Cut through the pretext to uncover real message
A tyrant will always find a pretext for his (or her) tyranny.
A recent letter writer’s is that people find fault with the Taxed Enough Already party’s activities. The TEA critics’ very presence here “indicates that there are now Americans who prefer to become subjects rather than citizens” — so watch your back, people! She believes that people, such as me, audacious enough to criticize her party, are voluntarily making ourselves slaves to the federal government and this is all very “tragic.”
But Nancy Baumgartner is wrong. She does not think Tea Party critics are tragic. She thinks we are stupid: “It is not surprising that a significant number of vocal Tea Party critics know what the acronym even stands for,” she writes. That sentence is the real object of her letter.
What is unsurprising to me is that a militant Tea Party supporter does not know the definition of the word “tragic.” A real tragedy is a contradiction of principles.
ERIK B. ANDERSON
Independence Township
I know this is not my best letter. It has got a lot of abstract concepts in it, like "pretext" and "tragedy" and "contradiction" and "principles". But I am grateful for the opportunity to be heard. I made my point about Nancy Baumgarten's tragically twisted letter of September 6. I just wish the editor who chose the title of the Letters page online could understand that the one who is offbase is Nancy Baumgarten, the one who criticized the Tea Party critics, but I guess I fell into the same conundrum that the movie Inception (or the play Marat/Sade) did.
That's what living with Asperger's is like. you say something, and it makes sense. It objectively makes perfect sense. But expecting other people to understand what I have just said is a whole other thing.
It's like a game of telephone. Just look at my words, not the editors words. Think about it. You are free to think what you want. They will be the same words today, tomorrow and they will still be there, at the Warren County library 50 years from now, assuming another fire doesn't destroy those records too.
If I had to write it over again, I would say: Nancy Baumgartner wants to be Desdemona or Ophelia, but she doesn't understand that tragedy does not mean loss. The fact that tea parties are a bunch of losers who will never get anywhere is not tragic. The fact that Tea Party cricis like me will never go away. Tragedy means a contradiction of principles. She does not belong in one of Shakespeare's tragedies. She belongs in his comedies. Nancy Baumbartner is Katherine.
Warm Regards,
Erik B. Anderson
Independence Township, New Jersey
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"A tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny." is from:
The Wolf and the Lamb
by Aesop
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