It reminds me of Ray, too.
It was interesting watching Ray get harder and harder left after the election, or maybe after the stock market quit being fun, or maybe both.
He had some personal things going on, as well. We used to talk on the telephone occasionally. He has a very fine mind.
I really hated putting him on Ignore, but I just lose patience with personal attacks. Pretty much everybody lashes out from time to time, but at some point Ray just got to be too much.
Not just for me, since SI booted him for good, it must have been too much for SI. Most people shape up after being put in SI jail once or twice.
Back to Ray's politics. It seems to me that the left on SI has for the most part become more polarized, as well. Moderate voices are not raised as much.
I kinda cringe when I see people posting things from overtly Communist web sites, but at the same time, I realize that this orientation makes it harder for them to capture much political power.
Some of the stuff I agree with, anyway, like dissing Columbus. The New Yorker recently reviewed a biography of Columbus. In 1492, it was widely accepted that the world was spherical. The reason nobody wanted to sail West to Japan was because it was too far away. But Columbus calculated it differently than anybody else did, he thought the world was much smaller than it actually is, and he thought that Japan was much further west than it actually is. So he wasn't smarter than anybody else, he was stupider than anybody else, but lucky, and a very good sailor.
He also was a very cruel man, and dishonest. |
