Sillygism

[Steve Perry]

That's absolutely true, Doug, and as it happens I agree with all Carrol's premises as well. The problem is that at that level of generality, it becomes a fairly banal pronouncement about Littleton specifically. As I noted in an earlier post (and sorry for so many today, but hell, i only post every three months), these kids' sense of what they hated was enormously malleable--if press accounts are to be believed, they were both racist and anti-racist, naziphiles and naziphobes, at different points in the past year. The common denominator was their complete alienation, and their presumption of the right to destroy whatever struck them as *different* and therefore annoying. (I suppose one could argue this mindset was shaped by a deeply racist culture, and that would make sense; I'm just not sure it's true that American racism is really a necessary precondition for where these kids--and all the others like them who are mainly damaging *themselves*--have ended up.) 

A quote from Harris's web site ca. 3/98: "I am the law, and if you don't like it, you die. If I don't like you, you die."

----------
From: 	Doug Henwood
Sent: 	Tuesday, April 27, 1999 4:27 PM
To: 	lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
Subject: 	Re: Sillygism

Jim heartfield wrote:


>Carrol is a person
>
>Carrol lives in the United States
>
>Carrol is therefore permeated with racism?

Insofar as you can't have race without racism, it's everywhere James. I
can't speak for the rest of the world, but you can't live in the U.S. and
not be embedded in a racialized social system.

Doug
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