[Vision2020] Jury awards $11.3M....& the FBI -- MY LAST REPLY TO GARY CRABTREE

[Michael]

Gary,

 

I will respond to you this one last time in the effort to make sure that I
was clear enough in my previous response. I conclude with a robust answer to
your "question," by merely copying my answer to Leithart when he asked this
same question back in February. 

 

You first attempt to defend you slanderous insinuation that I am a person
who refuses to address questions and concerns that follow controversial
claims.  This is a ludicrous smear, and everybody on the list knows it. This
is why I do not care what the regulars see you writing about me; I care
about the possibility that your intentionally libelous comments about me
will remain in the internet world. You say that on two different dates you
found some instances of your "Mentioning in such a way to beg a response."
This is no doubt helpfully ambiguous Gary, but whatever its meaning, it is
certainly not equivalent to your original claim: "I also note that you have
yet to back away from, or explain in any manner, a remark I have questioned
you about repeatedly."  Mentioning in such a way to beg a response is
clearly not the same kind of action as questioning repeatedly.  Yet, even
though my primary hobby in life is answering every question and objection
anyone brings my way (I have a web site dedicated to this and this has been
my continual practice here at Vision 2020), you continue with this
slanderous smear in this latest post of yours. You now write: "It seems
clear that despite your supposed willingness to provide *answers,* ones
health would be jeopardized by holding their breath *waiting for them.* I
can only surmise from your inability or unwillingness to respond that *your
claims are lacking* in merit."  You are asserting something about me that
you know is utterly false; this is called intentional libel, and you are the
only person who writes here, to my knowledge, that regularly engages in this
kind of behavior. 

 

You then proceed to defend your more obtuse libel by admitting, "I was a tad
fanciful." Sorry, Gary, but what you said was not "a tad fanciful," but
rather a knowingly deceitful attack on my very sanity. Making knowingly
false claims about someone's basic "mental health" is little different than
informing Vision 2020 that you saw me having sex with a woman who was not my
wife last night when you in fact knew that you saw no such thing.  Yanking
my statement out of even the very sentence in which it was originally found,
you quote me:

 

"I'd imagine that some interested parties will soon be the FBI and the CIA."

 

And you were sure to fill the readers in on a made up story about what I was
talking about here:

 

".assertion that federal law enforcement and intelligence gathering
organizations would have even a glimmering of interest in the trials and
travails of poor Michael and his never ending dramas...When someone
hyperventilates to the point of imagining so much greater a public
involvement then their private molehill warrants, it's easy to see where the
mental disorder remarks might start to filter in."

 

You knew full well that my comment was not stating that I did in fact
believe that the current state of Christ Church made probable the current
interest of the FBI; and you knew full well that the reasons I gave for why
the FBI could potentially become interested in the future had nothing to do
with myself or my life story.  And yet this is precisely what told the
reader was the case. Your malicious intentions in doing this were made
explicit by your conclusion that claims about my "mental disorder" where
therefore justified.  This is gross and intentional libel, and again, of the
sort I do not believe anyone on this list is culpable of but yourself.  And
I note that other than Donovan, you are the only non-Kirker here on Vision
2020 that consistently identifies himself with Wilson's own tactics and
self-defense. 

 

This is why I refuse to dialog with you any further.  If you every want to
meet privately, in a setting where your dishonest statements about me will
not remain as public record, I would be happy to buy you a couple beers at
Bucers.

 

In conclusion, I want to assure those actually reading this that if I
thought someone asked a sincere question in June about my comment regarding
the FBI  I would have most likely merely forwarded  my reply to Leithart's
posing of this very question back in February (!). Here is my response to
Leithart's question about this statement in a private email last February:

 

[my statement in context:] 

 

"If the Kirk is able to keep notching up the strange combination of an
unanchored theonomy, the ad hoc theology of the local Enemy, imprecatory
prayers, the cultish inability for kirkers to think when their leader is
criticized, an elitist school, Wilson's "I'm Jesus" epistemology, and a
sanctified practice of serrated insult (against believers, non-believers,
ex-members, churches, city counsel members, you name it) I'd imagine that
some interested parties will soon be the FBI and the CIA."

 

[my explanation to Leithart:] 

 

1. Theonomy is violent punishment for practices that many of the 'Enemy'
perform.

 

2. This theonomy is unanchored: Wilson cannot retract, yet always morphs to
meet the occasion; he is intellectually dishonest and has given sufficient
evidence to the fact that if he was in more power, whatever 'hedges' he's
made (some of which he has already retracted when it was fitting) cannot be
trusted.  

 

3. The cultish intellectual behavior of the followers gives Wilson more
power and the ability to further extreme versions of the 'enemy' theology
(which is already nuts).

 

4. I would 'be surprised' if the imprecatory prayers (particularly
considering who they addressed) are not already 'on the radar' in
Washington-I'm embarrassed to be a member of Christ Church on this score
(and there is more to the way these rituals functioned than the mere fact of
the prayers).

 

5. Wilson's 'epistemology' is psychopathic and scary.  Whatever comes into
his gray matter is absolute certainty and qualifies him yet again for the
status of extreme sage. 

 

6. The serrated edge is explicitly built on'sociology of violence' and is a
clear rhetorical foretaste of more gruesome measures that Wilson is clearly
capable of. 

 

7. NSA is highly elitist and closed; and this is a self-asserted status,
before letting the world give it.  

 

I guess I don't see how *the combination* of these things, *if fostered even
more,* would not end up an item of serious concern for the authorities.
What is so hard connecting the dots here?  Off the cliff Leader, cultish
following, elitism, unanchored theonomy, a grotesque defensive theology of
the local 'enemy,' and the sanctification of violent rhetoric towards those
who challenge?  I can't imagine a better social crock pot for the next
national headlines!  Of course, not in the form of Waco, but rather the form
of a refined, classically trained, Nazi Germany-albeit one that will of
course never get off the ground in a wonderful nation like ours.

 

Of course, this is not my general rhetorical stance, particularly since I'm
interested in convincing those in the kirk too.  But I think it is safe to
say that conceptually, the conditional statement I used with respect to the
combination of all the items on my list do not make my inference with
respect to the FBI at all unfounded.  You know that Wilson explained to us
that the FBI was already here checking things out, right?  I stated this
fact in my 'sermon' and nobody questioned its veracity. 

 

Yours,

Michael

 

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