roachboy

there are a few contextual factors that are simply the case:

1. the general style that ustwo adopts is not something that he invented--it is a pretty accurate reflection of the mode of "argumentation" you run into amongst right radio pundits...somehow this gets wrapped up with a conception of purposefulness. i dont' really get that, but hey....

2. despite this, there are any number of ways to argue from a conservative position and the fact remains that ustwo--and a few others who play less often--are MAKING A CHOICE when they adopt this sub-pj o'rourke mode of discourse.

personally, i am pretty sure that the posting style is far from a representation of who the guy behind ustwo is, and from time to time you can see that this is the case (from time to time in politics--more often in other forums when he posts there)--i take this as making it *more* evident that the politics style is a choice.

i should day that roachboy comes across as arrogant at times--sometimes i know that the voice can be taken that way and other times i am surprised by it---sometimes i am deliberately operating in a "fuck you" mode, but mostly i am not---but no matter--i only say this mostly in order to defuse the idea that i am speaking from a position of righteousness on this front. i other words, it is not the arrogance that bothers me.

i guess the bottom line is what are folk looking for from a political debate.

personally, i would prefer more an informed chess game kind of thing--i enjoy opposing viewpoints--i find it interesting to try to work out how they operate, what their logic is--because is it only through doing that that i can take seriously what is being said---call it a quirk---but that's the case.

what i don't find interesting is the idea that anyone can just say anything and it's all "just my opinion man"--i figure that political viewpoints are the result of some thinking and that it is the thinking behind the viewpoints that matters.
even if the position are developed on the fly and so are, in fact, opinion, it is still interesting to see how other folk put together their view of the world. that is why i play in politics at all.

and that is the register in which ustwo rarely chooses to play.

like i said above--but i'll be more explicit here--it is BECAUSE i *know* that he is an intelligent and reasonably informed person that the choice he makes as to style is problematic--and this is compounded by willingness to attack personally those who oppose him--and host in particular, because for some reason host becomes the whipping boy for all the other folk in the micro-world that oppose him politically--perhaps because they are like mirror images (inverted images, to be clear) of each other---which in itself i wouldn't care about IF there was also a willingness on ustwo's part to answer for his own positions.

but it's not like that.
and i am tired of pretending that this is not the case.
it is, and we all know it.

so this is not really about ustwo as a member of the community. he is an important member, and frankly in some situations i enjoy the fact that we are in the same community--in others i'm more "wtf"--and i am sure that the same holds for him about roachboy and probably about whomever he imagines me to be, the guy behind roachboy who pulls his strings-- so this is about ustwo in politics.

there are structural problems with the board and one of them is the unmoving anatgonism between some of the posters----and that antagonism bleeds into a monotony in the posts that happen there--and that IS a problem--because the forum is the sum of its parts--and if there is a stagnant antagonism that produces stereotypical responses regardless of the topic--and if this has gone on FOR YEARS now--we are kidding ourselves if we do not acknowledge that PART of the way forward is to put an end to this dynamic.

so comrades: stop. enough.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite