Almost Unbearably Enlightening

I found this letter in my comments inbox I reprint it here in full because I think my Mom wrote it.

No, I am kidding. My Mom would not waste her time reading my articles. The reader signed himself G Stephen Tucker. I reprint it here because it flatters me until I blush like a schoolgirl, but, like a blushing schoolgirl, I actually do secretly think, deep down, I am as cute as Tartuffe and Grima Wormtongue say I am, and, besides, it took me hours to dye my eyes to match my gown, so there.

First of all, let me applaud you for speaking your mind bluntly. All too often, people (on either side of the political spectrum) speak in euphemisms or coded phrases, and do not simply lay their cards on the table. Especially when speaking of morality issues such as this, rarely do even the most conservative thinkers and writers have the honesty and integrity to come right out and say that such things should be illegal and punishable by incarceration, and that such things should carry a significant stigma. Such is the nature of politics, I suppose. If more people were as blunt and honest as you, the debate would no doubt be more transparent and straightforward.

Let me please add that I came to your blog because the topic of Robert Heinlein came up, and I decided to google search the term “crazy years” and found your piece which used this idea as an introduction. I believe that piece was also in response to another of your writings concerning homosexuality and the responses you received from folks you offended. That piece was, in essence, about semantics (hence your use of “the crazy years” as an intro) – and since I am a semanticist (BS, applied linguistics) I habitually perform semantic analyses on any writing about the meanings and usages of words. I found your language use – the words you chose, the syntax, and the overall structure of the piece – to be beyond incredibly fascinating. It was so full of multi-leveled recursive components that the semantic field it created reminded me of an M. C. Escher painting. The fact that the piece was actually written to explicate the phenomenon of semantic dissociation made it almost unbearably enlightening. It is as though the shouts and noise and nonsense and lies and insinuations and just plain bullshit of a decade or more of political diatribes I have heard and been unable to extract any meaningful content from was suddenly brought into focus, organized, clarified, and made perfectly comprehensible.

I have never chosen a side to be on in this conflict of ideas people call politics or culture wars. I always considered all sides, given their language usage, to be so devoid of any critical thinking ability or attachment to reality that choosing a side seemed in itself to be an act of desperation. Choosing a side seemed to be equivalent to deciding to no longer be sane.

And while I still am not willing to be so insane as to ACCEPT some party platform or believe in some abstract theory of “the way things should be,” or become a PROPONENT of some poorly informed ideal or agenda, you have made it clear to me that there is a political will which I must wholeheartedly REJECT, and a wickedly informed ideal and agenda that I must become an OPPONENT of, however I may do so with my limited power. Which admittedly ain’t much.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.