This political-philosophoical error/sin of being blind to context seems awfully serious to me, so maybe you could help me understand it better, so I could avoid it in the future. I wouldn't want it to get in the way of my Eduard Bernstein medal.
Does it mean that when I said:
<< ...it is partaking in the male adolescent joys of "kicking butt" by running through the streets with black flags and masks, busting Starbucks' windows, and proclaiming that you have invented some new form of revolutionary politics. If the term 'infantile leftism' didn't exist, it would have to be created to describe this type of self-absorbed, self-centered excuse for political struggle. >>
I did not anticipate that you would translate that into
<< Expressions of political enthusiasm and direct action protest are somehow equated with male gang-banging? >>
Which would then allow Carrol to translate it into a discourse on the:
<< ...the Women Strike For Peace organization. >>
Now I had thought that this was just an example of how you can twist an argument you don't want to face head on into some absurd, unrecognizable version of itself. I had no idea that it was all a function of my inability to grasp context.
So can I be clear on what the nature of my error and sin was here? Was it that (a) my impoverished political imagination did not allow me to understand that it was octogenarian women under those black masks and black flags breaking Starbucks' windows; (b) I failed to appreciate that all the times I and others were arrested for non-violent civil disobedience these last 35 years, around the civil rights, anti-war, anti-apartheid and gay rights struggles, we were engaged in direct action which was indistinguishable from putting on a black mask, waving black flags and breaking Starbucks windows, or from putting on a football helmet, waving a NLF flag and breaking bank windows 35 years ago? (c) my liberalism keeps me from seeing the essential and fundamental difference a 19 year male putting on a colored mask, hitting the streets in gangs and engaging in vandalism on Halloween and a 19 year old male putting on a black mask, hitting the streets in a "black bloc" and engaging in vandalism during a political demonstration? (d) my reliance on bourgeois forms of logic make it impossible for me to grasp why legality is so important when someone wants to trade votes for Nader and Gore, but so besides the point when one feels inspired to shock the bourgeoisie by breaking windows? (e) I have lost touch with the joys of 'infantile leftism'?
As you can see, I need a lot of help in this area.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20001104/77f120d9/attachment.htm>