Platonic essence? Sheer cussedness is more like it.
This phenomenon isn't peculiar to e-lists. Idle vituperation has a long tradition in leftist politics. E.g., I just finished sampling the collected letters of Dwight Macdonald, and pretty tedious reading they were for the most part; his typical message seemed to be: "Fuck you, and here's why." It's hard to believe his correspondents finished reading them, but I gather Macdonald was often just giving as good as he got (can't say -- this collection, edited by Michael Wreszin, has only Macdonald's outgoing letters).
To me, the obvious source of this fulmination is the belief that the blunter your candor, the more distance you put between yourself and the sly dissimulations of the bourgeoisie with all their phony-baloney politesse. That's the idea anyway. In practice, candor too often becomes wearisome disputatiousness.
One interesting point that Macdonald does make is to quote Marx (source not given) on the secret of effective polemics -- i.e., that to be successful, polemics must be both brutal *and* subtle. The second requisite there tends to be overlooked.
Carl
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