--- Michael Hoover <hooverm at scc-fl.edu> wrote:
> violence* - from post by Wojtek (guess i should have
> been paying more attention
> to who posters were, i would have skipped yours)...
I am generally trying to ignore snide comments, but I would like to use this one as a teaching, or perhaps deconstructing, example. I posted something that is a legitimate point of view that prefers some forms of organizing to other. One may agree or disagree with it. Chuck Munson, for example, profoundly disagrees and speaks his mind about that, offering his opposing point of view (which I reject) as an alternative. In a word, he disagrees with a point if view but in a serious and respectful way, without questionning the sincerity of his opponent.
I do not mean to impute anything about your motives or intentions, especially since I generally find your postings informative and level-headed. However, the above comment on my position on organizing shows signs of a certain form of discourse which for the lack of a better term I call the "inquisitor's leap." In this form of discourse, the speaker does not engage his opponent on equal terms with a rival point of view. Instead, he "leaps" to the "third-person omniscient" perspective in which he authoritatively pronouces to the public a statement (usually derogatory) about his opponent's trustworthiness. In other words, he takes the "high road" of an arbiter and a teacher for the audience, while reducing his opponent to the role of a subject or a pupil.
This form of discourse is particulary popular among left wing intellectuals (cf. Cox or Proyect), but of course they do not have a monopoly on it. It is also highly annoying, because it is a form of passive aggression that often provokes the other side to lose temper and start acting emotionally. That is why a rational thing to do in such situations is basically to ignore such passive-aggressive attacks and hope that the audience will see through them.
However, this form of discourse is not only annoying and provoking animosity, but above all - highly counterproductive. It ends the dialog and encourages sectarianism - which is basically the tendency for surrounding oneself with people who will not pose any challenge - a very rational strategy in a field infested with self-styled inquisitors. I have a reason to believe that this is not your intention here, so please be aware of the effects of snide comments directed at the specific interlocutors whose views you oppose - which btw is different from snide or derogatory comments about a social phenonomenon or a group of people defined in abstract and general terms.
Wojtek
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