Letters to Hannah

Rogue philosophy at its (almost) finest

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Nerds with guns

August 08, 2019

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Dear H, A while back I knew a man who prayed for children. So far as I'm aware not even to get children, but to make a new man of himself. His theory was that the more children he had the more he'd develop his character, and in the act of procreation he was creating a new version of himself -- more patient, and kind, and giving, and in general more Christian. He'd create something out of his body and the end product would be the Fruit of the Spirit.

I've moved to Substack

Dear reader, After years of getting shadowbanned by Facebook and Twitter I've moved to Substack. My views have already gotten better, and I'm looking forward to seeing you there. The link is https://lettersofj.substack.com . Yours, -J P.S. The app seems to be pretty good too, and allows you to follow lots of great writers pretty easily.

A gun to our heads

Dear Hannah, My current position on bums is shifting from "downtrodden children of God" to "round 'em up and gas 'em" -- a change I blame on the city of Seattle. It used to be that the homeless were just a sore on the lip of society; but Seattle has taken the worst parables of Jesus and actually made a religion out of them, and now if you aren't willing to throw everything away for the bums you're an outcast and a heretic. That's why I loathe them like the prophets of Ba'al, and every panhandler to me represents not just a failure of chemicals in the brain, or a refusal to get his act together, or a crime spree in waiting or a drug habit in action, but a whole code of ethics I hate for its enforcement -- not even really the bum , but the thing that he stands for . A robbery in progress. Some smug liberal's ticket to heaven on my back. An endless tide of sermons with no actual payout, other than a fuzzy feeling and a fitting in wi

On wankery

Dear Son, One major reason Americans are dumber than our ancestors is because so many of us are wankers. How good a man is "at life" is directly connected to whether he's spent himself sexually; and, from what I gather, the majority of American men have already wanked themselves dry.

On an ancient custom of the Babylonians

Dear M, Montaigne once said he could find something attractive on nearly any woman, but this is far too upbeat for me. Amy Schumer had great legs, but who wants to think too much about them? They're attached to Amy Schumer; and the package deal is too painful to really be called a deal -- it has all the qualities of the bargain bin. You buy the legs and you've bought the mouth.

Two weeks (a short history of your smug *sshole neighbor)

Afternoon there, neighbor! There's a new disease in town and I wanted you to know about it. It gives the chills and sweats and headaches and fevers and diarrhea and a cough and it can kill you. Not a cold or a flu, but a new thing. It can kill most of us it turns out. Very dangerous. We're going to have to lock you down, in fact. For your well-being. Two weeks is all we ask to flatten this curve. What's a curve? Funny you ask. It's when too many people get put into the hospital. We just want to slow the numbers. Whittle them down a bit. Lock you out of work and church and play for two weeks. Totally worth it, we promise.

Against positive news

Dear Hannah, Westerners watch too many shows about serial killers, but there are way worse things to be obsessed about. What we have to worry about isn't that people are sharing stories of people murdering people, but that people are sharing videos of people helping other people.

On being friends with Democrats

Dear H, I complain a lot about Seattle, but the truth is I've enjoyed my time here immensely, and now that it's time to go I'll confess I'm going to miss it. Not all of it, but lots of it. Some of even the worst parts of it. It's a terrible place to raise kids, but if you've got the spark of life in you it's a great place to turn into a man. I was an effeminate self-proclaimed socialist when I arrived here, and I'm a die-hard right-winger now that I'm leaving. In all truth the place is a train wreck; and it was the policy towards bums that made me rethink the concept of empathy; the insanity about gays that made me fall in love with gender roles ; the disrespect for whites that made me celebrate my whiteness ; and the praise of outright defects which made me rethink the limits of kindness. There were so many shitty ideas I was forced to rediscover great ideas; and maybe I could have learned these things in a red state, but I doubt I'd

Why "liberal" means "left-winger"

Dear T, Two of my heroes are Mises and Ayn Rand , but for several reasons I could never consider myself a full-blown libertarian. First off is the fact that you can and should legislate morality, and in fact every libertarian without exception does . All government is an extension of moral ideas. He won't prosecute you for stealing a wife, but he'll put you in jail for stealing a loaf; and beyond this he'll do the same thing for murder, and fraud, and kidnapping, and assault -- all of them moral issues, and 100% featured in the book of Deuteronomy.

What exactly is culture?

Dear M, Yesterday I met a man from Mumbai. He happened to mention that he was new to Idaho, so I asked how new, and it turned out he'd only been here a month and a half. He spoke good English, and I learned he'd gone to an English-speaking school, which made his getting a job here in Idaho possible*.

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