Anthony Slessor

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It is now over a year since I have posted a new article. There seems little point in writing for my website blog that no one follows. This is not surprising as I have made no effort to establish a following through facebook or twitter, both of which I rapidly eschewed after the briefest of dalliances. They seem to be vehicles for knee-jerk opinion and, therefore, shallow and dangerous, as evinced by the large number of people in trouble with their employers and/or the law, some even ending up in prison for behavior that may have been unwise but was not deserving of criminal sanction.

Plus, my last blog, sixteen months ago, was about Libya and I was spectacularly wrong, at least up to today. That rambling appeared on the front page of the blog for far too long and needed to be replaced it so it could disappear into the comparative anonymity of the blog archive, thus not immediately exposing my lack of prescience and judgment.

Finally I guess the only subjects that compel engagement are sex, politics, and religion. Comment on sex is vulgar, bound to be mistaken in some part, and is best kept private if one wants to avoid appearing ridiculous or warped, or both. Politics expose the vaguely intelligent compromising their few remaining virtues to pander to the basest instincts and parochial prejudices of the electorate…. not worth the candle really. And as for religion, well, I have no doubt that “a god” exists but if she were to have human emotion she would view the three monotheistic religions with equal measures of hilarity and horror. Can there be three more palpably derisible and self-indulgent concepts than papal infallibility, violent jihad, and a chosen race? As a supposed Christian, I’ll have one last dig in that direction: If you were guarding the celestial gates and found standing in front of you Christopher Eric Hitchens and Joseph Alois Ratzinger, which one would you let in?