Posted: 05-11-2013 12:16 AM
Joe had many interesting episodes here, often ideologically clashing with members. I think we all know that one thing Joe really loved was a good heated debate, and passion in using writing and words. He wanted people to get mad, but he was far from a troll, he was trying to inspire people. I had the good fortune to be able to chat with him while he was discovering some of these ideas, and I feel I perhaps was personally responsible for introducing him to some truths that he went on to hold dear. He did the same for me, he taught me about myself, and was pretty near to a father figure to me.
This quote is simply a stitch in time, offensive to some yes, but not meant to offend. He had hard-held beliefs, and he was not going to let them be downplayed or effaced.
This quote is simply a stitch in time, offensive to some yes, but not meant to offend. He had hard-held beliefs, and he was not going to let them be downplayed or effaced.
showthread.php?postid=569474#post569474A part of me is quite sorry that my recent posts have given offense: after all, I have been here at The Fantastic Forum for almost a decade now, and I have known many of you for quite a long time. I am --- or at least I once was --- a gentlemen, whom Cardinal Newman once defined as "a person who never causes pain." A part of me is quite sad that I am no longer a gentleman, that I am in a total existential situation where being a gentleman would be a mark of insanity.
A deeper part of me, however, realizes that that whole segment of my life is over now, once and for all. I could deal, albeit with great difficulty, with the overt fascism that has been allowed to pass unchecked on this forum for the past four years. But when the Obamabots began to appear here --- and mark my words, it will be disclosed someday that many of these Obamabots (not necessarily the ones here) were intelligence operatives in the service of the Brzezinski wing of the Cryptocracy --- that was that. I left the forum in a cold fury, and later learned that I had been banned from it for a month.
A part of me says that I should have let sleeping dogs lie, that I should have quietly vanished from this board, and that I should not have cultivated even more trouble for myself than I already have. That part still speaks to me. But another, and deeper, part says that the reason why the planet (forget about Amerika, just forget about that terminal mess at this point!), the reason why the planet is in such a hideous disaster-in-waiting was because too many people listened to that voice for too long. And after having been silent for so many decades, albeit out of necessity, I will not be silent any longer. I would rather be totally alone than be silent. Hell, I would rather be dead.
The bridges here are burning, and a part of me is quite sad to see them burn. But the cold, inescapable, fact of the matter is that I am not the person whom I was when I joined The Fantastic Forum in April of 2000 and that my collective reality has little in common with what it was in April of 2000. What was appropriate then for me is not appropriate now. The bridges are burning, alas, but they were old and rotton and ready to fall anyway. And that too is a sad thing to consider.
I guess that just about sums up how I feel and why I bothered to come back at all. A part, a big part, of me on the surface is sad at what has happened in the past 24 hours. But a deeper, now-realer, part of me knows that I needed to say what I said and that it was long overdue to be said. And there it stands with me...
