Doyle:
One never wants to offend people (without provocation, at least), but I think you have to lighten up. It should be obvious that I was not referring to a medical condition. This has come up before. I think hyper- sensitivity of this type is not general among the so-called 'target,' groups, but is unique to activists and professional lobbyists. Now they could be ahead of the curve, but I don't think so.
Disability is not a joke to me. My father was disabled from age 50 to 72 (most of the time I knew him). He was a pretty funny guy. Disability was a fact of life and thus nothing to get overwrought about. You can't spend your life being over-wrought.
My brother has been diagnosed chronic Schizo for the past 30 years. My aunt died of Alzheimers. I don't make jokes about either of these things (incl. w/respect to R Reagan). But "crazy" to me is an innocent term. Note I even said "crazier", including myself. If I told my brother he was crazy, he wouldn't get upset. I told him that before he got sick. He knows he's got something much worse than "crazy."
> If the person or persons you say are
> crazier than you, are they schizophrenic, or depressed, or OCD, or other
> symptoms. Decadence as a political charge using social marginalization
> requires that the common every day sort of bigotry and predjudice never
> get challenged. I like you Max. I really like your contribution to the
> list. Want to debate the merits of calling people crazy?
No, because I don't think it's worth debating.
>
> Doyle
> I want to be able to talk to someone who is afraid. I want to raise to
> Max something about being anti-disabled. How do we proceed to build our
> movement, to make social liberation happen? How do we begin to talk to
> each other as a mass movement to free ourselves from the chains that
> bind us?
What you're referring to I do not see as a major problem. In some cases (e.g., 'crazy,' I don't think it's any problem at all). Folks who see radical politics as the need to "destroy the Democratic Party," well that would be a problem if there were more such people. Workers who are demoralized and feel inadequate to the task of organizing a revitalized labor movement is a big problem. Racial/gender views that preclude such an effort are a big problem. Crazy is not a problem.
Regards,
Max