The fl0ss manifesto

This letter has three main sections. In the first, I argue that Mr. Floss Sparklepants III's whole life is a succession of shifts, excuses, and expedients. In the second, I make it clear that Mr. Sparklepants doesn't believe in the right to free speech, except for people who agree with him. And in the third and final section, I conclude that Mr. Sparklepants's egocentric adages are forcing our nation to face embarrassment after embarrassment and disaster after disaster. I will start this discussion by arguing that the more I study religion, the more I am convinced that Mr. Sparklepants has never worshipped anything but himself. Then, I will present evidence that you might have heard the story that Mr. Sparklepants once agreed to help us develop an alternative community, a cohesive and comprehensive underground with a charter to denounce his fulminations. No one has located the document in which Mr. Sparklepants said that. No one has identified when or where Mr. Sparklepants said that. That's because he never said it. As you might have suspected, I am not trying to save the world—I gave up that pursuit a long time ago. But I am trying to avoid the extremes of a pessimistic naturalism and an optimistic humanism by combining the truths of both.

I am deliberately using colorful language in this letter. I am deliberately using provocative phrases that I hope will stick in the minds of my readers. I do ensure, however, that my words are always appropriate and accurate and clearly explain how if Mr. Sparklepants manages to empty the meaning of such concepts as "self," "justice," "freedom," and other profundities, civilization will crumble almost immediately. Investigators from a future era will need to sift through the charred wreckage of our society looking for the black box to figure out what happened. Maybe they'll even discover that Mr. Sparklepants's précis are designed to strip people of their rights to free expression and individuality. And they're working; they're having the desired effect.

There's one conscienceless control freak I know (more on him later) who thinks that the world is crying out to labor beneath Mr. Sparklepants's firm but benevolent heel. Of course, that's not as bad as the sex-crazed gasbag I ran into yesterday (more on him later as well) who was totally unable to comprehend that in Mr. Sparklepants's rantings, presentism is witting and unremitting, crude and rash. He revels in it, rolls in it, and uses it to expand, augment, and intensify the size and intrusiveness of his plunderbund. Mr. Sparklepants wants us to emulate the White Queen from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, who strives to believe "as many as six impossible things before breakfast". Then again, even the White Queen would have trouble believing that mediocrity and normalcy are ideal virtues. I myself prefer to believe things that my experience tells me are true, such as that Mr. Sparklepants's faithfuls resist seeing that my conscience compels me to fight tooth and nail against Mr. Sparklepants. They resist seeing such things because to see them, to examine them, to think about them and draw conclusions from them is to study the impact on society of Mr. Sparklepants's greed, stupidity, hubris, and outright corruption. As incredible and bizarre as it sounds, humanity is decidedly the victim of a diabolical conspiracy masterminded by Mr. Floss Sparklepants III to break down the industrial-technological system. Period, finis, and Q.E.D.