Your Complete Guide to Digital Sparring With Nincompoops
Oh, sure, you encounter plenty of horseshit on Substack — women saying they covet as subscribers others who share their interest in Living Authentically [capitalization mine], or persons of both chromosomal configurations speaking of “lived experience” [an experience is, for God’s, sake lived BY DEFINITION — but I nonetheless there are few more enjoyable ways to spend a cold threatening-to-rain on London’s southwest corner than mixing it up with those who views differ sharply from my own.
I don’t know if anyone out there is interested in reading about God, but I will write about HIM every day for the few who are. He is faithful, and He is closer than your very breath. You are not alone.
Were the thousands of Palestinian civilians killed by Israeli bombs alone, Mr. Lewis? If so, why they and not we? How about the Somalian children dying of malnutrition? Alone? Not alone? Can we make a deal? You offer me a feasible explanation of God’s seeming indifference, if not sadism, and I’ll sign up without hesitation at whatever church you point me to.
HIM, indeed.
How odd. It was human beings who killed all those people. Or did you miss that?
One could almost infer that you believe in an omniscient God who condones unspeakable brutality. If your next door neighbors’ son’s idea of fun were poisoning the neighborhoods dogs and cats, would you condone the parents not stopping him? I suspect not. But God gets to skate?
Let me guess. God’s waiting for humanity to come to the realization that brutality isn’t nice on it own?
So….Have you ever actually read Genesis? Serious question. Have you?
John Mendelssohn
In view of the fact that I regard the Bible as a work of literature, and not sacred, what does that have to do with anything? Let me guess. You’re one of those who people who, because she chooses to believe that the Bible is sacred, everyone else should feel identically? Am I warm, Jeri? It makes as much sense as my asking if you’ve read Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn.
Jeri Massi
So I’m going to take that as a “No, you have not read Genesis.” And that’s why you think God is supposed to be Santa Clause or Batman and then get pissed when He’s not.
Go on, stay furious and blame everybody else. It’s so much easier than taking responsibility to get out of your own mind and start learning and getting out of your little middle class, entitled niche.
John Mendelssohn
I’m getting confused, Jeri. I’m entitled, and want God to be Santa Clause [sic] or Batman because I don’t regard the Bible as sacred?
You dodged my question. I have decided to regard Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn as sacred. If you haven’t read it — and carefully! — you have no mortal standing to accuse me of being irresponsible.
Hey, I asked first: Have you read Genesis? Didn’t get an answer but a lot of blather. You can call LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN your blueprint of faith and then rail against it because it fails to justify God. Fine. I expect it would fail to provide an adequate justification of God, since it’s not even about that topic.
But if you rail against a Christian because God is not Santa Clause, the simplest answer is that you have an infantile view of God, and if you want to understand the historic Christian view of God, you’ll find it in the BIble and a whole lot of it in Genesis.
So you can rant and rave about God, but we just look at you and say, poor guy, he thinks God is Santa Clause! Is he five years old? And why does he base his view of God on LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN and then blame Christians for their view of God, which they base on an entirely different book?
Ms. Sasha Stone objected to my album All We Are Saying Is Give Fascism a Chance.
Which side tried repeatedly to jail their political opponent? Which side threw protesters in solitary for a year without charging them? Which side demanded all comply with the rules of language, how we define biological sex, or risk losing everything? Which side has people afraid to speak their minds? Which side tried to censor speech via social media? Get it together, man. Until you actually understand what the word "fascism" means, don't throw it around.
How foolish of me. "Which side tried repeatedly to jail their political opponent?" I seem to remember a particular candidate inducing his moron audiences to chant, "Lock [Hillary] up," but maybe I'm misremembering that. Are you speaking of the attempts to hold Mr. Trump accountable for rape, seditious conspiracy, and election interference? What could they have been thinking! Who hasn't done a little raping, a little riot-inducing, a little trying to bully an election official into "finding" an extra 11,000 votes?
As for fascism, well, you're right. I have no conception of what it means. I thought it might mean firing ethics and other overseers, and generals who might disagree with your wanting to sic the American military on American civilians, and trying to compel all new federal hires to swear allegiance not to the Constitution, but to the rapist traitor in the Oval Office. A rapist traitor, mind you, who has made clear that he regards himself as the living embodiment of the Law.
Oh, and censoring speech on social media? You mean like trying to prevent the dissemination of public-endangering disinformation? That censorship? And your side's penchant for doxxing and death threats? To the uninitiated, such as I, that might look a lot like censorship, though less official than a university deciding to withdraw a particular speaker's platform.
Which has been to leave unmentioned Trump's appointment of the ghastly white supremacist Hegseth, whose sole "qualification" is his eagerness to please Trump. This idea that Central American refugees are polluting America's bloodlines? No fascism there, right, Shana? The ultranationalsim and belief in the innate superiority of those of European ancestry? Doesn't remind me at all of Hitler. Not a smidgen!
Do you live near a deep lake, Sasha? If so, may I suggest that you go jump in it?
When you engage with one, you engage for all of us.
I don’t love Mendelssohn . I adore him.