But that doesn't mean much out in the world. Most folks on the list actually agree on 99% of issues and 95% of most day-to-day political choices for action (boycott X, support Y strike, demand defeat of Z legislation), but it's no fun repeating "ditto", so people zero in on the stuff where people can tear each other apart over differences.
-- Nathan Newman
----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 3:46 PM Subject: Re: Steve Perry
lweiger at umich.edu wrote:
>Doug, would you please welcome him back? I'd hate to think that my
>most lasting contribution to this list was hastening (with Justin's
>help) the exit of such an open and unblinded mind.
He didn't leave, though he seems to be contemplating it.
I've been especially distressed - meaning I usually am, but it's been worse lately - by the insularity of a lot of listmembers. They're not interested in, or quite hostile to, people they deem too sectarian, or too liberal, or too "academic," or too whatever. The major reason I started this list was to offer a forum where people on the broadly defined "left," whatever that is, could talk across disciplinary, political, and temperamental boundaries. Sometimes it works, but in times of crisis, like this, the fault lines really become apparent. In my gloomier moments I think maybe I should just pull the plug on the whole thing because it's all so fucking doomed and just reposition myself as a writer of starlet profiles.
Doug