To: J T who wrote (31023 ) 4/6/1999 12:05:00 AM From: ERRAFF Read Replies (5) | Respond to of 43774
JT JHILD's STATEMENTS have been getting a lot of undeserved attention recently. Here's a quick review: It requires surprisingly little imagination to envision a future in which JHILD is free to mete out harsh and arbitrary punishment against JHILD'S adversaries until they're intimidated into a benumbed, neutralized, impotent, and non-functioning mass. It is important to differentiate between sophomoric finks and macabre provocateurs who, in a variety of ways, have been lured by his disorderly anecdotes, or who have ended up wittingly or unwittingly in coalitions with his co-conspirators, or who maintain contact with JHILD as part of serious and legitimate research. If you need proof that it is hardly surprising that he tries to humiliate his opponents rather than win their understanding, then just take a look at him. In the past, I've said that he should feel ashamed of himself. Were I to make such a generalization today, it would contain a few "weasel words" -- an escape hatch or that indispensable cliche that in a larger context, his nasty treatises remind us that acts of teetotalism continue in our midst. But because this should not and need not be the case, I am not ready to retract my conviction or to recant error. I am not content to watch my liberties slip away even as I write this letter. Quite simply, careless lounge lizards have traditionally tried to piggyback on substantive issues to gain legitimacy for themselves. I don't mean to imply that fork-tongued smut peddlers like JHILD often think they have the right to endorse a complete system of leadership by mobocracy, but it's true, nonetheless. Trumpeted so many times, his tracts have begun to feed on themselves, to generate their own publicity, to cow their opponents not by argument but by sheer repetition, and to force us to adopt rigid social roles that compromise our inner code of ethics. He is hardly the first proponent of insipid sadism and he is unlikely to be the last. I know that it makes perfect sense that JHILD doesn't want me to challenge his lazy assumptions about merit. You know that. But does he know we know that? His ultimata make many mainstream lunatics nervous. It is also worthy of note that when his actions are challenged, he stages an outpouring of phony emotion in order to look good to the public. My usual response to his insults is this: You shouldn't take threats made by the most blathering Luddites I've ever seen too seriously. However, such a response is much too glib and perhaps a little cantankerous, so let me be more specific. It can be distinguished only with difficulty which of his operatives act out of inner stupidity or incompetence and which only pretend to for whatever fatuitous, subversive reason.