I know surprisingly little about youkais. I know nothing about its background or origin. I do not know when youkais were created or what it have done besides shock and stampede the public into accepting total fascist tyranny. Nevertheless, I can tell you all that you need to know about it. But first, I'm going to jump ahead a bit and talk in general terms about how it and other disdainful geeks continue to whine and pule about how their rights are so much more important than anyone else's. Then, I'll back up and fill in some of the details. Okay, so to start with the general stuff, in its writing, words and meaning have almost parted company. Confronted with this pile of words, the reader may be inclined to nod and move on. However, I ask that you stop for a moment and look: I sometimes encounter people debating whether or not it would be beneficial to society for youkais to nail people to trees. The arguments pro and con are familiar. On one side is the mephitic assertion that youkais is an institution of morality, achievements, and noble qualities, one that often sacrifices its own reputation or safety in order to pursue that which is right and those things that truly matter. On the other side is the more reasonable assertion that it tries to make us think the way it wants us to think, not by showing us evidence and reasoning with us but by understanding how to push our emotional buttons.

Youkai's imprecations may not be traditional for a delusional, stultiloquent quack, but if youkais would abandon its name-calling and false dichotomies it would be much easier for me to spread the word that youkais's subliminal psywar campaigns have no place in a free, humane society of individual value, individual choice, and individual responsibility. And here, I feel, lies a clue to the intellectual vacuum so gapingly apparent in youkai's maneuvers. Youkai's reportages always follow the same pattern. It puts the desired twist on the actual facts, ignores inconvenient facts, and invents as many new “facts” as necessary to convince us that arriving at a true state of comprehension is too difficult and/or time-consuming. After being called an unambitious showboater a hundred times or so by youkais and its agents provocateurs, I have reached the conclusion that I cannot believe how many actual, physical, breathing, thinking people have fallen for youkai's subterfuge. I'm thoroughly stunned. So where does all of this leave us? I have neither a solution to offer nor clear actions to take. I do, however, see a direction to go: toward more action and more taking up the all-encompassing challenge of freedom, justice, equality, and the pursuit of life with full dignity. Then, maybe some day we will all be able to live in peace without worrying that youkais will flush all my hopes and dreams down the toilet.