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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (38979)	11/27/2001 12:52:08 PM
From: Mac Con Ulaidh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I'll try and explain more. (and it's your fault I am posting and not working. :) ) K.. uhm... I learned something in the early 80's from some smart folks about the difference between sarcasm and humor. I learned a difference between hurting and teasing affectionately. I would only tease Tim affectionately because I like and respect him. But he is reeeealllly earnest, as you mentioned. He cracks me up. But I would only poke him for that, and probably have. I would never dismiss, nor deride, him for his ideas. He is one of the most honest and thoughtful people I've ever met (but not really met). He thinks about what people say. And he never makes rude, personal, statements about people. I find him fasinating and interesting. I've seen him grow and change. And you, too. And E. And JLA. And others. So a simple, silly, example... before I went to all-white-all-the-time tube socks, I had socks of different colors but I put on whatever two socks I grabbed out of the drawer that morning. Some people laughed in a fun way about it and saw it as a part of my "distraction". Some people laughed in a hurtful way. They passed it off as humor, but it was clear that they thought I was some kind of freak and sorry individual for wearing one brown sock and one blue sock. Now, to be rude to myself would be to make "fun" of myself for my socks in a way that was clear I thought I was an idiot, or a moron. To make fun of myself would be to tease myself that I was too distracted to care about my socks. One hurts and dismisses. One teases in an affectionate way that makes it clear that the unpaired socks is a part of who I am. One doesn't really think much of me. One thinks of it as part of a person I, or the other, likes.

To: Lane3 who wrote (38979)	11/27/2001 1:20:49 PM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Just read something that relates to your earlier discussion of what it means to be patriotic. There is an excellent article in the December Vanity Fair by Christopher Hitchens titled For Patriot Dreams. Unfortunately, Vanity Fair doesn't post its articles on the web. I'll tax my limited typing skills: "....I have found the patch of soil on which I will take my own stand, and the people with whom I'll stand, and it's the only place in history where patriotism can be divorced from its evil twins of chauvinism and xenophobia. Patriotism is not local: it's universal. (No, finally - and what a relief! - all together now: All politics are not local.) I checked carefully every day with my friend Hussein Ibish, a Lebanese Kurd who speaks for the American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, and who had a lot of monitoring to do. There were not all that many nuts and dolts that week who were so shameless and idiotic as to bully or insult a Sikh or a Sri Lankan. But of the incidents of vandalism and barbarity reported and recorded, barely a one took place in the epicenter of Manhattan. If patriotism can be democratic and internationalist - and this remains to be fought for - then that's good enough for me; perhaps there's a better chance now than anyone could have envisioned. In this microcosm, there was the code for a macrocosm. Call it a rooted cosmopolitanism...." This typing is getting tedious, I better stop now. There is more in the piece that is just terrific.