[CrackMonkey] Lindsey Graham

[Bob Bernstein]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2000 at 05:50:06AM +0000, Mike Goldman wrote:


> Anyhow, it seems to me that your claim is unsupportable.

I'm not making a claim. There's nothing to support. I know that doesn't fit
in with the reigning language game around here, where the debating club
paradigm holds sway. The whole dreary business of making claims and bringing
forth 'evidence' left me cold a long time ago.

What startles the shit out of me - still - is that the olde academic
claptrap of argument, claim, evidence, inference, etc is taken - especially
in otherwise hip internet circles - to be the only reasonable use of
language imaginable. All else, one is led to believe, is useless empty
'posturing' devoid of "content."

Other modes of expression are repressed with an imperialistic Procrustean
axe wielded with breathtaking enthusiasm.

Look. I offer a set of verbal responses. You are free either to exercise the
willing suspension of disbelief and muck around in the images I use, or to
move on. If my sensibilities are dissonant to your cognitive ear, so be it;
no harm done. But don't give me that crap about 'unsupportable claims.'

> There are social forms which are non-politic, anyhow.

I couldn't agree more. 

> If voting is a NEGATIVE activity, then you WANT less of it.

Voting is a mostly harmless ritual, and we need to keep what few rituals we
have. We need ritual, but the new ones coming into usage suck. Let's hang
onto the few old ones we still have.

> > costs us nothing, while not voting feeds a delusion, to wit the belief that
> > we are not irremediably always already 'participants,' sullied by whatever
> > mires and ensnares us while it breathes life into us.
> 
> This is mystical nonsense, man.

Translation: I don't know what you're talking about, man.

We are always in some social form or other. The ritual of voting is for me
mostly a matter of civility, of manners. It's of a piece with the sense in
us that causes us to simmer down and sit (or stand) fairly still for awhile
when we get onto a bus or subway. 

My feeling about this soup of ritual, symbol and mannered behaviour that we
swim around in every day is that it is a fairly delicate creature, and very
hard to cultivate once it goes to seed. To see what life is like when it has
gone to seed one need only glance around the world.


-- 
Bob Bernstein
at                      This is Bob's OpenBSD 2.6 machine!
Esmond, R.I., USA