Dwayne Monroe wrote:
>
>
> The irony is that, given the complexity of American
> life, everyone can find compelling evidence to support
> his or her beliefs. Thus this debate can circle
> around itself forever.
Agreed. I want to point out that _none_ of my posts have actually made any statements about "american life" -- my concern has been solely with the categories that are relevant to such a discussion. I didn't, for example, argue whether americans were individualists or not, or whether that was good or bad; I argued that as a theoretical category "expressing one's personality" was empty.
When I suggested that support for Bush's position on Iraq was the "core" of popular culture I was not really interested in whether that was true or not; I was interested in moving towards some understanding of what the hell people thought they were talking about when they discussed "popular culture."
And so forth. In one of my early posts I pointed out that the discussion was tending to sqush different topics together -- it was as though almost everyone posting was a archetypal "Maoist" focused on defining the world in terms of "Two-Line Struggle." There aren't two positions in this set of threads. There are more (non-touching) positions than I would care to try to count. P says X is red." Q says, "No P, you are wrong, X is round." R says, "You are both wrong, X is is hard." And so forth.
Carrol
>
> This is a true oroboros of discussion; a
> self-devouring serpent.
>
> DRM
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk