This is a very strange read. My initial feeling was that it was an awful lot of verbal gesticulation aimed at simple gaslighting. Having read most of it at this point it almost reads like it's trying to confirm the hypothesis while saying it's doing the opposite. I really dunno what to make of the piece, but it's kind of an exhausting read.
I think you are exactly right. patio11 both wants to communicate a point and also understands that communicating certain points can lead to really bad outcomes for you and your family. Thus he often writes that way about topics where powerful individuals might wish to harm him for his opinions. Such is the way the world really works, regardless of whatever naive people were taught in school about freedom of expression. “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
> prior to the 19th century, Western scholars commonly understood that philosophical writing is not at home in any polity, no matter how liberal.. In questioning established opinions.. pre-modern philosophers found it necessary to convey their messages obliquely. Their "art of writing" was the art of esoteric communication. This is all the more apparent in medieval times, when heterodox political thinkers wrote under the threat of the Inquisition or comparably strict tribunals.
