Posted on 10/25/2002 12:14:19 AM PDT by jennyp
The Recent Nightclub Bombings in Bali Illustrate Just What the "War on Terror" Is Really About
On the night of Saturday, October 12--the second anniversary of the suicide bombing of the USS Cole, a year, month, and day after the destruction of the World Trade Center, and mere days after terrorist attacks in Yemen, Kuwait, and the Philippines--two car bombs detonated outside neighboring nightclubs on the island of Bali, triggering a third explosive planted inside, and killing nearly 200 people (the majority of whom were Australian tourists), injuring several others, and redirecting the focus of the war against terror to Indonesia.
Also on the night of Saturday, October 12, the following bands and DJs were playing and spinning at several of Seattle's rock and dance clubs from Re-bar to Rock Bottom: FCS North, Sing-Sing, DJ Greasy, Michiko, Super Furry Animals, Bill Frisell Quintet, the Vells, the Capillaries, the Swains, DJ Che, Redneck Girlfriend, Grunge, Violent Femmes, the Bangs, Better Than Ezra, the Briefs, Tami Hart, the Spitfires, Tullycraft, B-Mello, Cobra High, Randy Schlager, Bobby O, Venus Hum, MC Queen Lucky, Evan Blackstone, and the RC5, among many, many others.
This short list, taken semi-randomly from the pages of The Stranger's music calendar, is designed to illustrate a point that is both facile and essential to reckoning the effects of the Bali bombings. Many of you were at these shows, dancing, smoking, drinking, talking, flirting, kissing, groping, and presumably enjoying yourselves, much like the 180-plus tourists and revelers killed at the Sari Club and Paddy's Irish Pub in Bali. Though no group has come forward to claim responsibility for the bombings, they were almost certainly the work of Muslim radicals launching the latest volley in the war against apostasy.
Whether the attacks turn out to have been the work of al Qaeda or one of the like-purposed, loosely connected, multicellular organizations that function in the region--groups like the Jemaah Islamiyah (an umbrella network that seeks a single Islamic state comprising Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore), the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council (led by the nefarious Abu Bakar Bashir), Laskar Jihad (which waged holy war on Christians in the Spice Islands before mysteriously disbanding two weeks ago), or the Islam Defenders Front (which makes frequent "sweeps" of bars and nightclubs, attacking non-Muslims, and violently guarding against "prostitution and other bad things")--will ultimately prove to be of little consequence. What matters is that the forces of Islamic fascism have struck again, in a characteristically cowardly, murderous, and yes, blasphemous fashion that must register as an affront to every living human with even a passing interest in freedom.
The facile part: It could have happened here, at any club in Seattle. It's a ludicrous thought, of course--at least as ludicrous as the thought of shutting the Space Needle down on New Year's Eve because some crazy terrorist was arrested at the Canadian border--but that doesn't make it any less true. That doesn't mean we should be looking over our shoulders and under our chairs every time we go to a show. It simply means that it could happen anywhere, because anywhere is exactly where rabid Islamists can find evidence of blasphemy against their precious, imaginary god.
Which brings us to the essential part: The Bali bombings were not an attack against Bali; they were an attack against humankind. In all the jawflap about the whys and wherefores of the multiple conflicts currently dotting our collective radar screen--the war against terror, the war on Iraq, the coming holy war, et al.--it seems worth restating (at the risk of sounding pious) that the war against basic human liberty, waged not by us but on us, is at the heart of the matter. Discourse has justifiably, necessarily turned to complexities of strategy, diplomacy, and consequences. The moral truth, however, remains agonizingly basic. We are still dealing with a small but indefatigable contingent of radicalized, militant absolutists who believe that every living being is accountable to the stricture of Shari'a, under penalty of death. As Salman Rushdie wrote, in an oft-cited Washington Post editorial, the fundamentalist faction is against, "to offer a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex." If these were fictional villains, you'd call them hyperbolic, not believable. But they aren't fictional. Their code would be laughable if it weren't so aggressively despicable.
As headlines about Bali cross-fade into news of North Korean nukes, and there are further debates about the finer points of Iraqi de- and restabilization, it's crucial to remember that there is, in fact, a very real enemy, with a very real will, and the very real power of delusional self-righteousness. How to remember? Consider the scene of the attacks (as reported by various Australian and European news sources):
It's a typical hot, sweaty, drunken, lascivious Saturday night. People, primarily young Aussie tourists from Melbourne, Geelong, Perth, and Adelaide, are crammed into the clubs, mixing it up, spilling out into the street. Rock band noises mix with techno music and innumerable voices as latecomers clamor to squeeze inside. Just after 11:00 p.m., a car bomb explodes outside of Paddy's, followed a few seconds later by a second blast that smashes the façade of the Sari Club and leaves a hole in the street a meter deep and 10 meters across. The second bomb is strong enough to damage buildings miles away. All at once, everything's on fire. People are incinerated. Cars go up in flames. Televisions explode. Ceilings collapse, trapping those still inside. Screams. Blistered, charred flesh. Disembodied limbs. Mangled bodies. Victims covered in blood. Inferno.
Now transpose this horrible, fiery mass murder from the seedy, alien lushness of Bali to, say, Pioneer Square, where clubs and bars are lined up in the same teeming proximity as the Sari and Paddy's in the "raunchy" Jalan Legian district, the busiest strip of nightlife in Kuta Beach. Imagine a car blowing up outside the Central Saloon and another, across the street at the New Orleans. Again, it seems too simple an equation, but the fact remains that the victims were not targeted at random, or for merely political purposes. They were doing exactly what any of us might be doing on any night of the week: exercising a liberty so deeply offensive to religious believers as to constitute blasphemy. And the punishment for blasphemy is death.
There is an ongoing lie in the official governmental position on the war against terror, which bends over backwards to assure us that, in the words of our president, "we don't view this as a war of religion in any way, shape, or form." Clearly, in every sense, this is a war of religion, whether it's declared as such or not. And if it isn't, then it certainly should be. Not a war of one religion against another, but of reason against religion--against any belief system that takes its mandate from an invisible spiritual entity and endows its followers with the right to murder or subjugate anyone who fails to come to the same conclusion. This is the war our enemies are fighting. To pretend we're fighting any other--or worse, that this war is somehow not worth fighting, on all fronts--is to dishonor the innocent dead.
So what constitutes “Reality?” Is it you? Me? Or is it already “There!” before you (I) get a chance to “weigh in?” (And presumably will be a “There!” after you – and I – are gone….)
What this all boils down to – or so it seems to me – is that you require every other human person on this planet to be just as “bright” – that is, enormously gifted intellectually -- as you are. That is a TOTAL FICTION and you’d best get over it just as soon as possible, if you ask me (and you didn’t).
The world that “IS” can only be a world that is possible. You are asking for far more than that, it seems to me: You are asking for a world that conforms to your own preferences and sense of justice, of “right.” Whether or not this may be a “classic” case of Heraclitus’ “Logos in common” versus the “dream state” that leads us away from this Logos is precisely the question you ditched a couple posts back.
Notwithstanding, you forge ahead:
What you called ‘hopelessly idealistic’ isn’t “idealistic” at all. It is actually the way that it is in reality. The more people who can reason properly to come to the conclusion that it is in their own ‘best self interest’ to respect the rights of others because one wants those same rights for oneself, the better that society will be….
Thus you seem to assume that other people are fundamentally motivated similarly as you yourself are. That is to say, by reason. (I personally don’t have a problem with this.)
The more civilized, the more productive, the more creative, the more ‘capitalistic.’ If you really think it through you will see it cannot be any other way.
Well,sure; yet as much as I admire "your" model, I can notice from time to time that it can “be” some other way. Can you spell “chaos?”
If you want the right to live, if you want the right to make your own choices, if you want the right to think as you wish, if you want the right to own your own home, if you want the right to choose your career or own a business, if you want the right to have a family, if you want the right to worship any religion you choose, then you must conclude those same rights must also extend to everyone else or there is no ‘reason’ they apply to you.
No disagreement here, LW. But this (it seems to me) is to argue that Reason is the final arbiter of justice. Well, that would be well, and entirely welcome – except for the inconvenient fact that human history has so far failed to bear out this insight, such that we can trust it as an “arbiter of truth” in its own right anytime soon….
If it isn’t a “Right” for everyone, it isn’t a ‘right’ for you.
This insight is “true”; or so it seems to me. Where you and I might disagree, LogicWings, is about the Source of the insight that "grants" the right....
And I imagine you understand this perfectly well. For you said:
It stands to ‘reason’ that it is in my own best self interest to be in a place ‘at peace.’ Those who don’t see this are those, like the Muslims, that take their premises from something other than reality, or like socialists or criminals, don’t think it through enough to realize their ideas contain contradictions that make them ultimately self destructive and defeating.”
A “place ‘at peace’”... Have you found it yet, in all your travels?
Must run for now, dear LW. Bye!
(1) as about what "Pharasees" came to mean subsequent to the events reported in the Gospel. I have provided references for same, although it is fairly common knowledge.
(2) was the rather irrelevant discussion about what "Pharasees" meant at the time, which, as I have pointed out, does little to damp the overall anti-semitism of the Gospels, or even the references to Pharasees, for that matter, even if true. (1) and (3) are only contradictory if you are an afficionado of straining a camel trough a needle's eye.
It isn't hard once you recognize an absurdity, to make adjustments, and move on. It makes more sense than trying to defend it or just glossing over it. It would allow the debate to advance (hint hint).
Making a mild effort to construct the best argument you can out of what's presented to you, rather than trying to put minor quibbles in the bank, and closing the account would serve to advance debate as well. (hint hint).
An argument doesn't get better constructed that to maintain simplicity (my argument was only ever that Pharisees <> Jews) and lay out in a minimum of the author's own words (repeatedly so) the syllogism leading to the absurdity.
Sounds like you are now saying that (1) and (2) had different temporal contexts--that the meanings applied to different time periods. You can hardly fault me for not reading your mind on that.
it is fairly common knowledge
As for "common knowledge", let's try a dictionary:
"a member of a Jewish sect of the intertestamental period noted for strict observance of rites and ceremonies of the written law and for insistence on the validity of their own oral traditions concerning the law"
Funny the dictionary authors used so many words when "Jew" would have sufficed. And what's this business about "sect"? I guess they don't know what they are talking about. Better try another dictionary...hmm...American Heritage says the same thing.
Paul was Jewish That is totally irrelevant . . The authors of the book were a splinter sect of the jews
For further surprises we will add that Paul the-former- Pharasee-presubsequent -former anti-sect -pro-semite-but-still-a-Jew)'s writings predate the Gospels!
You mean predate the earliest known copies of the Gospels.
What is the truth value of this predicate:
"This sentence is FALSE"?
A statement with a truth value of FALSE would not be a contradiction--it has an unambiguous value--what do you think "contradiction" means?
It occurs with a conjunction of statements that cannot both be true. It is a fundamental of all rational logic.
It is a fundament of all historical formal logic, and it has limited application to the real world. It works pretty well for gross physical objects and relationships, and most formal maths. It fails conspicuously for sets that commit type violations, such as "the set of all sets", it fails conspicuously in subnuclear physics to explain the 2-slit experiment, and it fails conspicuously to explain many subjective phenomena, such as, for example, my ability to be both happy and not(happy) that my mother has died. It is just one of several mathematical descriptions of how elements in well-formed sets behave. As such, it does not constitute the entire warp and weave of the universe. It is a useful tool for many purposes, it is not a ghost that inhabits every corner of the universe.
"A and not A" is false in all rational set theory, grammars
Chomsky level 0 (or 4, I always forget which direction the grammar heirarchies are stacked in) grammars permit exactly such contradictions, as do my dreams and fancies, as do individual molecules going through the slits of the 2-slit one at a time.
That you have construed ways in which you think a contradiction is at times NOT false shows your misapplication of the fundamentals upon which the theories you think you understand are founded.
Kindly just answer the question: is "This sentence is FALSE" FALSE? If we assume the sentence is FALSE, (as you say, because it is contradictory), than upon evaluation, we find it declares itself to be TRUE, which we must believe, because we declared it to be FALSE. If it is true, it must therefore be FALSE, therefore, it must be TRUE...are you getting the drift here? Contradiction does not necessarily just mean FALSE--it could mean you cannot get a value. You hang up if you try. You are using a loose and inadequate notion of contradiction as if it were ubiquitous. It is not, it is quite easy to have validly formed predicates that are neither TRUE nor FALSE in any formally acceptable sense. That is what most of 20th century formal mathematics was about.
Besides. I don't fall for diversions.
Unless you supply them, I assume.
IE. an orthodox jew.
No, but I can fault you for continuing this tirade against my syllogism after the temporal contexts have been straightened out.
I can be as persistently recollective as you can be in denial. Once again, I give you the quote that started it all:
"Pharisees is just another word for jews."--donh post 1133
Why don't you just admit that you erred or changed your mind or something and dispense with it?
Don't worry. That's not something I would even consider doing. You should have straightened it out sooner.
Yes, of course. Presubsequent temporal contextualization. Sorry.
Is it safe to term the things being processed "sensations"?
And what is the commonly accepted term for the "burgeoning mind", the mind overflowing with sensations, but without concepts?
And, while I'm asking, what is the commonly accepted term for the mind with both sensations and concepts?
I guess I do fall for diversions.
I will restate, and I doubt even Chomsky would disagree, that the law of noncontradiction is inviolable. You seem well read enough I'm not sure why type violations are such a mystery to you. They are ill-formed concepts. The set of all sets is an ill-formed concept. "This sentence is false" is also ill-formed. In particular it attempts to prescribe a truth value before its definition is made. Just because English words can be put into grammatically correct patterns doesn't mean it makes sense. There's a number of examples in _Through the Looking Glass_.
At any rate, the so-called type violations, and the many paradoxes, or antinomies, of intuitive set theory show that the set theory is not consistent with its own axioms. Rather than revoking the law of noncontradiction, Cantor, Russell, and others had tried to correct the theory to eliminate the paradoxes. That is, they use the law of noncontradiction as a measure of the validity of a theory. As well they should.
You can rest assured that never, in no place, at no time, no matter how many accolades the advocate has, or how complex the theory, false is not true.
So what constitutes “Reality?” Is it you? Me? Or is it already “There!” before you (I) get a chance to “weigh in?” (And presumably will be a “There!” after you – and I – are gone….)
What follows is from my post to Tares - 992. I find this question very strange because if there is no ’reality’ that we all agree exists then none of this, none of it, ’means’ anything. Not from a logical point of view, not from a Christian point of view, not from any point of view. If there is no ‘reality’ then there can be no ‘morality’ because we are all having a different experience. What you claim is immoral never happened in my reality. There are no ‘facts’ and every court of law is a lie, every judge and jury liars and frauds, every cop is a liar, every law a fraud and a game. This is wrong. Every argument of every discussion, except of the mystic that says we all have our ’own reality,’ presupposes only one reality.
My post to Tares:
Ok, there are two answers for you. The first was something I picked up, hmmm, 'consensually observable phenomenon.' This phrase 'consensually observable phenomenon' says it about as well as I've ever seen. Can it be verified by others? Basis of the scientific method.
I remember a show once about a battered wife who couldn't get anyone to help her because her husband was a big shot so nobody wanted to get involved. Everybody just kept acting like nothing was wrong, nothing bad could be happening to her. There was this great line she said after someone finally believed her and she got out.
'Reality! Philosophers are always going about 'what is reality.' Well, it isn't so hard to understand. Reality is when something is happening and everyone else around you agrees that it is happening too.'
The second is, 'Reality is that which you cannot evade.' One can quibble about what we perceive and the distortion or unreliability of the senses all one likes, one still doesn't step in front of the speeding freight train. No matter what anyone 'says' they think about the validity of their perceptions, from the time they get up in the morning and pick up the toothbrush, to waiting for the light to turn green before crossing the street, to pouring the cold beer when coming home from work, to putting on an extra blanket when going to bed cause it's a chilly night, everyone, absolutely everyone, conforms to those sensory perceptions in the exactly the same way, or they risk injury or dying. No one, in reality, doubts the validity of the senses. That is just a word game for those trying to deny some aspect of reality. What this all boils down to – or so it seems to me – is that you require every other human person on this planet to be just as “bright” – that is, enormously gifted intellectually -- as you are. That is a TOTAL FICTION and you’d best get over it just as soon as possible, if you ask me (and you didn’t).
Flattery will get you anywhere! :^} (got face thing from you) While I appreciate the sarcasm here, you are missing the point. It isn’t an inability to think, it is a refusal to think. It is funny because if I really believed what you said here, then I have to do everything I can to convince other people to listen to me, for that very reason. I must undertake that obligation to myself precisely because I do understand and they don’t, by the very values that I claim to hold by virtue of reason. I must do exactly that or I am not being consistent to that very reasoning. I cannot ‘get over it’ precisely for that reason. But most people can think far more deeply than they have any idea, are far more ’bright’ than they realize. The problem is education. They have never been taught how to think, and they have never been taught the necessity. If nobody ever says it, then how will they ever know? So I say it. Somebody has to. The world that “
You have just defined reality. See, I knew you knew. But you left something out, ‘at this point in time.’ And if any of us truly accepted that, then none of us would do anything to make a better world. The world changed when Aristotle codified logic. The world changed when Newton used those rules to try to develop universal principles. This is no different. We live in a world that was impossible 500 years ago. The world that “IS” can only be a world that is possible. You are asking for far more than that, it seems to me: You are asking for a world that conforms to your own preferences and sense of justice, of “right.”
As I said before, this definition of ‘Rights’ is what is at the basis of the Bill of Rights. They were trying to create as secular and universal a definition as possible, which is why there is no mention of God in the Constitution. England had proven that couldn’t work, and Locke had given them a way to define it, natural rights, that didn’t rely upon religion as a basis. It isn’t ‘mine’ it is actually theirs, and all any of us are doing is recognizing the reality of the situation. Whether or not this may be a “classic” case of Heraclitus’ “Logos in common” versus the “dream state” that leads us away from this Logos is precisely the question you ditched a couple posts back.
Sorry, I don’t have the decoder ring to be able to follow you here. All that stuff is far too generalized and obscure, and distant from this point in time, to be of any use to me. You, or anybody else, don’t really know what he really meant there, and there is no way to verify it. Not logically, not by reason, not by any means. Condorman quoted Leonado da Vinci on another thread - “such an opinion cannot exist in a brain of much reason; “and this is at the heart of it. Does it stand to reason or not. That I can verify. Thus you seem to assume that other people are fundamentally motivated similarly as you yourself are. That is to say, by reason. (I personally don’t have a problem with this.)
Well, no. As so many of the discussions I’ve had on this web forum illustrate most are not motivated by reason, many reject it outright for different ‘reasons.’ What all people are motivated by in common is selfishness. Which is why I said to uncbuck that his admission he was a catholic for purely selfish reasons was one of the most honest I’d seen. The self, the individual is the universal standard. Every person is ultimately concerned with him or her self. Reason is the means to understand and function in reality, to further that self. Only those that are concerned with reality need embrace reason. Well,sure; yet as much as I admire "your" model, I can notice from time to time that it can “be” some other way. Can you spell “chaos?”
No, only by ignoring the context and dropping reason from the discussion. You cannot pick and choose where you want to reason and where you don’t. Chaos, in the sense you imply here, is the absence of reason. The very opposite of what I am talking about. I don’t know if you intentionally misunderstood here or really misunderstood, but chaos and reason (mental structure) are opposites. No disagreement here, LW. But this (it seems to me) is to argue that Reason is the final arbiter of justice. Well, that would be well, and entirely welcome – except for the inconvenient fact that human history has so far failed to bear out this insight, such that we can trust it as an “arbiter of truth” in its own right anytime soon….
Reason is the final arbiter of justice, that is correct (beyond a reasonable doubt). As human beings we have no other means at our disposal. Justice concerns reality and reason is how we understand and take actions in reality. And the reason why human history has failed so far to bear this out is, it has never been truly tried, never completely tried. It has never been fully implemented. The closer we come to it, the more effective justice is, but we still, to this day, have yet to really put it in practice. But if no one ever says that this is what we must do, then it will never happen. This insight is “true”; or so it seems to me. Where you and I might disagree, LogicWings, is about the Source of the insight that "grants" the right....
(when I reread this before posting I realized something. What you are commenting on isn’t an ‘insight’ - it is a reasoned conclusion. There is a difference. You are slowly shifting the terms of the discussion to those favorable to you. Bad BB!)
As a matter of public policy, you had better think this one through very carefully. This is the mistake that makes you assert that human history has never born out my view, and my assertion that it has never been really implemented. If you insist upon your Source then you must abandon the very reason that I used to get here in the first place, which is why I say it has never been fully implemented. The source is the fact of existence that every individual can verify for him or herself. If you go mystical at this point you open yourself up to everyone who rejects the mystical, or has a different mysticism, like Muslims. A “place ‘at peace’”... Have you found it yet, in all your travels?
I think you are Equivocating with me again. I meant in a physical sense as a nation at war, or a society in turmoil. One cannot be concerned with one’s rights when one’s life is under siege. The current insanity is a case in point. How many of our rights are going out the window because we are ’at war’ with the terrorists right now? I lived in Los Angeles a couple years before the riots. I had South Central LA as part of my territory and worked in a society within a city that was a war zone. I could see the riots coming and was long gone when they came. I’ve seen the practical application of what I am saying first hand. Nobody had the ‘right’ to walk to the store after dark. It’s worse there now.
As for in the sense I think you mean it here, I’ve sat here 15 minutes and re-written it 5 times before realized I can’t answer you without telling you more than I want to. It isn’t about me.
Yes, unless you have some reason not to.
And what is the commonly accepted term for the "burgeoning mind", the mind overflowing with sensations, but without concepts?
'Overflowing with sensations?' Is the mind overwhelmed or does it just absorb them all? Where do those overflowing sensations go that fell over the edge? (IOW - bad metaphor) Burgeoning in the sense of quickly growing, sprouting, budding. A young mind rapidly growing. I don't know there is a word for that, or that we need one.
And, while I'm asking, what is the commonly accepted term for the mind with both sensations and concepts?
'Commonly accepted?' Don't know there is one. Don't know that anybody has ever thought about it before now. That is the problem with being out on the edge, there aren't any maps to follow. You have to make your own.
The same thing I said, previously, in different words.
The fallacy of the Negative Self Referential.(mine)
A statement cannot refer to itself as a negative without asserting it doesn't exist. This assertion is self contradictory, THEREFORE, invalid.
What, are you crazy or something?
Don't you know the definition of a fanatic?
Someone who won't drop it, and won't change the subject.
you see, there are two sluts, err, slits and . . .
Why is Matthew 5-7, for example, supposed to take precidence over, say, the doctrine that witches should be stoned to death? Where is the schedule of precidence, if there is one?
The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is given by Jesus Christ directly and personally. He describes His authority with regard to the law in Matthew 5:17-22 (emphasis mine)
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach [them], the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed [the righteousness] of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither [can] a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
I believe Mark has the earliest dating for a completed Gospel account of the life of Jesus. However, the Pharisee sect did not become dominant overnight.
Moreover, the (New Testament) scriptures were in progress prior to the fall of the temple - and the letters of Paul - who clarifies what it means to be Pharisee - were considered Scripture (II Peter 3:14-16):
And account [that] the longsuffering of our Lord [is] salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;
As also in all [his] epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as [they do] also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
Oh, I'm so glad to hear you think you can lay this off against somebody else's responsibility. [NOT.]
But if this is the case, why have I spent the past 30 minutes or so -- at your personal invitation -- reading and thinking about your last?
In merry moments, I suppose you are the sort of person who can best be understood as a "tempter in training" AWOL from Screwtape's famous (and permanently endowed) Tempter's College....
Fortunately, I haven't been very "merry" in recent times...so don't feel particularly pressed to deal with this question.
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