[lbo-talk] Kees van der Pijl

[Christian Gregory]

I thought VDP's point was pretty clear, although the whole piece is badly written. Isn't he basically saying that, insofar as "democracy" and "freedom" have become aesthetic concepts, they have occluded the degree to which the "beauties" of our everyday lives require that we deny that others don't share our material wealth? As an example, I would cite a economics professor I knew who once asserted that world living standards were relatively equal. It's not _just_ ethnocentrism, but plain stupidity--in the form of denegation.

Christian