Quoting Arlo Bensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > [Platt] > Do you deny that "they" refers to capitalists? If so, who does "they" > refer to that you mentioned in previous statements? > > [Arlo] > I'll answer your one pointed question. > > The "they" referred, as Pirsig pointed out, to "right-wing politicians".
It's no great leap or distortion to go from right-wing politicians to capitalists. Left-wing politicians are socialists. > From my original post. > > "The whole "bash the Academy" crowd, which pretty much defines > right-wing politics, uses the same rhetoric generation in and > generation out. They labeled Pirsig a "radical professor" fifty years > ago, and still use that tired phrase with each new round of nonsense." > > When asked about being branded a "radical professor", Pirsig replied > "But that was just right-wing politics." Indeed. To my mind what defines right-wing politics is support of capitalism. Pirsig came across as a New Age liberal in ZMM. In Lila he changed his tune, becoming a right-wing supporter of capitalism. And in Lila he had less than flattering things to say about the professor class: "Phaedrus remembered parties in the fifties and sixties full of liberal intellectuals like himself who actually admired the criminal types that sometimes showed up. "Here we are," they seemed to believe, "drug pushers, flower children, anarchists, civil rights workers, college professorswe're all just comrades-m-arms against the cruel and corrupt social system that is really the enemy of us all." (Lila, 24) > You may interpret "right-wing politicians" as "xenophobic wing-nuts" > if you like, but given the fact that Pirsig himself is a "capitalist" > and yet also a "lifelong democrat", I hardly think you can make the > "right-wing politician=capitalist" substitution. Pirisg may still call himself a democrat, but I bet he's a Kennedy or Lieberman democrat who supports capitalism and doesn't think we should surrender to terrorists like the current bunch of democrats in Congress. ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
