Today’s Asshat comes to us from a magical place where there there was never slavery, no judgmentalism, and is completely devoid of religious and political extremism.

     Yes, of course I’m joking.

     He’s from north-central South Carolina.

     I can only assume this is some ridiculous retort to a recent statement I made, “I’m a lot more than just the sum of my experiences…”  But I wonder why he didn’t leave it in the comments, in that context, instead of giving me such impressive ammunition for an Asshat of the Day post?

     Via the Contact form, this so-called Doctor of Psychology writes:

From: Dr. H.T.B., Psy.D
Date: July 31st 2007, 9:34AM

It is wrong to think that you are more than the sum of your experiences.

It is even worse to combine it under religion.
Your deep faith commits you to slavery of a false ideal.
You are subservient to other masters.
You have righteous indignation.
The worse you feel the more you believe.
Your free will disappears.
It is an arrogant philopshopy of exclusion that breeds hatred.

You are the sum of your experiences and nothing more.
Your are flirting with disaster to think otherwise.

     I’m impressed with your amazing powers of observation, dude!  You must have been wearing your tinfoil hat to have such keen insight into all of the secret messages in the post.  *snicker*
     If you got all of that from a blog post, you’re more f$&*ed up than a football bat.  

     Where did you come up with the idea that I had “deep faith?”  Where did you come up with the idea that people who spiritual or religious are a bunch of exclusionary, hateful bastards?
     While I can agree with this viewpoint in certain cases (i.e. followers of former Asshat Award recipient, Fred Phelps), it’s certainly no reason to condemn every one of them.

     Doc, you apparently think anyone who mentions a Maker is a religious zealot, who’s a slave to false ideals and just out there to screw with people.  People like you, perhaps?  Did you have a bad experience with someone who was deeply religious?

     Seriously, I think you might need to try some of the advice you’re so quick to dole out.  Maybe you should take one of those pills…
     You know…
     The ones with a small risk of sexual side effects, but they are rare?
     Of course, both taking the pill and noticing any sexual side effects would require removing your head from your ass… You’re flirting with disaster to think otherwise.

     It’s a little disturbing that someone who claims to be a Doctor of Psychology doesn’t remember the basic tenets of his practice.  Perhaps some remedial study is in order…
     We are all the sum of our experiences, but it’s the way that we deal with them that defines who we are.  We can succumb to bad experiences and reflect them into our every day lives and be unhappy, or learn from them and move on in order to better ourselves and become well-adjusted.
     Me, I’ll take the latter.