>calling someone *stalinist* is stereotypical pejorative comment, adding
>*cyber* makes it sooo kewl, but calling lister *psychotic* - as in
>suffering from psychosis, as in severe mental disorder involving a person's
>whole personality - is more than 'probably excessive', it is highly
>offensive...
yeah, getting told that you sit on your fat ass all day or that you alway bring up sex on lbo-talk is kinda shitty too, but i didn't hear anyone whining then. btw, not to knock angela, but she has called folks narcissistic a couple of times, though she didnt name names quite so specifically. so hey, wotevA. yoshie and i go at it regularly, but i respect her on a gut level because she's an outspoken chick like me and there are things she and i agree on, on some level. but i would suggest, and i have before, that it does get tiring to be pinned into boxes or misrepresented regularly. which yoshie sometimes does do and it's difficult not to get exceedingly ticked off by that because it feels like you're banging your head against a steel wall when you would really like to be argued with on the basis of what you've typed, not on some box you've been unfairly pegged into. so after a couple of rounds of that,of feeling like what you're typing is simply not being read by your interlocutor, there's not much you can do and, yes, you get weak and often enough sucuumb to that kind of flammage in response.
people make mistakes and the flaming gets out of hand at times -- we're human, yoshie, daniel, michael, doug. so maybe we can cut folks a little slack here and there. and maybe we can be a bit more consistent in calling out over-the-top insults or something. have some principles which carrol has eloquently argued for as a virtue of a solidaristic class stuggle. i don't think daniel deserves to be castigated like this.
as for stalinist, i really don't think it's fair to shake daniel down for that since folks regularly hurl idealist, etc around in the same damn fashion, particularly when they are trying to insult someone who identifies with marsixt analyses.
enjoy your symptom!
kelley