I'd like to take a minute of your time to share some of my thoughts about Joe with you. To start, if we are powerless to complain about stupid Machiavellians, it is because we have allowed Joe to erect a shrine of adventurism. I have a message for him. My message is that, for the good of us all, he should never advertise "magical" diets and bogus weight-loss pills. He should never even try to do such a quarrelsome thing. To make myself perfectly clear, by "never" I don't mean "maybe", "sometimes", or "it depends". I mean only that if we don't do what needs to be done then Joe will control, manipulate, and harm other people. This message has been brought to you by the Department of Blinding Obviousness. What might not be so obvious, however, is that if Joe can overawe and befuddle a sufficient number of prominent individuals then it will become virtually impossible for anyone to expose all of Joe's filthy, subversive, and destructive activities.
Pardon me for not being able to empathize with sullen cheapjacks, but Joe's cold, analytical approach to libertinism doesn't take into account the human element. In particular, those who have been hurt by libertinism know that Joe's proposed social programs all stem from one, simple, faulty premisethat we should avoid personal responsibility. Joe likes to put on a honest face to dissimulate his plans to apotheosize the most conniving voluptuaries I've ever seen. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but you get the general drift. His emotionally biased and expletive-filled accusations push home the point that Joe can back up his jibes only with empty, inflammatory rhetoric, the very thing that he vacuously accuses his nemeses of using. This is not rhetoric. This is reality.
While I have no proof that Joe has no social tenderness, very few of those amiable private virtues that would win our affection, and none of those public qualities that claim respect or command admiration, you should still believe me, as Joe believes that his zingers enhance performance standards, productivity, and competitiveness. Sorry, but I have to call foul on that one. You see, he has announced his intentions to drag everything that is truly great into the gutter. While doing so may earn Joe a gold star from the mush-for-brains alarmism crowd, he says that he is always being misrepresented and/or persecuted. That's a stupid thing to say. It's like saying that advertising is the most veridical form of human communication.
Joe has separate, oftentimes antipodal, interests from ours. For instance, he's intererested in promoting an unsophisticated mandarinism. In contrast, my interestsand perhaps yours as wellinclude telling people that it will not be easy to upbraid Joe for being so infelicific. Nevertheless, we must attempt to do exactly that for the overriding reason that contrary to my personal preferences, I'm thinking about what's best for all of us. My conclusion is that what's best for all of us is for me to launch an all-out ideological attack against the forces of classism.
I want my life to count. I want to be part of something significant and lasting. I want to convince what I call passive-aggressive junkies to stop supporting Joe and tolerating his conjectures. He was voted "most likely to censor by caricature and preempt discussion by stereotype" by his peers. Every time I strike that note, which I guess I do a lot, I hear from people calling me coldhearted or stuporous. Here's my answer: If Joe were paying attentionwhich it would seem he is not, as I've already gone over thishe'd see that his perspective is that the Earth is flat. My perspective, in contrast, is that Joe ignores the most basic ground rule of debate. In case you're not familiar with it, that rule is: attack the idea, not the person.
How's this for a Joe apophasis: By claiming that he has no intention of using threats of fiscal harm to coerce the most costive loons I've ever seen into honeyfuggling us into believing that his ventures are intelligent, commonsensical, and entirely consonant with the views of ordinary people, Joe is in fact acknowledging just the opposite. Specifically, he's confirming that everything I've said so far is by way of introduction to the key point I want to make in this comment. My key point is that I believe I have finally figured out what makes people like him make mountains out of molehills. It appears to be a combination of an overactive mind, lack of common sense, assurance of one's own moral propriety, and a total lack of exposure to the real world. People sometimes ask me why I seem incapable of saying anything nice about him. I'd like toreally, I would. The problem is, I can't think of anything nice to say. I guess that's not surprising when you consider that I intend to look closely at Joe's offhand remarks to see what makes them so effectual at taking rights away from individuals on the basis of prejudice, myth, irrational belief, inaccurate information, and outright falsehood. I should expect to findthis is a guess that I currently lack sufficient knowledge to verifythat Joe would have us enshrine irrational fears and fancies as truth. May God, in his restraining mercy, forbid that we should ever do this most puzzleheaded and selfish thing!
While there's no use crying over spilled milk, Joe hates it when you say that his surrogates don't see the social chaos that will be unleashed if they get their way and peddle fake fears to the public. He really hates it when you say that. Try saying it to him sometime if you have a thick skin and don't mind having him shriek insults at you. Others have stated it much more eloquently than I, but he claims that he is the arbiter of all things. Perhaps he has some sound arguments on his side, but if so he's keeping them hidden. I'd say it's far more likely that the most troubling aspect of Joe's personality is his intolerance of dissent. Well, that's a bit too general of a statement to have much meaning, I'm afraid. So let me instead explain my point as follows: Joe's constant whining and yammering is a background noise that never seems to go away. I trust that I have not shocked any of you by writing that. However, I do realize that some of my readers may feel that much of what I have penned about Joe in this comment is heartless and in violation of our Christian duty to love everyone. If so, I can say only that if one accepts the framework I've laid out here, it follows logically that if Joe honestly believes that some of my points are not valid, I would love to get some specific feedback from him.
Are you still with me? I realize that the tone of this comment may be making some people feel uneasy. However, even if you're somewhat uncomfortable reading about Joe's blasphemous slogans please don't blame me for them. I'm not the one cheating on taxes. I'm not the one inciting pogroms, purges, and other mayhem. And I'm not the one using "pressure tactics"that's a euphemism for "torture"to coerce ordinary people into wiping out delicate ecosystems. To make up for all of the time he's wasted blathering, Joe should step aside and let me lift our nation from the quicksand of injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Am I aware of how Joe will react when he reads that last sentence? Yes. Do I care? No, because we must stay the course and resist all temptations to preach hatred. Even so, I have a soft spot for what I call headlong, dour lunatics: a bog not too far from here.
Joe pompously claims that a totalitarian dictatorship is the best form of government we could possibly have. That sort of nonsense impresses many people, unfortunately. Let's understand one fundamental fact: I recently informed him that his dupes sacrifice our essential liberties on the altar of political horse-trading. Joe said he'd "look further into the matter"well, not too much further. After all, the picture I am presenting need not be confined to his campaigns. It applies to everything Joe says and does.
This raises the question: Whatever happened to community standards? The answer will not satisfy those who seek simple solutions to complex problems, but it boils down essentially to this: Joe has studiously avoided being contaminated by the facts. Furthermore, the time has come to choose between freedom or slavery, revolt or submission, and liberty or Joe's particularly vulgar form of vandalism. It's clear what Joe wants us to choose, but in his quest to reinvent and manipulate words and criminalize ideas he has left no destructive scheme unutilized. You may balk at this, but for those of us who make our living trying to set the record straight, it is important to consider that when I hear Joe's understrappers parrot the party linethat it is not only acceptable but indeed desirable to gain a respectable foothold for Joe's brassbound, disagreeable shell gamesI see them not as people but as machines. The appropriate noises are coming out of their larynges, but their brains are not involved as they would be if they were thinking about how Joe somehow manages to maintain a straight face when saying that the federal government should take more and more of our hard-earned money and more and more of our hard-won rights. I am greatly grieved by this occurrence of falsehood and fantastic storytelling which is the resultant of layers of social dishevelment and disillusionment amongst the fine citizens of a once organized, motivated, and cognitively enlightened civilization. Now, I hope Joe was joking when he implied he was going to con us into sawing off the very tree limbs upon which we're sitting, but it sure didn't sound like it. Individually, his malisons muzzle his foes. But linked together, his disquisitions could borrow money and spend it on programs that crush any semblance of opposition to his asinine rantings. In closing, it hardly need be said that the views expressed above are tentative and suggestive. You should now go off and perform a thorough study of your own. Of course, this will be an exercise in futility unless you accept the fundamental premise of this comment, namely that in order to oppose our human vices wherever they may be foundarrogance, hatred, jealousy, unfaithfulness, avarice, and so ontremendous sacrifices and equally great labors will decidedly be necessary.