Some readers of The Signal have written that they find my letters very entertaining, while others see them as insulting, rude and offensive, if not downright nuts, but clearly designed to “poke a finger into peoples’ eyes,” as one disgruntled reader once put it. But there’s a method behind my “madness,” and it’s based on a very simple formula. I have no interest in applauding, defending, or supporting anything I see as being good or right. What would be the point in that? If it’s right then I leave it alone and allow it to continue. On the other hand, if I see something I deem to be either bad or wrong, it’s the same to me as a bogie on a radar screen, an open shot that needs to be taken — something that cannot be allowed to continue uncontested.
In that sense my letters do not fall into the category of the apologetic, but rather the polemic. I look at life and people as one looking at the standard “bell-shaped” curve. There is the majority, the average person, populating and occupying the middle. That’s where most people are in mind as well as in life. They only very rarely present themselves as a “target.” But as one goes out on either side, whether to the left or to the right, that is where the targets begin to emerge, and the more standard deviations one goes out the more targets one will encounter and the larger — and easier to hit — they will be.
Many of my letters have gone out against anything religious, especially when it involves the supernatural and all things based on faith and thus patently unprovable. That is because I feel that it weakens us as a species to rely on things that have only a “possibility” of existing — as in, maybe he’ll be there for you, and maybe he won’t, so what will you do if he’s not? Would you knowingly take a placebo to treat cancer? Well? That’s what having faith and believing in things, anything, means to me. That or walking into a casino and placing a bet. It’s really no different, so it’s thus ironic how all of the Abrahamic religions are against playing “games of chance.” Are you laughing yet?
But even more fundamental than that is the sheer arrogance with which so many Christians, in particular, carry themselves. The unabashed and patronizing condescension with which Christians view the rest of humanity, which includes those who have not even had the chance to be exposed to such ludicrous doctrines, the heathens, is mind-boggling. Such a monstrous attitude is begging, no, it is screaming, for a good lashing, and that is precisely the reason for which Christians were persecuted and martyred by the Romans, who were otherwise very tolerant of religious diversity in their empire. It is also the primary driver behind the backlash of liberal excesses and eccentricities we are experiencing today, against which there will no doubt be conservative backlashes. Lots of lashings, and all thanks to religion.
The rest of my letters go after political extremists, to the left as well as to the right, who spend most of their time claiming how right they are and how anyone disagreeing with them is wrong. Consequently, those letters usually come across as having a bias against the left, but it’s not my fault that those who behave like they know better than the rest of us tend to lean toward the left. I’m just shooting at targets that meet a certain criteria and I harbor no particular biases of which I am aware, except for one — I’m a Coke drinker and I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone could prefer the taste of Pepsi. Anyway…
My letters basically go after the two things that have historically, and to this day, divided people the most, started the most wars, and caused the most suffering — but basically anything that corrupts and destroys the rational mind and leads our world to ruin.
So here’s a rather funny side note with relation to statistical analysis, averages, norms and standard deviations. The more one goes out and “deviates” from the “norm,” the more eccentric are the subjects, and in that sense those people can be defined, and even characterized, as “abnormal deviants.” Most of our leaders, political and religious, fall into that category. It’s not only entertaining to think about it that way, for one whose sense of humor is as deranged as mine, it can also be proven mathematically.
Thank you for enduring me.
Arthur Saginian
Santa Clarita
