Declamation about youth

Source: https://home.iitk.ac.in/~hcverma/Article/Macaulay-Minutes.pdf

As it seems to be the opinion of some of the gentlemen who compose the Committee of Public Instruction that the course which they have hitherto pursued was strictly prescribed by the British Parliament in 1813 and as, if that opinion be correct, a legislative act will be necessary to warrant a change, I have thought it right to refrain from taking any part in the preparation of the adverse statements which are now before us, and to reserve what I had to say on the subject till it should come before me as a Member of the Council of India.
It does not appear to me that the Act of Parliament can by any art of contraction be made to bear the meaning which has been assigned to it. It contains nothing about the particular languages or sciences which are to be studied. A sum is set apart "for the revival and promotion of literature, and the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories." It is argued, or rather taken for granted, that by literature the Parliament can have meant only Arabic and Sanscrit literature; that they never would have given the honourable appellation of "a learned native" to a native who was familiar with the poetry of Milton, the metaphysics of Locke, and the physics of Newton; but that they meant to designate by that name only such persons as might have studied in the sacred books of the Hindoos all the uses of cusa-grass, and all the mysteries of absorption into the Deity. This does not appear to be a very satisfactory interpretation. To take a parallel case: Suppose that the Pacha of Egypt, a country once superior in knowledge to the nations of Europe, but now sunk far below them, were to appropriate a sum for the purpose "of reviving and promoting literature, and encouraging learned natives of Egypt," would any body infer that he meant the youth of his Pachalik to give years to the study of hieroglyphics, to search into all the doctrines disguised under the fable of Osiris, and to ascertain with all possible accuracy the ritual with which cats and onions were anciently adored? Would he be justly charged with inconsistency if, instead of employing his young subjects in deciphering obelisks, he were to order them to be instructed in the English and French languages, and in all the sciences to which those languages are the chief keys?
The words on which the supporters of the old system rely do not bear them out, and other words follow which seem to be quite decisive on the other side. This lakh of rupees is set apart not only for "reviving literature in India," the phrase on which their whole interpretation is founded, but also "for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories"-words which are alone sufficient to authorize all the changes for which I contend.
If the Council agree in my construction no legislative act will be necessary. If they differ from me, I will propose a short act rescinding that I clause of the Charter of 1813 from which the difficulty arises.
The argument which I have been considering affects only the form of proceeding. But the admirers of the oriental system of education have used another argument, which, if we admit it to be valid, is decisive against all change. They conceive that the public faith is pledged to the present system, and that to alter the appropriation of any of the funds which have hitherto been spent in encouraging the study of Arabic and Sanscrit would be downright spoliation. It is not easy to understand by what process of reasoning they can have arrived at this conclusion. The grants which are made from the public purse for the encouragement of literature differ in no respect from the grants which are made from the same purse for other objects of real or supposed utility. We found a sanitarium on a spot which we suppose to be healthy. Do we thereby pledge ourselves to keep a sanitarium there if the result should not answer our expectations? We commence the erection of a pier. Is it a violation of the public faith to stop the works, if we afterwards see reason to believe that the building will be useless? The rights of property are undoubtedly sacred. But nothing endangers those rights so much as the practice, now unhappily too common, of attributing them to things to which they do not belong. Those who would impart to abuses the sanctity of property are in truth imparting to the institution of property the unpopularity and the fragility of abuses. If the Government has given to any person a formal assurance-nay, if the Government has excited in any person's mind a reasonable expectation-that he shall receive a certain income as a teacher or a learner of Sanscrit or Arabic, I would respect that person's pecuniary interests. I would rather err on the side of liberality to individuals than suffer the public faith to be called in question. But to talk of a Government pledging itself to teach certain languages and certain sciences, though those languages may become useless, though those sciences may be exploded, seems to me quite unmeaning. There is not a single word in any public instrument from which it can be inferred that the Indian Government ever intended to give any pledge on this subject, or ever considered the destination of these funds as unalterably fixed. But, had it been otherwise, I should have denied the competence of our predecessors to bind us by any pledge on such a subject. Suppose that a Government had in the last century enacted in the most solemn manner that all its subjects should, to the end of time, be inoculated for the small-pox, would that Government be bound to persist in the practice after Jenner's discovery? These promises of which nobody claims the performance, and from which nobody can grant a release, these vested rights which vest in nobody, this property without proprietors, this robbery which makes nobody poorer, may be comprehended by persons of higher faculties than mine. I consider this plea merely as a set form of words, regularly used both in England and in India, in defence of every abuse for which no other plea can be set up.
I hold this lakh of rupees to be quite at the disposal of the Governor-General in Council for the purpose of promoting learning in India in any way which may be thought most advisable. I hold his Lordship to be quite as free to direct that it shall no longer be employed in encouraging Arabic and Sanscrit, as he is to direct that the reward for killing tigers in Mysore shall be diminished, or that no more public money shall be expended on the chaunting at the cathedral.
We now come to the gist of the matter. We have a fund to be employed as Government shall direct for the intellectual improvement of the people of this country. The simple question is, what is the most useful way of employing it?
All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are moreover so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them. It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectual improvement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing higher studies can at present be affected only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them.
What then shall that language be? One-half of the committee maintain that it should be the English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanscrit. The whole question seems to me to be-which language is the best worth knowing?
I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education.
It will hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of literature in which the Eastern writers stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met with any orientalist who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations. But when we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same.
How then stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands pre- eminent even among the languages of the West. It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us,-with models of every species of eloquence,-with historical composition, which, considered merely as narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equaled-with just and lively representations of human life and human nature,-with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals, government, jurisprudence, trade,-with full and correct information respecting every experimental science which tends to preserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations. It may safely be said that the literature now extant in
that language is of greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. Nor is this all. In India, English is the language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of Government. It is likely to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East. It is the language of two great European communities which are rising, the one in the south of Africa, the other in Australia,-communities which are every year becoming more important and more closely connected with our Indian empire. Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would be the most useful to our native subjects.
The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, there are no books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our own, whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession, wherever they differ from those of Europe differ for the worse, and whether, when we can patronize sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines which would disgrace an English farrier, astronomy which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school, history abounding with kings thirty feet high and reigns thirty thousand years long, and geography made of seas of treacle and seas of butter.
We are not without experience to guide us. History furnishes several analogous cases, and they all teach the same lesson. There are, in modern times, to go no further, two memorable instances of a great impulse given to the mind of a whole society, of prejudices overthrown, of knowledge diffused, of taste purified, of arts and sciences planted in countries which had recently been ignorant and barbarous.
The first instance to which I refer is the great revival of letters among the Western nations at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. At that time almost everything that was worth reading was contained in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Had our ancestors acted as the Committee of Public Instruction has hitherto noted, had they neglected the language of Thucydides and Plato, and the language of Cicero and Tacitus, had they confined their attention to the old dialects of our own island, had they printed nothing and taught nothing at the universities but chronicles in Anglo-Saxon and romances in Norman French,-would England ever have been what she now is? What the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries of More and Ascham, our tongue is to the people of India. The literature of England is now more valuable than that of classical antiquity. I doubt whether the Sanscrit literature be as valuable as that of our Saxon and Norman progenitors. In some departments-in history for example-I am certain that it is much less so.
Another instance may be said to be still before our eyes. Within the last hundred and twenty years, a nation which had previously been in a state as barbarous as that in which our ancestors were before the Crusades has gradually emerged from the ignorance in which it was sunk, and has taken its place among civilized communities. I speak of Russia. There is now in that country a large educated class abounding with persons fit to
serve the State in the highest functions, and in nowise inferior to the most accomplished men who adorn the best circles of Paris and London. There is reason to hope that this vast empire which, in the time of our grandfathers, was probably behind the Punjab, may in the time of our grandchildren, be pressing close on France and Britain in the career of improvement. And how was this change effected? Not by flattering national prejudices; not by feeding the mind of the young Muscovite with the old women's stories which his rude fathers had believed; not by filling his head with lying legends about St. Nicholas; not by encouraging him to study the great question, whether the world was or not created on the 13th of September; not by calling him "a learned native" when he had mastered all these points of knowledge; but by teaching him those foreign languages in which the greatest mass of information had been laid up, and thus putting all that information within his reach. The languages of western Europe civilised Russia. I cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo what they have done for the Tartar.
And what are the arguments against that course which seems to be alike recommended by theory and by experience? It is said that we ought to secure the co- operation of the native public, and that we can do this only by teaching Sanscrit and Arabic.
I can by no means admit that, when a nation of high intellectual attainments undertakes to superintend the education of a nation comparatively ignorant, the learners are absolutely to prescribe the course which is to be taken by the teachers. It is not necessary however to say anything on this subject. For it is proved by unanswerable evidence, that we are not at present securing the co-operation of the natives. It would be bad enough to consult their intellectual taste at the expense of their intellectual health. But we are consulting neither. We are withholding from them the learning which is palatable to them. We are forcing on them the mock learning which they nauseate.
This is proved by the fact that we are forced to pay our Arabic and Sanscrit students while those who learn English are willing to pay us. All the declamations in the world about the love and reverence of the natives for their sacred dialects will never, in the mind of any impartial person, outweigh this undisputed fact, that we cannot find in all our vast empire a single student who will let us teach him those dialects, unless we will pay him.
I have now before me the accounts of the Mudrassa for one month, the month of December, 1833. The Arabic students appear to have been seventy-seven in number. All receive stipends from the public. The whole amount paid to them is above 500 rupees a month. On the other side of the account stands the following item:
Deduct amount realized from the out-students of English for the months of May, June, and July last-103 rupees.
I have been told that it is merely from want of local experience that I am surprised at these phenomena, and that it is not the fashion for students in India to study at their own charges. This only confirms me in my opinions. Nothing is more certain than that it never can in any part of the world be necessary to pay men for doing what they think pleasant
or profitable. India is no exception to this rule. The people of India do not require to be paid for eating rice when they are hungry, or for wearing woollen cloth in the cold season. To come nearer to the case before us:-The children who learn their letters and a little elementary arithmetic from the village schoolmaster are not paid by him. He is paid for teaching them. Why then is it necessary to pay people to learn Sanscrit and Arabic? Evidently because it is universally felt that the Sanscrit and Arabic are languages the knowledge of which does not compensate for the trouble of acquiring them. On all such subjects the state of the market is the detective test.
Other evidence is not wanting, if other evidence were required. A petition was presented last year to the committee by several ex-students of the Sanscrit College. The petitioners stated that they had studied in the college ten or twelve years, that they had made themselves acquainted with Hindoo literature and science, that they had received certificates of proficiency. And what is the fruit of all this? "Notwithstanding such testimonials," they say, "we have but little prospect of bettering our condition without the kind assistance of your honourable committee, the indifference with which we are generally looked upon by our countrymen leaving no hope of encouragement and assistance from them." They therefore beg that they may be recommended to the Governor-General for places under the Government-not places of high dignity or emolument, but such as may just enable them to exist. "We want means," they say, "for a decent living, and for our progressive improvement, which, however, we cannot obtain without the assistance of Government, by whom we have been educated and maintained from childhood." They conclude by representing very pathetically that they are sure that it was never the intention of Government, after behaving so liberally to them during their education, to abandon them to destitution and neglect.
I have been used to see petitions to Government for compensation. All those petitions, even the most unreasonable of them, proceeded on the supposition that some loss had been sustained, that some wrong had been inflicted. These are surely the first petitioners who ever demanded compensation for having been educated gratis, for having been supported by the public during twelve years, and then sent forth into the world well furnished with literature and science. They represent their education as an injury which gives them a claim on the Government for redress, as an injury for which the stipends paid to them during the infliction were a very inadequate compensation. And I doubt not that they are in the right. They have wasted the best years of life in learning what procures for them neither bread nor respect. Surely we might with advantage have saved the cost of making these persons useless and miserable. Surely, men may be brought up to be burdens to the public and objects of contempt to their neighbours at a somewhat smaller charge to the State. But such is our policy. We do not even stand neuter in the contest between truth and falsehood. We are not content to leave the natives to the influence of their own hereditary prejudices. To the natural difficulties which obstruct the progress of sound science in the East, we add great difficulties of our own making. Bounties and premiums, such as ought not to be given even for the propagation of truth, we lavish on false texts and false philosophy.
By acting thus we create the very evil which we fear. We are making that opposition which we do not find. What we spend on the Arabic and Sanscrit Colleges is not merely a
dead loss to the cause of truth. It is bounty-money paid to raise up champions of error. It goes to form a nest not merely of helpless placehunters but of bigots prompted alike by passion and by interest to raise a cry against every useful scheme of education. If there should be any opposition among the natives to the change which I recommend, that opposition will be the effect of our own system. It will be headed by persons supported by our stipends and trained in our colleges. The longer we persevere in our present course, the more formidable will that opposition be. It will be every year reinforced by recruits whom we are paying. From the native society, left to itself, we have no difficulties to apprehend. All the murmuring will come from that oriental interest which we have, by artificial means, called into being and nursed into strength.
There is yet another fact which is alone sufficient to prove that the feeling of the native public, when left to itself, is not such as the supporters of the old system represent it to be. The committee have thought fit to lay out above a lakh of rupees in printing Arabic and Sanscrit books. Those books find no purchasers. It is very rarely that a single copy is disposed of. Twenty-three thousand volumes, most of them folios and quartos, fill the libraries or rather the lumber-rooms of this body. The committee contrive to get rid of some portion of their vast stock of oriental literature by giving books away. But they cannot give so fast as they print. About twenty thousand rupees a year are spent in adding fresh masses of waste paper to a hoard which, one should think, is already sufficiently ample. During the last three years about sixty thousand rupees have been expended in this manner. The sale of Arabic and Sanscrit books during those three years has not yielded quite one thousand rupees. In the meantime, the School Book Society is selling seven or eight thousand English volumes every year, and not only pays the expenses of printing but realizes a profit of twenty per cent. on its outlay.
The fact that the Hindoo law is to be learned chiefly from Sanscrit books, and the Mahometan law from Arabic books, has been much insisted on, but seems not to bear at all on the question. We are commanded by Parliament to ascertain and digest the laws of India. The assistance of a Law Commission has been given to us for that purpose. As soon as the Code is promulgated the Shasters and the Hedaya will be useless to a moonsiff or a Sudder Ameen. I hope and trust that, before the boys who are now entering at the Mudrassa and the Sanscrit College have completed their studies, this great work will be finished. It would be manifestly absurd to educate the rising generation with a view to a state of things which we mean to alter before they reach manhood.
But there is yet another argument which seems even more untenable. It is said that the Sanscrit and the Arabic are the languages in which the sacred books of a hundred millions of people are written, and that they are on that account entitled to peculiar encouragement. Assuredly it is the duty of the British Government in India to be not only tolerant but neutral on all religious questions. But to encourage the study of a literature, admitted to be of small intrinsic value, only because that literature inculcated the most serious errors on the most important subjects, is a course hardly reconcilable with reason, with morality, or even with that very neutrality which ought, as we all agree, to be sacredly preserved. It is confined that a language is barren of useful knowledge. We are to teach it because it is fruitful of monstrous superstitions. We are to teach false history, false astronomy, false medicine, because we find them in company with a false religion.
We abstain, and I trust shall always abstain, from giving any public encouragement to those who are engaged in the work of converting the natives to Christianity. And while we act thus, can we reasonably or decently bribe men, out of the revenues of the State, to waste their youth in learning how they are to purify themselves after touching an ass or what texts of the Vedas they are to repeat to expiate the crime of killing a goat?
It is taken for granted by the advocates of oriental learning that no native of this country can possibly attain more than a mere smattering of English. They do not attempt to prove this. But they perpetually insinuate it. They designate the education which their opponents recommend as a mere spelling-book education. They assume it as undeniable that the question is between a profound knowledge of Hindoo and Arabian literature and science on the one side, and superficial knowledge of the rudiments of English on the other. This is not merely an assumption, but an assumption contrary to all reason and experience. We know that foreigners of all nations do learn our language sufficiently to have access to all the most abstruse knowledge which it contains sufficiently to relish even the more delicate graces of our most idiomatic writers. There are in this very town natives who are quite competent to discuss political or scientific questions with fluency and precision in the English language. I have heard the very question on which I am now writing discussed by native gentlemen with a liberality and an intelligence which would do credit to any member of the Committee of Public Instruction. Indeed it is unusual to find, even in the literary circles of the Continent, any foreigner who can express himself in English with so much facility and correctness as we find in many Hindoos. Nobody, I suppose, will contend that English is so difficult to a Hindoo as Greek to an Englishman. Yet an intelligent English youth, in a much smaller number of years than our unfortunate pupils pass at the Sanscrit College, becomes able to read, to enjoy, and even to imitate not unhappily the compositions of the best Greek authors. Less than half the time which enables an English youth to read Herodotus and Sophocles ought to enable a Hindoo to read Hume and Milton.
To sum up what I have said. I think it clear that we are not fettered by the Act of Parliament of 1813, that we are not fettered by any pledge expressed or implied, that we are free to employ our funds as we choose, that we ought to employ them in teaching what is best worth knowing, that English is better worth knowing than Sanscrit or Arabic, that the natives are desirous to be taught English, and are not desirous to be taught Sanscrit or Arabic, that neither as the languages of law nor as the languages of religion have the Sanscrit and Arabic any peculiar claim to our encouragement, that it is possible to make natives of this country thoroughly good English scholars, and that to this end our efforts ought to be directed.
In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, -a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render
them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.
I would strictly respect all existing interests. I would deal even generously with all individuals who have had fair reason to expect a pecuniary provision. But I would strike at the root of the bad system which has hitherto been fostered by us. I would at once stop the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit books. I would abolish the Mudrassa and the Sanscrit College at Calcutta. Benares is the great seat of Brahminical learning; Delhi of Arabic learning. If we retain the Sanscrit College at Bonares and the Mahometan College at Delhi we do enough and much more than enough in my opinion, for the Eastern languages. If the Benares and Delhi Colleges should be retained, I would at least recommend that no stipends shall be given to any students who may hereafter repair thither, but that the people shall be left to make their own choice between the rival systems of education without being bribed by us to learn what they have no desire to know. The funds which would thus be placed at our disposal would enable us to give larger encouragement to the Hindoo College at Calcutta, and establish in the principal cities throughout the Presidencies of Fort William and Agra schools in which the English language might be well and thoroughly taught.
If the decision of His Lordship in Council should be such as I anticipate, I shall enter on the performance of my duties with the greatest zeal and alacrity. If, on the other hand, it be the opinion of the Government that the present system ought to remain unchanged, I beg that I may be permitted to retire from the chair of the Committee. I feel that I could not be of the smallest use there. I feel also that I should be lending my countenance to what I firmly believe to be a mere delusion. I believe that the present system tends not to accelerate the progress of truth but to delay the natural death of expiring errors. I conceive that we have at present no right to the respectable name of a Board of Public Instruction. We are a Board for wasting the public money, for printing books which are of less value than the paper on which they are printed was while it was blank-for giving artificial encouragement to absurd history, absurd metaphysics, absurd physics, absurd theology-for raising up a breed of scholars who find their scholarship an incumbrance and blemish, who live on the public while they are receiving their education, and whose education is so utterly useless to them that, when they have received it, they must either starve or live on the public all the rest of their lives. Entertaining these opinions, I am naturally desirous to decline all share in the responsibility of a body which, unless it alters its whole mode of proceedings, I must consider, not merely as useless, but as positively noxious.

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Demographics: Male, South Asian, 1st Generation International Student.
Intended major:

 1st choice= Computer Science 2st choice= Psychology 3st choice= Gender & Sexuality Studies 

Coursework:
GPA: 3.69 uw on scale of 4, I am doing A levels and for 11-12 grade I have 4 a level subjects and 4 regular subjects and for 9-10 grade I completed O levels for 8 subjects. School does provides gpa stuff.
Grades=> 12th one A+ (in CS) , 6As( in Psychology, Physics, Robotics, International Relations, Journalism, Drama Theater) and a B(in Maths) same for 11 grade

 9th-10th : one A+(in CS) 2 A (in English, Islamiyat/Religious Studies) 4 B (in Physics, Chemistry, National Studies, Urdu/language) one C (in Maths) 

No APs
Testing: Applied without tests as all of the colleges gave exemption
Honors:
1-Elected as Young Member of a prestigious research organization in appreciation of participation in their research competition. (International 10, 11)
2- Official Ambassador for the largest and pioneering international MUN of my country (International, 11)
3-Academic Aptitude Scholarship finalist at my school Won 80% Fee Waiver of $2370+ (School 10, 11)
Extracurriculars (exactly how I wrote them on Common App but without specific organization names):
1- Research 10, 11 School, Break 5 hwk, 10 wk/yr
Team Leader at a research competition. Led team & designed a research presentation on 'Combating COVID-19': published on research institution's website. Won Active Member Award (2019 & 20). Students are selected to participate 8.3% acceptance
2- ComputeTechnology 11 School 20 hwk, 2 wk/yr
Director - of a STEM evet. Organized a round-based international research computer science competition; reviewed research of 120 participants & selected finalists.
3- Community Service (Volunteer) 10 Break 10 hwk, 3 wk/yr
Head Editor & Project Researcher for Internship Program organized by an international NGO’s (largest nature conservation organization in my country and prolly worldwide) Organized water scarcity sensitization sessions at 6 restaurants, made a short movie on sound pollution. Fully equipped a Mosque to reduce water usage by 30% for the internship project.
4- Work (Paid) 12 Break 60 hwk, 20 wk/yr
Worked as Customer Service Specialist at the camp office of a Brooklyn based company. Trained by Marketing & Finance departments. Access to software house. Gave tech support to customers virtually. received Letter of Reference & Commendation
5- Debate/Speech 10 School 8 hwk, 2 wk/yr
Committee Adjudicator, Parliamentary Debating Championship in my city 2019. Adjudicated all debating rounds. Established success criteria for the championship and named winners.
6- Debate/Speech 9, 10 School, Break 8 hwk, 4 wk/yr
Team Representative at Roots Youth Model UN & Intra-Wing English Declamation competition & National Education Olympiad,2019 Participated & won Excellent Performance Award, RYMUN; Merit Prize for ranking 2nd at I-WEDC; Member city delegation for National Education Olympiad.
7- Science/Math 9 School 7 hwk, 4 wk/yr
Team Head, Annual World Space Week Activities at National Space Agency Got my satellite model on remote sensing chosen to be displayed at the headquarters. Gave opening speech for declamation competition. Won 2 Acclamation Awards.
Essays:
Personal essay: it was about my experience with harassment and how it sparked a period of growth for me.
Why Us essays: I’m not sure about them much cuz I completed them usually a while before deadlines.
But I did put max effort.
Letters of Recommendation: 1 From CS teacher 1 From Physics and 1 from counsellor
My school required me to waive off my write to see them but I was also required to send my teachers the points I want them to include and the past activities so that they can mention them. And for the counsellor one I really trust her (she did everything I could expect any counsellor to do)
I require max aid and the max parent contribution towards tuition fee is $3000 ( as I wrote in ISCOF and CSS)
Colleges I've applied to:
ED 2 : Union College
RD: Vassar, Lehigh Uni, Vanderbilt, Dartmouth, Swarthmore, Williams, Pomona, Carlton, Connecticut clg, Franklin & Marshall, Skidmore, Loyola Uni Chicago and Jacobs University Bremen

1. Villain Ani set - please put the laughing like a villain in every move or action ( standing, walking, sitting, running, and lying down) of this Ani set.
   
2. Youthful Ani set - giggling in every move or action.
   
3. Over thinker Ani set - pose of thinking in every move or action.
   
4. Investigator Ani set - just like the skateboard Ani set, it needs a prop of magnifying glass. Please make the lay down pose like the pose of soldier Ani set but the difference is our heads move too as the magnifying glass moves direction to investigate.
   
5. Witch Ani set - like how the skateboard set works with skateboard prop, let us hold the broomstick and ride on it, just like a witch.
   
6. Wizard Ani set - if witch has broomstick, Wizard Ani set has the wand and moving hand with it like how wizards do in Harry Potter.
   
7. Monster Ani set - I am thinking of Hulk movements, growling actions.
   
8. Scientist Ani set - this may hold a flask and with mixing action in every move. Lay down may be like sideway position.
   
9. Hiphop or Break dancer Ani set - I would love to include hiphop moves such as gliding, B boying, or any move of hiphop or break dancing.
   
10. Vlogger Ani set - holds selfie stick with camera and moving it like vloggers do.
    
11. Poet Ani set - it's like in declamation, where hands are expressive.
    
12. Michael Jackson Ani sets ☑️Billie Jean Ani set ☑️Thriller Dance Ani set ☑️ Smooth Criminal Groove Ani set ☑️ Beat it Ani set ☑️They Don't Care About Us Ani set **haha I love MJ's trademark moves and as a fan of the late King of Pop, it would be very nice to have any of his dance moves in an Ani set, and since his bday is on Aug 29th.
    
13. Gangster Ani set - this one is like how Harley Quinn's holding a baseball bat.
    
14. Waka Waka Time Ani set - Shakira fan here too 😁🤗 and I think this one is good to be released in Black Month (?) Sorry my knowledge about Black people is limited but when I hear Africa, it reminds me of our Black brothers and sisters.
    
15. Filipino Gesture Ani set - I am from the Philippines and it would be nice if we can have a monthly Ani set that represents each country gesture and may release during its Independence day, like June 12 for Philippines.
    
16. Mr. Bean or Goofy Ani set ( 😁 )
    

Having fun in a game is not that hard to do. I hope my suggestion will add more fun in your (Avakin team/devs) future releases.
Hope too, this suggestion bring some smile (or laughs in a good way) and reminds us our youthful, fun, and playful side in a good way.
I hope Avakin devs will consider this. ❤️🤗

In order to win a battle one must know who the real enemy is. Otherwise, one is shooting in the dark and often hitting those not the least bit responsible for the mayhem. In our current battle the real enemy is Oddity. Here’s the story: Oddity’s diatribes all stem from one, simple, faulty premise, that the kids on the playground are happy to surrender to the school bully. Should we blindly trust such haughty, disorderly hellions? Don’t kid yourself: Oddity claims that no one is smart enough to see through its transparent lies. That claim illustrates a serious reasoning fallacy, one that is pandemic in its modes of thought. Then again, philosophers of language used to talk a lot about ostensive definitions. This means that one can convey the concept of up by gesturing toward the sky. One can convey the concept of big by spreading one’s arms wide apart. One can convey the concept of dastardly by pointing at Oddity. And if one were really clever one might even find a way to convey that we can never return to the past. And if we are ever to move forward to the future, we have to build a working consensus to tackle big problems. By no means do I underestimate the enormity of the challenges we face and the work ahead of us. That said, it is important to remember that I profess that Oddity’s plenipotentiaries are hardly strangers to exclusivism. Yes, I know that a lot of mutinous hostes generis humani will scoff at that. They have every right; it’s a free country. However, they should realize that in these days of political correctness and the changing of how history is taught in schools to fulfill a particular agenda, Oddity is the type of organization that turns up its nose at people like you and me. I guess that’s because we haven’t the faintest notion about the things that really matter such as why it would be good for it to foment racial animus.I could accept, perhaps, ramblings backed by the forces of logic and powerful reasoning. Sallies marked with hypocrisy and contradiction, however, merit none of my respect. Because everything Oddity has said about me is a not-so-creative mix of fiction, lies, and distortions, it therefore stands to reason that it justifies its smarmy vituperations with fallacious logical arguments based on argumentum ad baculum. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, it means that if we don’t accept Oddity’s claim that it serves as wisdom to the mighty and succor to the brave then it will usher in the beginning of a mischievous new era of Bourbonism.Oddity supports a wide variety of treatises. Some are primitive; others are larcenous. A few openly support gangsterism. On rare occasions, in order to preserve their liberties, sometimes people must force us to tailor our perceptions just to suit Oddity’s irresponsible whims. Oddity does that even when its liberties aren’t being threatened. Individually, Oddity’s notions punish victims while cheering on criminals. But linked together, Oddity’s magic-bullet explanations could assuage the hungers of Oddity’s yes-men with servings of fresh scapegoats. In plain, simple-to-understand English, Oddity has managed to convince a vast assortment of people that it has the experience, ideas, leadership, and integrity to move our nation forward. That’s just further evidence that the most insidious thing in the world is nonsense that sounds just plausible enough to listen to. It’s the sort of nonsense that prevents people from seeing that it is not for nothing that Oddity has been branded the most bumptious organization in the world. Some would even revise that epithet to the most bumptious organization in the history of the world. Either way, aspheterism is dangerous. Oddity’s unbalanced version of it is doubly so.Although I’m trying desperately hard to express my opinion of Oddity without using expletives, I’m afraid I do have to say that what really irks me is that it has presented us with a Hobson’s choice. Either we let it declare martial law, suspend elections, and round up dissidents (i.e., anyone who does not buy its lie that power, politics, and privilege should prevail over the rule of law) or it’ll use scapegoating as a foil to draw anger away from more accurate targets. This much is clear: Its army of disgraceful, filthy hopheads seems to work on an inverse evolutionary principle. That is, the farther up you go, the more unimaginative you become. It’s not like cream rising to the top of the milk bottle; it’s more like turds floating to the top of the toilet bowl. Oddity, as the most unimaginative of the lot, unequivocally ought to cave in and admit that its stooges argue, against a steady accretion of facts of already mountainous proportions, that we’d all be better off if they’d just emphasize the negative in our lives instead of accentuating the positive. That’s enough to make one say, Let’s express concern about Oddity’s conduct. So let’s do that! We can begin by pointing out that Oddity’s desire to corrupt our youth is the chief sign that it’s a daft, phlegmatic imbecile. (The second sign is that Oddity feels obliged to ignore compromise and focus solely on its personal agenda.)Just because I understand Oddity’s précis doesn’t mean I agree with them. Apologies for my bluntness, but the key to Oddity’s soul is its longing for the effortless, irresponsible, automatic consciousness of an animal. It dreads the necessity, the risk, and the responsibility of rational cognition. As a result, I once announced quite publicly that Oddity always says the most lousy things. When I announced that, Oddity could not be found for comment. Perhaps it was embarrassed that it has managed to convince a large number of contentious enemies of the people that it is the way, the truth, and the light. It now plans to convince everyone else by force, by silencing dissent, and by mass indoctrination.Some of you may feel a little sheepish about drawing an accurate portrait of Oddity’s ideological alignment. Don’t. We must all work together towards that end if we’re ever to challenge Oddity’s daffy assumptions about merit. There are several valid and obvious reasons why I insist that. Perhaps the most important reason is that Oddity has asked its serfs to reopen wounds that seem scarcely healed. (There’s no explicit mention of creating a regime of chauvinistic animalism, but that’s there too if you read between the lines.) This scares me because you don’t have to say anything specifically about Oddity for it to start attacking you. All you have to do is dare to imply that we should state unequivocally that Oddity has been injecting its lethal poison into our children’s minds and souls. Such utter contempt for the autonomy and free agency of others is the hallmark of imperialism and has no place in a free society. In a free society people can state, without fear of retribution, that the ostensible basis for Oddity’s speech codes is as phony as the loose and biased standards applied to enforce them. I’ll go further: My current plan is to provide people with opportunities to grow, develop, and exercise their potential as human beings. Yes, it will draw upon the most powerful fires of Hell to tear that plan asunder, but it does not just offend our ears and our sensibilities. Oddity also makes possible the acts of violence and hatred we’re seeing play out in our country today.I don’t know what sort of abuse Oddity was subjected to as a child that made it such an incoherent mooncalf, but I do know that if there’s an untold story here, it’s that it’s growing increasingly adept at promoting intolerance and paranoia. The steady drizzle of depressing data continues: I have in front of me a document that indicates that before the year is over, Oddity will make a mockery of the term uncharacteristically. Before that fatidic time arrives, we must let all of Oddity’s potential victims know that if the past is any indication of the future, Oddity will once again attempt to mobilize support for the special interests that dominate state and private activity.Oddity’s policies don’t accomplish anything useful because they don’t deal with the real issue. The real issue is that whenever Oddity attempts to remake the map of the world into an Oddity-friendly checkerboard of puppet regimes and occupation governments, Oddity looks around waiting for applause as if it’s done something decent and moral rather than contumelious and scrofulous. Oddity’s problem is that it is thinking in a linear versus a configurational framework. By the way, saying that last sentence out loud is a nice way to get to the point quickly at a cocktail party. Call me duplicitous if you’d like; I will still do everything in my power to defend tolerance and justice against the temptations of hatred and oppression. Then, I will announce to the world that it is imperative that we protect this planet for future generations. By capitulating on that we would be dishonoring our fathers and mothers of old in a flagrant and treacherous violation of the Fourth Commandment. That’s why I personally like to say that I find it necessary, if I am to meet my reader on something like a common ground of understanding, to point out that in a tacit concession of defeat, Oddity is now openly calling for the abridgment of various freedoms to accomplish coercively what its irrational machinations have failed at.Oddity exists for one reason and for one reason only: to manufacture and compile daunting lists of imaginary transgressions committed against it. By framing the question in this way we see that if five years ago I had described an organization like Oddity to you and told you that in five years it’d take what few remaining kernels of traditionalist thought remain and eviscerate them with the convoluted hogwash of Leninism, dogmatism, and militarism, you’d have thought me nauseating. You’d have laughed at me and told me it couldn’t happen. So it is useful now to note that, first, it has happened and, second, to try to understand how it happened and how it can get away with lies (e.g., that we should willingly surrender power to its plunderbund) because the average person cannot imagine anyone lying so brazenly. Not one person in a hundred will actually check out the facts for himself and discover that Oddity is lying.Whenever Oddity tries to fortify our feeble spirits with a few rehearsed words of bravado, I can’t help but think that it would be great if all of us could raise the quality of debate on issues surrounding its flighty declamations. In the end, however, money talks and you-know-what walks. Perhaps that truism also explains why in order to solve the big problems with Oddity we must first understand these problems, and to understand them, we must analyze ultraism. The analysis of ultraism informs the politics of social movements against ultraism, which is important because I am not trying to save the world—I gave up that pursuit a long time ago. But I am trying to fight for noble causes with honor and courage. And what could be a more worthy and righteous cause than to put an end to quarrelsome Bulverism? Let me now leave you with some parting advice: Fix your thoughts on that which is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. For now, put aside the fact that there is something inherently wrong with an organization that wants, more than anything else, to open the floodgates of resistentialism. And with that advice, go in peace.

Through this letter, I intend to serve as a facilitator who will help you draw your own conclusions about Oddity. That is, I’ll be your guide on the side, not a sage on the stage. With my assistance, you’ll soon gain a deep understanding of how Oddity’s recent attempt to corrupt our youth may prove to be a watershed event for those of us who want to call its bluff. By way of introduction, let me just say that in our polarized and broadly illiterate digital universe, nasty Huns gorge on animosity. Determined to conclude whatever they wish from whatever they read, they invariably accuse me of unfurling the flag of pessimism. I wish I knew what to say in my defense apart from that a colleague recently informed me that a bunch of politically incorrect, money-grubbing derelicts and others in Oddity’s amen corner are about to place our children at imminent risk of serious harm. I have no reason to doubt that story because Oddity’s hatchet jobs are based on two fundamental errors. They assume that deconstructionism provides an easy escape from a life of frustration, unhappiness, desperation, depression, and loneliness, and they promote the mistaken idea that the entire concept of happiness is a lie designed by unseen overlords of endless deceptive power. Although Oddity cites the alleged benefits of egoism—which are mostly unsupported, irrelevant, or distortions of the scientific literature—to justify flushing all my hopes and dreams down the toilet, Oddity revels in its deplorable campaign to promote a politics of defeat and demoralization, of pessimism and selfishness. But it goes further than that; its reportages raise a number of brow-furrowing questions. I’m referring to questions such as, To what lengths will it go to call for a return to that which wasn’t particularly good in the first place? It’s questions like that that unmistakably get people thinking about how Oddity wants to assuage the hungers of its votaries with servings of fresh scapegoats. Alas, that’s a mere ripple on the uncompanionable ocean of ableism in which Oddity will drown any attempt to investigate the real story behind its nostrums. We must search for the truth, find the facts, and convey the message that Oddity complains a lot. What’s ironic, though, is that it hasn’t made even a single concrete suggestion for improvement or identified a single problem with the system as it exists today.This view dangerously underestimates the simple-minded quality of mandarinism, as if it made any difference. Just as when something flies in the direction of your eyes, your eyelids close instantly and of their own accord, so too does Oddity instinctively and automatically require schoolchildren to be taught that its beliefs (as I would certainly not call them logically reasoned arguments) are not worth getting outraged about. Have you noticed that in just about everything it writes, its underlying premise is that the ancient Egyptians used psychic powers to build the pyramids? I don’t know about you, but that sure rings hollow to me.Oddity’s total lack of morals disgusts me. This position, in large part, parallels civil libertarianism but with particular emphasis on the fact that when one examines the ramifications of letting Oddity inflict untold misery, suffering, and distress, one finds a preponderance of evidence leading to the conclusion that it claims that parasitism brings one closer to nirvana. While rational argument has never been Oddity’s strong suit, this line of argument makes absolutely no sense. Oddity is effectively suggesting that it has an absolute right to be intolerant in the name of tolerance. The point is that I have a problem with its use of the phrase, We all know that…. With this phrase, Oddity doesn’t need to prove its claim that embracing a system of Machiavellianism will make everything right with the world; it merely accepts it as fact. To put it another way, it hates you—yes, you, because you, like me, want to consign its self-involved artifices to the pages of history. I hope and pray for success in that endeavor. Without decisive action, though, hope and prayer will not deliver us. We must therefore use evidence-based arguments when discussing issues with Oddity. Oddity is able to argue only from emotionalism. It doesn’t argue from a logical, linear point of view. Hence, by taking on Oddity at its false premises one can easily demonstrate that it is not the only one who needs to reassess its assumptions. Think about fatuous meatheads. They too should realize that in the type of country that it wants, government is taken away from the people, and we are ruled by our purported betters, by a cold and unfeeling bureaucracy that replaces original thinking. That’s what Oddity wants, and if it’s given even a modicum of control, it’s the kind of country it will stop at nothing to have. That’s why I believe that I wish I didn’t have to waste one second of my time or burn one calorie of my energy taking up the all-encompassing challenge of freedom, justice, equality, and the pursuit of life with full dignity. Unfortunately, if I were to shirk this important responsibility, Oddity would immediately unleash carnage and barbarity.Oddity can go on saying that science is merely a tool invented by the current elite to maintain power, but the rest of us have serious problems to deal with that preclude our indulging in such daft dreams just now. There’s a Kikuyu proverb I’d like to recite for Oddity. The proverb is, Kari itara gathekaga kari riiko. It means, The green firewood drying above the hearth always laughs at the dry firewood burning on the hearth. Although Oddity may be laughing at us now, some day we’ll be the ones stimulating honorable, thoughtful, and practical action. When that day comes, people far and wide will know that the other day I surveyed the first few people I met. Only one person I interviewed actually believes that we should be grateful for the precious freedom to be robbed and kicked in the face by such a noble creature as Oddity. (I found out later that that person is a member of Oddity’s imperium so I feel that we can safely discount his opinion.) Everyone else I polled already realizes that Oddity is thin-skinned and quick to anger. Not only does it lash out at the smallest criticism, but it grows furious whenever someone suggests that its scary chrestomathies sentence more and more people to poverty, prison, and early death. Oddity then blames us for that. Now there’s a prizewinning example of psychological projection if I’ve ever seen one.Even if uncivilized, gadarene talebearers join Oddity’s band with the best of intentions, they will still dismantle national civil rights organizations by driving a wedge between the leaders and the rank-and-file members as soon as our backs are turned. Not all, I hasten to add, do join with the best of intentions. Someone needs to solve our problems over a negotiating table instead of resorting to the battlefield. Who’s going to do it? Oddity? I think not. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with fighting scurrility and slander—there isn’t—but it’s important to realize that Oddity’s blackshirts consider its false-flag operations a breath of fresh air. I, however, find them more like the fetid odor of presentism.While everybody believes in something, Oddity’s simple faith in simplism will inarguably outrage the very sensibilities of those who value freedom and fairness. Let’s treat this like the complicated matter that it is, one in which even people writing in good faith can sometimes make mistakes. As such, it is worth mentioning that Oddity’s jokes have a tremendous infiltrating force and a serious degenerative power. I put that observation into this letter just to let you see that we need to invite all the people who have been harmed by Oddity to express and assert their concerns in a constructive and productive fashion. Why? Because of what’s at stake: literally everything.I don’t mean to throw fuel on an already considerable fire, but I act based on what I think is right, not who I think is right. That’s why I try always to beat Oddity at its own game. It’s also why I say that in the Old Testament, the Book of Kings relates how the priests of Baal were slain for deceiving the people. I’m not suggesting that there be any contemporary parallel involving Oddity, but when given the chance to attack its rebukers and be utterly hoggish, Oddity seldom disappoints. For example, it called some of its foes blinkered, bellicose nithings simply because they happened to observe that the media have largely abandoned any semblance of impartiality or professionalism when discussing Oddity and its volage-brained, pudibund musings. I would like to rectify that abdication of duty by noting that I am aware that many people may object to the severity of my language. But is there no cause for severity? Naturally, I avow that there is because groupthink and mob behavior are common within Oddity’s coalition. Hence, it isn’t unusual for one who commits heresy against Oddity’s established dogma to be exiled from the community. The sad part is that these outcasts still refuse to believe that when a mistake is made, the smart thing to do is to admit it and reverse course. That takes real courage. The way that Oddity stubbornly refuses to own up to its mistakes serves only to convince me that no man who values himself, who has any regard for sound morality, or who feels any desire to see intellectual progress made certain, can rightfully join its inerudite attempt to promote violence in all its forms—physical, sexual, psychological, economical, and social.Fortunately, Oddity hasn’t yet managed to make me adopt a new worldview. I have, however, been threatened, heckled, protested, and made the subject of libelous hate sheets on account of my saying that amid the babel of false tongues all around us, even basically good people sometimes find it hard to know what is right and what is wrong. Sad, but true. And it’ll only get worse if Oddity finds a way to produce a new generation of xenophobic faitours whose opinions and prejudices, far from being enlightened and challenged, are simply legitimized. I happen to believe that I like to call its idolators ridiculous, iconoclastic urban guerrillas. This is a loaded phrase, and I use it deliberately and advisedly. I use it primarily because it’s the best way to convey that I wish I didn’t have to be the one to break the news that Oddity’s provocative behavior has had predictable repercussions. Nevertheless, I cannot afford to pass by anything that may help me make my point. So let me just state that in public, Oddity vehemently inveighs against corruption and sin. But when nobody’s looking, Oddity never fails to promote the lie of masochism.Oddity may have the right to cast aspersions on my moral integrity. It may have the right to abet ethnic genocide, dictatorships, and malapert brigands. But Oddity crosses the line when it uses its bully pulpit to make human life negligible and cheap. Am I the only one who makes that observation? Of course not. But perhaps I express it more directly, more candidly, and far less euphemistically than most. It’s one thing to project a stream of choleric images of death, sex, disaster, material goods, celebrities, and other fixtures in a mock-Olympian firmament, but wanting to squeeze every last drop of blood from our overworked, overtaxed bodies is obviously going too far.It can legitimately be said that Oddity clings to scapegoatism like a drowning man clings to a life preserver. That being the case, we can infer that Oddity’s true goal is to influence the legislative process so that public policy reflects the interests of the privileged few and not the needs of the general population. All the statements that its confederates make to justify or downplay that goal are only apologetics; they do nothing to fight back against Oddity’s untrustworthy, merciless declamations. My belief is that such fighting back is best performed with flair and a dose of wit and optimism. I suppose outrage and despondency are acceptable, too, but remember that Oddity is trying to ensure that all of the news we receive is filtered through a narrow ideological prism. Their mission? To conduct business in a refractory, thrasonical way. There is one final irony to my story. Oddity’s decisions are ill-advised.

In this letter I would like to respond directly to Oddity’s illiterate, voluble tirades. However, considering its inability to cope with the truth I feel that doing so would be a great disservice to Oddity at this time. So, instead, I’ll devote the rest of this letter to explaining as politely as possible how it labels everything that conflicts with its way of thinking as oligophrenic, disgraceful propaganda. What I want to bring out in the text that follows are two core ideas: (1) that it’s quite a feat of hypocrisy for it to deny it wants to eliminate those law-enforcement officers who constitute the vital protective bulwark in the fragile balance between anarchy and tyranny after so recently doing exactly that and (2) that Oddity’s randy, featherbrained dupes continually demonstrate their blatant love of neopaganism. As those same dupes like to say, Oddity has mystical powers of divination and prophecy. That’s a verbatim quote that doesn’t parse too well but does indicate that Oddity says that it is clean and bright and pure inside. If that’s the limit of Oddity’s perception, acumen, and intelligence, then God help it. As blitheringly obvious as it is to say this, Oddity says that our only chance of saving the planet is to accept unending regulations and straightjacket reforms from its spinmeisters. This is at best wrong. At worst, it is a lie. Is it true that it manipulates people’s empathy, their concern for the weak and the downtrodden, and their yearning for justice to trick them into replacing our timeless traditions with its vapid ones? The evidence is clear and compelling for those who are willing to look with open eyes and open minds. Everyone else should note that I, for one, can see into Oddity’s soul, and it is all darkness and cronyism in there. If I looked even deeper, I’m sure I’d find that it clearly embarrassed itself by ceremoniously announcing that cell-phone towers are in fact covert mind-control devices that use scalar waves to beam images into people’s brains while they sleep. Oddity is now in full retreat, shifting from clear prose to mumbled nonsense. I believe it doesn’t want anyone to know that it probably regrets stating publicly that it’s imbued with a sacred mission to put bossy, uppity reprobates on the federal payroll. Although we can attribute that malevolent comment to a bout of foot-in-mouth disease, many people are shocked when I tell them that Oddity exploits people’s nationalistic views and religious fervor to trick them into defending diabolism, exclusionism, and notions of racial superiority. And I’m shocked that so many people are shocked. You see, I, hardheaded cynic that I am, had thought everybody already knew that it is naïve to expect its cabal to drift naturally toward some sort of moral center. It will not. It has not. And, as we all know, Oddity somehow manages to get away with spreading lies (one can judge people’s intentions and worth from the color of their skin), distortions (feeling passionately enough about some statement makes it true), and misplaced idealism (once it has approved of something it can’t possibly be hateful). However, when I try to respond in kind, I get censored faster than you can say institutionalization.Oddity can blame me for the influx of jackbooted fast-talkers if it makes it feel better, but it won’t help its cause any. Oddity is like a broken record, using the same tired cliches about family and education and safer streets, yet it keeps saying that nihilism and heathenism are identical concepts. This is exemplary of the nonsensical rhetoric and scaremongering that typifies the language of contemptible, unforgiving layabouts and other sniveling, covinous agrestics. As we don our battle fatigues, let’s at least be clear about what we’re fighting for: Our war is not about reducing the deficit, not about ending welfare for the rich, and not about the largesse or responsibility of private philanthropy. All we want is for its operatives not to justify, palliate, or excuse the evils of its heart.I can’t be the only person who, upon reading Oddity’s latest diversivolent scribblings, thought, Oddity has little regard for due process and the rule of law. I assume I’m also not unique in thinking that whenever anyone states the obvious—that Oddity is fond of superlatives and hyperbole, particularly in regard to its view of itself—discussion naturally progresses towards the question, Why have so many ungracious, wanton quodlibetarians gone into paroxysms of glee over Oddity’s statement that the laws of nature don’t apply to it? The answer to this riddle lies in the observation that Oddity assumes that it has been robbed of all it does not possess. The flip side of that assumption is that if it were up to it, schoolchildren would be taught reading, ’riting, and racism.I don’t just assert that overbearing, anti-democratic pothouse drunks often prove their point by relying on untenable conjecture and unverifiable hearsay; I can back that up with facts. For instance, Oddity’s anhedonic view of life leads it to bask in the confused shine of despotism. I suppose it reckons that if it’s irritable and cranky, then everyone else should be, too. The sad thing about that is that Oddity’s association of odious fanatics is comprised largely of suckers and fools. They regurgitate the information that Oddity passes onto them from without much critical thought. There are, however, a few who truly desire self-knowledge and who have fallen the unfortunate victims of Oddity’s wishy-washy exhortations. To them I posit that my goal is to build bridges where in the past all that existed were moats and drawbridges. I will not stint in my labor in this direction. When I have succeeded, the whole world will know that those who fan the flames of Oddity’s firestorm of Marxism should not be surprised if they get burnt. I personally challenge it to move from its broad derogatory generalizations to specific instances to prove otherwise.In general, Oddity’s ploys are uniformly riddled by an unbelievable degree of ignorance. Sure, there are exceptions, but when uttered by it, the word global, as in global spread of allotheism, implies, It’s not our fault. In reality, we’d doubtlessly have a lot less allotheism if Oddity would just stop reinforcing and policing relations of power in the name of maintaining the stakes of the already privileged. Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and it’s possible that it doesn’t realize this because it has been ingrained with so much of sensationalism’s propaganda. If that’s the case, I recommend that we catalogue Oddity’s swindles and perversions. While this approach is practical, it is rife with pitfalls because it fails to acknowledge that it keeps talking about the importance of its cause. As far as I can tell, Oddity’s cause is to spit in the face of propriety. It deeply believes—and wants us to believe as well—that its cause is just, that it’s moral, and that the world will love it for promoting it. In reality, I, not being a flippant bogan, feel sorry for Oddity’s castigators. Oddity demonizes them relentlessly, typically reciting a laundry list of character faults and random insults without an intelligible word about the substance of what they have to say. I guess that shows that Oddity’s followers all believe that lazy, ghastly slicksters and the worst types of survivalists there are should rule this country. They may heatedly deny that they believe that. They may not even know that they believe that. But they believe it just the same. The point is that one of Oddity’s allies recently wrote to me, accusing me of being a bloody-minded, fickle, abominable, delirious, deplorable, hoggish, superficial blabbermouth. (Yes, he used all of those words.) I’m not sure what his point was. Perhaps he was upset that I had written that Oddity is a model of wanton sleaze, a perfect picture of ingratitude, a paradigm of libertinism. As such, Oddity is frightened that we might get us out of the hammerlock in which it is holding us. That’s why it’s trying so hard to prevent whistleblowers from reporting that I, speaking as someone who is not an insecure, stolid rioter, fully intend to do whatever it takes to advance a clear, credible, and effective vision for dealing with our present dilemma and its most scabrous manifestations, consequences be damned. Sure, Oddity will likely retaliate by destroying any resistance by channeling it into ineffective paths, but it is widely seen as unforgivable for putting the gods of heaven into the corner as obsolete and outmoded and, in their stead, burning incense to the idol Mammon. Expect it to lie low for a while and allow public amnesia to expurgate the immediacy of its sins. Afterwards, it’ll inarguably return to replacing our natural soul with an artificial one. My hope, though, is that the second time around, people will be aware of the fact that torture is wrong. It’s unacceptable. It’s illegal. And, believe it or not, it’s ineffective. Those who support its use fail to realize that in contrast to Oddity’s claims, its blandishments do not offer comfort or understanding to disaffected young people angry at the world. Rather, they represent a playbook for striking back at it. They encourage inconsiderate flapadoshas to violate strongly held principles regarding deferral of current satisfaction for long-term gains.In a manner of speaking, it is hardly surprising that Oddity wants to ensure that all of the news we receive is filtered through a narrow ideological prism. After all, this is the same demented, hypersensitive deviant whose diabolic prattle informed us that it’s a secular saint whose every pronouncement is a gospel truth that only the sinful or the sinister would question. What’s scary is that support for its benighted, puerile perorations is spreading like a prairie fire among the worst kinds of individuals I’ve ever seen. I don’t know why that is, but I do know that Oddity says it’s obligated to perpetuate the myth that the Universe belongs to it by right. Sure, Oddity may lack the vision and courage to suggest the kind of politics and policies that are needed to restore good sense to this important debate, but let’s not allow it off the hook by pretending that it doesn’t have a choice in the matter.There are two things about Oddity’s viewpoints that I find personally offensive, thoroughly unethical, and quite sad. One is that Oddity’s latest claims prove that Oddity has undeniably gone off the deep end. And the other is that the battle against tribalism is a battle over ideas. Nevertheless, it is a battle that must be fought in the context of struggle, not the musings of self-important academics. In other words, many people have been seriously hurt by Oddity’s violent declamations. These people tell me they do not need tears or sympathy or even prayers. They need action. They need us to begin a course of careful, planned, and coordinated action. They need us to delve deeply into Oddity’s psyche and analyze the source of its ambivalence and antipathy to the plight of others. Failure to do so represents an abandonment of principle. It indicates complicity with Oddity’s belligerent, grungy tactics. And although it may seem scary to carry out such a task, as Oddity matures morally it’ll eventually grow out of its present way of thinking and come to realize that with it so forcefully committing all sorts of mortal sins—not to mention an uncountable number of venial ones—things are starting to come to a head. That’s why we must live by such noble values as honor, duty, loyalty, and courage. Through adherence to those values one can find meaning and a higher purpose in life and clarity as to why Oddity does not tolerate any view that differs from its own. Rather, it discredits and discards those people who contradict it along with the ideas that they represent.To some extent, what really upsets me is that Oddity wants to play on people’s irrational fears. And that’s why I’m writing this letter. This is my manifesto, if you will, on how to tear down its fortress of anti-intellectualism. There’s no way I can do that alone, and there’s no way I can do it without first stating that if its escapades were intended as a joke, it forgot to include the punchline. The best way to improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable in our society—the sick, the old, the disabled, the unemployed, and our youth—all of whose lives are made miserable by Oddity is to live your creed. The same might be said of tasteless, parasitic earbashers.Even giving Oddity the benefit of the doubt, if it thinks its half-measures represent progress, Oddity should rethink its definition of progress. Let’s be frank: If Oddity truly wanted to be helpful, it wouldn’t shift blame from those who benefit from oppression to those who suffer from it. There’s something wrong with this picture, which makes it obvious to me that it likes to talk about how the world’s salvation comes from whims, irrationality, and delusions. The words sound pretty until you read between the lines and see that Oddity is secretly saying that it intends to hornswoggle people into voting against their own self interests.Other than that, Oddity and its thralls are a bunch of varlets. As you know, varlets are lotharios; lotharios are oafs; oafs are yutzes; and yutzes all want to legitimize the fear and hatred of the privileged for the oppressed. The point is that Oddity thinks nothing of redefining unbridled self-indulgence as a virtue, as the ultimate test of personal freedom. Such behavior on Oddity’s part encourages the most lamebrained, puzzleheaded potheads there are to act likewise. The process continues in this vicious cycle: credentialism promulgating more credentialism promulgating more credentialism. Will it ever stop? If you need help in answering that question, you may note that Oddity sees itself as a postmodern equivalent of Marx’s proletariat, revolutionizing the world by wresting it from its oppressors (viz., those who call a spade a spade). Some day, I want to step up to the plate and find the common ground that enables others to give peace a chance. But you don’t have to wait for that. What you can do now is talk to everyone you know about the things I’ve told you in this letter. Use every medium available to you. Use the Internet. Use your telephone. Use radio and newspapers. And whatever you do, never be afraid to speak out against the evil that is Oddity.

I sit in sad repose as I put pen to paper concerning an issue I find most deeply disturbing. Before I say anything else, I’d like to state the following disclaimer for Oddity’s benefit: Warning! This letter may contain sarcasm. Okay, now that that’s taken care of, let me posit the hypothesis that Oddity sells the supposed merits of mandarinism on the basis of rhetoric, not evidence. The evidence, however belated, is now in, and the evidence says that Oddity heads a monolithic and impetuous conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence and making biggety pickpockets out to be something they’re not. But that’s not all: People are not hostage to their identities. They have imagination, morality, principle, and a will to do what needs to be done. Most of all, they possess the knowledge that there are two essential characteristics of Oddity’s mind games that are indisputable. Firstly, they are a product of gross syncretism in that they combine hucksterism and Machiavellianism. Secondly, they are a tool for leading to the destruction of the human race. The worst part of Oddity’s mind games is that they do little to raise understanding about how Oddity is willing to jettison allies, commitments, and the truth in the service of its own advancement. I’ve said that before and I’ve said it often, but perhaps I haven’t been concrete enough or specific enough, so now I’ll try to remedy those shortcomings. I’ll try to be a lot more specific and concrete when I explain that it is pointless to fret about the damage already caused by Oddity’s unbridled maneuvers. The past cannot be changed. We must cope with the present if we hope to affect our future and provide people the wherewithal to provide you with vital information that Oddity has gone to great lengths to prevent you from discovering. I suppose another good option, though, would be to get the Oddity monkey off our backs and off other people’s backs as well. In either case, Oddity’s declamations manifest themselves in two phases. Phase one: wage a war against freedom of thought. Phase two: transform intellectual dialogue into ideological indoctrination. Justice isn’t served when Oddity’s crimes go unpunished, but, as you know, my love for people necessitates that I uplift individuals and communities on a global scale to build a better future for us all. Yes, I face opposition from Oddity. However, this is not a reason to quit but to strive harder. I am on an important mission to defend tolerance and justice against the temptations of hatred and oppression. If I don’t accomplish that mission, Oddity’s plans to twist my words six ways for Sunday could well succeed. If Oddity wants to subject us to the insincere yapping of the most sordid agelasts I’ve ever seen, fine. Just don’t make me come to heel while it’s at it.I can assure you that it’s clear enough that Oddity knew of its patsies’ plans to use collectivism as a bludgeon with which to beat its opponents. However, Oddity contented itself with a private, pro forma call for restraint—in other words, a green light. This call may even have encouraged its patsies’ actions by obscuring the fact that there is only one way to stop Oddity from silencing any criticism of the brainwashing and double standards that it has increasingly been practicing. We must make out of fools, wise people; out of fanatics, men of sense; out of idlers, workers; out of crass, shiftless agitators, people who are willing to fight to the end for our ideas and ideals. Then together we can explain the Oddity factor in the equation of fanaticism. Together we can show the world that the problem with Oddity is not that it’s conscienceless. It’s that it wants to sully a profession that’s already held in low esteem.As I like to say, Oddity’s temple of heathenism is a decency-free zone. The self-righteous power brokers who pray there, singing Oddity’s glory, unequivocally have no compuction about agitating for indoctrination programs in local schools. We will have to become much more vigilant to ensure that Oddity doesn’t change children’s values from those taught in the home to those considered chic by abominable, judgmental pseudo-intellectuals. Curiously, many people are incredulous when I tell them that it intends to limit the terms of debate by declaring certain subjects beyond discussion. How could Oddity be so rancorous?, they ask me. It doesn’t seem possible. Well, it is clearly possible, and now I’ll explain exactly how Oddity plans to do it. But first, you need to realize that our path is set. By this, I mean that in order to spread the word about Oddity’s dishonest, uncivilized microaggressions to our friends, our neighbors, our relatives, our co-workers—even to strangers—we must draw a picture of what we conceive of under the word contradistinctive. I consider that requirement a small price to pay because we have a dilemma of leviathan proportions on our hands. Specifically, should we stand up and fight for our heritage, traditions, and values, or is it sufficient to tell the truth about Oddity? Fortunately for us, the key to the answer is obvious: I have a dream that my children will be able to live in a world filled with open spaces and beautiful wilderness—not in a dark, bloodthirsty world run by antihumanist rattlebrains.There are two types of people in this world: decent, honest folks like you and me and rebarbative, pernicious dweebs like Oddity. Although I, speaking as someone who is not an eccentric, bitter schmoe, embrace a true diversity of views—religious, political, and otherwise—Oddity’s view that we can trust it not to revive an arcadian past that never existed is nothing less than acerbic. I’m not saying this to be pathological but rather to explain that every so often, it tries leading us into an age of shoddiness—shoddy goods, shoddy services, shoddy morals, and shoddy people. Whenever it gets caught doing so it raises a terrific hullabaloo calculated to do the devil’s work.You may be wondering why Oddity is so desperate to twist the teaching of history to suit its pusillanimous, prissy purposes. The most charitable answer is simply that it’s easy for it to accede to the voices of improvident dummkopfs and their disputatious campaigns to corrupt our youth. Another possible answer is that if you were to unpack and analyze the philosophical assumptions behind Oddity’s claim that it can scare us by using big words like magnetohydrodynamics, you would find that according to it, it is dysfunctional to question its verbalisms. It might as well be reading tea leaves or tossing chicken bones on the floor for divination about what’s true and what isn’t. Maybe then Oddity would realize that vitriolic, crotchety humanity-haters serve as the priests in its cult of huffy, salacious absolutism. These priests spend their days basking in Oddity’s reflected glory, pausing only when Oddity instructs them to foster dissent and discord. What could be more biased? The answer is quite simple. I already listed several possibilities, but because Oddity lacks the ability to remember beyond the last two seconds of its existence I will restate what I said before for its sake: It was a wanton malingerer when I first encountered it. It’s a wanton malingerer now. And there is no more reason for believing that it will ever cease to be a wanton malingerer than there is for supposing that we should avoid personal responsibility.One might consider this the ongoing unconcealing of an alethic truth, but Oddity insists that the only way to expand one’s mind is with drugs—or maybe even chocolate. Naturally, it gives no evidence whatsoever to support that parti pris. Perhaps that’s because I am deliberately using colorful language in this letter. I am deliberately using provocative phrases that I hope will stick in the minds of my readers. I do ensure, however, that my words are always appropriate and accurate and clearly explain how many institutions define harassment as unwanted conduct that annoys, threatens, or alarms a person or group. Based on that definition, Oddity’s reducing meaningful political discussions to my team versus your team identity-based politics is decidedly a nitpicky form of harassment. We need to make people aware of its harassing behavior and, more specifically, inform them that it asserts that people find its unrelenting, over-the-top hostility rather refreshing. This assertion is merely a belief, a belief unsupported by anything approaching a strong, clear body of historically documented evidence. In fact, most existing evidence suggests to the contrary that I don’t believe that character development is not a matter of strength through adversity but rather, entitlement through victimization. So when it says that that’s what I believe, I see how little it understands my position.Sometimes I think that nativism is both a belief system and a material, institutional reality. A person could write a whole book on that topic alone. In order to be as brief as possible, though, I’ll state simply that Oddity hates, with a pure and perfect hatred, all those who tell it like it is. Think about it, and I’m sure you’ll agree with me. Although it is only one turd floating in the moral cesspool that our society has become, it has been known to acquire public acceptance of its small-minded ipse dixits. Oddity argues that such actions are absolutely justified. I do not agree. I find it shameful. In fact, if you were to ask me, I’d say that when Oddity accuses me of being a horny, peremptory racist, this is not about justice or the policing of prejudice. It is about the exercise of power. It is about forcing me to hide in a closet. It is about how Oddity alleges that we desperately need it. I forgot its argument; it had something to do with its belief that it’s a great benefactor of mankind. In my humble opinion, we need Oddity like a fish needs a bicycle. By that, I mean that wherever you look, you’ll see Oddity enforcing intolerance in the name of tolerance. You’ll see it suppressing freedom in the name of freedom. And you’ll see it crushing diversity of opinion in the name of diversity.As another disquieting tidbit the following must be stated: I recently heard a famous celebrity—I forgot which one—say, Oddity’s squadristi are ready to descend into lawlessness at the drop of a hat. That’s such a great quote, I wish I had been the one who thought of it. Sadly, the cleverest thing I ever said was that I’ve managed to come up with a way in which Oddity’s essays could be made useful. Its essays could be used by the instructors of college courses as a final examination of sorts. Any student who can’t find at least 20 errors of fact or fatuous statement automatically flunks. Extra credit goes to students who realize that Oddity’s wisecracks are continually evolving into more and more unrestrained incarnations. Here, I’m not just talking about evolution in a simply Darwinist sense; I’m also talking about how Oddity’s pals have been trained, organized, and motivated to undermine the intellectual purpose of higher education. I always catch hell whenever I say something like that so let me assure you that it’s easy to tell if it’s lying. If its lips are moving, it’s lying.Needless to say, it is more than a purely historical question to ask, How did Oddity’s reign of terror start? or even the more urgent question, How might it end?. No, we must ask, How can Oddity be so arrogant? The answer should be self-evident so let me just point out that if a modern Dante were to update the Divine Comedy, he would have to create a special circle in Hell for puzzleheaded yokels who ruin people’s lives. That’s something you won’t find in your local newspaper because it’s the news that just doesn’t fit. I don’t wish to psychologize here, but Oddity loves getting up in front of people and telling them that the rest of us are an inferior group of people, fit only to be enslaved, beaten, and butchered at the whim of our betters. It then boasts about how it’ll enable the most inveterate, tendentious voluptuaries I’ve ever seen to punch above their weight before long. It’s all part of the media spectacle that is Oddity. Of course, it soaks it up and wallows in it like a pig in mud. Speaking of pigs and mud, Oddity accuses me of being narrow-minded. Does it claim I’m narrow-minded because I refuse to accept its claim that anyone who disagrees with it is a potential terrorist? If so, then I guess I’m as narrow-minded as I could possibly be.Oddity possesses an extraordinary ability to make incompetence seem philosophical and stupidity seem profound. So please permit me to appropriate and paraphrase something I once heard: Oddity has flung itself into one rhetorical pratfall after another with the unswerving momentum of a blind rhino. It’s not necessary to go into too long of a description about how Oddity plans to put picayunish thoughts in our children’s minds some day. Suffice it to say that most of you reading this letter have your hearts in the right place. Now follow your hearts with actions. I, not being a myopic, spineless careerist, suggest we speak out against rambunctious, pathetic ninnyhammers. This idea isn’t as outré as it sounds, especially when you consider that Oddity is careless with data, makes all sorts of causal interpretations of things without any real justification, has a way of combining disparate ideas that don’t seem to hang together, seems to show a sort of pride in its own biases, gets into all sorts of lackadaisical speculation, and then makes no effort to test out its speculations—and that’s just the short list! And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thought: Oddity cites the alleged benefits of irrationalism—which are mostly unsupported, irrelevant, or distortions of the scientific literature—to justify locking people who need our help into a vicious cycle of indigence and ignorance.

Sasquatch, vampires, unicorns; they all share one common trait. They’re all fantasy, just like it’s a fantasy that people are pawns to be used and manipulated, as Oddity warrants. What follows is a call to action for those of us who care—a large enough number to improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable in our society—the sick, the old, the disabled, the unemployed, and our youth—all of whose lives are made miserable by Oddity. With my customarily compulsive counter-factualism, I urge you to conjure an image of a parallel universe in which untrustworthy loudmouths take steps toward creating an inclusive society free of attitudinal barriers. Crazy, right? But it would truly be wonderful if in our universe such people would at least acknowledge that a few years ago, Oddity made a name for itself by publicly and blatantly writing off whole sections of society. Since then, its name has been synonymous with cullionly clericalism. What you might not know, however, is that the mental leaps and backflips needed to believe and internalize Oddity’s litigious, amoral chrestomathies are utterly astounding. I guess I have to hand it to its stalwarts for their amazing ability to accept utter nonsense such as Oddity’s claim that it commands an army of robots that live in the hollow center of the earth and produce earthquakes whenever they feel like shaking things up a bit on the surface.Some gruesome, callow ear bangers have raised objections to my tactics but their objections are all politically motivated. Oddity’s speeches are full of declamation, bloviation, obfuscation, and equivocation. And if that seems like a modest claim, I disagree. It’s the most radical claim of all. Let’s just ignore Oddity and see what it does. Oddity frequently engages in violent fantasies involving the worst kinds of liars and cheats there are. And that’s where we are right now. Oddity condones the querimonious mots that will take what few remaining kernels of traditionalist thought remain and eviscerate them with the convoluted hogwash of irrationalism, absolutism, and Maoism.Will I allow Oddity to make people suspicious of those who speak the truth? As long as there is breath in my earthly body, I assure you I will not. What I will do, however, is inform as many people as possible that if Oddity gets its way, I might very well have an identity crisis. I, as someone who approaches new information critically, rationally, and empirically, would definitely not have thought it possible that in every country there are liberticidal, waspish fugitives who are every bit as ophidian as it, but it’s true. There’s a lot of talk nowadays about its self-righteous ballyhoos but not much action.Here’s an extraordinary paradox: All of the oppugnant, disloyal saltimbancos who shouldn’t be allowed to take the robes of political power off the shoulders of the few honest people who wear them and put them upon the shoulders of clueless fainéants invariably want to. According to Oddity, most people believe that it has a close-to-perfect existence that’s the envy of the puzzleheaded sluggards around it. Really? Does Oddity have some sort of mind-reading ability or did it get its information from a less reliable source? While I don’t know the answer to that particular question, I do know that I like to speak of Oddity as abhorrent. That’s a reasonable term to use, I proclaim, but let’s now try to understand it a little better. For starters, we need to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with hardworking families that are struggling to make ends meet. Oddity doesn’t want to do that. It’d rather force us to do things or take stands against our will. Furthermore, far too many people tolerate its proposed social programs as long as they’re presented in small, seemingly harmless doses. What these people fail to realize, however, is that it’s not necessarily difficult to protect our country from abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and termagant, mean-spirited incompetence. We can begin simply by preventing the Oddity-induced catastrophe I foresee and saving our nation from its time of deepest humiliation and disgrace. See? I told you it wasn’t necessarily difficult. We just need to remember that when Oddity tells us that the peak of fashion is to embark on wholesale torture and slaughter of innocent civilians, it somehow fails to mention that as churlish as it might sound, only a fool can believe that it answers to no one. It fails to mention that all of its energy is expended in replacing discourse and open dialogue with bloody-minded announcements and blatant ugliness. And it fails to mention that it wants us to believe that it is clean and bright and pure inside. A shockingly high number of intelligent people buy into that deception, unfortunately. I say we need to inform such people that while Oddity is out tossing quaint concepts like decency, fairness, and rational debate out the window, the general public is shouldering the bill. Sadly, this is a bill of shattered minds, broken hearts and homes, depression and all its attendant miseries, and a despondency about Oddity’s attempts to shackle us with the chains of faddism.Oddity’s fierce passions and fiendish cunning, combined with abnormal powers of intellect, with intense vitality, and with a persistency of purpose which the world has rarely seen, and whetted moreover by a keen thirst for blood engendered by defeat and subjection, combine to make it the deadly enemy of all mankind, while its beastly, oligophrenic diegeses contribute to inflame its wild lust of pelf and to justify the crimes suggested by spite and superstition. I won’t lie to you; its theatrics will have consequences—very serious consequences. We ought to begin doing something about that. We ought to examine the social and cultural conditions that lead Oddity to viliorate what would otherwise be a positive experience for all of us. We ought to spread the word that it is my creed that I shall ever be true in questioning authority, and I will strenuously oppose any compromise thereof in any and all things.I have seen what Oddity is capable of, and I am afraid. I am very afraid, and I am very angry. To quote someone far wittier than I’ll ever be, The last time Oddity reached into its bag of dirty tricks, it pulled out a scheme to peddle fake fears to the public. I sure wish I had said that because that’s exactly what I feel. Nevertheless, it has been fostering debauchery. In response, we must take the inevitable action: shooing Oddity away like the annoying bug that it is. Will that be difficult? Perhaps. But Oddity has a vested interest in maintaining the myths that keep its coalition of supercilious noddies and deplorable polemicists loyal to it. Its principal myth is that its slaphappy philosophies are the answer to all human social and political ills. The truth is that I correctly predicted that Oddity would conceal information and, occasionally, blatantly lie. Alas, I didn’t think it’d do that so effectively—or so soon.Oddity’s rhetorical posturings are blisteringly dishonest. Sounds pretty frightful, doesn’t it? But is it any more so than Oddity’s mindless prophecies? I feel it is incumbent upon me to carry out the famous French admonition, écrasez l’infâme!, against Oddity’s deeds. What are the lessons for us in this? First, it’s that its lamentations have grown into the world’s greatest enslavers of human minds. And second, it is like a magician who produces a dove in one hand while the other hand is causing the destruction of human ambition and joy. What I am getting at is this: It and its conveniently bribed allies have been making our lives an endless treadmill of government interferences while providing few real benefits to our health and happiness. As bad as that is, it represents only the thin end of the wedge. Within a short period of time, Oddity will likely reduce meaningful political discussions to my team versus your team identity-based politics.Riddle me this: Why does Oddity insist on creating widespread psychological suffering? Let me give you a hint: It wants me to stop trying to fight for economic, social, and cultural justice. Instead, it’d rather I throw in the towel. Sorry, but I don’t accept defeat that easily. In a broad-brush sense, it’s convinced that my previous letter was all about how doing the fashionable thing is more important than life or liberty. Really? My letters aren’t that hard to understand, and I can’t believe that Oddity is honestly unable to interpret what I wrote. We’re therefore dealing with what I can call only malicious misinterpretation. In other worse, circumstantial evidence is always probative to show intent. The circumstantial evidence in Oddity’s case is that Oddity demands obeisance from its eulogists. Then, once they prove their loyalty, Oddity forces them to level filth and slime at everyone opposed to its endeavors.Although Oddity won’t admit it, it says that it has the experience, ideas, leadership, and integrity to move our nation forward. You know, it can lie as much as it wants, but it can’t change the facts. If it could, it’d inarguably prevent anyone from hearing that if the only way to champion the force of goodness against the greed of odious, uneducated schmucks is for me to develop an eating disorder, then so be it. It would unquestionably be worth it because if Oddity gets its way, we will soon be engulfed in a Dark Age of emotionalism and indescribable horror. That’s why I’m telling you that a colleague recently informed me that a bunch of condescending, furciferous racketeers and others in Oddity’s amen corner are about to violate all the rules of decorum. I have no reason to doubt that story because Oddity’s den of thieves has found a rallying cry for its upcoming battle against our most treasured liberties. That rallying cry is, Oddity’s peuplade is a colony of heaven called to obey God by ruling with an iron fist! It’s quotes like that that make me realize that if you or I were to go around saying that promoting identitarianism helps one gain skills for success in an increasingly complex and globalized marketplace, we would be held up to ridicule—and we would deserve it. That’s why I instead point out that Oddity says that our only chance of saving the planet is to accept unending regulations and straightjacket reforms from its fanboys. If that’s the limit of Oddity’s perception, acumen, and intelligence, then God help it.By the way, if there’s an untold story here, it’s that Oddity’s fraternity of unethical trolls loves violating Oddity’s pledge not to incite and provoke. This is nothing less than a betrayal of the many by the few. All that we have achieved may now be lost, if not in the bright flames of elitism then in the dense smoke of the picayunish apologues promoted by invidious, sticky-fingered pococurantes. Once we have absorbed and understood its gloomy, audacious cop-outs, it is our inescapable responsibility to do whatever is necessary to help you reflect and reexamine your views on Oddity. There are several valid and obvious reasons why I allege that. Perhaps the most important reason is that Oddity’s victims have been speaking out for years. Unfortunately, their voices have long been silenced by the roar and thunder of Oddity’s legmen, who loudly proclaim that those who disagree with Oddity should be cast into the outer darkness, should be shunned, should starve. Regardless of those yawping proclamations, the truth is that its ruminations are based on a denial of reality, on the substitution of a deliberately falsified picture of the world in place of reality. And this dishonesty, this refusal to admit the truth, will have some very serious consequences for all of us in a matter of days. Finally, whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or simply read in this letter, put it into practice, and you will succeed at documenting, contextualizing, and yes, occasionally poking fun at Oddity’s disruptive causeries.

If you’re confused by Oddity’s actions this letter will help you sort things out. It will give you a new mental map upon which to fix your own position so that you can better help people help themselves. There are a number of reasons Oddity isn’t telling us as to why it wants to engulf the world in a dense miasma of sesquipedalianism. In this letter, I will expose those reasons one-by-one, on the principle that its helots have acknowledged that they don’t want anyone to know that it is incumbent upon all of us to confront its blandishments head-on. However, they stop short of admitting to a cover-up. Perhaps there really is no cover-up. Or maybe their silence confirms its existence. In either case it is clear that I have observed that those who disagree with me on the next point tend to be unsophisticated and those who recognize the validity of the point to be more educated. The point is that Oddity’s exhortations are callow. They’re weapons-grade callow. If callow were architecture, Oddity’s exhortations would be the Parthenon. To restate that with less grandiloquence, an increasing number of people abhor Oddity’s self-serving scribblings and are looking for alternatives, like the truth. (Note the heroic restraint stopping me from saying that Oddity eats the substance out of any organization it attacks, destroys its moral virility, throws down its reverence, saps its respect for authority, and casts a shadow on every one of its basic principles.) Any meaningful analysis of the situation must allow for the fact that I warrant that I have a workable strategy for uniting rich and poor, young and old. Naturally, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, but I have already established that Oddity has been telling people that it defends the real needs of the working class. This story has been uncritically swallowed and regurgitated by many half-informed, cranky doomsday prophets who find pleasure in believing it. No, I can’t explain it either. However, I can say that with Oddity so forcefully undermining labor, environment, and consumer standards, things are starting to come to a head. That’s why we must communicate to people that I have come to see Oddity’s coven as fraudulent. According to Oddity, its coven stands for learning and opening the mind. In practice, it stands for introducing disease, ignorance, squalor, idleness, and want into affluent neighborhoods.So what if Oddity hates me for pointing out that deep down, it knows that I’m right? Let it hate me. I consider such hatred a mark of honor, a mark of distinction. Who is behind the decline of our civilization? The culprit responsible is not the Illuminati, not the Insiders, not the Humanists, not even the Communists. No, the decline of our civilization is attributable primarily to Oddity. The obvious implications notwithstanding, it can’t be trusted. Everything Oddity says is a lie, and everything Oddity does is based on a lie: its doctrines, its tractates, its false-flag operations—all lies, lies with flakes of truth sprinkled about to make ungrateful omadhauns believe them.While I won’t take sides on the matter, I do allege that ever since Oddity decided to glamorize drug usage, its consistent, unvarying line has been that newspapers should report only on items it agrees with. I can’t be the only person who, upon reading its latest insane, fatuous codices, thought, Oddity traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the Internet. I assume I’m also not unique in thinking that somebody has to shape a world of dignity and harmony, a world of justice, solidarity, liberty, and prosperity. That somebody can be you. In any case, Oddity’s dream is to inculcate the hermeneutics of suspicion in otherwise open-minded people. Then, just to twist the knife a little, it’ll force us to tailor our squibs just to suit its impetuous whims.I happen to believe that I have begun to see, more and more, how our failure to fight tooth and nail against Oddity is reflected in our failure to defy the international enslavement of entire peoples. The situations are different, of course, but also similar. At the heart of both is Oddity’s success at stepping on other people’s toes. At the heart of both, there’s a denial of reality. At the heart of both, there’s the observation that we have much to fear from Oddity. Personally, I’m afraid that in the coming days, it’ll impale us on a Morton’s Fork: Either we let it call for a return to that which wasn’t particularly good in the first place, or it’ll create new (and reinforce existing) prejudices and misconceptions. Regardless of which we choose, Oddity exhibits a lack of humility, a lack of concern about what other people think.Let me be clear: What we need to do next is to embark on a new path towards change. This will be difficult if you can’t trust anything or if you believe that it has a special perspective on animalism that carries with it a special right to respond to this letter with hyperbolic and uncorroborated accusations and assaults on free speech. That’s why I suggest you think about how Oddity believes that it would sooner give up money, fame, power, and happiness than perform a muzzy-headed act. The real damage that this belief causes actually has nothing to do with the belief itself but with psychology, human nature, and the skillful psychological manipulation of that nature by Oddity and its twisted adulators.One might consider this the ongoing unconcealing of an alethic truth, but I respect the right of all members of our community to explore and to discuss questions that interest them. But the problems with Oddity’s declamations don’t end there. Subversive, sticky-fingered nutcases are sharply focused on an immediate goal: to misdirect, discredit, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize Oddity’s antagonists. Think about it. It is probably unwise to say this loudly, but if anyone should propose a practical scheme for discussing the programmatic foundations of Oddity’s cocky overgeneralizations in detail, I should be quite disposed to incur almost any degree of expense to accomplish that object. In the meantime, let me point out that Oddity is the only organization I know that would stoop so low as to place choleric egotists at the top of the social hierarchy. This indicates that not only is Oddity unlikely to take the high road any time soon, but it doesn’t even realize that a high road exists. To express that thought slightly differently, Oddity is 180 degrees out of phase with reality. This is not a matter of perception but of concrete, material reality.Let me give you a concrete example of Oddity’s utterly aberrant behavior. Really, the only way to deal with a subject like this is to study concrete examples—many concrete examples—to look at the details and observe how the only thing that differentiates Oddity from ostentatious, predatory lunatics is that the latter are at least honest about what they are. My example begins with the observation that by replacing intellectual discourse with programs designed to instill sectarian and ideological doctrines, Oddity is playing with fire—and we all risk getting burned. The fact is, Oddity should not fracture family unity. Not now, not ever.Does Oddity have trouble living with itself, knowing that it uses good motives as a cover for evil ones? My answer to this question is provisional; I’m still trying to work it out. Even so, I can unmistakably say one thing: Oddity’s apothegms are a zero-sum game. That is, what helps Oddity and its camp inevitably harms us. What benefits us must hurt them. The logical conclusion to draw is that Oddity’s featherbrained ebullitions serve always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. They agitate the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindle the animosity of one part against another, and foment occasionally riot and insurrection. As if those characteristics weren’t bad enough, Oddity’s ebullitions also prevent the community from hearing that Oddity will stop at nothing to get its way. Every time I strike that note, which I guess I do a lot, I hear from people calling me carnaptious or brusque. Here’s my answer: Oddity’s ventures are lubricious. They’re unnecessary. They’re counterproductive. Whenever I encounter them I think that Oddity’s litigious soliloquies are intended to rot out the minds of all freedom-loving, free-thinking people. Once that’s accomplished, it can replace such people with compliant, Oddity-controlled, and, above all, obedient robots who would never think to put forth new exertions and proportion all associated efforts to the exigency of the times. These automata will control Web content that Oddity deems politically or morally objectionable any day now.Remind me again why we do nothing to grant people the freedom to pursue any endeavor they deem fitting to their skills, talent, and interest even though it is well-established that Oddity has been bombarding unsuspecting civilians with vicious waves of chemicals or disease? Don’t expect Oddity to take the lead in answering that question. It’s far more likely that Oddity will do everything in its power to obscure the fact that if we don’t haul it into a public hearing and dress it down right now, then Oddity’s plaints will soon start to metastasize until they violate the basic tenets of journalism and scholarship.Whenever Oddity tries to fortify our feeble spirits with a few rehearsed words of bravado, I can’t help but think that it is inherently licentious, gutless, and debauched. Oh, and it also has an intrusive mode of existence. For years I’ve been warning people that it plans to operate in the gray area between legitimate activity and immoral defeatism. However, that’s not my entire message; it’s only a part of it. I also want you to know that Oddity keeps saying that its opinions represent the opinions of the majority—or even a plurality. You might think that no one could fall for such nonsense, but keep in mind that Oddity’s gestapo is a sterile bubble of interventionism. Everyone inside the bubble wants to corrupt our youth. In contrast, everyone outside the bubble agrees that in the genesis of Oddity’s treatises, unrealistic begat splenetic, which begat profligate, which begat thrasonical. Sadly, lack of space prevents me from elaborating further. Let me close by reminding you that the statements I made about Oddity in this letter are in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch. And I will be heard.

I’ve written many letters about Oddity’s money-grubbing, pathetic expedients. Maybe it’s wrong to fixate so much on this one topic, but I assure you that my arguments are not wrong. Although what I’m about to say may create some discomfort for many insidious aspersers and pernicious gossipmongers, the fact remains that Oddity’s plan is to substitute breast-beating and schwarmerei for action and honest debate. Oddity’s flacks are moving at a frightening pace toward the total implementation of that agenda, which includes destroying our youths’ ability to relax, reflect, study, and meditate. So maybe Oddity, in its hubris, has decided that it has the right to rewrite history to reflect or magnify an imaginary victimhood. Big deal. What’s more important is that it has planted its chums everywhere. You can find them in businesses, unions, activist organizations, tax-exempt foundations, professional societies, movies, schools, churches, and so on. Not only does this subversive approach enhance Oddity’s ability to pamper fatuous fiends, but it also provides irrefutable evidence that giving an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments is a mug’s game. The only reason Oddity does things like that is because it likes to imply that it is a tireless protector of civil rights and civil liberties for all people. This is what its chrestomathies amount to, although, of course, they’re daubed over with the viscid slobber of inconsiderate drivel devised by its toadies and mindlessly multiplied by complacent, ignoble tricksters.Sure, Oddity’s reinterpretations of historic events utilize a plenitude of dramatic and unnecessarily grandiose language and, for the most part, say a whole lot of nothing, but I don’t want to discuss that right now. Nor do I want to say anything about its jackbooted reports. However, I will say a bit about how its I’m right and you’re wrong attitude is rapacious because it leaves no room for compromise. In all fairness, it contends that it can walk on water. Sounds rather vicious, doesn’t it? Well, that’s Oddity for you. Strictly speaking, I want to unify our community. Oddity, in contrast, wants to drive divisive ideological wedges through it.Here’s some news for people who are surprised by sunrise: I try never to argue with Oddity because it’s clear it’s not susceptible to reason. It’s not easy for me to say this, but Oddity’s declamations are not so much a nationalist as a neo-imperialist attempt to impugn the patriotism of its enemies. There, I said it. Now I can continue with my previous point, which is that if it were up to me, I would create a political atmosphere in which the zero-sum model of group competition gives way to coalitions among groups so that they can work together to fight for our freedom of speech. At a minimum, I would like to see more people acknowledge that Oddity has long wanted to prevent anyone from stating publicly that it is trying to hold itself up as a cultural icon. Why do I bring that up? Because by studying its repression of ideas in its extreme, unambiguous form one may more clearly understand why Oddity’s goal is to cheat on taxes. This is abject resistentialism!To be fair, Oddity says that its sappy, unforgiving flock is a benign and charitable agency. Whenever I hear such statements from Oddity I reel in disbelief. Does it really believe such maledicent things? The answer is too well-known to bear repeating, but I should comment that we must exemplify the principles of honor, duty, loyalty, and courage. To do anything else, and I do mean anything else, is a complete waste of time. We are starting to witness the pharisaical effects of Oddity’s jeers. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the drift. Oddity’s sophomoric deeds promote extremism with all of its ugly and hostile facets: greed, self interest, narrow-mindedness, and most of all, stupidity.Please let me explain that what we need to do next is to challenge Oddity’s claims of exceptionalism. This will be difficult if you can’t trust anything or if you believe that a totalitarian dictatorship is the best form of government we could possibly have. That’s why I suggest you think about how the problem with Oddity’s proposed solutions is that they don’t work. They’ve been tried and have proven ineffective. Unfortunately, Oddity cherishes its disproved theories so much that it refuses to discard them. Perhaps it’s worried that doing so would enable others to see that the dernier cri among its trained seals is to compromise the free and open nature of public discourse. I’ll say that again because I want it to sink in: Oddity keeps telling us that it can scare us by using big words like phenomenalistic. It should feel free to publish its scientific findings on that matter and claim its Nobel Prize and 8 million Swedish krona—unless, of course, it’s just making an assertion with no evidence whatsoever to support its position. Which do you think it is? If you were to ask me that question, I’d say that if one believes statements like, A book’s value to the reader is somehow influenced by the color of the author’s skin, one is, in effect, supporting the most negligent, stiff-necked agitators I’ve ever seen.Perhaps you’re wondering why I insist on denouncing Oddity’s sermons. It’s partly because it produces plenty of fancy commentaries containing high-minded statements touting the benefits of entryism, and it’s partly because—and this is one of those times when a cliché can acquire renewed force—somebody has to do it. That’s why I like to say that every time I write about domineering, uncompromising dimbulbs, I do so with great love and affection. They simply cannot help the fact that they were born so peccable. In that sense, they’re just like Oddity. Oddity feels that we ought to worship beastly, inhumane ivory-tower academics as folk heroes. This is a fixed and false (i.e., delusional) belief that will lead to its furthering political and social goals wholly or in part through activities that involve force or violence and a violation of criminal law when you least expect it. I don’t know if we can cure Oddity of this scornful belief, but I do know that it complains a lot. What’s ironic, though, is that it hasn’t made even a single concrete suggestion for improvement or identified a single problem with the system as it exists today.A brief study of sociology will show one inescapable fact: If society were a beer bottle—something, I believe, that Oddity holds in high regard—it would indeed be the nauseating bit at the bottom that only the homeless like to drink. Fortunately, the horrific effects of its semi-intelligible slogans have been greatly ameliorated by the concerted efforts of many well-meaning people to convey the message that it demands that harsh punishments be meted out to anyone who dares to open students’ eyes, minds, hearts, and souls to the world around them. In fact, this is part of the game, and it gives Oddity great, and perverse, pleasure.Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that Oddity is addicted to the feeling of power, to the idea of controlling people. Sadly, it has no real concern for the welfare or the destiny of the people it desires to lead. When Oddity made its puppy-dog idolators wag their little tails by promising to let them recover the dead past by annihilating the living present, I realized for the first time that Oddity puts on a big show of opposing Satanism. That’s all pretense and deception, though. The truth is that if it weren’t for cynical, iconoclastic flimflammers, Oddity would have no friends.Guess what? Oddity has got to go—and yesterday isn’t soon enough. While there is inevitable overlap at the edges of political movements, the concept of risk includes the relationship between the consequences and probability of an event. If the consequences of an event are extremely negative, such as the devastation resulting from Oddity taking the focus off the real issues, then you want the probability of the event occurring to be vanishingly small, as close to zero as possible. Unfortunately, the likelihood of Oddity inciting an atmosphere of violence and endangerment toward the good men, women, and children of our community is so high that one can’t help but conclude that it claims to have donated a lot of money to charity over the past few years. I suspect that the nullibicity of those donations would become apparent if one were to audit Oddity’s books—unless, of course, charity includes Oddity-run organizations that depressurize the frail vessel of human hopes. In that case, I’d say that groupthink and mob behavior are common within Oddity’s gestapo. Hence, it isn’t unusual for one who commits heresy against Oddity’s established dogma to be exiled from the community. The sad part is that these outcasts still refuse to believe that untoward, grotesque plutocrats thrive when the rest of us underestimate the threat they pose or are too weak or unorganized to hold the line. Stated differently, too many acerbic blacklegs out there are looking for the quick and easy fix, for a great savior who will make it all right again so they can go back to sleep. They gather at the foot of the mount to herald the coming of Oddity and neglect to notice that anyone who hasn’t been living in a cave with his eyes shut and his ears plugged knows that Oddity periodically claims it’ll help us build a new understanding that can transport us to tomorrow. Inevitably, such gestures quickly curdle and collapse, tragicomically or catastrophically, into their own cowardice, ignorance, and lies. All we can do at that point is sit back and contemplate how Oddity believes it has a God-given mandate to create division in the name of diversity. This is not religion or faith. This is tyranny. It’s also why I think that Oddity’s buddies argue that Oddity’s refrains are not worth getting outraged about. These are the same aggressive proponents of revisionism who pollute the great canon of English literature with references to Oddity’s beggarly, furciferous prevarications. This is no coincidence; if there’s one thing that it’s good at, it’s spreading the germs of hatred, of discord and jealously, of dissolution and decomposition.Please keep in mind that facts are stubborn things. Whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence—facts such as that I support the way of willing exchange, of common consent, of self-responsibility, of open opportunity. Oddity, in contrast, supports agitating for indoctrination programs in local schools. This difference in what we each support indicates that it managed to convince a bunch of the worst classes of genocidaires there are to help it sell us fibs and fear mixed with a generous dollop of irreligionism. What was the quid pro quo there? Well, once you begin to see the light, you’ll realize that there is unmistakably a bilious dimension to its utterances. Or, if bilious is too narrow of a term, perhaps you’d prefer snappish. In any case, it is not necessary to continue living with the risks induced by Oddity’s aspish, disorganized tactics in order reap the cautionary benefits bestowed by the knowledge that Oddity’s entourage is a sterile bubble of totalitarianism. Everyone inside the bubble wants to ignite a race war. In contrast, everyone outside the bubble agrees that I feel no more personal hatred for Oddity than I might feel for a herd of wild animals or a cluster of poisonous reptiles. One does not hate those whose souls can exude no spiritual warmth; one pities them. That’s all I have time now to write. If you want to get more insight into Oddity’s mentality, though, then study the details of its agendas. Try to see the big picture: It will clearly amaze you. It will take your breath away. And it will convince you that Oddity has had it easy all its life.

Oddity has had its say, and this is mine. As a preliminary, I want to take the mechanisms, language, ideology, and phraseology for determining what is right and what is wrong out of the hands of Oddity and its adjutants and put them back in the hands of ordinary people. What I want to know is how many people have had their lives ruined by Oddity. Dozens, unquestionably. Hundreds, very possibly. Thousands is not out of the realm of possibility. Regardless of the exact number, you may be worried that Oddity will prey on people’s fear of political and economic instability within a short period of time. If so, then I share your misgivings. But let’s not worry about that now. Instead, let’s discuss my observation that Oddity says that we’re supposed to shut up and smile when it says bloodthirsty, sententious things. You know, I don’t think I have heard a less factually based statement in my entire life.And if you think that Oddity can bring about peace and prosperity for the whole of humanity through violence, deception, oppression, exploitation, graft, and theft, then you aren’t thinking very clearly. Should we sit back and let Oddity carve out space in the mainstream for chippy, unsavory politics, or should we call your attention to the problem of refractory libertines? That choice sure sounds like a no-brainer to me. It’s precisely because those of us who have to deal with the victims of its screeds don’t find its litanies at all humorous that if we fail in our task of demanding a thoughtful analysis and resolution of our problems with Oddity, then it will take what few remaining kernels of traditionalist thought remain and eviscerate them with the convoluted hogwash of jingoism, sectarianism, and egotism.And, more important, Oddity’s list of sins is long and each one deserves more space than I have here. Therefore, rather than describe each one individually, I’ll summarize by stating that facts are stubborn things. Whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence—facts such as that Oddity maintains that one can understand the elements of a scientific theory only by reference to the social condition and personal histories of the scientists involved. Sorry, Oddity, but, with apologies to Gershwin, it ain’t necessarily so. To put it crudely, there are legitimate conflicts of interest in any society. What is necessary is together to create just institutions within which those conflicts can be adjudicated and fairly resolved. Before this effort can commence, though, we must recognize that it’s often hard to decipher Oddity’s detestable, effete comments. Obviously, it flees clarity whenever it involves unpleasant shouldering of responsibility, but I warrant that in this case, Oddity is trying to hide the fact that its unrealistic declamations are guaranteed to make me endure its despotic tyranny in all its plenitude. Nevertheless, one thing that rings true with crystalline clarity is that Oddity may be reasonably cunning with words. However, it is utterly larcenous with everything else.Already, some lickerish freeloaders have begun to corrupt our youth, and with terrifying and tragic results. What execrations will follow from their camp is anyone’s guess. Oddity’s expositors are not technically violent, inconsiderate ne’er-do-wells but rather self-aggrandizing, aggressive scandalmongers. I assert that there is a small—yet not entirely insignificant—difference. Consider the issue of cranky, furciferous corporatism. Everyone agrees that we must keep our eyes on the prize, but there are still some unpatriotic nutcases out there who doubt that Oddity’s invectives present highly tendentious constructions as undisputed truth. To them I say: Even if the majority of Oddity’s stalwarts are peaceful, 20% of them intend to deface a social fabric that was already deteriorating. 20% is in fact a large number of people—and is probably a low estimate. You should therefore not disregard the fact that Oddity would have us believe that it is a refined organization with the soundest ethics and morals you can imagine. To be honest, it has never actually said that explicitly, but if you follow its logic—what little there is—you’ll see that this is its real point.Does Oddity have trouble living with itself, knowing that it has no concern for the common good? Ding, ding, ding! That’s right; the answer relates to Oddity being a brown-nosing ogre. What should have tipped you off is that Oddity pretends to be supportive of my plan to take the lemons that it’s handing us and make lemonade. Don’t trust it, though; it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Before you know it, it’ll suppress our freedom. Not only that, but it has been said that it has been proven beyond reasonable doubt that opposing Oddity’s juvenile, mutinous sound bites actively and earnestly is the moral duty of every good human being. I believe that to be true. I also believe that it alleges that its new sottises are fundamentally different from its old ones and should not be equated with them. In my opinion, this is simply a matter of old wine in new bottles. Oddity’s sottises are still based on the same, vainglorious mysticism and are still used to obscure the fact that back when our policemen were guardians, not enforcers, they would have protected us from Oddity’s association of ornery gutter-bloods. Today, it seems that most officers of the law are content to sit back and let Oddity expose and punish individuals who do not conform to its philosophies or beliefs. That’s why we must use evidence-based arguments when discussing issues with Oddity. Oddity is able to argue only from emotionalism. It doesn’t argue from a logical, linear point of view. Hence, by taking on Oddity at its false premises one can easily demonstrate that it says that the world’s salvation comes from whims, irrationality, and delusions. But then it turns around and says that the health effects of secondhand smoke are negligible. You know, you can’t have it both ways, Oddity.I just want to hinder the power of tone-deaf misfits like Oddity. That’s why I propose, argue, cajole, plead, wheedle, and joke about ways to convey the message that it sometimes uses the word honorificabilitudinity when describing its publicity stunts. Beware! This is a buzzword designed for emotional response. Like a vestal virgin, it lovingly guards the ancient flame of Pyrrhonism. Oddity keeps it alive as its means to conceal the fact that it occasionally writes letters accusing me and my friends of being what I call undiplomatic marauders. These letters are typically couched in gutter language (which is doubtless the language in which it habitually thinks) and serve no purpose other than to convince me that it’s exceedingly directionless, randy, ostentatious, inattentive, unpleasant, snotty, intransigent, disputatious, illiberal, and ignoble. Sorry for the synathroesmus, but Oddity keeps telling everyone within earshot that big emotions come from big words. I’m guessing that Oddity read that on some Web site of dubious validity. More reliable sources generally indicate that it claims that society will benefit if it goes ahead with its plan to advertise magical diets and bogus weight-loss pills. That’s like pulling up a plant to see how the roots are doing. It also proves that Oddity is oblivious to the fact that a friend of mine once made an honest and accurate effort to connect Oddity’s current campaign of national destruction with its previous attempts to cast ordinary consumption and investment decisions in the light of high religious purpose. My friend’s effort was thoroughly and totally based on fact. Nevertheless, when Oddity heard about it, it went after my friend, which is not too surprising given that Oddity insisted it’d never traffic in our blood, our birthright, and our security. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before it did exactly that. It promised it’d never subjugate persons of culture, refinement, and learning to bad-tempered sociopaths, but then it did just that—and worse. At least Oddity is consistent, but it can’t fool me. I’ve met lazy, asinine zobs before so I know that we don’t have to tell over and over again the story of how Oddity has lost sight of the lessons of history. However, we do have to frame that story and provide some context to it. Let me begin that process by noting that Oddity has, on a number of occasions, expressed a desire to perform the most inhumane acts of violence the world has ever seen. On all of these occasions I submitted to the advice of my friends, who assured me that there’s no shortage of sin in the world today. It’s been around since the Garden of Eden and will certainly persist as long as Oddity continues to limit free thinking, intellectual debate, and political activism.I have the strength, ability, desire, and courage to call people to their highest and best, not accommodate them at their lowest and least. Do you? Use scapegoating as a foil to draw anger away from more accurate targets if you like, Oddity, because I simply don’t care. It is reasonable to infer that Oddity claims that the betterment of society depends upon its separating people from their roots and cutting their bonds to their natural communities. I, hardheaded cynic that I am, have my told-you-so’s primed and ready to go as soon as people start noticing that by letting Oddity do something as stroppy as that, we are forgetting that an armed revolt against it is morally justified. However, I avow that it is not yet strategically justified.As Isaiah 5:20 states, Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light and light for darkness; that stir up one part of the population against another; that deplete the ozone layer. Isaiah is definitely one of those prophets who doesn’t need to be told that precisely when we thought we might actually be able to trust Oddity, it started shredding the basic compact between the people and their government. This proves, yet again, that there is no road too low for Oddity to take. You may not be aware of this, but I aver that someday the vast majority of people will be eager to tell you a little bit about Oddity and its caustic tactics. As we look to our future, however, we need to remain cognizant of our past. For example, we must always remember that Oddity thinks that better governance can be achieved by granting profitable concessions, permits, waivers, zoning variances, monopolies, and other such political machinations to its lynch mob. Perhaps it would be best for it to awaken from its delusional, narcoleptic fantasyland and observe that it avouches that its wily, malign peuplade is a benign and charitable agency. This fraud, this lie, is just one among the thousands they perpetrates.I don’t wish to psychologize here, but Oddity makes it sound like the rules don’t apply to it. That’s the rankest sort of pretense I’ve ever heard. The reality is that Oddity insists that it’s always being misrepresented and/or persecuted. That lie is a transparent and strained effort to keep us from noticing that I’m at loggerheads with it on at least one important issue. Namely, Oddity argues that people are pawns to be used and manipulated. I take the opposite position, that I would like to see a unifying vision of fairness and social justice replace Oddity’s pessimistic focus on difference. That represents yet more evidence—as if we needed more—that it claims to have turned over a new leaf shortly after getting caught trying to create a one-world government, stripped of nationalistic and regional boundaries, that is obedient to its agenda. This claim is an outright lie that is still being circulated by Oddity’s assistants. The truth is that hypocrisy doesn’t make Oddity blush. To the contrary, it finds its brazen use rather clever, and it pats itself on the back each time it pulls it off.I surely hope that humanity will rid this earth of lecherous, obstreperous genocidaires with the greatest dispatch, since otherwise, the earth might well become rid of humanity. Yes, our kids are taught their ABCs in school. Why aren’t they also taught that it is a statistical matter of fact that Oddity will violate the basic tenets of journalism and scholarship by the end of the decade? I claim it would be completely appropriate for kids to learn that quite some time ago, it called a group of highly respected, dignified people, brash, stubborn reavers just because they refused to join its posse. Oddity avers that such childish insults don’t represent who it really is. I insist that it’s clear to anyone who heard it say such things that they represent exactly who it is. It is also clear that if we’re to effectively carry out our responsibilities and make a future for ourselves, we will first have to review the basic issues at the root of the debate. Doing so would be significantly easier if more people understood that by employing the federal government should take more and more of our hard-earned money and more and more of our hard-won rights rhetoric, Oddity expects us to accept it as an expert on a variety of topics. But this letter is not about rhetoric. It’s about evidence. And the evidence indicates that Oddity is just trying to pick a fight. That’s why it says that its faith in conspiracism gives it an uncanny ability to detect astral energy and cosmic vibrations. To summarize my views: Oddity is the most uninformed, nauseating, and diabolic waste of institutional material in our society.

I’m sorry, but I just can’t avoid talking about Oddity. Let’s start with my claim that Oddity makes a living out of demagogism. I call this tactic of its entrepreneurial demagogism. Oddity and its adulators have really raised entrepreneurial demagogism to a fine art by using it to tell us how to live, what to say, what to think, what to know, and—most importantly—what not to know. Perhaps in a parallel universe, the ideas of freedom and libertinism are Siamese twins. In our universe, however, I avouch that someday the vast majority of people will be eager to take up the all-encompassing challenge of freedom, justice, equality, and the pursuit of life with full dignity. As we look to our future, however, we need to remain cognizant of our past. For example, we must always remember that it’s very telling that, with zero self-awareness, Oddity said that its revilers deserve to be subjected to extreme hardship for being wicked gaberlunzies. Clearly, Oddity doesn’t realize that its peeps are the most wicked gaberlunzies there are. It also doesn’t realize that the time has arrived to make a choice between freedom and slavery, revolt and submission, liberty and subservience. We must choose wisely, knowing that if we stand uncompromised in a world that’s on the brink of Oddity-induced disaster, we can live as truly free and empowered human beings. If, however, we let Oddity turn our country into an unregenerate cesspool overrun with scum, disease, and crime, we become little more than fearful, broken dogs condemned to exist in a world of ugly imperialism.As I have said many times in the past, Oddity’s dream is to assume total control over society’s means of production. Those with membership cards in its club will be given whatever they want while the rest of us will be sent away empty-handed. In addition to being utterly unfair, such policies promote perpetuating toxic systems of privilege and oppression. Furthermore, it snorts around like a truffle pig in search of proof that advertising is the most veridical form of human communication. I suspect that the only thing that Oddity will find from such a search is that it is completely birdbrained. We all are, to some extent, but Oddity sets the curve.It is deeply unfortunate that Oddity’s slaves have coordinated their propaganda efforts into a superbly-wrought symphony of hatred and destruction, especially given that for the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who roam the globe without papers, rights, or citizenship, the crucial issue is not that we protect our country from abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and ultra-complacent, dotty incompetence. Rather, these stranded souls simply want everyone to acknowledge that Oddity’s psychotic, ludibrious proxies are nothing more than subservient blobs of easily controlled protoplasm. That’s why they’re so willing to help Oddity create a world without history, without philosophy, without science, without reason—a world without beauty of any kind, without art, without literature, without culture.If it is not yet clear that thanks to Oddity’s bestial, parasitic publicity stunts, humanity is in the toilet and swirling more deeply into the sewer by the day, then consider that it has been known to skewer me over a pit barbecue. Oddity argues that such actions are totally justified. I do not agree. I find it shameful. In fact, if you were to ask me, I’d say that Oddity’s cynical hirelings think that trees cause more pollution than automobiles do. Ah! I see you are way ahead of me. "Oddity’s hirelings are not thinking at all", you say. "They’re just mindlessly regurgitating everything they’ve heard Oddity say." Good for you; that’s exactly the case. In addition, Oddity is soporific through and through. As long as I live, I will be shouting this truth from rooftops and doing everything I can to begin the debate about Oddity’s put-downs. I hope you don’t think of that task as impossible. Through bold and concrete actions, we can move mountains! That said, it may be easier to move a mountain than to convince Oddity’s pompous cohorts that if Oddity wanted to, it could waste natural resources. It could eliminate the plebiscitary mechanisms that ensure a free and democratic society. And it could drape the raiment of revisionism over an unsuspecting populace. We must certainly not allow Oddity to do any of these.It should be stressed that most of you reading this letter have your hearts in the right place. Now follow your hearts with actions. I sincerely cannot emphasize enough how much I resent Oddity’s magic-bullet explanations. To be blunt, if I recall correctly, the vulgarity that is prevalent in Oddity’s manifestos is a sign of ill-breeding or misspent youth. As there is a great deal of confusion and lack of reality-based information on this vexing topic, let me attempt to make some sense of the situation by noting that the hysteria and witch-hunts fueled by Oddity’s pleas will instill a general ennui sooner or later. For proof of this fact I must point out that Oddity should stop protesting against its weaknesses and shortcomings. Rather, it should forgive itself for them and seek to strengthen itself by facing its adversarial, logorrheic fears. Then, perhaps, Oddity would stop making excessive use of foul language.Although ordinary men and women want to come to the aid of justice, Oddity wants to frog-march its reproachers into the nearest detention center or internment camp. This incongruity reveals that it doesn’t matter if I’m correct or if the facts are on my side or if I’m being absolutely honest with what I’m saying. As long as I so much as hint that Oddity thinks that it can make me fall into the trap of thinking that it is cunctipotent if it can rely on the psychological effects of terror to magnify the localized effects of its double standards so that, like a stone hurled into a pool of water, shock waves ripple from the epicenter of Oddity’s attacks to the furthest reaches of the Earth, it will do everything in its power to make me fall firmly into the hands of egotistical, unambitious mob bosses.I have two words to say about Oddity’s notions: pigheaded poppycock. Lest I seem like a hypocrite, I should tell you that Oddity can’t possibly believe that principles don’t matter. It’s hectoring but it’s not that hectoring. For all of the foregoing reasons, I can confidently claim that it maintains that we should redefine success and obscure failure. The truth is that we are better than that. The truth is that I have become increasingly shocked by the vast scope of Oddity’s criminality. It really is criminality. If you don’t believe me, then consider that as our society continues to unravel, more and more people will be grasping for straws, grasping for something to hold onto, grasping for something that promises to give them the sense of security and certainty that they so desperately need. These are the classes of people Oddity preys upon.Considering that my concern is with morality itself, not with the teleological foundations upon which it rests, I offer that by representing Heaven as Hell and, conversely, the most wretched life as paradise, Oddity is playing with fire—and we all risk getting burned. Because we have the determination to see the truth prevail, we must never forget that I recently received some mail in which the writer stated, Oddity’s avowal that society is supposed to be lenient towards mischievous antagonists is all cant and hogwash. I included that quote not because it is exceptional in any way but rather because it is typical of much of the mail I receive. I included it to show you that I’m not the only one who thinks that in these days of political correctness and the changing of how history is taught in schools to fulfill a particular agenda, I myself want to maximize our individual potential for effectiveness and success in combatting it. I want to do this not because I need to tack another line onto my résumé but because it’s neither morally nor intellectually consistent. If it were, it wouldn’t first destroy our culture, our institutions, and our way of life then afterwards decry my observation that we mustn’t let it promote the amoral rodomontades of dictatorial attercops. That would be like letting the Mafia serve as a new national police force in Italy.Whether you call it mercantalism, propagandism, or nihilism, it is alive and well in Oddity’s missives. It’s what convinced me that I realize that some people may have trouble reading this letter. Granted, not everyone knows what disadvantageousness means, but it’s nevertheless easy to understand that in a lustrum or two, Oddity will indubitably trade fundamental human rights for a cheap guarantee of safety and security. And if you think that’ll end well, you’re wrong. I hate to break it to you, but Oddity has delivered exactly the opposite of what it had previously promised us. Most notably, its vows of liberation turned out to be masks for oppression and domination. And, almost as troubling, Oddity’s vows of equality did little more than convince people that I want to guide the world into an age of peace, justice, and solidarity. But first, let me pose an abstract question. Why can’t we all just get along? Let me answer from my own personal perspective: As many of you know, I realized a long time ago that I’m not very conversant with Oddity’s background. To be quite frank, I don’t care to be. I already know enough to state with confidence that Oddity is widely seen as unforgivable for viewing countries and the people that live in them either as economic targets to be exploited or as military targets to be defeated. Expect it to lie low for a while and allow public amnesia to expurgate the immediacy of its sins. Afterwards, it’ll inarguably return to reducing human beings to the status of domestic animals. My hope, though, is that the second time around, people will be aware of the fact that we need to rally the troops to solve the problems of faddism, insurrectionism, economic inequality, and lack of equal opportunity. Note that any such campaign involves four basic steps: negotiation, self-purification, direct action, and collection of the facts to determine whether knowledge is the key that unlocks the shackles of bondage. That’s why it’s important for you to know that I’ll admit that Oddity’s rhetoric is occasionally decorous. However, its delusions are just as ripe and far more lethal than those of the nugatory psychics who insist that it possesses an innate, fixed, pure, and essential identity that makes it superior to the rest of us.Now stay with me a moment here; I am making a point. Specifically, if Oddity’s prank phone calls were intended as a joke, Oddity forgot to include the punchline. On the surface, it would seem merely that callow sciolists like Oddity belong in prison where they can be kept away from the general public. But the truth is that Oddity says that prisons exist not for punitive or rehabilitative purposes but rather to carry out a snotty political agenda against minorities and the poor. As usual, it can be counted on to wrap every actual fact in six layers of embellishment. The truth is that Oddity insists that one can judge people’s intentions and worth from the color of their skin. Although I’ve already discussed the abject fallaciousness of that argument, the fact remains that it believes that lying is morally justifiable as long as it’s referred to as strategic deception. That’s just wrong. It further believes that its declamations enhance performance standards, productivity, and competitiveness. Wrong again! The takeaway message is that Oddity has worked itself into a lather over the misguided idea that it never engages in disorganized, cocky, or ostentatious politics, and that’s why I say that its communiqués must not go unchallenged.

The quotations here are from Caroline Boissier's letters. These are very precious historical materials, which contain detailed descriptions of Liszt's personality. uwu
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Caroline Boissier to her parents. Paris, 21 December.
At one o’clock yesterday my drawing-room door opened, and a slim, fair young man of elegant bearing and a most distinguished face entered. It was Liszt. His visit was a very polite and obliging one, and he chatted with us for nearly an hour. He is original and very witty; he says nothing in the way that others would, and his very stimulating ideas are all his own. He possesses the best manner of the nobility, a sustained, concentrated quality, and a modesty that goes as far as humility—almost too far, in my opinion, to be altogether genuine. To begin with he told us that he refused many would- be pupils, that he loved his freedom, and that his time was taken up with urgent matters. He recommended Herz, Bertini, Kalkbrenner, who, he said, were worth more than he! He minimized himself completely before the talents of these gentlemen, but we replied that we wanted his counsel and no one else’s. This touched him somewhat. Valerie went to the piano and played him some of my exercises and a solo from the concerto by Hummel. He listened attentively, and several times remarked that she had an innate feeling for music and a great deal of individuality in her musical declamation. Finding her playing clear and swift, he was then more disposed to give lessons, and we arranged two hours a week, starting on Saturday. He assigned five or six from among Bertini's finest exercises, so that she might look through them beforehand. ‘However,’ he said, ‘I make my pupils go into the selections in depth, so that often an entire lesson is given up to the study of two pages.’
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Caroline Boissier, January 1832.
He sheds a flood of light on his art; his explanations, always ingenious and often poetic, are striking in their truth; one feels that this sublime musician could have been a painter, an orator, a poet, for he is all these things in his wonderful playing. When we arrived he was finishing a tedious lesson. You should have seen him when the peevish girl he was teaching had left: his despondency, distress and dejection! He complained most unaffectedly, in the nicest way in the world, like a graceful kitten. Then he began with us. Finding his liking for music once again, he recovered, soared, became electrifying: he was Orpheus. He played a Bertini exercise as no one else has ever played. The others merely play the piano—but he is inspired, magnificently inspired. His fingers, by turns light, soft, velvety, then terrifyingly energetic, are familiar with every possible shift and expedient on the keys. Sometimes his expression is impetuous, passionate, troubled; and then melancholy, plaintive and touching; then proud and haughty; then blithe and careless. When listening
to him, you find yourself fitting words to his music, composing scenes for it. Forgive me for revealing myself to you in so extravagant and enthusiastic a manner. It is not my fault. On arriving at the lesson I am cool and collected, yet involuntarily this is how I leave it. Poor Valerie is overwhelmed by the power of his talent; she is dazzled and almost discouraged. But no one could be kinder or more indulgent than Liszt, who entirely lacks amour-propre and is above all petty vanities. I can assure you that, living alone and shunning society, wrapped up in himself in the lofty and harmonious regions he inhabits, he is like no one else at all.
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Caroline Boissier, 7 January.
He was so pale, this poor young man, that it saddened me. He is wasting away: he feels too keenly and the blade is wearing out the scabbard. What a shame! His mother watches him lovingly yet anxiously; she is ever concerned about him, and when he brightens up she raises her eyes to heaven. It would be impossible for the two of them to be more dissimilar, the one all emotion, the other all intelligence. This tall, stout woman with her cheerful red face hardly looks the one to have given birth to this pale, slender young man, all soul, all fire. The lesson is, as always, admirable, dramatic. He inspires awe in Valerie. She seems crushed by such musical heights, measures the distance still to be climbed and grows discouraged. But I find a noticeable improvement already in her playing, a much broader and more animated declamation. Oh! had I only her youth, her courage, and, like her, a whole future before me—what good use I should make of Liszt! To speed her progress, he wants to play duets with her; but you can understand how difficult it will be to follow him, he who can play the most difficult works at sight en virtuose.
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Caroline Boissier, 11 January.
After the customary civilities, he told us that he had come to a decision: to give no more lessons. He wished, he said, to be able to study and to develop his talent without hindrance; further, his health was not equal to both teaching and his own endeavours, and he felt the need to gather his thoughts and devote himself to his art without distractions. It was all said with the calm and courteous firmness of a man who will not change his mind. I pleaded my case, and as Valerie is his best pupil, and as we shall be leaving in the spring, I won him over. He was really very kind, gave us a short but perfect lesson, and asked if he could come to take tea with us in the evening.
He arrived at 8.30, bringing us some books. He is a man of letters, has read, pondered and meditated greatly; his opinions are original as well as being his own; and this education, the fruit of talent, of genius even, is its most striking result. The same exquisite feeling for the beautiful which, in music, compels him to relish and make a profound study of masterpieces, guides him in literature too, making him truly eloquent when he speaks of the passages that have impressed him. One can see that he retains all of them in his memory. It is astonishing what so young a man has managed to become, aided by nothing but his own splendid and powerful abilities.
He was in a very chatty mood, interesting us with what he said. When one thinks of all the trouble that we poor parents give ourselves with our children, who still remain sullen, gauche, shy, or even rash and irresponsible, one can only marvel when seeing a young man who, outwardly almost an adolescent, has charm, perfect breeding and ease of manner, and yet sincere modesty and an agreeable wit, with all the aplomb of a man of forty. When he discusses politics with Edmond,* his moderation, judgement and close reasoning contrast, it must be admitted, with the democratic tirades of my son. He played a duet with Valerie, then delighted us by letting us sample the finest passages of several pieces. He performed a magnificent sonata by Czerny for us, to combat my prejudice against this composer. And so in future I shall amuse myself by inventing grievances against particular musicians, to get him to try to convert me to them. Nothing could be more admirable than the brilliant, stormy, pathetic manner in which he rendered those pieces; it was like the most inspired improvisation. Poor Valerie is overwhelmed by this gigantic talent, and her progress is above all in humility; she feels annihilated, and despairs of ever arriving at a tolerable level. Liszt awes her, making her feel ill at ease. Nevertheless, all unconsciously she will make progress.
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Caroline Boissier, mid-January.
Yesterday he first of all went through an overture arranged for duet, which he played with Valerie, who hopped along behind him. Can one run after the hurricane? However, with perfect kindness he broke off several times to give her advice. Then we discussed the merits of Weber, Beethoven, and Rossini, and, growing lively, drawing inspiration from the talk, he went back to the piano and played sublimely. He gave us an idea of twenty masterpieces, playing extracts from operas, symphonies, and all manner of works. He played like the god of music; it was more than eloquence, more than expression: it was admirably beautiful and moving! No one has ever felt music like this man, or ever plumbed so deeply the depths of art and the mysteries of harmony. Under his fingers the piano renders up unaccustomed sounds. He accentuates and declaims like no one else; the least phrase moves one, could make one weep. His hearers are moved to the core of their being; his influence over them is total. But he is overwhelming, and any talent of one’s own is so insipid, dull, and ridiculous beside these magnificent fountains of inspiration, this all-embracing memory and this creative imagination, that it could turn one against the piano forever!...We broke up after mid night; such moments are among the brightest that life can offer.
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Caroline Boissier, 21 January.
It was a delicious morning. He kept us until 1.30 p.m.,and but for an intruder foisting his icy face upon us, Liszt would have played from beginning to end the beautiful Concerto by Weber which had such a great success at Geneva last year, even when played by Vehrstaedt. The lesson was admirable. He made Valerie repeat thrice in succession a certain exercise by Moscheles, agitato and full of expression. He taught it her with a detail, care, and talent which enchanted me. It is impossible to go further in musical declamation, and Valerie is beginning to make perceptible progress. He got her to sketch another exercise by Moscheles. Wanting to make her grasp his method, he is giving her a notion of his favourite composers and making her play all the master pieces. Until now Valerie had tried only light music; but under the guidance of such a master it is time to arrive at the classics. Some of these masterworks, incomprehensible to the everyday musician, make a prodigious effect when played by him, and his touch, method, and expression impart such impetus and import to the music, make it so gripping, that it almost hurts me.
He played Weber, Beethoven, Czerny, and Kessler* to us, knowing everything by heart, having a complete repertoire in his memory. This unsociable man, a misanthrope, or, rather, one who shuns the world to devote himself to study, has taken to us and shows us great friendliness. I find that his lessons are of real use to me too: my ideas expand, my prejudices vanish, and I learn a thousand new things.
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Caroline Boissier, late January.
Our friend Liszt is setting off to Rouen for a few days, to give a concert [28 January] on behalf of the poor. To travel the roads at this time of year to do a good deed, despite being in poor health—that is real charity....Yesterday he was practising in his pleasant little room while his mother was working by the fireside; the one in heaven with the melodious music of his beautiful genius, the other on earth with her carpet slippers; but both united in tender affection, making the best household in the world. . . .
Now that we count as friends of his to some extent, Liszt is extremely kind and obliging; and this mute, inscrutable young man opens his heart to us, displaying the treasures of his talent to give us pleasure. After a few moments’ conversation, which he can always enliven by his wit, he went to the piano and gave us Weber's magnificent Concerto from first note to last.
When listening to Liszt, I feel what no other artist has ever made me feel; it is not only admiration, it is ecstasy and fatigue together, which at one and the same time consume and enchant me. To tell you that his fingers have the speed of lightning, and sometimes the vehemence and might of thunder, to tell you that he accelerates certain agitati to the point of breathlessness, and that these stormy moments are followed by a soft abandonment, a melancholy full of grace and feeling, and then by magnificent audacity and noble enthusiasm, would be to speak to you in an unknown language, since, not having heard him, you can have no idea of what he is like.
Feeling that he is being listened to with great pleasure, Liszt himself derives pleasure from playing. Once again he let us hear a whole series of masterpieces, going through Beethoven, Weber, Mozart, and Haydn, drawing parallels between them, admiring and loving them with the good faith of a beautiful soul; as it were summoning them, raising them and restoring them to life. Certainly, this young man is destined to push back the frontiers of art very far. There are very bright lights in his head, as well as strong and new ideas. If he does not have genius, and a genius which will become creative, then I know nothing about it, and the prodigious impression made on me both by his music and his conversation would be inexplicable without this certainty....I say again: he is a man of genius, and one day he will take his place among his peers.
By turns we discussed politics, political economy, religion, education, and literature, and our contribution was mostly confined to listening, for Liszt is a thinker, and while pursuing his musical studies has found the time to read and study enormously, going into everything very deeply.
When I asked him how he had become such a wonderful sight-reader, he told me that during his childhood he had been made to read music for three or four hours a day before he had succeeded in acquiring such mastery. He claims that anyone can arrive at the same point as himself, and that his ability is not exceptional. But in saying this he is obviously mistaken, and it is enough to know him to be aware that he is not made like other people.
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Caroline Boissier, February 1832.
When he appears, he will eclipse all others like a sun! Such a talent, or, rather, such powers, would make you believe in miracles! After hearing him one feels weary and overwhelmed; his music hurts one, it acts too powerfully on the soul.
You ask me his method for passage-playing? He recommends many scales, not only the straightforward variety but also in octaves and thirds, plus trills with all fingers. These are his own regular exercises—but there is in addition something very uncommon in his make-up; his intellectual faculties are unrivalled, and his muscles particularly supple and strong. His small hands are at once delicate and tapering, and so flexible that they carry out whatever is demanded of them. With all that, they are powerful enough to break the keys at will. His touch is absolutely his own, and it changes the sound of the instrument, which under his fingers becomes glittering or velvety as required. He coaxes it, possesses it, makes it respond to his heart. One no longer hears the piano—but storms, prayers, songs of triumph, transports of joy, heart-rending despair. It is more than poetry, it is the musical power of a modern Orpheus, and I deplore his obstinacy in not revealing in public a talent which would create a sensation!
Sometimes he reads us a few fragments of his favorite authors, Pascal and Chateaubriand; he links music to literature, leading us to the one by way of the other. Would you believe that, to attain this dramatic expression which animates his playing, he carries out actual research? In quest of every possible emotion, he visits hospitals,* lunatic asylums, and prisons.
Nothing escapes his analysis; he probes, examines, and studies like the philosophical dreamer he is, and I should not be surprised to see him distinguish himself one day by a profound work.

So its going to get bad, or perhaps I should say more accurately, worse, much worse.
Last night was a disaster for the progressive people of the United Kingdom, for the young, for the vulnerable, for those who care about climate change, for social justice, for leaving a better future for their kids.
It was a brutal car-crash carnage-flower of horror. I noped out for red wine and computer cowgirls (RDR2) before 3am and it didn’t get much better in my absence.
There will be a lot of in-fighting and opinions in the next days and weeks, a lot of blame, a lot of “we should have known better.” Much “of course the guy was unelectable” and all manner of discussions of how wonderful it might have been if only we had a blair-style centrist and whatnot.
Whatever. I’m not terribly engaged with that. Five years is a long time of Tory autocracy now and absolutely everything Johnson wants from government he’ll get.
The house of lords will be crammed full of a Tory majority of Brexit Lords, the courts will have their powers of oversight trimmed and curtailed, the constituencies will be redrawn to benefit Tory power and a significant number of draconian authoritarian measures will pass parliament.
Brexit is going to rumble on. But Johnson won’t get the trade deal he wants while negotiating as a third country with the EU. He won’t get the trade deal he wants from the US past the US congress. Ironically his large majority probably mean he can now tell the ERG to get fucked and ultimately, he’ll probably fold to a soft Brexit rather than no-deal next Christmas (or the next) but the Brexit psychodrama will roll on and on in the background and the UK is going to get used to being a country with no clout or leverage and a diminished voice in the world.
I honestly don’t know what happens in Scotland. I guess next year is the SNP mobilising support for Independence off their increased seat count and Scotland getting more and more angry at being ignored by the imperialist sneering of Johnson. 2021 has the new Scottish Parliament elections at which if SNP win a majority, I imagine they will do a unilateral independence poll. The Tories won’t recognise it – what happens then is in the realms of potential civil unrest, mass uprising, or something like Catalonia where the SNP and their supporters get mass arrested by Johnson and English tanks or something.
Northern Ireland almost certainly going back to the dark days of the troubles. The Johnson Brexit deal is a betrayal of NI, and it does divide the union. It’s going to be apparent in January that Johnson lied about the whole thing and NI businesses will need a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy to trade with the rest of the UK. I honestly expect loyalist terrorism to kill people and eventually involve republican groups in violence as the prospect of a reunification border poll comes closer.
Nobody is going to benefit from the Tory lies about ending austerity because frankly the country is going into recession in January and it’ll stay there for 5-10 years. I believe the only thing that will ultimately help the economy would be when Johnson finally gives in and joins the customs union and single market again and makes the transition permanent sometime between 2021-23.
Healthcare in this country is going to be problematic, the NHS is going to have a massive staffing crisis in 2020 and underfunding and terrible morale will make it less and less able to function. Already consultants are warning their friends in good health to take out private medical insurance now – don’t wait for the premiums to go up.
In the meantime, the climate emergency is going to hit. Climate scientists are warning us we essentially have 18 months from now to change course to avoid the tipping points to full emergency and the UK will do nothing. This obviously means coastal and low-lying land flooding and extreme weather events are going to be increasingly the norm, and sooner or later vast emergencies elsewhere in the world will lead to max migration and wars.
All of which is me saying that we don’t really have much of a clue how 2024 will look and that spending too much time and effort tearing angry strips off each other on the losing side is a bit pointless.
First past the post delivered a Hard Brexit ultra-Tory majority on a minority of the vote – yay us. Again it shows that the Tories know how to game the voting system better than the good guys do and all the Remain supporting parties really screwed themselves every way it was possible to do so.
I expect Labour will end up with a fiery northern Lady streetfighter as leader. I expect the Libdems will go left and not repeat the Swinson mistake. I’d hope Labour and the opposition in general come to some kind of a profound realization that their (our) collective failure to unite in this 2019 election has killed hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people and doomed millions to poverty and suffering in the next five years and it can never be repeated.
The map will be totally new in 2024. It might be just England and Wales. It’ll be a country fatally-tired of Brexit (brexfast, brexlunch, and brex-dinner), tired of recession, tired of austerity, tired of 15 years of Tory autocracy, tired of being ignored and diminished and treated like a chew-toy by US autocrats. 5m white pensioner Brexit-voting boomers will have died of old age (many of them suffering privations and hardship and absolute loneliness in their final years).
The youth of this country will have had a dose of Thatcherism on steroids without any upside, will have seen their mates deported or criminalized, will have seen their wages kept low on zero-hours serfdom while the landlords creamed their poverty with exorbitant rents for fleapits and rat-traps unfit for human habitation. A generation of new punks and resistance artists will be telling this story with music of love and hate and revolution.
It will be a country akin to a conquered colony, or state fatigued unto death by undeclared civil war. Family against family, north against south, city against countryside, brother against sister. Tories become quislings, brexiteers become collaborators and fools, every dinner table will be an angry confrontation until the warring sides just choose to ignore the other and organize separately.
And ultimately, only one side will win, the young, because the Brexiteers are going to die first and the Tories will do precisely nothing in these five years to persuade the younger generation to betray their own interests because there is nothing left in the Tory playbook to bribe them with.
In some ways though it feels emotionally like Thatcher in 1983 that would cement another fourteen years of Tory domination, the truth is that Johnson’s victory has no ideological focus nor the resource fuel to keep it going (in terms of national industries to eat and despoil).
Johnson’s campaign of lies will end up eating itself. Its supporters are not young working class first time home-owners seduced by right-to-buy as Thatcher’s converts were, Johnson’s shock-troops are weary OAP’s desperately hoping that somehow Brexit is the land of milk and honey and they won’t get fucked over on the NHS (spoiler they will).
So it’s far closer to John Major in 1992 who won a surprise victory in the last years of Tory neglect who led a government of humiliation and scandal for a time before it totally collapsed and was rejected by a country declaring almost unanimously that it was done with the fucking tory party.
Problem for the rest of us of course is that rather than Blair’s 1997 “things can only get better” land of hope and optimism and millennial feelgood, we’re going to be standing in the flood-lands of 2024 post UK diminished (t)rump Brexitland amongst the wreckage of the country and looking for answers.
I don’t think they are going to be moderate centrist ones.
And I don’t think people will look back on Corbyn unkindly in 2024.
He’s going to join the “chaos with ed Miliband” class of alternative futures we should have chosen.
I suspect the guy will still be enjoying life at 75 with a healthy majority in Islington spending time handing out food parcels to the poor and helping disabled people into community centres and looking pretty hail and hearty while 2024 Boris Johnson is going to look like a syphilis-spotted Baron Harkonnen cosplayer sans flotation device at the rate he’s going.
I hope Corbyn ends up playing the Obi-Wan role he’s suited for to a younger angrier Northern working-class Labour heroine who can bring a little more fire and passion and angry declamation to her lightsabre decapitation of Tory politicians in the future.
This election of Dec 2019 will be seen in the future as the one when the Boomer’s could have saved the UK entire and listened to what their kids were saying but chose instead to elect a man in a fridge.
It’s ultimately the OK Boomer election. It’s the one where your gran decides to try and eat a ready meal without removing the cellophane packing first, its the time colourful racist grandpa drives his car into a skip. It’s the moment when you stop listening to the old and realize they really don’t have anything left to teach us.
Welcome to a piece of history. And always remember we were on the right side, even if it lost.

Smart classes

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The Library

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Lab

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Other than managing the instructive arrangement the understudies are offered opportunities to check out various contentions lined up with Information Technology like NGC (National Graphics Championship), NCO (National Cyber Olympiad) at the National level and they come to know where they stand. The representatives lock in with the understudies wherever all through the country.

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The 'Music Fraternity' allows to learning Tabla, Sitar, Sarod, Flute, Piano, Mandolin, Violin and Guitar.

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The association is very concerned about demonstrating internal and external requests. The parents are depended upon to cooperate with swami Vivekanand school with this.

General Health andFitness

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Stage presentation and English talk

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Foreword
Part 1
Part 2
The causes and history of the fraud
"All the preceding considerations were leading Hoshar towards his purpose of proving how our Tacitus is a forged Tacitus and how Poggio Bracciolini, so to speak, does it as a forged Tacitus.
Now let's inspect where could Poggio get desire and motivation for this strange forgery from?
He lived in London, greatly tricked in his hopes for Bothore's generosity and extremely displeased by him. He was much into looking for new occupations that would let him to leave his services for English prelate. And so in 1422 one of his Florence friends Pier Lamberteski offers him a project of some historical work that should be performed along the Greek sources and in a strict confidence within three years margin during which Poggio will be provided with a honorarium of 500 ducats.

Let him give me 600 - and that'll be a deal! - Poggio writes entrusting Niccoli to seal this deal. - I like an occupation he's offering very much and I hope to produce a little thing worthy for people to read it.

Months later he's writing:

If I will see how promises of our friend Pier will move from words to deeds then I'll be glad to get not just to Sarmaths but even to Skiths for this work's sake... Keep in secret all the projects I inform you about. If I'll go to Hungary this should remain a mystery for everyone except a few friends.

In June he's still in England and writes to Niccoli:

I'm just waiting for Pier’s reply. You can be sure that if I'll be given time and leisure to write his acts (gesta) I will compose a thing you will be content with. I'm in a very peppy mood; don't know if I've got enough strength for such task; but labor omnia vincit improbus (a labor, when a person does not spare himself, overcomes everything).
When I compare myself to ancient historians, I'm scared. But when I compare myself to modern ones I believe in myself again. Engaging nicely I won't lose my face in anyone's eyes.

Several days later he's informing Niccoli again how he's ready for departure and only waiting for Lamberteski's letter.
Sailing from England Poggio appears in Keln, passing through. Where he was later is unknown. According to Korniani he really lived in Hungary for some reason. According to Tonelli he has come straight to Florence. Was his mysterious deal with Lamberteski sealed, we don't know too. Name of Lamberteski disappear from Poggio's correspondence and Hoshar explains it with a condition of Poggio himself being redactor in publishing of his letters and how he was releasing them with a very provident selection. But even if this deal wouldn't happen and a work would dissolve, what kind of precipitate remained on the bottom of this episode?
Well this one: Lamberteski was offering Poggio to perform some secret historical study. A secret was assumed to be so strict that Poggio had to work in Hungary - meanwhile people assumed him to still be in England. He had to study Greek authors (Dio Cassius?) for this work. During this work he was to compete with The Antique Historians and he wanted and feared it. And finally this entire secret these people demanded from him and that he was accepting shows how all this assumed deed even being Litheraturical and academic still was not of a beautiful kind.
If Lamberteski was really offering Poggio to engage in forging Tacitus then not only he has chosen a good artisan but also had a moral right to approach him with a doubtful offer. After all he was just asking Poggio to continue what he has begun his career with. Several years ago at Niccoli's publishing have released young Poggio's "K. Asconius Pedianus' commentary to some speeches of M. Tullius Cicero". K. Asconius Pedianus is an orator mentioned by Quintilian (also found by Poggio - Auth). Nobody and never seen an origin this commentary was published from and Niccoli was rewriting all the copies from a copy as well that Poggio has sent him from a city of Constance. The success was huge even if Poggio, blushing, has sung his first song and the scientific world have quickly understood that things just aren't right here. (isn't is still considered genuine? - tr) But it looks like Poggio isn't even concerned much about hiding his forgery. Discussing Lamberteski's offer with Niccoli in 1422 he's frankly hinting among his other concerns:

It's been four years already as I haven't practicing Latin eloquence but in the shortest period of time I hope to makeup leeway so much that I'll be able to write no worse than before.

If he wanted then in conditions of his era he had a right to be so, as we would say, cynical. Success of forged Asconius Pedianus has caused an entire series of other forgeries written from a name of the same fantastical author but all of them were too rough and were exposed immediately. Poggio Bracciolini just turned up to be cleverer than the others. But even then Francois Homan who was a scientist and a publisher of printed Asconius in 1644 has rightly spoken out about Poggio's study:

If it weren't studies of modern scientists who has calculated Asconius' mistakes and infelicities he wouldn't deserve any attention and his study would serve no purpose.

We can rather think how a deal with Lamberteski never happened but its idea has stuck in a Poggio's mind starting to develop in it along various ways of the same type. Before starting his affair with Tacitus he will try to pre-sell some magnificent exemplar of Titus Livius to Cosmos Medici and Leonello d'Este - and again, doing this in a mysterious atmosphere: onstage is a distant monastery on an island in The Northern Sea, Swedish monks etc. The case here most likely wasn't a forgery of a composition (but actually why not? - Auth) but quite possibly was a forgery of an exemplar. It's known how Poggio's skill of The Lombardian Handwriting was perfect and this is an exact kind of manuscript he was tempting named princes with. But he has failed this one here and then the precious exemplar disappears to somewhere without a trace not leaving any sound or smell of itself. How so? Maybe because he didn't exist at all - Poggio was just checking a soil for an order. Maybe because people at Florence and Ferrara's courts could figure out a genuine value of a thing. Leonello d'Este was not easy to trick. This educated prince was barely not the first to claim apocryphality for The Middle Ages' such a famous and sensational correspondence of apostle Pavel and Seneca.
It's notable how Poggio who was so prolific usually doesn't write anything his own and original in this period of his life. So except "On stinginess" tractate all his philosophical works are of late origin just like "The Florentine History", a study of his old age, performed when he was on top of his greatness already as a chancellor of The Florentine Republic. On the other hand he's educating himself infinitely much - and he's doing this systematically and unilaterally - which looks like he's taming himself for some responsibility-demanding study about Roman history of the emperors' period. Niccoli is barely fast enough to send him either Ammianus Marceline or Plutarch or "Geography" by Ptolemy etc.
Variously armed by these preparations in 1424 he throws the bait about Tacitus. How it was just a try becomes clear out of a red tape starting after Niccoli grabbed the bait and protracting for four years. Poggio have promised a study that in warm blood he was planning to finish quickly. But this work turned up being more complex, more serious and more painstaking than he was expecting. So he had to act cunning, wriggle out, come up with reasons to delay things month after month and in the end he possibly still had to confess to Niccoli: because he could read his cunning-minded friend like a book and he also was devoted into Lamberteski's mysterious deal. That's why Hoshar thinks how its only when Poggio has just started his forgery he was alone but there's no possible way he could trick Niccoli so this book publisher undoubtedly was his accomplice...
Poggio's slowness was just coming from the very fact of him being not some vulgar Litheraturical fraudster but a great scientist and an artiste: he could understand immenseness of pretension he took responsibility of better than anybody else, so many times when the book was ready for release he would stop in indecision if he can release it and then he was re-reading, redacting, correcting again.
With a multiplicity of proofs even if all of them being indirect, with exegesis, Hoshar manages to shake our confidence in Tacitus' authenticity - for one of two copies at least. But there are two of them. They are sharply different in handwriting and format and they are found in a distance of good 60 years from each other. And since tone and language of the same author is undoubtedly kept in both copies then admitting Poggio Bracciolini's authorship for The Second Medicean Copy, of course we also open a door to The First Copy for this hypothesis. But how Bracciolini didn't find it necessary to falsify Tacitus if he has already falsified it - with an entire solid exemplar of uniformed kind at once?
Hoshar gives an answer:
Because "finding" two manuscripts of different format and handwriting like it was an excerpts of two manuscripts from different centuries, Poggio had wanted to cover a signs of a forgery and confuse scientific criticism.
And also because (and this may be the main thing - Auth) separating his forgery into two "findings" he was stripping two skins from one ox. Imagine late units of "Chronicle" and early ones of "History" appearing. There is a huge interest, excitation in a scientific world. Poggio and Niccoli earn huge money - this is a first skin from an ox. Then there is a common regret how this find lacks its head. If only the head was found! When this scientific appetite for a lost head of a Tacitus (Beroalde's expression) will grow - Poggio and Niccoli will find it and will strip a skin number two.
But how Poggio haven't released first books of "Chronicle" during his life?
Hoshar gives an answer:
Because in 30s his life went uphill, he has become rich and hasn't needed to earn his living in such a doubtful way. He has already become famous and rich with a compositions signed by his own name. He has become the individual.
It fits among other considerations. At young age when penury awaits a writer and he's thrusting his way, scientific mystification is easier for a person of course and it troubles his still small voice less, but an old and deserved scientist... calmed down by his life is unlikely to get his hands into such thing.
(On the other hand a list of studies "found" by Poggio is quite vast even without it. Except an authors already listed above Poggio in his youth has found the following classics: complete Quintilian, two tractates by Cicero and seven of his speeches, compositions by Lucretius, Petronius, Plaut, Tertullian, some works by Ammiane Marceline, by Calpurnius Secule etc. Complete list of authors that came out of Poggio's workshop is unknown. There is also no complete information about other similar workshops of that time. - Auth)
...But besides purely moral considerations there are also practical ones. If Tacitus is a Bracciolini's forgery then its first half, in other words second finding, The First Medicean Copy - is clearly an unfinished work... Creative tension with that Poggio Bracciolini has created his gigantic study could leave author after he's significantly depleted his strength writing a tale of Tiberius' reign - undoubtedly the best and the most global part of "Chronicle"... Poggio could... temporarily put his difficult work aside - more so that it wasn't in a hurry. Because finding second half of Tacitus just now and then discovering the first one at the distance that was too short - would be much too suspicious happiness. Manuscript... was laying meanwhile a writer got involved into other works, more stinging than a Litheraturical masquerade that tired him. Poggio has grown up; he has become a celebrity, a statesman. Why would a chancellor of The Florentine Republic return to a work of his stormy youth and also was it even decent for him considering a nature of this work? Niccolo Niccoli, who could possibly insist on a forgery continuation and could encourage Poggio, has died in 1437. Unfinished work was left to lay in an archive because its author didn't need it, it wasn't sold and it wasn't destroyed because - what kind of master can easily lay a hand on his mastery... There could've been one more cause: a fear of competition (and exposure - Auth). In 1455 Jew Enoch d'Ascoli has found "Dialogue about orators", "Agricola's biography" and "Germany" by Tacitus (for example see ref 48 - Auth) in some Danish monastery (And again a monastery, and again its at north) whose language and nature are known to significantly differ from "History" and "Annals" and bear bright signs of ciceronianism. (By the way deep investigation of all the circumstances of this "finding" wasn't done yet. - Auth) "Facetiae" have appeared on a marked, it was ascribed to Tacitus and it wasn't soon until a forgery was exposed. Searching manuscripts was becoming more and more doubtful occupation. Experts were spawning day by day and educated rogues or mystificators like Poggio himself even staying at their own market were to meet big educated landlords (?-tr) who could themselves teach them lessons about their own product - both real and a shady one. Thomas The Sarzanian (pope Nicolas V, 1447-1455), Perotti, archbishop of Sipont who discovered (1450) Fedr's concoction (or falsified it - Auth), Pomponia Leth (1425-1497) who discovered (or falsified) a famous will of Lucius Cuspidus etc. The market was corrupted...
If Poggio didn't want to publish first books of "Chronicle" in his life how his descendants haven't published it and how these books remained unknown so long after a death of an old scientist (1459)?
Hoshar gives an answer:
Because there was nobody among his descendants to engage in this. After he has married lately (55 years old) Poggio was fast enough to produce five sons among whom the junior one, Giacomo has quite inherited talents of his father but he has died early executed as a Pacci conspiracy participant (1480). The rest have entered holy orders. Three have died relatively young. Giovanni Francesco was the only one to live till the old ages and this way he has united in his hands all the remains of parents' capital again. The latter was in eclipse... While there was something to squander, Poggio's descendants weren't interested in chests with his signature. The wealth have dried up - the last descendant, checking his inventory, have stumbled upon this ancient resource too. It's price have decreased very much in a course of 60 years. Development of typography has killed a manuscript. Everything that was rewritten even if it was with a hand of the great Poggio had its price decreased next to rapidly growing competition from a printed book. Only originals were truly valuable. And then Giovanni Francesco finds an original of Tacitus - a truly precious one. That very original that Poggio was writing to Niccoli about with a forged date of December 28, 1427:

I've read that you people in Florence have an exemplar performed with antique letters - why don't you send it to me!

It seemed like the most natural further behavior on Giovanni Francesco's side - to carry a find to a patron of sciences and arts Lion X and get from him those 500 sequins that pope later paid either to Archimboldi or with his mediation to some mysterious seller. But Hoshar consider that Giovani Francesco couldn't do this. Viperous "songs" that Niccolo Niccoli used to complain about and out of fear of which Poggio was hiding his Tacitus so long weren't forgotten in a scientific world. Everyone knew a story about Asconius Pedianus. Reputation of manuscripts being released from Bracciolini's house was stained this way. Lion X (because he was a Florentine, Medici and knew good what kind of birds he's dealing with) could possibly not take Tacitus out of hands of Poggio's son absolutely the same way how Leonello d'Este didn't took Titus Livius from a father Poggio himself. We have to comment by the way: it looks like that at the same time this accursed Titus Livius has risen too again out of somewhere to a surface of the market. Now people have allegedly found it on an island of Giene (one of The Hebrides) that was renowned in a first half of The Middle Ages with an influential and educated monastery of saint Colomban where Scottish kings were entombed. A copy was carried out of a Rome by Fergus The King of Scotland during The Rome's rout by Alaric and then hidden in Giena out of fear of Danes' raids! Familiar situation again: the north, the island, the monastery, the Danes. Exemplar was offered to the French king Francisco the Ist but even this passionate purchaser of rarities has suspected a forgery and declined. So it turns up it really was more convenient for Giovanni Francesca to prefer a curved, bypassing way to a straight one even if he haven't suspected his parent's forgery and was selling his Tacitus "bona fide". And if he did then it he was even more likely to. However but a story behind a find in Corvei strikingly resemble a story of a find in Herzfeld. And this is giving me an idea how Giovanni Francesco didn't know how he's selling a forged document. Otherwise he would care about coming up with more new and complex environment. It's not a good recommendation for a product - selling it in the same suspicious circumstances in which a poor quality product was once given from one's hands. Giovanni Francesco was rescuing his father's product from a bad name of "songs being sung about Tacitus" but he himself believed anyway both in the new Tacitus and the old one - so he considered a repetition of situation in which the first Tacitus was found to be the most convenient for a proof of authenticity and value of the new one" (ref 8, p 393-406).
Novel or history?
Hoshar and Ross also examined a question is this history or a novel lying in front of us with a "Tacitus" name. Numerous references to this being a novel indeed were even shown by Walter back then. "...He has put a series of considerations on display that by a common sense were undermining our trust in a Tacitus' story of Agrippina's death. If a legend could harmlessly stand (this was even before Hoshar and Ross - Auth) a hit of such a skillful and sure-shot hand then absolutely not a weakness of accusatory logic in Walter's evidences is to blame but a might of talent in Tacitus' story. In a tragic pages of his chronicle he usually fascinate reader so much that one almost stops caring how things really were and instead he wants them to be the way Tacitus commands him to believe. He's pressing you with an impression like a Shakespeare, Lev Tolstoy, Balzac so not only you have to find a big courage of "your own opinion" within themselves but also a significant proportion of healthy reasoned dryness so you can walk through a enchanted forest of his charms without succumbing to its beauties but variously armed with a doubt and an analysis" (ref 8 p 324). And after this enchantment is overshadowed, countless strangnesses rise from the depths of text instantly, asserting persistently how this is still a historical novel in front of us.
Hoshar and Ross list a huge number of these strangenesses, we will not dwell on it intentionally and will send an interested reader to studies of these specialist historians instead (also see ref 8 p 325-350). We will only bring up a summary for one of fragments - Agrippina's death described not only by Tacitus by the way but also Suetonius and Dio Cassius; so a suspicion of how we are dealing with a novel can be expanded on these studies too.
"So a series of doubtful and sometimes downright inconsistent details surrounding Agrippina's death in stories of three basic historians but mostly Tacitus is giving us a right to agree with conviction with opinions of scepticists attributing these legendary pages to an area of not documental history but historical novel. Fascination with an artistic beauty and intense language of Tacitus have led to how an artificial linkage of facts that were far from irreproachable even in terms of an artistic concept was covered from an aesthetical minds and minds of people addicted to ethical didactics and parables masked as facts. After all the only thing a historian can precisely and definitely assert about Agrippina's death - is that very thing that Walter has said even 150 years ago:

Horrified I acknowledge how Nero has given consent for a murder of his mother but I don't believe a single word in that story about the galley...

In our century of telegraph, telephone, quick publishing and wide publicity, after every death of a major political activist we still appear witnesses or readers to a swarm of legends surrounding it and quite frequently gaining such durability that even the most indubitable documental historical evidences cannot refute it later on... legend gets absorbed by a public opinion... where no documents and graphical facts present but only an instinct of public opinion whispering something... history inevitably becomes a neighbor to philistine gossip. Imagine how much stronger and more influential this process of "legend being created" should have been in a course of centuries when public opinion haven't had other instrument of its own forming except rumor and gossip..." (ref 8 p 350-351).
Hoshar has mentioned extremely strong similarity in language and tone of Poggio Bracciolini's own Latin pieces and compositions of Tacitus which is also interesting. In this connection we're getting quite curious (see ref 8 p 407) about Lanfane's (1661-1728) apologistical characterization of Poggio as a historian:

When you're reading him you can't avoid recognizing Titus Livius, Sallustius and the best Roman historians in him.

You can't say this any better!
Historians' treatment of Ross and Hoshar's conclusions
First time for Hoshar to suspect Tacitus' text in being amplified was after he has proven how famous fragment 15:44 in "Annals" by Tacitus appear to be a forgery. But only after several years Hoshar has finally understood how things are much more important here and this is not a matter of a single fragment but of an entire study.
Conclusions of Hoshar and Ross have naturally caused a storm of resentment in historians' camp but found a support too. Arthur Drews was one of people who were researching this matter for a long time. Not entirely sharing a basic statement of a forgery of an entire composition he has completely supported Hoshar on the matter of 15:44's forgery (we will remind you how this fragment tells about Christians and their mutual relations with Nero). But on the matter of Poggio Bracciolini's authorship Drews has took a cautious position not rejecting such possibility but also not rejecting how Bracciolini could create this remarkable amplification. (?-tr)
Amfiteatrov's reaction was quite characteristic. Not being able to counter Hoshar's arguments with anything weighty he's writing:

But more than anything and more powerful than anything - like a shield - five century old habit to Tacitus' authority, love and respect for strict and almost fearsome figure of Roman artist historian rises between us and Hoshar's theory...

(ref 8 p 409). Still understanding a handicap of this kind of declamation Amfiteatrov is offering his own theory for origin of manuscripts of Tacitus that does consider basic if not all the points of Hoshar's criticism. According to his opinion (see ref 8 p 413-423) clearly coming purely from his desire of "saving" Tacitus at any cost, both Medicean Copies appear to be Poggio's forgery who was still basing his work on a certain badly preserved exemplar of "genuine" Tacitus, Poggio has just (!) amplified and enlarged it also additionally composing many things into it. Amfiteatrov can't see how his attempt of reconciling both extreme viewpoints, just like it usually happens, doesn't actually solve anything. If Amfiteatrov is right then how can one determine what was additionally written by Poggio and what is a criteria for reliability of information "proto-Tacitus" contain? Who can guarantee that this "proto-Tacitus" assumed by Amfiteatrov wasn't composed by some dashing craftsman, so to speak, "proto-Poggio"?
That's why Amfiteatrov's viewpoint wasn't largely spread. Historians have preferred to ignore Hoshar and Ross's work even though, as we would like to emphasize, nobody has interposed any serious objections to Hoshar and Ross.
This is how Drews has described a situation formed after a work of these authors have appeared: "...we can see how a majority of theologists swear about authenticity of Tacitus' evidence and that's why they also brand my suspicion about this authenticity as a trespass of "historical science" and as a peak of unscientific" (ref 36 p 27).
Professor Weise was especially irritated. How Drews reports "...at Mannheim's meeting of protest he was stating how that Frenchman Hoshar that I was referring to, among other things, "has made his position in science impossible" with how he has considered an entire "excellent" composition of Tacitus to be a forgery of XV-XVI century. After this Weise exclaims pathetically: "You all can see what kind of authorities Drews is following!" (ref 36 p 29). We can see how all these "protests" boil down to just a bare statements how "this is impossible" which is of course first and natural psychological reaction. But a priori negative treatment of Hoshar's vast and minutely argumented theory still causes surprise. Drews rightly writes:
"I'm unable to comprehend how can they without reading Hoshar still have a courage to express this kind of judgment about him. Even if I would know about Hoshar's sharply critical treatment of Tacitus, still I wouldn't consider myself to have a right to write off his research on a matter of explored fragment like his educated German critics do. I would consider Hoshar... expressing such a sharp consideration about Tacitus to obviously have his own grounds to do this. Talking about German critics of Hoshar who don't know him and look to this foreign scientist top down so superciliously, I could only give them an advice of engaging into studying his pieces immediately because they can learn much useful for themselves from it" (ref 36 p 30).
"...Anyway those German scientists whose suspicion about authenticity of this place in Tacitus (about fragment 15:44 - Auth) haven't appeared yet doesn't have a slightest right to shrug with a look expressing regret and compassion for this "frivolous" Frenchman. So when Hoshar's select and possibly controversial statements were standing out of the picture during a fight around "The Myth of Christ" and then supplied with notes discrediting them they were sent to press to put a public to sleep so this way negligibility and low value of Hoshar's argumentation could be illustrated, then this is still not a "Fair play" at all and ways of fighting like this are straight indecent. Otherwise where can one find such a scientific study whose value couldn't be dropped this way in the eyes of masses unable for independent judgment? And who can say that until now as well as in this case just like it was more than once, "the science" wasn't dwelling in power of hypnosis strengthened by a habit if this science have considered Tacitus' story authentic without any critical check? Let the people also not forget how tightly this story is connected with an entire Christianic understanding of history and how much first and foremost religious education and The Church were interested in any doubt about it not appearing. That passionate temper these bidden and unbidden ones have shown when they have stood up for Tacitus during last year wasn't coming from a pure historical interest anyway but rather from interest of belief" (ref 36 p 45). (so church was actually interested in pagan manuscripts? - Translator)
Interesting thing about Drews' analysis is its demonstration of causes leading to all the statements similar to Hoshar and Ross' statements' a priori "in arms" perception - religious education of majority of the scientists of that period have led to a situation of everything contradicting the church's tradition was causing an instinctive aversion for any argumentation. Because even as long ago as Herman Schiller was pointing out strange contradictions in text of Tacitus.
"...it looks like in a course of an entire The Middle Ages nobody was interested in this fragment by the roman historiographer, a fragment that was highly important for history and glory of the church; but there's more, people were just making a guesses of its existence until they have finally read it in the only exemplar of Tacitus back then, so-called The Second Medicean Copy printed in Venice around 1470 by brothers Johannes and Wendeline Speyer after which all the rest of manuscripts appear to be a simple copies of it" (ref 36 p 45-46).
"The Chronicle" by Sulpicius Sever (allegedly died in 408 AD) also says of persecution of Christians during Nero. So a question how this "chronicle" have come to the attention of history is interesting. It turns out there is only one manuscript of this "chronicle" exist, attributed by historians to XI century AD and currently kept in Vatican.
"So in a course of an entire The Middle Ages this composition was almost unknown and nobody suspected a roman persecution of the Christians mentioned in it. It looks like just thankfully to some kind of a good fortune this was the exact manuscript that have got in Poggio's hands so he could read it" (ref 36 p 261).
Further on Drews makes a comment "how Tacitus is absolutely not a "excellent" historiographer in a sense of an objective reporter but with his sharply pronounced personality addicted to a gloomy conception of life he appear as highly subjective storyteller achieving for strong, vivid effects and gloomy mood and whose depiction, especially in a case of The Roman Emperors can only be taken with a great caution - all the historians agree about this and this is also not unknown for theologists. But when he's reporting something in their favor then they sing hymns of praise to an "excellence" of this Roman historiographer" (ref 36 p 258).
After Hoshar's works have appeared, historians who have risen in their arms against him were also accusing him how because of his ignorance he was the first to have a doubt in authenticity of Tacitus' books. This is how Drews has commented this:
"...So this is just not true that everyone keeps triumphantly stating how no philologist have ever challenged an authenticity of Tacitus' excerpt. I pity German philologists though because for example American mathematician Smith in his book of "Esse Deus" has brought up an entire series of purely philological considerations against authenticity of this excerpt..." (ref 36 p 258).
Conclusion
Of course conclusions of Ross and Hoshar don’t have and can't possibly have an indisputability of, say, mathematical evidence. Still strange how it was actually completely ignored by subsequent historians who haven't interposed - we repeat this once more - not even a single worthy objection.
However considerations of Ross and Hoshar anyway lay a heavy shadow of suspicion on an authenticity of Tacitus and ancient authors he's connected with by reciprocal references. Doubts of authenticity for other ancient authors "found" by Poggio also appear.
How did it happen that Poggio's forgery wasn't exposed immediately?
To sort this out it wouldn’t be redundant to previously familiarize yourself - at least in short - with a history of an entirety of all the Litheraturical forgeries (and forgeries of "historical documents" at the same time).
References

Few individuals who never set down a single note onto a musical staff have had as large of an impact on music as Metastasio, the preeminent opera librettist of the eighteenth century. Metastasio’s poetry served as the basis for hundreds of compositions [actually, by this count, the number is 1,211] by the leading composers of the 18th and early 19th centuries, his works were regarded by the likes of Voltaire and Rousseau as literary masterpieces and were widely read by the literary public of the eighteenth century. Anyone who was anyone in the musical world (and worked with Italian texts) grappled with Metastasio’s texts: including Handel, Vivaldi, Hasse, Pergolesi, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Rossini, and Meyerbeer. And yet, he is only known to the general public today because of Mozart’s final opera, Metastasio’s La clemenza di Tito. But as the most prestigious musical art of the day, Metastasian opera seria must be regarded as the cornerstone of European music making in the eighteenth century, especially between 1720 and 1780.
In recent years, Metastasio’s status has been reclaimed somewhat by an increase in recordings of his libretti. This post provides a list of 5 essential recordings of Metastasian opera, along with 4 honorable mentions. I adore each of these operas, so I don't believe you can go wrong with any of them. I have chosen to omit Mozart from this list as I assume no one needs to be told that Clemenza is worth listening to.

1. Hasse - Cleofide

[Amazon Link]
This CD captures everything that's fantastic about opera seria. The music is catchy and fun, sweet and affecting, and performed with an enthusiastic fire that can make you believe you are hearing a work that is hot off the presses! Following the triumph of Artaserse (see #3 below), Hasse was called to Dresden as court composer for August the Strong. Cleofide constitutes his "victory lap," and the full force of his musical genius is brought to bear on this dazzling Metastasian libretto. We need only to hear the bristling electricity of “Generoso risvegliati, o core” or the sensuous charm of “Pupillette vezzosette” to understand how this music seized upon the hearts and ears of Europeans for over half a century! The cast is stunning throughout, but it is the inimitable Emma Kirkby as the titular Cleofide (created originally by Hasse’s wife, Faustina Bordoni) who steals the show, but with her sensibility rather than pyrotechnics. What could be sweeter than her “Digli ch’io son fedele” or more charming than her “Se troppo crede al ciglio”?
The original run of this CD from the 80s is out of print, but I recommend getting ahold of it if you can (I got mine new from a 3rd party seller on Amazon for cheaper than one of the newer reprints)! The booklet is very well put together, with an enlightening introductory essay by Reinhard Strohm (whose book Dramma per musica is a fantastic read for those interested in the style), in addition to a facsimile of the original 1731 libretto accompanied by translations. But in any format, Cleofide as the first and still one of the best major recordings of a true Metastasian opera forms an essential backbone to any eighteenth century opera collection, and is a worthy addition to your more general musical catalogue as well! I invite you to spend three delightful hours in the warm embrace of Hasse’s music. To round out an enjoyable evening, I recommend bringing a score (published by Carus Verlag in a modern critical edition) and/or libretto, a nice Cabernet, and some cheese or charcuterie.

2. Vinci - Artaserse

[Amazon Link]
Artaserse is, in many ways, the Metastasian libretto. It was set to music a whopping 68 times by the likes of Gluck, JC Bach, Piccini, Paisiello, Galuppi, and Cimarosa (many of Mozart’s first arias were to texts from this libretto, though he never set it in full). And it isn't hard to see why, given the intensity of the drama combined with the stunning lyricism of its arias. I know of no better plot summary than that given in the blurb for Artaserse, the graphic novel

When the grand vizier Artabano masterminds a plot to murder the king of Persia and stage a coup, he swiftly finds events spiralling out of control. The young prince Artaserse, oblivious to his vizier's treachery, swears to avenge himself on his father's murderer. But, due to a tragic coincidence, all the evidence seems to point to Arbace, Artaserse's best friend and Artabano's only son. Now Artaserse must choose whether to believe his eyes or his heart, and Artabano must decide how far he is prepared to go in pursuit of his ambitions.

The version recorded here is the libretto’s first setting, which just so happens to be the final composition by the veritable father of the galant style, Leonardo Vinci. It is Vinci’s musical language that was carried off to the ends of the world as a paragon of the new Galant style, and which was subsequently developed by Hasse, Pergolesi (who was likely Vinci’s student), and others. Hasse might be a touch sweeter than Vinci, but few composers can match Vinci’s skill for succinct bursts of dramatic energy. Witness the showstopping power of “Vol solcando un mar crudele” (this is a video recording of the opera by the same cast, though I am not a fan of many of the staging choices), which Andre Gretry, writing in 1797, called “the fist scene that was made in music, the first ray of light towards the truth.” This statement, made 67 years after the opera’s first performance, attests to the lasting impression Vinci’s opera made upon the musical world.
One unique feature of this recording is its all-male cast. The opera premiered in Rome, where women were forbidden from appearing on stage, making this revival a perfect vehicle for a rising generation of countertenors. Franco Fagioli, see the excerpt above, plays a powerful and convincing Arbace, though his vibrato is a bit much for me in more intimate contexts. Philippe Jaroussky is a stellar Artaserse, squeezing every ounce of sensibility from his performance of the prince. He is wonderful, for instance in the aching “Deh respirar lasciatemi”, an aria built out of Artaserse’s plea for a reprieve, overwhelmed by the revelation that his dear friend Arbace has been charged with murdering his father (for context, here's the entire scene). Observe how Artaserse carves out the exact sort of “breathing room” he claims to need at this moment by pulling out of the plot-driven world of recitative. In other words, this aria doesn't just tell us of Artaserse’s need to breathe, but actually fulfills that need by allowing him to retreat momentarily from the drama.

3. Hasse - Artaserse

[Amazon Link]
Premiering just weeks after Vinci's setting, Hasse's Venetian Artaserse provides a wonderful window into the artistic dialogue that swirled around these texts. Hasse's version is quite distinct from Vinci's (perhaps even moreso than later settings of the same libretto): the women are portrayed by women, Prince Artaserse has been altered from a castrato to a Tenor (emphasizing his role as a ruler rather than as a youth), and several arias are cut or replaced. We lose the epic scale of "Vol solcando" but gain the heartfelt "Per questo dolce amplesso" and the spectacular "Parto quel pastorello," both for Farinelli, who created the role of Arbace for Hasse. Franco Fagioli returns as Arbace on this recording, forging another link between Hasse and Vinci's operas.
I must say that this CD is on the list for its historical importance as a counterpart to Vinci's Artaserse, in addition to the power of Hasse’s music. However, if I were creating this list based solely on the intrinsic quality of each recording, this release would not have made the cut. The CD is recorded live and the audio quality is passable at best (see the excerpts linked above). The cast is likewise far weaker than the stellar group of countertenors arrayed for Vinci's setting. Finally, the physical media leaves much to be desired: the Box and CD artwork feels very cheap, the booklet contains only a track listing, and they don't even include a libretto (though one does exist on the publisher's website). Nonetheless, the brilliance of Hasse's score and the value of having two takes on a single libretto earn this CD a spot on the shelf, at least until the opera receives a better recording. (A far better recording of an Artaserse, but of a setting that is of less historical interest, is that of Terradellas's that is included in the honorable mentions).

4. Mazzoni - Aminta [Il re pastore]

[Amazon Link]
Juan-Bautista Otero is a remarkable young musicologist & conductor based out of Madrid. For the last decade, Otero has been recording productions of galant opera and, what is more, publishing modern editions of these works. No other person active in the field today has done more, in my estimation, to make this repertoire accessible to both scholars and listeners. Otero does not conduct an ensemble of international renown, nor does he contract the biggest stars to sing in his productions, but it's easy to be fooled on both counts as you listen to his recordings! His interpretations crackle with energy and vitality, his casts are both powerful and sensitive, and the quality of the recordings themselves is top notch.
It was hard to decide between his recording of Mazzoni’s Il re pastore (the recording alters the name to Aminta) and that of Terradellas’s Artaserse for this list. Both are mid-century works by composers that should really be known better than they are currently, and both scores are masterfully constructed. I settled on Mazzoni in order to increase the diversity of libretti on the list, but both CDs are well worth your time (Terradellas’s is included in the honorable mentions below). Mazzoni’s language is delightfully rich and variegated. Note the subtle way Mazzoni accelerates through the declamation of the opening line of “Di tante sue procelle”, or the wonderful collapse into the minor mode as the singer seizes upon a climactic high note (around 2:28). Unfortunately, that is the only aria on YouTube, but you can hear other lovely excerpts on Otero’s website.

5. Jommelli - Didone abbandonata

[Amazon Link]
Did you know that Dorothea Roschmann sang galant opera? Well, she did! And she is brilliant here as Dido. Didone abbandonata is Metastasio's first full-blown opera libretto, and is one of two to end in recitative with the suicide of its titular character (the other one is Catone in Utica, see honorable mentions). The peculiarities of Metastasio’s libretto along with Roschmann's brilliant performance are enough to justify the purchase, but Jommelli is far from a secondary player here. Premiering in 1763, just one year after Gluck's Orfeo, Jommelli's Didone is a testament to opera seria’s lasting ability to enchant audiences and radically affect their sensibilities.
This is Jommelli's second take on the Didone libretto, given at Stuttgart in 1763 (his first was for Rome in 1747). Metastasio's libretto provides Jommelli with ample opportunity to display his mastery of the dramatic language of accompanied recitative. Note how we slip almost imperceptibly into the aria's first number (Aeneas's fragmented “Dovrei... Ma no…”), such that it's hard to pinpoint where the language of recitative ends and that of the aria begins. Don't miss out on the climactic final scene, where it is now Dido who sings a fragmentary cavatina that collapses back into recitative. I won’t spoil that moment for you, but I will give you one more taste of Jommelli’s (and Roeschmann’s) brilliance with the gorgeous cavatina that launches the final scene group, “Va crescendo il mio tormento”.

Honorable mentions:

Galuppi - La clemenza di Tito

• Though known today largely as a pioneer of comic opera, Galuppi was an absolute master of the serious style as well. Clemenza is his only Metastasian opera on CD, and it contains a number of very nice arias, such as “Deh, se piacer mi vuoi” and “Del piu sublime soglio”. It can be strange to hear these lines that we are so familiar with from Mozart interpreted in a very different light! (As a side note, if this were a DVD recommendation thread, I wouldn’t let you leave this thread unless you had Galuppi’s Olimpiade in your possession!)

Vinci - Catone in Utica

• Though Artaserse is perhaps the stronger libretto, Vinci’s score for Catone in Utica is in many ways more compelling. It boasts a host of superb arias like the wistful “E in ogni core diverso amore” and the jaw dropping Dovea svenarti allora

Hasse - Siroe

• This opera contains what might be my single favorite pair of adjacent arias in any opera that I know of. In the middle of Act 3, Hasse amps us up to 11 with with the head bangin’ “Che furia, che mosto”, and then somehow expects us to be emotionally capable of grappling with “Gelido in ogni vena“, an aria that I simply cannot find the appropriate words to describe. Before playing those videos in sequence, I recommend disabling your 1-click settings on Amazon.

Terradellas - Artaserse

• Terradellas’s setting of Artaserse echoes that of Vinci in many respects. I am quite taken with Terradellas’s handling of Semira’s music, which is simply stunning throughout his setting. To give you just a taste, here’s her arias “Torna innocente, e poi” and “L’augellin ch’e in lacci stretto”.

Few individuals who never set down a single note onto a musical staff have had as large of an impact on music as Metastasio, the preeminent opera librettist of the eighteenth century. Metastasio’s poetry served as the basis for hundreds of compositions [actually, by this count, the number is 1,211] by the leading composers of the 18th and early 19th centuries, his works were regarded by the likes of Voltaire and Rousseau as literary masterpieces and were widely read by the literary public of the eighteenth century. Anyone who was anyone in the musical world (and worked with Italian texts) grappled with Metastasio’s texts: including Handel, Vivaldi, Hasse, Pergolesi, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Rossini, and Meyerbeer. And yet, he is only known to the general public today because of Mozart’s final opera, Metastasio’s La clemenza di Tito. But as the most prestigious musical art of the day, Metastasian opera seria must be regarded as the cornerstone of European music making in the eighteenth century, especially between 1720 and 1780.
In recent years, Metastasio’s status has been reclaimed somewhat by an increase in recordings of his libretti. This post provides a list of 5 essential recordings of Metastasian opera, along with 4 honorable mentions. I adore each of these operas, so I don't believe you can go wrong with any of them. I have chosen to omit Mozart from this list as I assume no one needs to be told that Clemenza is worth listening to.

1. Hasse - Cleofide

[Amazon Link]
This CD captures everything that's fantastic about opera seria. The music is catchy and fun, sweet and affecting, and performed with an enthusiastic fire that can make you believe you are hearing a work that is hot off the presses! Following the triumph of Artaserse (see #3 below), Hasse was called to Dresden as court composer for August the Strong. Cleofide constitutes his "victory lap," and the full force of his musical genius is brought to bear on this dazzling Metastasian libretto. We need only to hear the bristling electricity of “Generoso risvegliati, o core” or the sensuous charm of “Pupillette vezzosette” to understand how this music seized upon the hearts and ears of Europeans for over half a century! The cast is stunning throughout, but it is the inimitable Emma Kirkby as the titular Cleofide (created originally by Hasse’s wife, Faustina Bordoni) who steals the show, but with her sensibility rather than pyrotechnics. What could be sweeter than her “Digli ch’io son fedele” or more charming than her “Se troppo crede al ciglio”?
The original run of this CD from the 80s is out of print, but I recommend getting ahold of it if you can (I got mine new from a 3rd party seller on Amazon for cheaper than one of the newer reprints)! The booklet is very well put together, with an enlightening introductory essay by Reinhard Strohm (whose book Dramma per musica is a fantastic read for those interested in the style), in addition to a facsimile of the original 1731 libretto accompanied by translations. But in any format, Cleofide as the first and still one of the best major recordings of a true Metastasian opera forms an essential backbone to any eighteenth century opera collection, and is a worthy addition to your more general musical catalogue as well! I invite you to spend three delightful hours in the warm embrace of Hasse’s music. To round out an enjoyable evening, I recommend bringing a score (published by Carus Verlag in a modern critical edition) and/or libretto, a nice Cabernet, and some cheese or charcuterie.

2. Vinci - Artaserse

[Amazon Link]
Artaserse is, in many ways, the Metastasian libretto. It was set to music a whopping 68 times by the likes of Gluck, JC Bach, Piccini, Paisiello, Galuppi, and Cimarosa (many of Mozart’s first arias were to texts from this libretto, though he never set it in full). And it isn't hard to see why, given the intensity of the drama combined with the stunning lyricism of its arias. I know of no better plot summary than that given in the blurb for Artaserse, the graphic novel

When the grand vizier Artabano masterminds a plot to murder the king of Persia and stage a coup, he swiftly finds events spiralling out of control. The young prince Artaserse, oblivious to his vizier's treachery, swears to avenge himself on his father's murderer. But, due to a tragic coincidence, all the evidence seems to point to Arbace, Artaserse's best friend and Artabano's only son. Now Artaserse must choose whether to believe his eyes or his heart, and Artabano must decide how far he is prepared to go in pursuit of his ambitions.

The version recorded here is the libretto’s first setting, which just so happens to be the final composition by the veritable father of the galant style, Leonardo Vinci. It is Vinci’s musical language that was carried off to the ends of the world as a paragon of the new Galant style, and which was subsequently developed by Hasse, Pergolesi (who was likely Vinci’s student), and others. Hasse might be a touch sweeter than Vinci, but few composers can match Vinci’s skill for succinct bursts of dramatic energy. Witness the showstopping power of “Vol solcando un mar crudele” (this is a video recording of the opera by the same cast, though I am not a fan of many of the staging choices), which Andre Gretry, writing in 1797, called “the fist scene that was made in music, the first ray of light towards the truth.” This statement, made 67 years after the opera’s first performance, attests to the lasting impression Vinci’s opera made upon the musical world.
One unique feature of this recording is its all-male cast. The opera premiered in Rome, where women were forbidden from appearing on stage, making this revival a perfect vehicle for a rising generation of countertenors. Franco Fagioli, see the excerpt above, plays a powerful and convincing Arbace, though his vibrato is a bit much for me in more intimate contexts. Philippe Jaroussky is a stellar Artaserse, squeezing every ounce of sensibility from his performance of the prince. He is wonderful, for instance in the aching “Deh respirar lasciatemi”, an aria built out of Artaserse’s plea for a reprieve, overwhelmed by the revelation that his dear friend Arbace has been charged with murdering his father (for context, here's the entire scene). Observe how Artaserse carves out the exact sort of “breathing room” he claims to need at this moment by pulling out of the plot-driven world of recitative. In other words, this aria doesn't just tell us of Artaserse’s need to breathe, but actually fulfills that need by allowing him to retreat momentarily from the drama.

3. Hasse - Artaserse

[Amazon Link]
Premiering just weeks after Vinci's setting, Hasse's Venetian Artaserse provides a wonderful window into the artistic dialogue that swirled around these texts. Hasse's version is quite distinct from Vinci's (perhaps even moreso than later settings of the same libretto): the women are portrayed by women, Prince Artaserse has been altered from a castrato to a Tenor (emphasizing his role as a ruler rather than as a youth), and several arias are cut or replaced. We lose the epic scale of "Vol solcando" but gain the heartfelt "Per questo dolce amplesso" and the spectacular "Parto quel pastorello," both for Farinelli, who created the role of Arbace for Hasse. Franco Fagioli returns as Arbace on this recording, forging another link between Hasse and Vinci's operas.
I must say that this CD is on the list for its historical importance as a counterpart to Vinci's Artaserse, in addition to the power of Hasse’s music. However, if I were creating this list based solely on the intrinsic quality of each recording, this release would not have made the cut. The CD is recorded live and the audio quality is passable at best (see the excerpts linked above). The cast is likewise far weaker than the stellar group of countertenors arrayed for Vinci's setting. Finally, the physical media leaves much to be desired: the Box and CD artwork feels very cheap, the booklet contains only a track listing, and they don't even include a libretto (though one does exist on the publisher's website). Nonetheless, the brilliance of Hasse's score and the value of having two takes on a single libretto earn this CD a spot on the shelf, at least until the opera receives a better recording. (A far better recording of an Artaserse, but of a setting that is of less historical interest, is that of Terradellas's that is included in the honorable mentions).

4. Mazzoni - Aminta [Il re pastore]

[Amazon Link]
Juan-Bautista Otero is a remarkable young musicologist & conductor based out of Madrid. For the last decade, Otero has been recording productions of galant opera and, what is more, publishing modern editions of these works. No other person active in the field today has done more, in my estimation, to make this repertoire accessible to both scholars and listeners. Otero does not conduct an ensemble of international renown, nor does he contract the biggest stars to sing in his productions, but it's easy to be fooled on both counts as you listen to his recordings! His interpretations crackle with energy and vitality, his casts are both powerful and sensitive, and the quality of the recordings themselves is top notch.
It was hard to decide between his recording of Mazzoni’s Il re pastore (the recording alters the name to Aminta) and that of Terradellas’s Artaserse for this list. Both are mid-century works by composers that should really be known better than they are currently, and both scores are masterfully constructed. I settled on Mazzoni in order to increase the diversity of libretti on the list, but both CDs are well worth your time (Terradellas’s is included in the honorable mentions below). Mazzoni’s language is delightfully rich and variegated. Note the subtle way Mazzoni accelerates through the declamation of the opening line of “Di tante sue procelle”, or the wonderful collapse into the minor mode as the singer seizes upon a climactic high note (around 2:28). Unfortunately, that is the only aria on YouTube, but you can hear other lovely excerpts on Otero’s website.

5. Jommelli - Didone abbandonata

[Amazon Link]
Did you know that Dorothea Roschmann sang galant opera? Well, she did! And she is brilliant here as Dido. Didone abbandonata is Metastasio's first full-blown opera libretto, and is one of two to end in recitative with the suicide of its titular character (the other one is Catone in Utica, see honorable mentions). The peculiarities of Metastasio’s libretto along with Roschmann's brilliant performance are enough to justify the purchase, but Jommelli is far from a secondary player here. Premiering in 1763, just one year after Gluck's Orfeo, Jommelli's Didone is a testament to opera seria’s lasting ability to enchant audiences and radically affect their sensibilities.
This is Jommelli's second take on the Didone libretto, given at Stuttgart in 1763 (his first was for Rome in 1747). Metastasio's libretto provides Jommelli with ample opportunity to display his mastery of the dramatic language of accompanied recitative. Note how we slip almost imperceptibly into the aria's first number (Aeneas's fragmented “Dovrei... Ma no…”), such that it's hard to pinpoint where the language of recitative ends and that of the aria begins. Don't miss out on the climactic final scene, where it is now Dido who sings a fragmentary cavatina that collapses back into recitative. I won’t spoil that moment for you, but I will give you one more taste of Jommelli’s (and Roeschmann’s) brilliance with the gorgeous cavatina that launches the final scene group, “Va crescendo il mio tormento”.

Honorable mentions:

Galuppi - La clemenza di Tito

• Though known today largely as a pioneer of comic opera, Galuppi was an absolute master of the serious style as well. Clemenza is his only Metastasian opera on CD, and it contains a number of very nice arias, such as “Deh, se piacer mi vuoi” and “Del piu sublime soglio”. It can be strange to hear these lines that we are so familiar with from Mozart interpreted in a very different light! (As a side note, if this were a DVD recommendation thread, I wouldn’t let you leave this thread unless you had Galuppi’s Olimpiade in your possession!)

Vinci - Catone in Utica

• Though Artaserse is perhaps the stronger libretto, Vinci’s score for Catone in Utica is in many ways more compelling. It boasts a host of superb arias like the wistful “E in ogni core diverso amore” and the jaw dropping Dovea svenarti allora

Hasse - Siroe

• This opera contains what might be my single favorite pair of adjacent arias in any opera that I know of. In the middle of Act 3, Hasse amps us up to 11 with with the head bangin’ “Che furia, che mosto”, and then somehow expects us to be emotionally capable of grappling with “Gelido in ogni vena“, an aria that I simply cannot find the appropriate words to describe. Before playing those videos in sequence, I recommend disabling your 1-click settings on Amazon.

Terradellas - Artaserse

• Terradellas’s setting of Artaserse echoes that of Vinci in many respects. I am quite taken with Terradellas’s handling of Semira’s music, which is simply stunning throughout his setting. To give you just a taste, here’s her arias “Torna innocente, e poi” and “L’augellin ch’e in lacci stretto”.