[Innoxx]

This is a letter I have planned on writing for some time, a letter that I think is extremely important and one that sincerely must be heeded if we are to undo the damage caused by Mr. Eight Ace. First off, Ace says that we should all bear the brunt of his actions. Yet he also wants to win support by encapsulating frustrations and directing them toward unpopular scapegoats. Am I the only one who sees the irony there? I ask, because his method (or school, or ideology -- it is hard to know exactly what to call it) goes by the name of "Ace-ism". It is a money-grubbing and avowedly disagreeable philosophy that aims to sidetrack us, so we can't find the inner strength to demand a thoughtful analysis and resolution of our problems with Ace. I have two words for him: Grow up! Think about how easy it's become for lame-brained, deranged devil-worshippers to transform our whole society to suit Ace's own fatuitous, frightful interests. In its annual report on obstreperous incidents, the government concluded that Ace is trying to brainwash us. He wants us to believe that it's dodgy to begin a course of careful, planned, and coordinated action; that's boring; that's not cool. You know what I think of that, don't you? I think that Ace's dissertations are not witty satire, as he would have you believe. They're simply the surly ramblings of someone who has no idea or appreciation of what he's mocking.

He is a bacillus in the self-centered gut of teetotalism. I always catch hell whenever I say something like that, so let me assure you that he hates it when you say that the intent of this letter is certainly not hatred, but a probing look into an obviously significant issue. He really hates it when you say that. Try saying it to him sometime, if you have a thick skin and don't mind having him shriek insults at you. Does Ace remember the hurt and hate in the eyes of the people he made fun of just so others would like him more? Even if he does, I'm sure he doesn't care, because if Ace succeeds in his attempt to make us the helpless puppets of our demographic labels, it'll have to be over my dead body.

Let me put it this way: I, for one, have a dream, a mission, a set path that I would like to travel down. Specifically, my goal is to point out that the emperor has no clothes on. Of course, if you look back over some of my older letters, you'll see that I predicted that he would spread hatred, animosity, and divisiveness. And, as I predicted, he did. But you know, that was not a difficult prediction to make. Anyone who has bothered to learn even a little about Ace could have made the same prediction. He is not just ribald; he's unstable, too. Even if we accepted Ace's grievances, so what? Does that mean that he acts in the public interest? Of course not. Statements like, "Being shielded from the consequences of his bad judgment and bad behavior has made Ace careless" accurately express the feelings of most of us here.

He is truly up to something. I don't know exactly what, but it's our responsibility to bring the communion of knowledge to all of us. That's the first step in trying to tell him where he can stick it, and it's the only way to strike at the heart of his efforts to hand over the country to prudish fanatics. If you wonder why I take the stance that I do, it's because Ace's beliefs are like an enormous solipsism-spewing machine. We must begin dismantling that structure. We must put a monkey wrench in its gears. And we must stick to the facts and offer only those arguments that can be supported by those facts, because it doesn't do us much good to become angry and wave our arms and shout about the evils of Ace's holier-than-thou attitudes in general terms. If we want other people to agree with us and join forces with us, then we must anneal discourse with honesty, clear thinking, and a sense of moral good. No matter how close he's come to making me languish along beneath the thousand eyes of the worst types of self-pitying numskulls there are, he won't be satisfied until he finds a way to deflect attention from his unwillingness to support policies that benefit the average citizen. In my view, the acid test for Ace's "kinder, gentler" new politics should be, "Do they still declare a national emergency, round up everyone who disagrees with him, and put them in concentration camps?" If the answer is yes, then we can conclude that Ace has yet to acknowledge this. What's my problem, then? Allow me to present it in the form of a question: Is it possible for those who defend debauched, immature separatism to make their defense look more depraved than it currently is? Well, I'm sure Ace would rather create a kind of psychic pain at the very root of the modern mind than answer that particular question. He and detestable twaddlers are cut from the same cloth. Now, I could go off on that point alone, but his lieutenants have learned their scripts well, and the rhetoric comes gushing forth with little provocation. Ace likes thinking thoughts that aren't burdensome and that feel good. That's why you shouldn't let him intimidate you. You shouldn't let him push you around. We're the ones who are right, not Ace.

I can't predict the future, but I do know this: It's easy for us to shake our heads at his foolishness and cowardice. It's easy for us to exclaim that we should study the problem and recommend corrective action. It's easy for us to say, "Ace will adopt or abandon any principle to obtain power." The point is that it's easy for us to say these things, because Ace's intent is to prevent us from asking questions. He doesn't want the details checked. He doesn't want anyone looking for any facts other than the official facts he presents to us. I wonder if this is because most of his "facts" are false. Here's some food for thought: I, for one, do not find sentiments that are choleric, sullen, and abominable to be "funny". Maybe I lack a sense of humor, but maybe what we have been imparting to him -- or what he has been eliciting from us -- is a half-submerged, barely intended logic, contaminated by wishes and tendencies we prefer not to acknowledge.

I, hardheaded cynic that I am, wonder what would happen if Ace really did spit on sacred icons. There's a spooky thought. He can blame me for the influx of horny adulterers if it makes him feel better, but it won't help his cause any. I am making a pretty serious accusation here. I am accusing him of planning to hold annual private conferences in which unruly beggars are invited to present their "research". And I don't want anyone to think that I am basing my accusation only on the fact that he can't attack my ideas, so he attacks me. It could be worse, I suppose. Ace could create a Frankenstein's monster. I wish I could say this nicely, but I don't have much tolerance for what I call pestilential beer-guzzling-types: He claims that all it takes to solve our social woes are shotgun marriages, heavy-handed divorce laws, and a return to some mythical 1950s Shangri-la. I respond that my number one priority is to tell it like it is. When I first heard about Ace's inclinations, I dismissed them as merely heartless. But when I later learned that he wants me to swallow his perversions whole, without question or quibble, I realized that Ace's idiotic claim that he can achieve his goals by friendly and moral conduct is just that, an idiotic claim.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into Ace's notions, but they don't seem to serve any purpose other than to gain a respectable foothold for Ace's snooty imprecations. As I've said in the past, pauperism is dangerous. Ace's pushy version of it is doubly so.

There is no place in this country where we are safe from Ace's subordinates, no place where we are not targeted for hatred and attack. Call me unimaginative if you'd like; I, for one, will still do everything in my power to cast a gimlet eye on Ace's ideologies. Then, I will announce to the world that Ace is reluctant to resolve problems. He always just looks the other way and hopes no one will notice that the objection may still be raised that there is an international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. At first glance, this sounds almost believable. Yet the following must be borne in mind: He is an opportunist. That is, he is an ideological chameleon, without any real morality, without a soul.

The greatest quote I ever heard goes something like this: "As a dynamic historical current, unilateralism has taken many different forms and has evolved dramatically in some ways." Ace's writings are just another signpost marking our long, steep cultural descent. Not that I've come to expect any better from Ace. To say that the sky is falling is randy nonsense and untrue to boot. He can't discuss anything without talking about factionalism. The sooner he comes to grips with that reality, the better for all of us. The facts as I see them simply do not support the false, but widely accepted, notion that Ace can ignore rules, laws, and protocol without repercussion.

His taradiddles have caused widespread social alienation, and from this alienation a thousand social pathologies have sprung. Ace has recently been going around claiming that all any child needs is a big dose of television every day. You really have to tie your brain in knots to be gullible enough to believe that junk. Anyhow, I guess I've run out of things to say, so let me just leave you with one parting wish: Together, may we go placidly amid the noise and haste.

This took me exaclty 10 seconds.