Michael Perelman wrote, > As usual, Michael H. is correct. I tried to say something similar a > couple days ago when Doug suggested that the left had a tendency to root > out heretics. I cryptically suggested that it was not some political > tendency but rather it reflected powerlessness.
I mentioned Nietzsche's "all instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward" from Genealogy of Morals. I'm re-posting the comment, below, because I originally sent it at the bottom of a longer message so it may have gotten overlooked. By the way, notwithstanding Michael's not seeing "any reason for the nastiness," there may indeed be a reason. And that reason may also help explain the "we're having big fun over here on the right" phenomena (http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/41/on-powers.php). I did a quick scan of the fun guys on the right and spent a little more time looking at one particular fun guy on the right and noticed one distinctive feature that contrasted with left discourse. There was a lot of jocular "kill talk." Not all of it was graphic. Some was euphemistic, like "take out Saddam." But the kill talk seemed to me to be playing a crucial role in bonding between the righties. There are obstacles to a comparable kill talk on the left. For one thing, many of us hold the opinion that killing is not sport and that talking about killing doesn't advance progressive politics. There are also possible legal complications if people on the left routinely made jokes about killing people _we_ don't like. We're not on a level playing field with the right in regard to kill talk. They can rhetorically murder with impunity. Before anybody concludes that I'm calling righties a bunch of blood-thirsty cretins, I want to clarify that I don't take the kill talk literally. There is, of course, always the danger it may get played-out literally in some psychopathic spectacle of "preemtive self-defence" but I don't see that as an integral part or inevitable consequence of the rhetoric. What I do see as an integral part is the bonding that takes place around the kill talk. Nietzsche wrote that "all instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward." And it may be worth asking whether the internal rancor of the left may have something to do with the self-imposed and societal constraints that the left feels about rhetorical violence. Remember I am talking about *rhetorical* violence. In his _Rhetoric of Motives_, Kenneth Burke questioned what the literary function of suicide and murder was in a number of texts, among them Milton's Samson Agonistes. To make a long story short, Burke saw these themes as figuring change. I don't know if my short story does justice to Burke's long one, but the point is that kill talk projects a metaphor for profound change that people can identify with (can, not necessarily will). Sorel was saying something similar (although not identical) with his theory of social myths. Rhetorical violence, taken literally, may well be the mother of all weapons of mass destruction. Let's ignore it and hope it goes away. On second thought, haven't we tried that? > > On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at > 01:38:55PM -0400, > Michael Hoover wrote: > >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/08/02 05:33PM >>> > > How the hell does a simple discussion about data evoke such nastiness? > > Michael Perelman > > <<<>>> > > > > i'll try to avoid making an analogy here for reasons that should be > >obvious... i can't help but recall fanon's assertion that violence is > turned > >inward in colonial society; people kill each other rather than their > >subjugators... > > > > so while most pen-lers are probably comfortable (relatively speaking), > i've a > >hunch that many have been rendered politically impotent... michael hoover
