Kautsky parle

Paul Henry Rosenberg rad at gte.net
Fri Sep 11 09:05:46 PDT 1998


Christopher Niles wrote:


> That you feel the need to distort or ignore my arguments
> means that you find honest idealogical exchange, for any number of
> personal or political reasons, threatening.

You asked me where you had made certain statements. I responded by showing you the passages. Your responded with a rant that ignored my references, and made no attempt whatsoever to deal with your original statements or my interpretations in kind of constructive manner.

People go through moods, Chris. Somethimes someone will say something whimsically, or sardonically, or whatever. If it's taken in the wrong spirit it can get out of hand. When this seemed to start happening with us, I tried to go back to the beginning and show more soberly where I'd gotten my impressions. This failed to interest you. So I gave up. I had too much else on my plate at the time, and didn't particularly feel like hogging bandwidth here.

I'm sorry we hit it off so poorly, but I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

I also think you've never seriously experienced anything vaguely resembling a flame war, or you would know how mild my comments were in the context of the possible.

If you talk so seriously--as you did--about the possibilityh of DYING in the struggle, there's something a bit ludicrously out of proportion in having such thin skin in cyberspace, or at least so it seems to me.

I'm sorry you took what was basically a teasing voice and heard it as a sinister, mocking one, or worse.

It would be nice if we could start fresh, but given your hypersensitivity, I'm afraid the same thing would just recur, probably sooner rather than later. I'm a bit of a smart aleck, have been since grade school, and I'm bound to tick you off again, no question about it. There's nothing wrong with your sensitivity OR with my smart-aleckicity. They just don't mix too well.

-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net

"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"



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