====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
Yes, everything's going to be used an argument to get us to vote for Obama. Who really gives a damn? If nobody shot anybody, they'd make it an argument for getting us to vote for Obama. They're going to try to make anything an argument to vote for Obama other than his Bushie record.... The starting point for our understanding of an event should not be what the pundits are arguing.... So, too, I don't know what the hell people are talking about when they talk about a Trotskyist position on such things. Are we developing a Marxist analysis with a Ouija board? The issue is not restoring some phony "civility" of the discussion in the civic culture. Obviously, the predictable roll-over-and-play-dead goofs in pundit-world and in the swamp of the "progressive" milieu are obviously going to call for "everybody" to tone down the rhetoric and pretend that there's some sort of equal responsibility for the level of discourse between the Right and "the Left." Such a position is obviously absurd. The escalation of the rhetoric has been part of the strategy for politicians of the Right. None of us can really tell at this point how much this was a factor in the shootings in Arizona. But the climate was what it was and his rants, at least in part, reflected that rhetoric. At this stage, I'm less optimistic over the level of that discussion, which is naturally going to make all the sense of that discussion of the sound knob on the speakers in "Spinal Tab." ML ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
