Greetings Economists, On Nov 13, 2007, at 12:49 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
So it's politically not too bright to throw "fascist" around in u.s. politics.
Doyle; It's clear to me that 'fascist' is long since lost it's roots in militaristic mass movements and become in the U.S. synonymous with foreign imperialist war and at home police state mechanisms. It's widely enough used that George W. Bush, himself, can use it to apply to 'Islam-o-fascist'. If the term is what the public uses I don't see your point in calling it stupid. You may disagree, say it's rooted in meaning something different. but to say it's stupid questions what mass usage and meaning is in terms of intelligence standards. And that contradicts your own principles I'm sure in ways that could tie you in knots about what you 'really' understand. In other words you seem to me to use stupid in the handy dandy way of frustrated people to label someone casually in a derogatory way to underscore your point. Of course to me this so-called stupidity is a question of cognitive disability too. The more I explore these issues aside from trying to chide someone, the more I find the complexity both daunting and educating. Here you mean to shame someone by missing the meaning. How is meaning missed? The persons brain doesn't work. Doesn't work? Doesn't hear, read, or what? Writing is a complex system of communication which for large numbers of people doesn't work as a means of communication. Being illiterate is not stupid as the left well knows. It's the social support of the community that is 'stupid' or lacking. But the social support for literate people can simply ignore dyslexia, or other learning disabilities. Since you spent your life teaching English, the weakness of writing itself has been ignored in your professional life. I've never once seen you question writing like I do. But I don't see you as stupid. I see our whole society as not supportive of communication in so many ways. In a technical sense these issues are about knowledge production and we could see this material production as economic, but Pen-L demands more than epithets like stupid. thanks, Doyle
