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how would be set this up so it did not devolve in to more of this kind of nonsense?
you insist on reducing the various points of dispute to questions of prior disposition on my part--this will get us nowhere.
you act as though you can speak to grounds for arguments that you have no way of knowing about.
so let me be clear:
i fundamentally disagree with your politics.
period.
the reasons i have for doing so do not correspond to your assumptions about why i disagree--if i felt conservative ideology provided an adequate description of the world, i would in all probability be a conservative.
but i dont.
how do we talk across this kind of basic disagreement?
well one way of trying would be to stop reducing my position to a cartoon and stop imputing ridiculous motives to me.
because your response above seems to me a kind of tedious exercize in projection on your part, alansmithee--again---this has happened over and over here----it is like you have to jam me into some tiny little box to explain to yourself why i do not see things as you do. and when it comes down to it, you simply invert the whole process and project all this back onto me.
when i post here i try to be quite specific: i try not to go after personal motivations and instead talk about types of argument, types of logic, that i see shaping what the poster is trying to say. i think i can talk about that and push it quite far without having to revert to speculations about motive. i can see why you might take it otherwise--but there is nothing i can really do about that, given that over and over i have tried to be as clear as i can that i see in your arguments, and in the arguments of other conservative folk who post here, particular patterns. and i talk about those patterns. you do not do me the same courtesy. if you want to continue anything like a dialogue, you have to do me that. on this point, i see no need to compromise. think of it as a ground rule. you agree to continue, you agree to that. they are, in a way, the same thing.
in conversation/debate on this board that has involved me with folk who are conservative, there has been a range of interactions--with artelevision, for example, things went in an interesting direction because despite the fact that we do not agree politically we could still talk. because we did not patronize each other up front by imputing goofy shit to each other, we have even been able to become friends. there is another type of argument that i run into here that has not offered the same kind of space--the ustwo model--sometimes your posts run into that place. i find him patronizing and uninformed--he finds me arrogant. and that is where things remain. nowhere to go, no real discussion to be had. i think that each of us has located a particularly effective way to irritate the other. so it is not that i will not listen--it is that i find myself sometimes being accorded some respect and according it in turn--and other times that respect is not forthcoming and things devolve quickly. and this particular type of devolution, because it follows the same pattern every time, is not interesting to me. i have alot going on in 3-d life and am increasingly feeling that i need not bother with it.
just so you know. i expect that you feel a parallel way about my posts--if so we push each other into these stupid places. it is not necessary--but you have to stop the kind of stuff i noted above or you will never know whether this particular type of conversation is the only one possible across political positions. maybe i'm wrong, but i take some of the more aggressive aspects of my posts to be reactive. one way to find out though: grant me this up front and if afterward i turn out to be an asshole, tell me. and i'll try to back off.
so there we are.
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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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