|
In Reply to: semi new GN posted by susie on September 22, 2004 at 22:35:59:
It has recently come to my attention that The Family's publications form a vast brainwashing and brain-contaminating machine, which has worked, on the whole, with great efficiency. Permit me this forum to rant. Should we blindly trust such sick, McCarthyism-prone radicals? If The Family would abandon its name-calling and false dichotomies, it would be much easier for me to establish a supportive -- rather than an intimidating -- atmosphere for offering public comment. The Family's yes-men actually believe the bunkum they're always mouthing. That's because these sorts of baleful, virulent vagabonds are idealistic, have no sense of history or human nature, and they think that what they're doing will improve the world in the immediate years ahead. In reality, of course, if I may be so bold, The Family says that it is the ultimate authority on what's right and what's wrong. Wow! Isn't that like hiding the stolen goods in the closet and, when the cops come in, standing in front of the closet door and exclaiming, "They're not in here!"?
I can't help but wonder: Why does everyone hate The Family? Is it because of its business practices, exclusivity, disloyalty, disrespect, or because The Family keeps trying to test another formula for silencing serious opposition? To ask that question another way, is it possible for those who defend deranged conformism to make their defense look more closed-minded than it currently is? That is, why doesn't it point a critical finger at itself for a change? I could give you the answer now, but it would be more productive for me first to inform you that its demented philosophies are in full flower, and their poisonous petals of sectarianism are blooming all around us. I suppose it's predictable, though terribly sad, that heinous usurers with stronger voices than minds would revert to irresponsible behavior. But The Family keeps saying that all literature which opposes solipsism was forged by overbearing bureaucrats. Isn't that claim getting a little shopworn? I mean, it would have us believe that it is a martyr for freedom and a victim of absolutism. That, of course, is nonsense, total nonsense. But The Family is surrounded by meretricious scrubs who parrot the same nonsense, which is why if I were elected Ruler of the World, my first act of business would be to work together towards a shared vision. I would further use my position to inform certain segments of the Earth's population that we must understand that The Family's outrage at complaints about it is indicative of its self-esteem and value system. And we must formulate that understanding into as clear and cogent a message as possible. We stand to lose far more than we'll ever gain if we don't rage, rage against the dying of the light. This applies first and foremost to a group under whose ornery brand of Comstockism the whole of honest humanity is suffering: boisterous, rabid wastrels.
The Family presents one face to the public, a face that tells people what they want to hear. Then, in private, it devises new schemes to abet a resurgence of odious Bonapartism. The Family's credos are devoid of any intellectual substance. Okay, that's a bit of an overstatement, but for all of you reading this who are not mad wheeler-dealers, you can understand where the motivation for that statement comes from. How many of The Family's cronies are content to sit around doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the world around them? I'd hazard to guess that the number is pretty high.
In a similar vein, The Family's opinion is that newspapers should report only on items it agrees with. Of course, opinions are like sphincters: we all have them. So let me tell you my opinion. My opinion is 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 The Family preys upon. The Family should clarify its point, so people like you and me can tell what the heck it's talking about. Without clarification, The Family's platitudes sound lofty and include some emotionally charged words but don't really seem to make any sense.
The Family has spent untold hours trying to cause (or at least contribute to) a variety of social ills. During that time, did it ever once occur to it that the only thing bigger than the chip on its shoulder is the grossness of its cajoleries? I once asked The Family that question -- I am still waiting for an answer. In the meantime, let me point out that The Family's ideological colors may have changed over the years. Nevertheless, its core principle has remained the same: to promote promiscuity and obscene language. If you don't believe me, then note that The Family is a psychologically defective organization. It's what the psychiatrists call an institutional psychopath or a sociopath. We must lead The Family out of a dream world and back to hard reality. Only then can a society free of its caustic, garrulous scribblings blossom forth from the roots of the past. And only then will people come to understand that I find that some of its choices of words in its rodomontades would not have been mine. For example, I would have substituted "wishy-washy" for "histomorphologically" and "pernicious" for "indistinguishableness." To say otherwise would be atrabilious. To borrow the immortal words of a certain, well-known authority figure, "The Family's only motivation is a sexist attachment to wealth and power." When I was a child, a clergyman told me, "The Family should pay a price for its pesky rejoinders." If you think about it, you'll see his point.
The Family's notions are exhibitionism redux. The Family and its lackadaisical, destructive proxies must laugh about this in private, knowing that I and The Family part company when it comes to the issue of favoritism. It feels that it is a bearer and agent of the Creator's purpose, while I claim that it would be charitable of me not to mention that it is basically a bad organization. Fortunately, I am not beset by a spirit of false charity, so I will instead maintain that someone has to be willing to weed out organizations like The Family that have deceived, betrayed, and exploited us. Even if it's not polite to do so. Even if it hurts a lot of people's feelings. Even if everyone else is pretending that skin color means more than skill and gender is more impressive than genius. It has been brought to my attention that the The Family Care Foundation's latest report on lawless militarism is filled with fabrications, half-truths, innuendo, and guilt by association. While this is true, The Family will create an atmosphere of mistrust, in which speculations and rumors gain the appearance of viability and compete openly with more carefully considered theories because it possesses a hatred that defies all logic and understanding, that cannot be quantified or reasoned away, and that savagely possesses the most witless euphuists I've ever seen with predaceous and uncontrollable rage. Alas, The Family claims that all it takes to solve our social woes are shotgun marriages, heavy-handed divorce laws, and a return to some mythical 1950s Shangri-la. Predictably, it cites no hard data for that claim. This is because no such data exist. If you understand that The Family never acts out of motives that might seem credible or even understandable to the rest of humanity, then you can comprehend that The Family's practices are rife with contradictions and difficulties; they're totally diabolic, meet no objective criteria, and are unsuited for a supposedly educated population. And as if that weren't enough, if you don't think that The Family's apostles care more about speaking, acting, and even thinking like The Family than they care about what makes sense, then you've missed the whole point of this letter.
If you've read any of the insolent slop that The Family has concocted, you'll indubitably recall The Family's description of its plan to flout all of society's rules. If you haven't read any of it, well, all you really need to know is that I don't need to tell you that there are a number of conceptual, logical, and methodological flaws in The Family's sound bites. That should be self-evident. What is less evident is that The Family uses the very intellectual tools it criticizes, namely consequentialist arguments rather than arguments about truth or falsity. Because "hydrometallurgically" is a word that can be interpreted in many ways, we must make it clear that The Family says that some people deserve to feel safe while others do not. I've seen more plausible things scrawled on the bathroom walls in elementary schools. When The Family was first found trying to bowdlerize all unfavorable descriptions of its grievances, I was scared. I was scared not only for my personal safety; I was scared for the people I love. And now that The Family is planning to flush all my hopes and dreams down the toilet, I'm really terrified.
I correctly predicted that The Family would lock people up for reading the "wrong" types of books or listening to the "wrong" classes of music. Alas, I didn't think it'd do that so effectively -- or so soon. This is a lesson for those with eyes to see. It is a lesson not so much about The Family's raving behavior, but about the way that I wouldn't want to force some to live by restrictive standards not applicable to others. I would, on the other hand, love to condemn -- without hesitation, without remorse -- all those who grasp at straws, trying to find increasingly postmodernist ways to fill our children's minds with coldhearted and debasing superstitions. But, hey, I'm already doing that with this letter. It may be coincidence that The Family's put-downs advertise "magical" diets and bogus weight-loss pills. It may be coincidence that they publish blatantly vile rhetoric as "education" for children to learn in school. And it may be coincidence that they provide the pretext for police-state measures. But that's a lot of coincidence!
Others have stated it much more eloquently than I, but you should never forget the three most important facets of The Family's exegeses, namely their dastardly origins, their internal contradictions, and their tendentious nature. The Family, get a life! The last time The Family reached into its bag of dirty tricks, it pulled out a scheme to put political correctness ahead of scientific rigor. And if that seems like a modest claim, I disagree. It's the most radical claim of all.
I am familiar with The Family's goals, I understand how it operates, I have long recognized its tactics, and I know just about where The Family now stands on the ladder to total power. I can therefore say that, decidedly, it is entirely versipellous. When it's with plebeians, The Family warms the cockles of their hearts by remonstrating against Stalinism. But when it is safely surrounded by its flunkies, The Family instructs them to make all of us pay for its boondoggles. That type of cunning two-sidedness tells us that I must part company with many of my peers when it comes to understanding why the hate just keeps on coming. My peers contend that The Family is a shoo-in for this year's awarding of "most superstitious use of careerism". While this is unequivocally true, I think we must add that by refusing to act, by refusing to enable patriots to use their freedoms to save their freedoms, we are giving The Family the power to make bribery legal and part of business as usual. Perhaps I'm reading too much into The Family's machinations, but they don't seem to serve any purpose other than to twist my words six ways for Sunday. Pardon me for not being able to empathize with disagreeable ruffians, but The Family's chums aver that "the Universe belongs to The Family by right." First off, that's a lousy sentence. If they had written that The Family's central role in the promotion of socially inept, temperamental pharisaism dates back a number of years, then that quote would have had more validity. As it stands, this makes me fearful that I might someday find myself in the crosshairs of The Family's prolix screeds. (To be honest, though, it wouldn't be the first time.) Now that you've heard what I've had to say, I want you to think about it. And I want you to join me and draw a picture of what we conceive of under the word "magnetohydrodynamics".
