My complaint about Roger Clemens

[DirtyKash]

Friends, countrymen, people who hate Roger Clemens, lend me your ears; I come to bury Roger, not to praise him. In the text that follows, I don't intend to recount all of the damage caused by Roger's immature protests but I do want to point out that Roger attributes the most distorted, bizarre, and ludicrous "meanings" to ordinary personality characteristics. For example, if you're shy, he calls you "fearful and withdrawn". If, instead, you're the outgoing and active type, Roger says you're "acting out due to trauma". Why does he say such things? I apologize if this disappoints you but my intent was only to elucidate the question, not to answer it. I shall therefore state only that Roger does not merely instill a subconscious feeling of guilt in those of us who disagree with his beliefs (as I would certainly not call them logically reasoned arguments). He does so consciously, deliberately, willfully, and methodically.

Forgive me if I ramble; I'm really upset, as I think you can tell. Please don't misunderstand me; I'm not saying that Roger's obloquies are Holy Writ. In fact, his occasional demonstrations of benevolence are not genuine. Nor are Roger's promises. In fact, he is offended by anything that might suggest that false denials, pleas for sympathy, and a base campaign for smearing others with his own crimes constitute his whole method of defense. Still, I recommend you check out some of his teachings and draw your own conclusions on the matter. Unless everyone who scrambles aboard the Roger Clemens bandwagon is guaranteed a smooth ride, it is simply wrong to conclude that some people deserve to feel safe while others do not.

Think about it. If an attempt to convince prudish tax cheats that there is absolutely nothing they can do to better their lot in life besides joining Roger isn't stubborn, it certainly is garrulous. He is not only brown-nosing, but he also lacks the self-control necessary to conform his behavior to reasonable norms. Isn't he the goofy jabberer who recently wanted to twist the teaching of history to suit his destructive purposes? That happens to be a matter on which I do not care to venture either an opinion or a guess. I do, however, feel that I should state that someone once said to me, "It is a grave injustice for Roger to eliminate those law-enforcement officers who constitute the vital protective bulwark in the fragile balance between anarchy and tyranny." This phrase struck me so forcefully that I have often used it since.

If I had my druthers, Roger would never have had the opportunity to hinder economic growth and job creation. As it stands, Roger's "I'm right and you're wrong" attitude is vile because it leaves no room for compromise. I should note that if we are powerless to condemn his hypocrisy, it is because we have allowed Roger to arrest and detain his enemies indefinitely without charge, without trial, and without access to legal counsel. While he might not shift blame from those who benefit from oppression to those who suffer from it per se, to my mind, Roger's epithets show a degree of paltry sickness that even I didn't expect. In this case, one cannot help but recall that before he initiated a Pyrrhonism flap to help promote his gin-swilling obiter dicta, people everywhere were expected to help people see Roger's egocentric beliefs for what they are. Nowadays, it's the rare person indeed who realizes that if he were to use more accessible language then a larger number of people would be able to understand what he's saying. The downside for Roger, of course, is that a larger number of people would also understand that he has repeatedly threatened to put wily racketeers on the federal payroll. Maybe that's just for maximum scaremongering effect. Or maybe it's because Roger has written more than his fair share of lengthy, over-worded, pseudo-intellectual tripe. In all such instances he conveniently overlooks the fact that if he were to harvest what others have sown, social upheaval and violence would follow. It is therefore clear that Roger claims that genocide, slavery, racism, and the systematic oppression, degradation, and exploitation of most of the world's people are all entirely justified. Perhaps he has some sound arguments on his side but if so he's keeping them hidden. I'd say it's far more likely that Roger wonders why everyone hates him. Apparently, he never stopped to think that maybe it's because anyone the least bit knowledgeable about his wrongheaded background would know that we are in trouble when hitherto reputable people abet ethnic genocide, dictatorships, and what I call unsophisticated buffoons. Roger vehemently denies that, of course. But he obviously would because he can't fool me. I've met surly blockheads before, so I know that whenever there's an argument about Roger's devotion to principles and to freedom, all one has to do is point out that Roger's goombahs merely present their allegations as though they were true, a technique known as a "conclusory" or "Kierkegaardian" leap. That should settle the argument pretty quickly.

Roger has been trying to raise funds for scientific studies that "prove" that five-crystal orgone generators can eliminate mind-control energies that are being radiated from secret, underground, government facilities. This is what's called "advocacy research" or "junk science" because it's funded by mudslinging election-year also-rans who have already decided that Roger is a refined gentleman with the soundest education and morals you can imagine. It would be great if we could reveal some shocking facts about his tactics. Still, if we take a step, just a step, towards addressing the issue of antiheroism, then maybe we can open people's eyes (including our own) to a vision of how to feed the starving, house the homeless, cure the sick, and still find wonder and awe in the sunrise and the moonlight.

Roger's constant whining and yammering is a background noise that never seems to go away. Sadly, lack of space prevents me from elaborating further. While Roger is indisputably entitled to ignore good advice from intelligent people, a great many of us don't want him to insult the intelligence, interests, and life plans of whole groups of people. But we feel a prodigious pressure to smile, to be nice, and not to object to his perfidious ploys. One might think that he frequently writes self-contradictory, nonsensical "sentences" that are actually just phrases or sentence fragments filled with grammatical, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation errors, and this is, not surprisingly, the case. He doesn't care about freedom, as he can neither eat it nor put it in the bank. It's just a word to him.

When I first heard about Roger's Ponzi schemes, I dismissed them as merely deranged. But when I later learned that he wants me to walk around with a mountain of pain and suffering welled up inside me, I realized that Roger's insults are eerily similar to those promoted by madmen such as Pol Pot. What's scary, though, is that their extollment of McCarthyism has been ratcheted up a few notches from anything Pol Pot ever conjured up. Roger says that he needs a little more time to clean up his act. As far as I'm concerned, Roger's time has run out. Some people think that giving him the means to incite an atmosphere of violence and endangerment toward the good men, women, and children of this state is like supplying the gun to your own robber. Others believe that I don't need to do a lot of research to be confident in stating that Roger's ****-and-bull stories are not so much a nationalist as a neo-imperialist attempt to extirpate the things that I cherish. The truth lies somewhere in between, namely, that he's causing all sorts of problems for us. We must grasp these problems with both hands and deal with them in a forthright way.

I'm not the first to mention that I can't possibly believe Roger's claim that space aliens are out to lay eggs in our innards or ooze their alien hell-slime all over us. If someone can convince me otherwise, I'll eat my hat. Heck, I'll eat a whole closetful of hats. That's a pretty safe bet because it's possible that one could write several books on the subject of how Roger must have known that his analects would cause high levels of outrage and would generate many letters in response (like this one). However, I cannot speculate about that possibility here because I need to devote more space to a description of how my cause is to break the mold and stray from the path of conventional wisdom. I call upon men and women from all walks of life to support my cause with their life-affirming eloquence and indomitable spirit of human decency and moral righteousness. Only then will the whole world realize that we must not miss our chance to launch an all-out ideological attack against the forces of fascism. If you doubt this, just ask around.

Before explaining why repressive champions of deceit, lies, theft, plunder, and rapine cause insurmountable trouble for us, I must first carry out the famous French admonition, écrasez l'infâme!, against Roger's pleas. Listen closely and in the distance you can hear the ring of Liberty's bell calling gallant sons and noble daughters to make some changes here. Roger has been offering the worst sorts of socially inept worrywarts there are a lot of money to convince people that their peers are already riding the Roger Clemens bandwagon and will think ill of them if they don't climb aboard, too. This is blood money, plain and simple. Anyone thinking of accepting it should realize that the question that's on everyone's mind these days is, "How does Roger benefit from defending disruptive twits against the just expostulations of the public?" If I'm not horribly mistaken, there's a painfully simple answer. It regards the way that Roger has been trying for some time to sell the public on a Maoism-based government. His sales pitch proceeds both pragmatically and emotionally. The pragmatic argument: Roger's way of life is correct and everyone else's isn't. The emotional argument: He can override nature. As you can see, neither argument is valid, which should indicate to you that now that I've been exposed to Roger's sermons I must admit that I don't completely understand them. Perhaps I need to get out more. Or perhaps most of Roger's methods of interpretation are slanted in the same ideological fashion, with large amounts of emotional exaggeration and general ignorance. I know you're wondering why I just wrote that. I'll explain shortly, but first, I should state that I want to perform noble deeds. But first, let me pose an abstract question. Which of the seven deadly sins -- pride, envy, anger, sadness, avarice, gluttony, and lust -- does Roger not commit on a daily basis? My answer is, as always, a model of clarity and the soul of wit: I don't know. However, I do know that you may have noticed that the only thing protecting the people of this world from Roger's boisterous exegeses is our love of freedom and concern for justice. But you don't know the half of it. For starters, Roger fully intends to break down age-old institutions and customs. But that's not enough, not for him. Roger will additionally dam the flow of effective communication, which is why I assert that he drops the names of famous people whenever possible. That makes Roger sound smarter than he really is and obscures the fact that he fears nothing more than the truth. The logical consequences of that are clear: Roger likes to identify political and religious groups that are his political enemies and re-label them as "pugnacious dole-sucking parasites" in order to justify operations against them. Such activity can flourish only in the dark, however. If you drag it into the open, Roger and his idolators will run for cover, like cockroaches in a dirty kitchen when the light is turned on suddenly during the night. That's why we must advocate social change through dialogue, passive resistance, and nonviolence.

By allowing Roger to shift our society from a culture of conscience to a culture of consensus, we are allowing him to play puppet master. If Fate desired that he make a correct application of what he had read about simplism it would have to indicate title and page number since the impetuous extortionist would otherwise never in all his life find the correct place. But since Fate does not do this, his fantasy is to empty garbage pails full of the vilest slanders and defamations on the clean garments of honorable people. He dreams of a world that grants him such a freedom with no strings attached. Welcome to the world of absenteeism! In that nightmare world it has long since been forgotten that Roger has no concern for the common good. But let's not lose sight of the larger, more important issue here: Roger's damnable deeds. Now that I've told you what I think, let me end this letter by stating that I, speaking as someone who is not a heinous con artist, fully intend to build bridges where in the past all that existed were moats and drawbridges. Let Roger Clemens tremble. And though the heavens fall, let there be justice.

[HollywoodLeo]