I have pondered a while now the best way to help you with your condition. It is indeed perplexing because the regular nostrums like Ritalin seem to be of no avail. I debated offering personal counseling and I considered that I could recommend some rehabilitation centers where they can, with modern drugs, ease you through withdrawal before you embark on a 12-step program. But these are usually quite expensive and, barring a successful intervention, the patient has a very poor prognosis because he is unwilling to accept the treatment.
All the modern authorities report that the majority of patients once released from rehab inevitably wander back to their keyboards and commit the sin of personal attacks within a matter of hours. Alas, the hard and bitter truth is that the AD HOMINEM DISTEMPER which afflicts you and so many others with access to the Internet, has no known cure, as a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine under this very title has concluded. The statistical relapse rate has been truly disheartening. That is, until now for I have by the grace of a benign Providence hit upon the solution to your compulsion which no doubt will be published in the next edition of the Journal under the working title, FReeper announces breakthrough to cure the Ad Hominem Distemper-an Analogue of Tourette's Syndrome. I will be pleased to send you a reprint upon request.
It all came to me as an epiphany when I contemplated your symptoms. The malady is easy to describe: The unfortunate patient, unable to deal with the substance of what he reads and bereft of factual answer for it, resorts to attacks against those whom he regards to be the author of his misery, much like the ancient Pharaohs who cut off the heads of messengers bearing bad news. Our modern Pharoah cannot, of course, physically decapitate anyone in ether-space so he becomes a mighty potentate astride his own keyboard and lashes out to assassinate the character of these cyber devils. After he has pushed the Reply button and sent his screed into cyberspace, he enjoys a rush of adrenaline and a psychotic high which, of course, is inevitably followed by a deeper low from which he cannot emerge until he finds another victim for his calumnies. The disease is progressive and up until now there has been no known cure. But I have found the certain cure and I am willing to give it away, free and without charge, out of Christian concern and solicitude for a fellow conservative. You may consider this to be charity but I am also motivated in the interests of science. Since my motives are altruistic you will observe below the absence of any claim of copyright for my breakthrough, I exact no excise for my good works. I do this not just to save you - but for all humanity, that is, to save all humanity from you.
My prescription, like all brilliant breakthroughs which are obvious only in hindsight for their simplicity and brevity, is analogous to the practice which has developed on the Rush Limbaugh radio program in which the caller, to express a whole series of complementary observations merely has to say: Dittos -and all is perfectly understood by everyone with no trouble or bother or any loss of time.
My antidote for your Ad Hominem Distemper is simplicity itself: Whenever you feel an attack coming on do not resist, for that only leads to the cold sweats, rather, you should embrace it because, after all, acceptance of the disease and your powerlessness over it are the first steps in your recovery. Do not try to avoid your keyboard but eagerly reach out for it. We know that you have nothing to say about the substance of the matter, we know that you've been confused by the reality with which you have been confronted, we know how feverish and insecure you feel as a result, we know how much you feel the need to blackguard someone. Nevertheless, go confidently to your keyboard without any anxiety that you will compulsively vituperate - as though you were some wretched victim of Tourette's syndrome - and take your keyboard stoutly in hand to gallantly type the following:
TOUCHÉ
(recent results of phase lll clinical trials have shown that the better course of therapy is to encourage the patient to write the word in italics and in bold letters because it seems to bolster self-esteem, a pathological deficiency common to all these unfortunates)
Now there, don’t you see how much easier and lighter you feel in your soul? Instead of betraying to the world the poverty of your intellectual estate, you have made a clean breast of your ignorance, which is different from rank stupidity, and it is anyway the first step in your recovery program. More, you will be awarded points because you show the world that you are a bigger man and by no means petty. The therapeutic effects of this balm cannot be overestimated. Phase llB and pivotal phase lll clinical trials have shown that, although my remedy may be sublime, it is not wholly perfect because it brings no cheap and easy rush, no high, but then no crash either, no withdrawal, no need for the next fix. Instead, you can have your life back.
Your friend,
Nathan
