Dear Gary: It's a Shame You Don't Understand How to Choose Your Battles -- Your Friend, Kevin S.
I do not travel in the highest circles, but I do travel in circles that are filled with very smart people. They may not be rich, but they will leave legacies that will affect millions of people, or already have. In their fields, they are experts.
I have noticed something about experts. They do not spend time sending emails to strangers to straighten them out. If they have a complaint, they post it on their websites. They provide documentation. They figure that they might as well get their suggestions out in front of the target, in a form he will recognize: a public challenge. This is how experts do battle.
The mark of someone who doesn't know what he is talking about is an email sent to a stranger that tells the stranger he has something all wrong. "I'm going to straighten you out!"
There are a lot of experts out there who know exactly what I am doing wrong. They let me know in no uncertain terms. I have received their suggestions for over 40 years.
Usually, they are not paying subscribers. This individual is not a paying subscriber, and never has been. He is on the Tea Party Economist mailing list. It is a free list.
People who do not pay are more likely to send letters like this than people who pay. This is a major reason to join only subscription sites. You avoid the people who want to give you a piece of their mind, but who cannot afford it.
Here is the letter.
Recent garynorth.com readings have raised three questions for me :
1.] Would you judge the extensive efforts at your web-site to be time "well spent" ?? I refer specifically to the numerous rebuttals of Ellen Brown -- she seems to have excited you into a continuing repetitive fervor, rife with emotional vitriol and the piety of unnecessary biblical quotations in your arguments. Please review and re-judge this body of your material.
2.] If this time is indeed judged "well spent", would it not be much better spent on organizations and persons whom you do not so plainly dismiss as incompetent and wholly misguided ??
3.] Shall I assist you in rendering level and reasoned arguments ?? I urge you to recuse yourself from further displays : Calm yourself and "pull it together", man. The imbecile discredits himself by his excitation and fervor to discredit another !!
I venture this prose forth in comradeship, and I invite a robust and forthright reply.
He wants forthright. He will get forthright.
Let me re-write this letter in order to get to the heart of the matter.
Dear Gary:I call you Gary, even though I have never met you or communicated with you before. This is part of the New Generation approach. As you can see, my email address is from a rock & roll site in the United Kingdom, which offers free email addresses. If you are old school, you need to get up to speed. Got it, Gary?
Anyway, here's the deal. You are not supposed to refer to Ellen Brown any longer.
Yes, I know. You are the only person who has ever refuted her, line by line. But so what? She is not important. I know this, because I am have a free rock & roll email address in the UK. She is an American. She represents a political tradition that goes back to your Civil War. But here in the UK, we are not interested in your political traditions.
The fact that you are the only American economic analyst who has challenged the Greenback movement in the last half century is really irrelevant. Get off your hobby horse.
It is a shame that you do not know which battles to fight. I mean, here you are with 100,000 subscribers to Tea Party Economist, yet you just do not understand what to write about. You have written 50 volumes of books since 1968, but you seem to be unable to understand what readers want. You started Remnant Review in 1974, and you still publish it. But you just don't know which battles to fight.
You may respond that LewRockwell.com ran your original refutation of Brown. You may respond that it also ran your recent article on kilowatt money, which mentioned Brown, and which led me to write this email. You may even bring up the argument that LewRockwell.com has more traffic than other libertarian sites -- rated in the top 9,000 out of a little under one billion sites. But let me assure you that this would not impress me. What impresses me is my opinion.
That's why you should listen to me. I know what succeeds.
Admittedly, I do not have my own website. That's why I use a free email address of a rock and roll site. But if I had my own website, I would know exactly what needs to be done. I would not mention Ellen Brown. This is crucial to my worldview: not mentioning Ellen Brown.
I feel so strongly about not mentioning Ellen Brown that I have sent this wholly friendly warning letter to you. I want you to understand that I know what's good for you, good for your readers, and good -- above all -- for Ellen Brown. That is this: not exposing Ellen Brown as a pro-Bernanke, pro-QE2, pro-QE3 groupie who made her reputation by opposing the Federal Reserve.
I know you are vitally interested in what I think. I surely am, so I know you must be, too.
So, please do not refer to Ellen Brown again. I am an expert on this, and you would be wise to take my advice.
It never ceases to amaze me that strangers who have no websites, no newsletters, and who have not spent half a century writing for a specific market, are experts in what I should write about. Yet I have never received a warning letter from anyone who has written a book in the field.
The temptation to send "you must change your ways" emails to strangers who are experts in a field is an emotional affliction of people who used to be called the walking wounded, but are now better categorized as the typing wounded.
These people are not a big problem for me. I have a little fun with them from time to time, as I am having now. I usually send a link to a form letter to deal with these people. //www.garynorth.com/public/10466.cfm
This time, I went the extra mile.
If you want to get a stranger to change his ways, create a website in the area of your concern. Fill it with 200 articles. Then write your critique and send the offending party a link. He can then take you apart in full public view. If you are not that confident, don't send the email.