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well, first off the problem was, like other folk have said, social.
there's no particular reason to respect what other people think or say, but there are reasons to respect the person. and there are tactical reasons within a debate context to try to remain a bit..um...nice, particularly if you harbor the illusion of changing someone's mind. roachboy isn't necessarily so good at this, but in 3-d his meat correlate is actually kinda gracious about such things. but i also don't hesitate to tell people they're wrong. sometimes pretty bluntly. but you have to pick your spots, know why you make that move.
o yeah--by the way, the change in the notion of terrorism from referring to a specific set of political tactics into something like it's modern form, which designates Enemies and evacuates the idea that they have a political agenda but are instead just Bad People, is usually linked to the 1972 munich olympics, the black september action, how it was framed, what it was defined as discursively. this ran alongside the other co-opting of the word by folk like baader-meinhof and the red army brigade, but folk don't remember them so much any more. maybe that's a function of the revision of the history of the entire vietnam period that was of a piece with the (mercifully ended for now) republican ascendancy, the shift to the hard right, the fashioning of the vietnam syndrome myth blah blah blah.
you can track the process. people have done it--i can give titles if you want.
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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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