Deconstructing Gang Bangs and Rhetorical Deviousness

[Gordon Fitch]

LeoCasey at aol.com:
> ...
> I take it that the "one of us" is you, speaking about yourself in the third
> person. I don't know if this counts as an "extremely devious" rhetorical
> tactic, but in any case, I think I understood quite well what you said: that
> because you disagreed with what I had to say about -- shit, it is a pain in
> the ass to refer to the actual statement so many times -- wearing black
> masks, waving black flags and breaking Starbucks windows being a "male
> adolescent" activity, but didn't actually want to take on the burden of
> defending it as real politics....

I think part of the problem is that wearing black masks,
waving black flags, _and_ breaking Starbucks window is not a
representative activity of anarchists or radicals in general,
and everyone (at least in these sophisticated environs) knows
this.  Therefore, people assume (correctly, I think) that you
are deliberately using the few to misrepresent the many as a
technique of rhetoric rather than as sober factuality, hyperbole
we're all supposed to understand.  This leaves your interlocutors
with nothing to respond to but mythographic content; they can
hardly be expected to respond to that sort of thing by "tak[ing]
on the burden of defending it as real politics" since they,
including Chuck, had not advanced it as the "real politics" in
the first place.

The whole business seems to me to be rather evasive, like your
non-answer to my complaints about Gore's moral turpitude in
supporting the Drug War.