Stardate 20031121.1608

(On Screen): Porphyrogenitus mentions in passing a "short, derisive mail from one reader who wanted to express his contempt for me." I get those too, though thankfully not often. But in response to yesterday's post about European caution, I got this one:

You are really getting more and more delusional every day my dear Mr DenBeste.

Seems like your "great success" in transforming Iraq, your utter inability to suppress Al Qaida terrorist attacks, the bleak prospect of the US economy (the worlds biggest debtor with a staggering deficit too boot), having a president who can't utter a coherent sentence, having lost almost every friend you had in the world, the fact that you are losing 2-3 soldiers every day in Iraq and Afghanistan is finally getting to you.

Stick to explaining natural science. You are really good at that as opposed to your anti-EU rantings which are a lot of wishful thinking.

Maybe you should try to read something besides nicedoggie.net

This was from a guy in Finland. He's written to me before, usually not with such a contemptuous tone. (For instance, he wrote to say that he liked these two posts.)

I might mention that while I yield to no one in my respect for Emperor Misha, his site is not one of the ones I read regularly. There are only so many hours in a day, and far too many deserving sites which I must neglect.

One thing I found interesting was the way this letter seemed to take advantage of the ambiguity of the English word you. Linguistically speaking, it's generally used as the translation for both German du ("you", singular, familiar) and ihr ("y'all", more or less; "you, plural") but it turns out to be cognate to du while taking its meaning from one of the ways that sie is used, or so I was taught in high school German class. German sie can be translated in English as either she, they or you depending on context and verb conjugation, and in the third meaning applies both to singular and plural cases, as does you in English. But sie is formal/respectful, differentiating with the familiar du. In English, you is polite; we express familiarity in other ways.

...and that's what happens when I channel Marc Miyake.

In this letter, you in the first paragraph clearly is singular, and refers to me as the one getting delusional. But in the second paragraph, it sounds as if I'm being credited with being the head of the Illuminati, or perhaps the Great Right Wing Conspiracy which secretly rules the US from behind the scenes.

I thought it was the Jews who were in charge of everything. I'm goyim. (According to some Jewish friends, I'm also parve.) I'm not part of the Illuminati and don't have the kind of power and influence this can be interpreted as suggesting I do. (Of course, if I were, I'd deny it, wouldn't I?)Fnord

We won't bother talking about the factual errors in his letter, and I'll instead say that it's clear from this and previous letters that he and I do not live in the same world. One of us is deceived. Perhaps both of us are. Time will make that clear. Until then, contentless supercilious dismissals such as this are pointless.

Update 20031122: Marc Miyake comments more about polite/familiar second person pronouns. By the way, the second-person familiar pronoun in English is thou, which is considered archaic and has fallen out of normal use.