Damnation!

Most of the emails I get are very polite and interesting. But occasionally the moonbats take flight. Here's one I received today, from a gentleman in Scotland (my ancestral home) who took somewhat belated exception to an old essay I posted about Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ - or more specifically, about a Vanity Fair piece by Christopher Hitchen attacking that movie a few weeks before its release.

I post this partly because I think it's funny, but mainly because it illustrates a point I sometimes make (for instance, here) - that people who are vehemently hostile to religion are very often just hostile in general. It all has to do with the ego, which religion asks us to transcend and overcome. Hostile people are ego-driven, and they naturally see religion as an attack and a threat.

Please note: I'm not saying that all anti-religious folks are hostile; I'm just saying that some of them are. And yes, some religious people are hostile, too - even downright murderous. But their conception of religion needs work.

One small point: The emailer says I haven't even seen Gibson's film. This was true when I wrote the essay, since the film had not yet come out. But of course I have seen it now. For the most part I liked it, though I found some of the historical reconstructions questionable. 

Anyway, here's the email, reproduced unedited except for the deletion of expletives. The author's name has been removed to save him from embarrassment.

Hey, just read your article lambasting Christopher Hitchens and his stunning critique of a disgusting bilge of a film The Passion of the Christ.

Maybe you should re-read the original Vanity Fair article, or are you scared of people thinking you are a leftist 'elite', a phrase you constantly use in your 'essay'. Not surprising as your writing shows you up as the derivitive mental eunuch you are.

I don't normally speak such hatred for an author, but your predictable rubbish (that's your books by the way) is embarrassing. I can't believe you are even published. Maybe your crap is exciting or well written to a lonely 35 year old that still lives with his parents, but I actually find the fact that you are published, offensive. I work in a bookshop here in Scotland, and if we are ever crazy enough to order your books in I will hide them under a table where no-one can buy them. It's kind of a clean up the world from philistine writers service.

Your contention that Gibson is an ok guy just wanting to make his little film, and seem to dismiss the idea that the film is any way ideologically loaded (which with any film is IMPOSSIBLE, read Foucault or someone with an IQ, although I can't imagine it being hard to find someone that would challenge you), is folly in any sense. So what, people didn't actually find the film offensive about Jews -- the IDEA was there, and Gibson sought to perputuate lies.

Also, it interests me that you write such a damning account of Hitchens, when by your own admission, you have never seen said film!! You write, 'They do not want any testaments to religious faith.' Wrong. We just don't want sanctimonious, right wing drivel. You'll know all about writing drivel, of course.

I hope you will forgive my tone, no actually, I don't, because I have no sympathy for such a boring thriller-by-numbers monkey as yourself.

Damnation awaits purveyors of rubbish (I scarce use the word to describe you) literature like yourself. GO read a thesaurus and CHALLENGE your reader. WHy do you sit around and write such tripe. I...just...don't...understand...it. When you can write with even half the eloquence or erudition of someone like Hitchens, you may just be fit to kiss his feet.

Please be a better writer for all our sakes, or for f***'s sake just stop altogether and stop crowding the shelves with tripe like your own.

Writer's are supposed to CHALLENGE people. But you're one of these, 'I don't want people to think I'm an elitist' idiots. Why are you so scared to try and do something original for f***'s sake?

Here's hoping you find a good writer's club ...

Comments

[Margaret Falk]

It's so much fun being an author! We get some very nice letters from fans like this guy. This is what we all work for--the chance for some numbskull to call our work derivative drivel.

This guy does not know how to express himself without using obscenities--a sure sign of a deep thinker.

Kiss Hitchens' feet? Bite his feet off, maybe. He makes my skin crawl.

[Dirty Harry]

I was a liberal until I was 27 and just as mouthy about it. And never once did a conservative talk to me like that.

Since becoming a conservative A LOT of liberals have talked to me like that. Anecdotal but revealing.

I read an article about a reporter who wore a Kerry shirt around the most Republican area of California and a Bush shirt in the most liberal: Not one incident with the Republicans. They were all polite and helpful and nice and he never got more than a little gentle friendly teasing.

A lot of liberals treated him poorly, rudely, and like an outsider. The reporter was liberal, expected the exact opposite, and was shocked.

[Brins]

I'm from Scotland.

...no, I'm not him! But if you look closely at his word-capitalisation trends in the email, he seems to be saying 'Impossible idea, go challenge'. Hm.

[Michael Prescott]

Margaret,

I don't think I'd want to kiss Hitchens' feet, either ...

Harry,

There are some conservatives who can be pretty rude 'n' crude - like the execrable Michael Savage, a master of the cheap shot. Ann Coulter can be mean, too. It does seem to me that more of the venom is on the left, but that may just be because they are out of power and feeling frustrated. During the Clinton years there was a lot of toxic talk from the right - claims that Clinton was a drug smuggler, a murderer, a Soviet dupe, a spy for China, and that Hillary was a lesbian who (at the same time) had an affair with Vince Foster ...

It goes both ways, I think.

Brin,

Believe me, I'm not tarring all Scots with the same brush! I am of Scottish descent myself. The family legend is that we came over on the Mayflower, but I am doubtful.

Interesting about the capitalization. The email almost cries out for psychological analysis, doesn't it?

If I were trying to read between the lines, I would say that this fellow was raised in a religious (possibly Calvinist) household, then rebelled, and is now very hostile toward religion in general - yet still thinking in somewhat religious terms ("Damnation awaits ...").

He says he is a bookstore clerk, a fairly low-paying job for someone who seems well educated - which leads me to think that he is an aspiring, and so far frustrated, writer. He blames his lack of success on the intellectual superiority of his work, which cannot find a publisher in a marketplace dominated by mediocre commercial hacks - hence his antagonism toward genre fiction. He sees himself as part of an intellectual elite, held back by the ignorance of the masses, who do not want to be "challenged."

His otherwise inexplicable reference to 35-year-olds who live with their parents strikes me as psychological projection; my bet is that he is (or was until recently) dependent on his family for some measure of financial support, and he is ashamed of it. He may be less confident in his abilities than he pretends; his references to low IQ, etc., suggest that he may fear he is not as smart as he likes to believe. His references to bilge, crap, rubbish, etc. also strike me as projection; generally when we label others as no good, we are secretly afraid that we ourselves are no good. (Scapegoating is a very old practice.) So for all his bluster, he may be quite insecure and may even see himself as a failure, as garbage.

For all these reasons, I think that he is very unhappy with his present circumstances, and when he writes with peculiar emphasis, "I ... just ... don't ... understand," he is really saying that he doesn't understand how to break out of the situation in which he finds himself. In that sense, the letter may be a cry for help at an unconscious level.

If I were trying to help him, I would say that he should not judge his worth as a person by what he has or hasn't accomplished thus far. There is more to a human being than a resume, and a lack of success in a particular endeavor does not turn a person into garbage. Being mad at the world or mad at himself (it amounts to the same thing) is only a short-term coping strategy. The longer-term strategy is to pursue a meaningful goal while not investing one's own value as a person in the outcome. Commit to the process, detach from the outcome, as the Bhagavad Gita teaches.

Of course, my analysis could be all wrong, but usually when someone invests this much emotion in a letter to a stranger, there is an underlying meaning that is much more profound (and more profoundly human) than the surface message.

[Dirty Harry]

You know what, Michael? You're absolutely right. We weren't very classy when not in power. It's easy to be generous when you're ahead in the game. Excellent point.

[Brins]

I guess that shows, there can be more to people than meets the eye. In this case, perhaps quite a lot more!

Seriously, this analysis certainly has potential to elevate the guy beyond the title of 'some numbskull'.

Who knows, maybe he'll read all this and chip in his two cents!

[Michael Prescott]

Harry,

Of course, the other side of the coin is that the Clintons were (are?) astonishingly corrupt. Hillary's cattle futures, Bill's Troopergate, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, the travel office, IRS audits of conservative think tanks, the Secret Service's arrest of a guy for asking Clinton a tough question at a town hall meeting ... not to mention the corrupt cronies they surrounded themselves with - Ron Brown, Web Hubbel, Janet Reno (she was either corrupt or just grossly incompetent, I'm not sure which) ... and their hatchetmen like Dick Morris and Harold Ickes ... and the general air of sleaze emanating from the Clinton White House, with Bill hanging out in the Oval Office in a sweatsuit, telling people what kind of underwear he wore, making "jokes" about his critics being racists, implying that talk radio hosts were responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing ...

Yeah, it's all coming back to me! In that atmosphere, a certain amount of paranoia and mean-spiritedness on the Right was probably justified. It looks bad in retrospect, though.

Brins,

I admit that my analysis of the hostile emailer was a flight of fancy that could be entirely off-base. It was interesting to create a mental picture of this gent and flesh it out imaginatively, but of course he might be altogether different. One thing is certain: he needs to work on his social skills!

[Dirty Harry]

Just blogged that amazing list. I'd forgotten as well.

But Republicans did accuse the Clintons of murder. Jesse Helms made some crack about what the army would do if he came to NC -- and lost my vote. They made fun of Chelsea...

That's coming back too,

[Dirty Harry]

Updated my post so it reflect better the context of all this.

[Brins]

Oh, I don't doubt that you didn't exactly pour hours of in-depth analysis or research into your assessment of the email, Michael, but what you came up with is still very impressive, however far from the truth it is!

It's probably not going to happen now, but a comment from this person here would have added some depth to all this. I'd be interested to see his scope on what you've said (then again, he might be equally hostile!).

Anyway, this grand discussion has gone far enough now, I think.

Now, black holes...