Jeff Seiler: Dave Sim & Me

JEFF SEILER:

Hello, everyone out there in AMOC land! Per a joint decision by Dave Sim and myself, I would like to humbly request feedback on the following question:

Would you rather see these weekly posts of Dave Sim letters in chronological order (as they more or less have been posted so far), or would you rather see random posts from any place throughout the 11-year correspondence?

Argument for chronological:  It gives a glimpse into the evolution of a long-term relationship as it unfolded over time, and it is posted as that evolution occurred--sequentially.

Argument for random:  Randomness keeps things hopping and we don't have to wait it out through three or four weeks of posts of letters that are all about the same thing/s.

So, please, everyone who could give the hindquarters of a rodent, please vote here in the comments section to this post -- vote early and vote often. Once a week's worth of votes are in, I'll let Dave know. We now returned you to your regularly scheduled programming...

JEFF SEILER:

Eleven years ago, when Cerebus ended, Dave Sim decided to answer all of his back mail. A month or so later, he had his "Jeff Seiler Day" in which he answered multiple letters I had written over the previous year. After I received that letter, I decided to keep writing, and he kept his promise to answer every letter he received. Now, I have a foot-high stack of letters written and received over 10 years or so. I'll be running interesting excerpts from those letters each week.

Today’s letter is from Dave to me is dated 12 April, 2005. It does not have a postmark or stamp on the envelope because Dave delivered it by hand, along with some others he also delivered by hand to other Cerebites, at the S.P.A.C.E convention in Columbus, Ohio, in late April that year. It was my first year of attending S.P.A.C.E. If memory serves, that was also the year that I witnessed him handing off several of his notebooks to Margaret for scanning, some pages of which you have seen and more of which you will continue to see every Thursday, here at AMOC. Okay, on to the letter:

12 April 05

Dear Jeff:

Thanks for your letter and enclosures of March 27. I’m afraid I’m a little “under the weather” and trying to stay pasted together long enough to make it through the S.P.A.C.E weekend, so this is going to be less thorough than I would’ve liked.

The Sally Quinn column [Ed: a clipping I sent him]

Yes, it seems to me just basic embarrassment at how the whole thing is hatching out. It seems to me that it is one of the givens of gender relations that we’ll just have to suck it up and not make a big deal about the waste of thirty-five years of human civilization (or however many years it takes) while we all tried to glue together this complete feminist misapprehension. It also seems to me a bad sign the she refers to men as “poor devils”. The feminists are completely wrong [she writes], that doesn’t mean they’re going to give up without a fight. Exactly the opposite. The profound level of feminist chauvinism means at least another ten or fifteen years of exactly this pendulum swing from resignation to harpy-like defiance and back again. Whenever we finally do get clear of this, it is going to be one of the most thoroughly documented and least appealing chapters in human history.

That’s the way the cookie crumbles: Science marches on [another clipping, all of these are from the Dallas Morning News]

Good light-hearted piece. It always astonishes me the things that people anguish over.

Visit Dallas Central Mosque, and you’ll find tolerance and faith [clipping]

“Do we condone hate or extremism in our mosque? Absolutely not. Nor do we think in terms of ‘killing the infidels’ or ‘avoiding friendship with Christians or Jews’ as some ignorant writers suggest based on out-of-context interpretations of the Quran.”

I would take issue with Nabil Sadoun here because I don’t think there is a context to the Quran, per se. I see it as a twin monologue conducted by God and YHWH and there’s no doubt in my mind that YHWH is in fine form with his/her/its Jew hating. I see the Koran (my preferred spelling) as a litmus test, actually. Who do you think is talking here? God or YHWH or, as they’re called in the Koran, Allah or Eblis/Satan? There are some borderline instances, but there are also glaringly obvious YHWH assertions: malign, hard-hearted and mean-spirited. A portion of the Muslim world seems to be coming around to a recognition that it is not only impossible but evil to institute every aspect of the Koran as divine law. I assume that’s the point of the debate. WIll Muslims ultimately follow the malign, hard-hearted and mean-spirited verses or the enlightened ones, like ‘you to your religion and me to mine’? I’m sure God is betting that they’ll all ultimately come around to the enlightened view and Eblis is betting they’ll destroy the world trying to fulfill the Eblis inspired verses.

Out of bounds [clipping]

Yes, the unhappy result of the largely optimistic decision to create the United Nations. Democracy doesn’t work among nations, largely (I suspect) because of the Arab and African Bloc voting. Marxism hadn’t fully hatched out by 1945 and will be flourishing in those two blocs for some time to come, as well as infecting countries like Canada that should know better but don’t seem to. It’s the primary conundrum. A free country is free to choose to become Marxist but a Marxist country isn’t free to choose to become free except in extremis (witness: Ukraine). It’s only because of the United States that there is light at the end of that tunnel, so all eyes are on the land of the free and home of the brave to get us out of the mess we’re in.

[End of responses to clippings.]

You are certainly free to post our correspondence to the Newsgroup. Legally, I can’t do that with all of the correspondents, so it seems unethical to pick and choose, but if you want to post the whole thing and scan in my answers, you’re certainly free to do so. At this point, it looks as if we would have two full volume of Collected Letters ready to go. Depending on the reaction to the first we might do the second through one of the on-line print-to-order houses just to keep our own printing obligations to a reasonable seventeen volumes. I say this so you have an option--my responses will see print up ahead, but if you want the correspondence posted you are welcome to do so. I’m sure Margaret will be glad to include them at cerebusfangirl.com

I suspect the propensity for “off topic” can be attributed to the fact that everyone is still responding reflexively to discussions of feminism by the tried and true feminist method: changing the subject. I’m also a little suspicious of your survey because it asks people to assess themselves and I’m not sure--post 9-11--how accurate most self-perceptions are. I think most liberals see themselves as something in between liberal and conservative. In my own case, I see myself as liberal but realistic, whereas most other people would see me as extreme right wing. Although I think it was valuable as a piece of information where there had previously been a void, my own view it that the critical importance--and only “way forward” remains ideas and the free and open discussion of those ideas. Labelling tends to be evasive of ideas. If I point out that standards need to be skewed in order to achieve numerical parity between the genders, it’s easy to avoid the core idea presented by labelling me as a misogynist or asking me if I consider myself to be a cynic. What someone calls me or what I call myself is irrelevant in the realm of ideas. Let’s stick to perceiving reality accurately and skip what we call aspects of it in favour of examining the ideas.

My ideas are definitely in the “this is a hard saying and who can hear it?” category. I suspect that your brother agrees with me far more than he lets on. Otherwise, where’s the girlfriend? Where’s the fiancee? Where’s the wife? You can drink heavily and curse the name of Dave Sim and the star he was born under, but if you’re living in his construct--marriage as constituted is untenable--then it rings more than a little false. Prove me wrong. Go out and marry someone.

Personally, I’m very much at peace with the way things are hatching out since all of the linked entities which are not based upon reality--Marxism, feminism, academe, the United Nations, et. al.--are suddenly falling on hard times. They represent a temporarily effective series of basic tricks, but the problem with basic tricks--like fundamental evasiveness, labelling and changing of the subject--is that once they’ve been identified they quickly become useless. As long as those of us opposing the malignancies can stay on topic and continue to ask the same basic questions about the forces which continue to dominate our society, they really aren’t long for this world--whether that’s in a human frame or reference of another decade or so or a societal frame of reference of another century or two. In either case, I consider it worthwhile (and a privilege!) to have been an early proponent of accurate perception and have no regrets whether I live to see the dawning of a new age of accurate perception or whether it arrives fifty years after I’m dead.

Thanks as always for writing.

Sincerely,

Dave