By Neil Stewart
(with help from Scott Pakin)

I myself indubitably can’t let Mr. Martin Benjamin’s misinformation and misguided arguments about pornology go by without comment. First off, Mr. Benjamin can’t discuss anything without talking about defeatism. Please let me explain that fatuous idealists ought to be worshipping at a higher altar than the bottom line of a balance sheet. I myself decidedly contend that Mr. Benjamin’s opinion is a lazy cop-out. We should expose Mr. Benjamin’s effusions for what they really are. (Goodness knows our elected officials aren’t going to.) Everybody loves a good game of hide-and-seek: find the person, find the hidden item, or in the case of Mr. Benjamin and his revolting letters, find the hidden agenda. One can examine this from another angle, and plainly see that if this letter did nothing else but serve as a beacon of truth, it would be worthy of reading by all right-thinking people. However, this letter’s role is much greater than just to turn his subhuman scribblings to our advantage.

If you’ve read his letters, odds are that you already know that most people get so hypnotized by his simplistic "good guys and bad guys" approach to history that they do not hear what Mr. Benjamin is really saying. Viewed from all angles, for some strange reason, he is worried he’ll be disenfranchised and shunned by witless gits. Mr. Benjamin needs a refill of his medication. As it turns out, the unsympathetic aspect of his hatchet jobs will create a stir between obstinate pamphleteers and the repressive public at large. What will be the next object of attack from Mr. Benjamin’s camp?

To make bargains with the devil is an injustice. My intention here is not just to review the basic issues at the root of the debate, but also to answer the wretched champions of deceit, lies, theft, plunder, and rapine who impugn the patriotism of Mr. Benjamin’s opponents. Last week, in the aftermath of Mr. Benjamin’s last volley of attacks, a group of mad rubes began to reduce human beings to the status of domestic animals. Mr. Benjamin does not want to diminish our will to live because he is insolent, incomprehensible, inarticulate, and pestiferous (though, granted, Mr. Benjamin is all of the aforementioned), but rather because Mr. Benjamin often flirts with cynicism. For your information, he is the picture of the insane person on the street, babbling to a tree, a wall, or a cloud, which cannot and does not respond to his campaigns.

Mr. Benjamin doesn’t give a damn about any of us. Just because I understand his recommendations doesn’t mean I agree with them. How can he instill distrust and thereby create a need for his domineering views and then turn around and shed tears for those who got hurt as a result? There is an obvious inconsistency here.

The issues surrounding post-structuralism are more complex and embedded than Mr. Benjamin will admit. Naturally, the reservoir from which he draws his henchmen is primarily the masses of socially inept swindlers. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s say that you might say, "That last statement is almost a tautology." Fine, I agree. But it’s no secret that Mr. Benjamin always tries to shift blame from himself to yawping fiends. How did he get so antihumanist? I have my theories, but they’re only speculation. At any rate, I, for one, resent being exposed to the worst sorts of malignant enemies of the people there are.

My argument is that Mr. Benjamin’s smear tactics are uniformly riddled by an unbelievable degree of ignorance. Ridiculous? Not so. Mr. Benjamin sometimes uses the word "practicality" when describing his notions. Beware! This is a buzzword designed for emotional response. You’ve never heard him announce that he plans to vandalize our neighborhoods? Well, Mr. Benjamin has repeatedly enunciated such a plan, but in his typically convoluted way. Once we have absorbed and understood his neo-demonic invectives, it is our inescapable responsibility to do whatever is necessary to establish a supportive–rather than an intimidating–atmosphere for offering public comment.

Looking at it on the bright side, anyone who examines the historical development of the last hundred years from the standpoint of this letter will at once understand that it looks like I’m not actually demanding revenge. Only Mr. Benjamin could believe that the most virulent cult leaders you’ll ever see are any better than the worst classes of jackbooted fogeys there are (also known as Mr. Benjamin’s believers). I must blow my whistle on his tactics of deception and distortion. His allegations are a hotbed of separatism. I could go on and on about Mr. Benjamin’s special form of nonrepresentationalism, but you get the general idea. Currently, Mr. Benjamin’s protests merely blitz media outlets with faxes and newsletters that highlight the good points of his insensitive effrontive words. As you will see in a lustrum or two, this is only the tip of a gigantic iceberg. I must part company with many of my peers when it comes to understanding why we ought to teach Mr. Benjamin a lesson. My peers insist that you won’t hear Mr. Benjamin’s helpers admit that he’s wild. While this is truly true, I claim we must add that this should not and need not be the case.

He supports a wide variety of witticisms. Some are ultra-self-deceiving; others are untrustworthy. A few openly support sensationalism. It would stand to reason that the natural result of Mr. Benjamin’s complaints is an intolerance that, in the long run, tends to mobilize support for the special interests that dominate university and private activity. Perhaps I’m reading too much into Mr. Benjamin’s mottoes, but they don’t seem to serve any purpose other than to reap a whirlwind of destroyed marriages, damaged children, and, quite possibly, a globe-wide expression of incurable sexually-transmitted diseases. The ideological underpinnings of Mr. Benjamin’s sound bites have struck a receptive chord among thousands of licentious knee-biters.

Mr. Benjamin’s arguments allege, after performing shoddy research and utilizing threadbare scholarship, that a number of his enemies are planning to violate Mr. Benjamin’s pledge not to use organized violence to suppress opposition. Nothing offends Mr. Benjamin more than the truth. I would much rather address the continued social injustice shown by the most self-serving psychopaths you’ll ever see than waste my precious time chastising appalling nonentities, yet his litanies are based on prejudices and preconceived notions. This sort of vertiginous paradox is well known to most hate-filled party animals. Experience should probably indicate that this letter should be regarded as the beginning, not the end, of my stance against Mr. Benjamin. His treatises may not be traditional for all lewd social outcasts, but he does not tolerate any view that differs from his own. Rather, Mr. Benjamin discredits and discards those people who contradict him along with the ideas that they represent. As I noted at the beginning of this letter, sometimes the best course of action will be obvious, sometimes not.

I use such language purposefully–and somewhat sardonically–to illustrate how even without making an ethical argument against cannibalism, I can show that it will not be easy to break the spell of great expectations that now binds the most impudent buffoons you’ll ever see to Mr. Benjamin. I predict that within a short period of time, people will generally agree that I stand foursquare in defense of liberty, freedom of speech, and the right to criticize vile egocentric tax cheats. This is a prediction that will not be true in all cases, but it is expected to become more common as time passes. The use of long run-on sentences, bad metaphors, multiple nonsense words, and inappropriately-placed $5 words like "Iran" does not help his cause at all. No matter what Mr. Benjamin thinks, I proudly adopt this stand. As will become apparent quicker than you can double-check the spelling of "saccharogalactorrhea", if one accepts the framework I’ve laid out here, it follows that evidence exists to suggest that his excuses will come back to bite us in the behind sooner than you think. If we intend to defend democracy, we had best learn to recognize its primary enemy and not be afraid to stand up and call him by name. That name is Mr. Martin Benjamin.

Stewart is a member of the class of 2000.
Pakin comes to us via http:\\www-csag.cs.uiuc.edu\individual\pakin\complaint.