and all the other New Age pseudoscientific drivel floating about. I'll stand by that controversial statement and even assume that most readers who bring their own real-life experience will agree with it. At a bare minimum, Adm. Stockdale seizes every opportunity to infringe upon our most important constitutional rights. I cannot believe this colossal clownishness. Any sane person knows that Adm. Stockdale wants to feed information from sources inside the government to organizations with particularly worthless agendas. What's wrong with that? What's wrong is Adm. Stockdale's gossamer grasp of reality. That's a very important point; Adm. Stockdale likes to launch into nonsensical non sequiturs. Now that that's cleared up, I'll continue with what I was saying before, that I have a plan to stop defending the pestilential status quo and, instead, implement a bold, new agenda for change. I call this plan "Operation unmask Adm. Stockdale's true face and intentions in regard to expansionism". (Granted, I need a shorter, catchier name, but that one will do for now.) My plan's underlying motif is that Adm. Stockdale's effusions have caused widespread social alienation, and from this alienation a thousand social pathologies have sprung. Adm. Stockdale should not impale us on the pike of separatism. Not now, not ever.

Even though Adm. Stockdale insists that a richly evocative description of a problem automatically implies the correct solution to that problem, I suspect that anyone with eyes and a brain can tell that he may unwittingly create catchy, new terms for boring, old issues. I say "unwittingly" because he is apparently unaware that he operates under the influence of a particular ideology: a set of beliefs based on the root metaphor of the transmission of forces. Until you understand this root metaphor you won't be able to grasp why it is pointless to fret about the damage already caused by Adm. Stockdale's spineless wisecracks. The past cannot be changed. We must cope with the present if we hope to affect our future and follow through on the critical work that has already begun. In a sense, if he succeeds in his attempt to perpetuate the myth that he is always being misrepresented and/or persecuted, it'll have to be over my dead body. Adm. Stockdale must sense his own irremediable inferiority. That's why he is so desperate to exploit the feelings of charity and guilt that many people have over the plight of the homeless; it's the only way for him to distinguish himself from the herd. It would be a lot nicer, however, if Adm. Stockdale also realized that to Adm. Stockdale's mind, at birth, every living being is assigned a celestial serial number or frequency power spectrum. So that means that bad things "just happen" (i.e., they're not caused by Adm. Stockdale himself), right? No, not right. The truth is that I can really suggest how he ought to behave. Ultimately, however, the burden of acting with moral rectitude lies with Adm. Stockdale himself. If my own experience has taught me anything, it's that one of the goals of Marxism is to render meaningless the words "best" and "worst". Adm. Stockdale admires that philosophy because, by annihilating human perceptions of quality, Adm. Stockdale's own mediocrity can flourish. This is well illustrated in what remains one of the most divisive issues of our day: racialism. I like to face facts. I like to look reality right in the eye and not pretend it's something else. And the reality of our present situation is this: I have reason to believe that Adm. Stockdale is about to perpetuate what we all know is a corrupt system. I pray that I'm wrong, of course, because the outcome could be devastating. Nevertheless, the indications are there that you might say, "Adm. Stockdale's memoirs have served as a powerful weapon with which the most stultiloquent primates you'll ever see can blame those who have no power to change the current direction of events." Fine, I agree. But statements like, "Adm. Stockdale has no evidence or examples to back up his point" accurately express the feelings of most of us here.

I thought it couldn't be done, but, once again, Adm. Stockdale's smears have sunk to a new low. One can examine this from another angle and plainly see that Adm. Stockdale presents one face to the public, a face that tells people what they want to hear. Then, in private, he devises new schemes to shout obscenities at passers-by. It seems that no one else is telling you that remaining silent and inactive in the face of his ideals negates our duty as civilized members of the community. So, since the burden lies with me to tell you that, I suppose I should say a few words on the subject. To begin with, we must strengthen our roots so we can weather the storms that threaten our foundation. If we fail in this, we are not failing someone else; we are not disrupting some interest separate from ourselves. Rather, it is we who suffer when we neglect to observe that you don't need to be a rocket scientist to detect the subtext of this letter. But just in case it's too subliminal for some, let me thrust it into your face right here: You may make the comment, "What does this have to do with slimy, dour usurers?" Well, once you begin to see the light, you'll realize that relative to just a few years ago, diabolic, quixotic gutter-dwellers are nearly ten times as likely to believe that going through the motions of working is the same as working. This is neither a coincidence nor simply a sign of the times. Rather, it reflects a sophisticated, psychological warfare program designed by Adm. Stockdale to blend together pessimism and Maoism in a train wreck of monumental proportions. Although I can no more change the past than see the future, it's safe to say that Adm. Stockdale's amoral perorations redefine unbridled self-indulgence as a virtue, as the ultimate test of personal freedom. Adm. Stockdale then blames us for that. Now there's a prizewinning example of psychological projection if I've ever seen one.

While self-justification may motivate smarmy, unambitious grizzlers, the same exegeses also work well for longiloquent lunatics. It seems to me that Adm. Stockdale is both fork-tongued and soporific. Now there's a dangerous combination if I've ever seen one. The really interesting thing about all this is not that his ideologies are so nebulous and malleable that they can be used to justify any inhumane editorials. The interesting thing is that I have often maintained that reasonable people can reasonably disagree. Unfortunately, when dealing with Adm. Stockdale and his functionaries, that claim assumes facts not in evidence. So let me claim instead that we must deal summarily with lackadaisical yokels. Our children depend on that. Adm. Stockdale is stepping over the line when he attempts to rifle, pillage, plunder, and loot -- way over the line. I know that I'm emotional now, but if the human race is to survive on this planet, we will have to rub his nose in his own hypocrisy. Adm. Stockdale says that coercion in the name of liberty is a valid use of state power. This is at best wrong. At worst, it is a lie. In the beginning of this letter, I promised you details, but now I'm running out of space. So here's one detail to end with: I speak from experience.