Originally Posted by NoComments

Hi, Jim, how the hell are you!?

Are you still in Florida? When are we going waverunning again?

As for 12 Clicks, all I have to say and I will be brief:

I am writing on behalf of myself and a few of my friends to state that I don't expect everyone to agree with me. As this letter will make clear, I once overheard 12clicks say something quite astonishing. Are you strapped in? 12clicks said that he is always being misrepresented and/or persecuted. Can you believe that? At least his statement made me realize that his propaganda factories continuously spew forth messages like, "Anyone who disagrees with 12clicks is ultimately invidious" and, "The sky is falling". What they don't tell you, though, is that there's an important difference between me and 12clicks. Namely, I, for one, am willing to die for my cause. 12clicks, in contrast, is willing to kill for his -- or, if not to kill, at least to welsh on all kinds of agreements.

Difficult times lie ahead. Fortunately, we have the capacity to circumvent much of the impending misery by working together to shelter initially unpopular truths from suppression, enabling them to ultimately win out through competition in the marketplace of ideas. Because "anthropocentrical" is a word that can be interpreted in many ways, we must make it clear that the pen is a powerful tool. Why don't we use that tool to speak up and speak out against 12clicks? His goal is to use both overt and covert deceptions to win support by encapsulating frustrations and directing them toward unpopular scapegoats. How satanic is that? How untoward? How unctuous?

Please don't misinterpret that last statement to mean that ebola, AIDS, mad-cow disease, and the hantavirus were intentionally bioengineered by contemptuous blockheads for the purpose of population reduction. That's not at all what it means. Rather, it means that if 12clicks believes that individual worth is defined by race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin, then it's obvious why he thinks that he is the one who will lead us to our great shining future. I insist that the best way to overcome misunderstanding, prejudice, and hate is by means of reason, common sense, clear thinking, and goodwill. 12clicks, in contrast, believes that he is forward-looking, open-minded, and creative. The conclusion to draw from this conflict of views should be obvious: 12clicks wants us to emulate the White Queen from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, who strives to believe "as many as six impossible things before breakfast". Then again, even the White Queen would have trouble believing that otiose, misguided twaddlers are more deserving of honor than our nation's war heroes. I prefer to believe things that my experience tells me are true, such as that 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 12clicks's grotesque, effrontive protests, which use scapegoating as a foil to draw anger away from more accurate targets.

Although I can find only circumstantial evidence of misconduct and rule violations, 12clicks would have us believe that the rest of us are an inferior group of people, fit only to be enslaved, beaten, and butchered at the whim of our betters. Not surprisingly, his evidence for that completely splenetic claim is top-heavy with anonymous sources and, to put it mildly, he has a checkered track record for accuracy. I warrant it would be more accurate for 12clicks to say that by an odd twist of fate, what he is doing is akin to painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. To say anything else would be a lie. He should stop calling me an unpleasant, obstreperous nutcase. Although I've been called worse things by better people, my goal is to get 12clicks to realize that we must put our religious and factional differences aside if we are ever to throw down the gauntlet and challenge his adherents to shine a light on his efforts to preach hatred. Of course, if he insists on remaining an ignorant, uninformed, and ill-informed dunderhead, that's his prerogative.

Before I move on, I just want to state once more that there is no excuse for the innumerable errors of fact, the slovenly and philistine artistic judgments, the historical ineptitude, the internal contradictions, and the various half-truths, untruths, and gussied-up truths that litter every one of 12clicks's essays from the first word to the last. I am entirely shocked and angered by 12clicks's contentious improprieties. Such shameful conduct should never be repeated. Of course, 12clicks confuses demagoguery with leadership and undocumented conspiracism with serious research. I say "of course" because we must tell 12clicks what we all think of him -- and boy, do I have some choice words I'd like to use. This call to action begins with you. You must be the first to bring him down a peg. You must be the one to turn 12clicks's quarrelsome exegeses to our advantage. And you must inform your fellow man that 12clicks sees the world as somewhat anarchic, a game of catch-as-catch-can in which the sneakiest scamps nab the biggest prizes. Because 12clicks is so caught up in trying to implement an inaniloquent parody of justice called "12clicks-ism", I'd like to conclude this letter by quoting to 12clicks the last line of R. M. Rilke's poem, "Archaic Torso of Apollo": "You must change your life."