Sometimes Them Bridges Just Have To Go

Posted by Daniel Lyons Tue, 09 Oct 2007 07:12:00 GMT

You know Cathy, I no longer delight in writing venomous personal diatribes like I used to but for you I’m just going to have to make an exception. I really am tired to death of your commentary on my blog; can you please knock it off? I know you have your own, and if you think carefully you’ll notice that it’s been years and years since I’ve read it or commented on it. I just don’t like talking to a brick wall that much. Imagine my discontent, for a minute, in having brick walls spontaneously appearing in front of me, trying to converse with me.

I know you think you’re doing the right thing, the helpful thing, trying to “reason” me back onto the right path of Marxism and pure materialism and whatnot, but let’s face it, I’m a goner. The sooner we both accept that, the happier we’ll be.

Consider your comment on my blithely indignant essay on the w4m craigslist postings. Without the meet-you-halfway mumbo jumbo it is totally transparent, I hope you realize:

If you’re looking for somebody who’d be OK dating a conservative religious guy, why are you looking through the personals on Craigslist? I don’t see how you can blame “the culture” when you’re the one looking in a place that emphatically does not have the kind of culture you’re looking for. Craigslist personals are not really for dating, they’re for hooking up! Conservative religious people tend to meet and marry through their house of worship, or through religious-appropriate events or dating services. Not through online personal ads.

It’s so charming getting a lecture from you about where religious people meet and marry. Can you say “Donny, you’re out of your element?” Let’s think for a minute about every Jew you’ve ever met. How many of them were religious? Oh yeah, just me. Have you been to a synagogue here? I love it, but it’s definitely a sausage fest. A really old, wrinkly sausage fest.

Just because I didn’t mention looking on JDate and the usual suspects doesn’t mean I don’t look there. I’ve been looking everywhere online. I was driven online by, shock and amazement, them religious folks at my synagogue! I have met and been set up on a total of two dates in the past 1.5 years through the synagogue. One of those was to a girl about as anti-semitic and as you and your Jewish boyfriend—and my friends met her online! The other one didn’t, as they say, work out. When you run out of food, sometimes you have to go to the grocery store, even if they do sell bacon alongside the pastrami.

I don’t know what you’re looking for on Craigslist when you go but there are, in fact, different sections. You’re right, there does seem to be a lot of confusion about the definition of highly contestable words and phrases like “misc romance” and “strictly platonic.” In a perfect world, the women posting hook-up advertisements wouldn’t do it in the w4m section when there is actually a hook-up advertisement section, but hey, I guess they’ve got more important things on their mind than reading (or spelling). But I also see plenty of women looking for Christian guys on there, so I think you’re more-or-less off-base.

Anyway, what you’re really getting at is that you’d like to have all religious people rounded up and thrown into cattle cars, but you’ll settle for merely rounding us all up and segregating us from the rest of society. Well, fuck you. I’m going to look for religious women under every rock I have to because, you know what, there aren’t any! Yay! What a proud day for Darwin’s military liberation front (I’m sure he’d be proud). Somehow, no woman my age wants a stable romantic relationship when she could just have a fuck buddy on the side while she furthers her career. Apparently it’s a documented phenomenon that guys like me are all going for 35 year old women who either missed the boat on this or have finally been burned by it enough to stop wanting it.

By the way, wanting a woman who is OK with a “conservative, religious” guy who isn’t precisely talking marriage yet, but is talking about how he won’t put up with abortion if “they” have sex without a condom (and by “they” you really mean “they and I”, since women do not impregnate themselves, yes?) It should be obvious that all of these things are, taken together, insane.

Oh, you’re so right! Or you would be, if I was looking for one of those hook-ups we were just talking about. Where did I say that, precisely? I think all I said was if I fucked up, I would own up to it. I didn’t, and I still don’t, understand how a woman could find that as bewildering as you do. It’s not like I have any power. Do you see me out there, campaigning against the supreme court? Are you picturing me chaining some woman up in a dungeon until she has my kid? All I have, and all I’m entitled to, is an opinion of zero value. And a whopping boatload of incredulity as to how women would prefer a guy whose first response to hearing “I’m pregnant!” is “Oh shit. I’m not having this! You have to get an abortion. We can go halfers.” That’s your idea of liberation? Doesn’t something seem to be missing from that equation? Like, I dunno, the sanctity of human life? Oh right, everything has a price tag and nothing has a soul in your philosophy. How very secularly humane.

Last time I checked, disapproval didn’t really accomplish much of anything in this country. Women have the right to murder their babies if they want to. I would even say there are a few extremely rare cases where it’s better to have an abortion, namely when the woman’s life is in danger. But Could I be merely suggesting that I think our disregard for responsibility and life is wrong, that this causes more pain for the woman in the long run, that perhaps people should, from time to time, act like the adults they pretend to be by fucking all the time?

Is it so much to ask that people not fuck people they dislike so intently? To suggest that, if you are going to be having sex with someone you at least like them enough to own up to your mistakes if you make them? To at least not have sex with someone you can’t imagine ever committing to? What a monstrous romantic I am! To suggest that human life might actually be an important enough principle to change the way I live! To suggest that love be a precondition to sex! How absurd!

Sorry, but speaking as a woman, I would require a guarantee of support (for example, marriage with a solid pre-nup agreement) before I touched a pro-life man with somebody else’s body, much less mine.

I think we all know that you find the concept of an emotional attachment to someone who is emotionally attached to the concept of life unthinkable. This kind of inhuman behavior is your hallmark. Have you ever loved anything, other than the concept of misanthropic hatred, or your own superiority? Do you ever think to yourself how absurd your life is, that all your beliefs and actions are directly contingent on something shitty that happened to you on a playground when you were a child? Do your pseudo-philosophical extrapolations really reassure you that you’ve made the right irrational decisions when you’re all alone with just your mind?

I suppose there should be nothing surprising about a self-avowed pure materialist bringing up money when everyone else was talking about life, love and sex. What’s Eric paying to be with you? Last time I checked he was somewhere between no tax bracket and the one where they acknowledge you exist but don’t make you send any in. Or are you retaining his services?

Condoms aren’t perfect, and if you’re not willing to commit ahead of time to 18 years of living with a kid, I don’t see why a woman should be expected to.

I think my whole point is that if I’m sleeping with a woman, I am willing to make that commitment. If I’m not, then I shouldn’t be sleeping with her. Is this reasoning so cloudy we should really go around murdering people rather than, I dunno, suggesting that people take responsibility for their own bodies? (I thought personal responsibility was one of those things you were really into.)

Valor is a two-way street, and the valorous way for a conservative, religious man in our culture does not include sex in “long-term relationships” that aren’t marriage, condom or no condom. It seems to me that your requirements are no less contradictory than those you’re complaining about… par for the course with personal ads, I suppose.

You know, you’d be so right, if only you weren’t so completely irrelevant. Do you read my posts before you reply? I thought maybe if I deleted the last one—your inexcusably lame non-contribution to my essay on G-d and reasoning, you would get the hint. I don’t know why you ceaselessly remind me of the useless dialog created by you and the other scumfucks who can’t seem to hit the link at the top of the RSS feed page on LiveJournal. There was a hint in that, but I guess maybe I should be more direct, more reasonable, more logical: I don’t care what you and your friends think about me, my blog, my beliefs, my actions, my words, or my life. I don’t care! I really don’t!

And this blog, believe it or not, isn’t a public forum for the discussion of my ideas, it’s my personal G-ddamn stomping grounds for ideas. I invite commentary pretty much for Justin, Michael, David, Bill and Pi. If they didn’t comment, I’d turn the fucking feature off because so many lice like you seem to take up residence in them. It looks like a big reasoned argument, but really it’s just filler leading up to that last snarky comment. I get it already! You’re an atheist! You like abortion! Well, fucking great! Can you fucking go home now?

Just for good measure, let’s throw in the rubbish you sent me before. The internet’s all about free speech you know.

The question of whether God is a logical being is close to the heart of my own atheism. To me, the Abrahamic view of an omnipotent, judgmental God leaves open two main options: either God is constrained by logic, in which case the literal and philosophical crimes outlined in the Bible and allowed to occur in God’s name in the Universe today suggest (to me) defiant non-compliance with God; or he is not constrained by logic, in which case there is nothing to suggest that compliance will generate a positive result. Taken together, these two scenarios partially explain why compliance with Judeo-Christianity is, for me, not an attractive option.

Blah blah blah… I get it! You’re an atheist! That’s great! You know, you’re in good company, with bright bulbs like Richard Dawkins. Will you leave me alone now? Seriously?

Here’s a bucket of possible explanations:

  1. Perhaps G-d voluntarily constrains himself to reason as part of his gift of reason to mankind, even though he doesn’t, strictly-speaking, have to? Maybe this evolved since the Biblical era?
  2. Maybe the atrocities documented in the Bible are actually part of a historical narrative rather than a how-to manual on things to do when you’re in power?
  3. Perhaps people were actually bad and G-d actually knew enough about them that when he ordered they be destroyed, it was for the best (Him being omniscient and all)?
  4. Perhaps there is a moral ulterior motive to the story, that, I dunno, atrocities are bad and this is what has been taught about the Biblical narrative for thousands of years by both Judaism and Christianity?
  5. Perhaps some cases of abject destruction are meant to illustrate that you shouldn’t profit from war?
  6. Perhaps in the Talmud there are a few thousand much better interpretations of the things that have turned all our stomachs for thousands of years?
  7. Maybe (your favorite possibility) there’s no scientific evidence that anything mentioned in the Tanach ever happened and it’s all a big metaphor?
  8. I’m sure with your startling command of the Bible you’ve noticed by now that G-d is angry a lot more often at the Jews in Tanach, not the Gentiles who are better at repenting (see Jonah, for example)? (Or, alternatively, is the Cliff’s Notes Exodus really the extent of your literacy?)

I could have responded so at the beginning, but I don’t like to get that worked up over marketing, so I just deleted your comment like the advertisement it is. Let me invite you to get worked up over that: no, wait, it’s my house, I can delete whatever I want. You have our own blog. Now go blog how small-minded and horrible I am. I’m sure all your rabid atheist friends and your hired boyfriend will all rush to burn me in effigy along with all other religious people. Have a real party! By the way, have you noticed I’m completely alone out here? You assholes have won! The religious right doesn’t exist, I’m the only religious Jew my age in the southwest. You’ve swallowed a bunch of propaganda engineered to keep the two-party machine going a little bit longer so your party and the party you hate can be just a bit more profitable, together!

Hope you’re all having a blast! Please never return! Thank you! Goodnight!

P.S.: Your taste in metal sucks.

P.P.S.: It sickens me that this is going to be the top thing on my blog for weeks, and it sickens me that this is undoubtedly the nail in the coffin of my friendship with Eric, which I really did treasure and whom I really do miss.

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