That kind of assertion can be easily reversed and applied to you: e.g., "I might suspect that you're really into speculation about motives with no hard evidence because you're really into unscientific stuff the Freudians do." Either way, though, it sheds no light on the merits and demerits of psychology of any brand.
Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu, Tue Feb 22 13:50:10 PST 2005:
>Example: Analysis of U.S. aggression in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan,
>Iraq, Iran, Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, etc.
>There is no point in talking about motives at any level (of the
>ruling class, of the Administration as a whole, of Bush (or Clinton
>or Reagan or Carter or Eisenhower or Truman before him) unless one
>has first established (to the satisfaction of those one is writing
>speaking to) that all those instances from the Truman Doctrine
>through overthrow of Mossedegh to the latest crimes in the Mideast
>are in fact instances of aggression. Then it is still not important
>to analyze Bush's personal motives, because such gossip interferes
>with our building a movement rather than contributes to it. I'm not
>in the least embarassed by the Weathermen or Lynne Stewart but I'm
>embarassed as hell (though there's nothing I can do about it so I
>ignore it) by leftists on maillists or in left publications who go
>on and on about what a doofus Bush is.
>
>Discussion of Bush's motives or character simply diverts from and
>throws in to chaos attempts to understand the overall thrust of u.s.
>policy for purposes of resisting it.
>
>Ascribing imperialism to personal motives is about the most
>disruptive discourse on the left that I can conceive of. Cheney's
>policies have to be established as vicious in abstraction from the
>benefit to Halliburton. They would be equally vicious if they were
>counter-productive for Cheney personally and Halliburton as a
>business -- and Cheney's motives were squeaky clean and utterly
>disinterested.
Lyndon LaRouche specializes in the sort of diversion that you discuss above: e.g., <http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/larouchevotestmt12804.pdf>. What's sad is that lots of liberal Democrats' arguments against the George W. Bush administration are hardly better than LaRouche's. A bumpy terrain indeed. -- Yoshie
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