A writer of an open letter to aficionados of proper punctuation, for instance, might set up as a straw-man some militant user of the Oxford comma whose righteous insistence on clarity might then be mocked in absentia as pompous and hermeneutic despite his never having actually existed at all. The one-sided nature of the open letter presents no opportunity for debate and thereby frees one of the need to obey the basic rules of debate. Either approach, though, serves only as bare cover for a tactic that we can all clearly see lies somewhere between the subtly repressive and the outright fascist.įrom behind the veil of the open letter one may comfortably launch ad hominem attacks (I know some of my mouth-breathing detractors will assume that this is an attack that sounds just like another attack but has a different meaning if you're too stupid to use a dictionary, Google it.) Conversely, by addressing such a missive openly to a general group (Pharmaceutical advertisers, 9-11 Truthers, People Who Wear Camouflage to Funerals, for instance) a modicum of anonymity may seem to be afforded the specific person(s) toward whom one aims the ire. ![]() As discourse becomes less and less civil, it becomes increasingly tempting to find means of expressing oneself in a vacuum of sorts, avoiding the need for actual discourse of any sort.īy creating the false intimacy of an open letter to an individual (i.e., Donald Trump, Rahm Emanuel or Gallagher), one can address a troubling social or cultural issue without seeming to engage all those at whom one's comments are aimed, building an effective preemptive defense against claims of generalization. I know, in this age of social media postings to which trolls respond with hate-spewing comments, angry subtweets and outraged text-on-photo memes, one longs for the opportunity to make one's opinion known without the fear of reprisal, repercussion or disagreement. ![]() A trend has emerged in recent months of writing open letters for publication as a means of presenting arguments, salient and otherwise, on matters of public policy, societal ills and economic theory.
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