Dear Sir,
It has come to my attention that you have been operating under assumptions that are miscalibrated for our times. I am writing to you today to help you re-orient your understandings to match the updated realities under which we now incontrovertibly live. You will remember the incident five years ago? You thought there was nothing to learn from. That was not “an exception that proved the rule” as you claimed at the time. It was a signpost that read: these times. Woe befall any who do not read the signs, that’s what those who have left implied. Listen to them, you still have the records. To hear is an art that may come with extra time, but to ignore is a stone that never moves. I know you don’t like flowery language, you thought Hemmingway was the man. But hear the nuance on the winds, understand that things may not be as you’ve seen. You are at risk of being Chamberlain (not that you’re at risk of being Churchill); and not in the “should have been more aggressive” sense, but in the “should have heard the wind and closed the shutters” sense. The storm is upon us and you continue to feast and smoke your cigar (I know how much you love metaphors). You do not need to be the solution incarnate to our challenges, that is not how it works (I know how much you claim to love history). You just need to start doing something that seems to acknowledge the precarity of our circumstance, the criticality of this moment. Make a move. Go in a direction. You can reckon without dying and with a cloudy sky, I know you can. Do you know how to move forward? Are you stuck entirely in the way you’ve been? I know things have come easily and that you become irate when people say “I know” about ineffable things like your thoughts and life. But have some perspective, I’m offering it, for free. There may be no such thing as a free meal (as you remind everyone), and I’m getting what I want from this missive too, but you need to get a grip, get whatever cliché you need to see things a little differently than you apparently do. I can only write and listen and argue, but I am here to do more of all three. We can do what must be done. The question is: will you?
Your not particularly humble fellow, Provocateur
Roman Ryan 