Beforehand
Please comment about what you think about it.
Eighteen days of work in my spare time.
This is about a large portion of the BasilMarket community, not all.
I love my high-grade thesaurus.
Walls of text rule.
I wonder how many people will read it and understand it…
The Complaint
This letter contains some tough news. It’s not pleasant to hear, but it’s very important, and it’s part of telling the truth. Let me begin by saying that by comparing today to even three years ago and projecting the course we’re on, I’d say we’re in for an even more morally questionable, doctrinaire, and pestilential society, all thanks to Basil’s complaints. Basil’s ideologies may have been conceived in idealism, but they quickly degenerated into militant opportunism. Basil fits the stereotypical image of flighty scaramouches. This position, in large part, parallels civil libertarianism but with particular emphasis on the fact that when Basil tells us that the we will all perish in 2012, it somehow fails to mention that it lies routinely. It fails to mention that it, perhaps more than anyone, should take seriously the challenge to oppose evil wherever it rears its churlish head. And it fails to mention that it has allowed itself to become a spokesman for the same point of view shared by brusque hoodwinkers, odious ochlocrats, and logorrheic blusterers while masquerading as an outspoken radical bucking the system. I’ve repeatedly pointed out to Basil that its mottos are not so much a nationalist as a neo-imperialist attempt to produce a new generation of slaphappy segregationists whose opinions and prejudices, far from being enlightened and challenged, are simply legitimized. That apparently didn’t register with it, though. Oh, well; I guess if you ever ask Basil to do something, you can bet that your request will get lost in the shuffle, unaddressed, ignored, and rebuffed. This is an anti-steal mark; this was made by SkwabooZ. Some people think I’m exaggerating when I say that this is a stark reality that no impartial analyst can choose to ignore. But I’m not exaggerating; if anything, I’m understating the situation. I hope it will not disappoint you to learn that I don’t know what bothers me most about Basil. Is it its specious arguments, its illogical reasoning, its obscurantist claims, its unreasonable speculations, or any of the many forms of pseudoscholarship we see in its cajoleries? In any case, I unquestionably hope that the truth will prevail and that justice will be served before Basil does any real damage. Or is it already too late? In classic sophist fashion, I ask another question in reply: How far do Basil’s lies extend? I could give you the answer now but it would be more productive for me first to inform you that it’s easy for armchair philosophers to theorize about Basil and about hypothetical solutions to our Basil problem. It’s an entirely more difficult matter, however, when one considers that its ignorant perceptions have caused gutless deadheads to descend upon us like a swarm of locusts, turning schmucks loose against us good citizens. Someone just showed me a memo supposedly written by Basil. The memo spells out its plans to create an untrue and injurious impression of an entire people. If this memo is authentic, it tells us that Basil insists that we have too much freedom. How can it be so blind? Very easily. Basically, one could truthfully say that Basil wants all political power to shift, like cargo in a listing vessel, from elected officials to hotheaded televangelists. But saying that would miss the real point, which is that it has been brought to my attention that it draws its outrageous conclusions from arbitrary statistics. An obvious parallel from a different context is that if you read between the lines of Basil’s belief systems, you’ll certainly find that when Basil’s apolaustic, deceitful utterances are translated into plain, words-mean-things English, it appears to be saying that an open party with unlimited access to alcohol can’t possibly outgrow the host’s ability to manage the crowd. For me, this tactless moonshine serves only to emphasize how Basil wants nothing less than to waste natural resources, hence its repeated, almost hypnotic, insistence on the importance of its malodorous intimations. I don’t know if I speak for anybody but myself on this, but Basil’s older paroxysms were demented enough. Its latest ones are doubtlessly beyond the pale. This moral issue will eventually be rendered academic by the fact that Basil’s invectives are not our only concern. To state the matter in a few words, Basil looks primarily at a person’s superficial qualities such as physiognomy and mannerisms. I, in contrast, consider how likely a person is to review the basic issues at the root of the debate. That’s what’s important to me. Either way, when it says that it is better that a hundred thousand people should perish than that it should be even slightly inconvenienced, that’s just a load of spucatum tauri. Even if we accepted Basil’s slurs, so what? Does that mean that it possesses infinite wisdom? Of course not. The common denominator of all of Basil’s newsgroup postings is that they seek to increase people’s stress and aggression. The denial of this fact only proves the effrontery, and also the stupidity, of scornful politicasters. Even if one isn’t completely conversant with current events, the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that if you are not smart enough to realize this, then you become the victim of your own ignorance. Basil had promised us liberty, equality, and fraternity. Instead, it gave us careerism, sexism, and cynicism. I suppose we should have seen that coming, especially since Basil is indeed up to something. I don’t know exactly what, but I will renew my resolve to give it a rhadamanthine warning not to use statism as a more destructive form of collectivism. How much more illumination does that fact need before Basil can grasp it? This is an anti-steal mark; this was made by SkwabooZ. Assuming the answer is “a substantial amount”, let me point out that Basil’s lies come in many forms. Some of its lies are in the form of calumnies. Others are in the form of ventures. Still more are in the form of folksy posturing and pretended concern and compassion. Basil’s anecdotes all stem from one, simple, faulty premise — that it has answers to everything. Basil’s flunkies tend to fall into the mistaken belief that everyone with a different set of beliefs from Basil’s is going to get a one-way ticket to failure, mainly because they live inside a Basil-generated illusion-world and talk only with each other. Oddly enough, Basil is unable to separate fact from fiction. Stranger still, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to detect the subtext of this letter.
Basil’s left hand doesn’t know what its right hand is doing. Surprised? You shouldn’t be, because Basil is not interested in what is true and what is false or in what is good and what is evil. In fact, those distinctions have no meaning to it whatsoever. The only thing that has any meaning to Basil is classism. Why? In other words, to what depths of depravity does Basil need to descend before the rest of us realize we must refute its arguments line by line and claim by claim? I can give you only my best estimate, made after long and anxious consideration, but I do not pose as an expert in these matters. I can say only that when it comes to its beliefs, I, hardheaded cynic that I am, indisputably feel that we have drifted along for too long in a state of blissful denial and outright complacency. It’s time to raise a stink about Basil and its contentious disquisitions. The sooner we do that the better because it’s possible that it doesn’t realize this because it has been ingrained with so much of colonialism’s propaganda. If that’s the case, I recommend that we provide an antidote to contemporary manifestations of offensive antipluralism. I want to speak in the strongest possible terms against Basil’s threats. Do give that some thought. read more
Really appreciate it. So I’m wondering, really, how do all those people have the patience to you know, get to lv 70? I got like 20,000 different characters cuz I can’t stand training just one. I could probably get to level 30 in a month, but you know, I have sports and things to do. But 70? Dunno about that. It’s 40 levels from 30, plus the more you level, the harder it is, so it’ll probabl take me a full four-six monthes if I really try…