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moondog: this is why i prefer to emphasize style of argument: but in situations like this, the boundary between that and speculating about psychological motives gets to be really tempting to cross....i reiterate my basic challenge to folk who support the war to spell out their positions in the kind of way that they have tried to pressure those of us who opposed and oppose this war to do.
as for the matter of politics being a question of belief--well, most beliefs are rooted in some kind of contact with a world beyond them. so are convictions. both are amenable to testing--i expect that you, like anyone, indulges testing all the time. if you use either belief or conviction as a device to make all political argument arbitrary, and if this reflects a wider pattern (and i believe it does) then we are all in a pretty sorry state of affairs in which nothing can be refuted by recourse to either evidence or argument: when that goes out the window, so does even the slightest pretense to democratic process. but maybe you prefer abandoning even those faint traces of democracy that still float about in the american system. for myself, i think the consequences of it are too high.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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