[Darvish]

here's the letter in its original form:

This letter is not meant to be witty or insulting and I am afraid I won't even be able to make it eloquent. But I, hardheaded cynic that I am, will do the best I can to ring the bells of truth. The nitty-gritty of what I'm about to write is this: I am certain that if I asked the next person I meet if he would want Mr. Rice Damien to take away what few freedoms we have left, he would say no. Yet we all stand idly by while Mr. Damien claims that national-security interests can and should be sidestepped whenever his personal interests are at stake. I can guarantee the readers of this letter that he says it is within his legal right to create a Mr. Damien-centric society in which what I call inconsiderate underachievers dictate the populace's values and myths, its traditions and archetypes. Whether or not he indeed has such a right, he is like a magician who produces a dove in one hand while the other hand is busy trying to cast ordinary consumption and investment decisions in the light of high religious purpose. Teenagers who want to shock their parents sometimes maintain—with a straight face—that deconstructionism is a noble goal. Fortunately, most parents don't fall for this fraud because they know that we must give our young people the values that will inspire them to find the common ground that enables others to work together towards a shared vision. Those who claim otherwise do so only to justify their own bloodthirsty opuscula.

At one point, I actually believed that Mr. Damien would stop being so ill-bred. Silly me. His pronouncements may not be traditional for a lamebrained ivory-tower academic, but this is not the first time I've wanted to remind him about the concept of truth in advertising. But it is the first time I realized that he finds reality too difficult to swallow. Or maybe it just gets lost between the sports and entertainment pages. In either case, all the deals Mr. Damien makes are strictly one-way. Mr. Damien gets all the rights, and the other party gets all the obligations.

I laughed so hard I almost cried when Mr. Damien stated publicly that it's okay to expose and neutralize his enemies rather than sit at the same table and negotiate. You just can't make this stuff up—at least, not without noticing that not only does Mr. Damien dress up his profit motive in the cloak of selfless altruism, but he then commands his slaves, "Go, and do thou likewise." Let's be honest here: If I try really, really hard, I can almost see why he would want to impose theological straightjackets on scriptural interpretation. Mr. Damien's reason is not true reason. It does not seek the truth but only anti-democratic answers, immature resolutions to conflicts. So, sorry for being so long-winded in this letter, but the theoretical fallacies in Mr. Rice Damien's slogans run deep.