[lbo-talk] RE: Film notes

Thomas Seay entheogens at yahoo.com
Sun Oct 26 11:36:21 PST 2003


--- joanna bujes <jbujes at covad.net> wrote:
>
> Is there anyone on this list who holds this
> position? Who are you arguing against?

I dont know if there is or not. However, we have been discussing "competition" and the idea has been put out there for discussion that "sports" are both a form of competition (and therefore bad) and possibly an opiate that distracts people from political action. I am not arguing against any person, but just making a point. ANYTHING can become an addiction or a distraction from political action...INCLUDING spending all day on the Internet writing to a listserve about politics. However sports are also a joy and to reduce every joy- especially those that may not be your particular joy- to a distraction from political action would be silly.

That's all. I am addressing my statement to what was written in the article. I am not necessarily firing that out at anybody on this list, and I am certainly not firing it out at my friend, Michael Pugliese, who passed the article along.


>
>
> "For many of us, me included, politics is at least
> partially a game...it's a hobby. That is not to say
> people on the Left dont engage in it mainly for
> reasons of liberation and concern for others. But
> part of the allure is that it is a game, a
> pass-time.
> That is part of the reason why we are on this list."
>
> Would just like to point out that if politics
> strikes you as a game, this is because your material
> well-being would not be substantially affected by a
> particular political outcome.

You are not about to
> be drafted and you are not about to be thrown out on
> the sidewalk. For many people who are not as
> privileged as you are, political outcomes might make
> the difference between life and death, between a
> decent life and absolute immiseration, between
> freedom and imprisonment.

And did I say it was otherwise? I said it was IN PART a game for some people. And I think it is PART of the pleasure people get from a listserve like this. I also said that I did not think that was necessarily the main reason people engage in it. I fully understand that some people engage in politics because they have to. Other people do it because they feel a moral responsibility to do so. Most people do it for a mixture of those reasons.

By the way, I do not deny being privleged. I also refuse to be brow-beaten by another person who is privleged, relatively speaking. I suspect that the "game" or "fun" aspect of politics wont be liked by those who feel they are morally one-up and couldn't be subject to such a base reason for being political such as "fun">


>It is therefore much less
> of a game for them and they are not "puritannical"
> because it is not a game for them.

Explain this word "puritanical" and why you used it here, please.

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