[lbo-talk] Was: Principled Discoursing More like off My Head

[Hari Kumar]

Jon Johanning: "Does anyone realize or care that if you put all the readers of 
Counterpunch together with all the members of this list, they would 
pack a good-sized telephone booth, compared with the total population 
of the country?
It's the latter we need to be concerned about, not our own bruised 
little egos, because it's the population of the country that will 
decide the fate of the world in the rest of the 21st century, not us."

Comment: This is surely a deliberately narrow way of looking at it in the context?
Where has Carrol denied that "it is the population of the world" etc?

Let us accept that the members of an e-group, form some form of peer group. Our respective 'peer groups' - accord either respect or abuse or tolerance. On this basis, we form our response to the peer group, or to members of that peer group. Is this not obvious? 
Thus a charge of 'traitor' - may be considered by bystanders as innocent hyperbole. But it may be in reality quite wounding. Especially if it's charge are aiimed at stripping the legitimacy of the target's future interventions/comments in discussions on political matters with the 'peer group'. 
What is so difficult to see about that?

If false charges - or hyperbolic charges that are perceived as outrageous enough to warrant rebuttal - are made, it is surely not needed to remind us that most of our peer groups are so small that the putative insult will not penetrate the lives of all on the planet? What mandate does this lend to outrageous charges/insults/goads?
That is my view anyway. 

I think it relates to an earlier strand here that discussed how members of the left behave pretty brutally to each other on this peer group e-list & others. 
Hari KUmar