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ok, it's nice that there's an agreement about this sort of discussion being tiresome---and it is---but what do you (or does anyone) propose to do about it?
one of the reasons this thread has grown as tired and stinky as it has follows from the simple fact that there's no agreement at all about the premises of a discussion.
in this case, for example, there is a group of folk who understand that to talk about the tea parties is to talk about how they're being manufactured, and to see them as a conservative pseudo-grassroots movement--and there's another group that wants to see in them an opportunity to channel whatever it is that motivates them politically, and who therefore have no particular interest in talking about these (non) events in the same way at all.
from there, it seems like there's noplace to go but talking past each other, and sure enough across the whole of this thread, people have talked past each other.
this is nothing new, nor is it a function of anything to do with tfp--it's a direct reflection of how political viewpoints have been framed over a considerable period. and each side of any given debate understands their premises as a viable place to start---and there's typically very little chance that a discussion about premises, about starting points, is going to happen here.
there are a variety of moves that folk try to get around this and force a discussion about starting points, but typically they simply fall down or are ignored (it comes to the same thing)....
speaking for myself, i find the refusal to debate starting points to be endlessly irritating. and it hardly seems plausible that folk are going to engage over interior arguments because these arguments *rely* on premises---the reproduce them, perform their effects---and often that's where the problem really lay.
so it seems to me there's a simple choice--either we collectively agree to try something different, or the endless performance of what i take to be a pathetic state of political discourse in the states generally is just going to repeat itself again and again.
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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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