--- Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> and other issues. The problem, Woj, is that you
> share Mencken's sour view of
> America as one big collective "booboisie", but
> Mencken's stereotype was
> wrong then and you're wrong now.
Not exactly "one big" - just big enough to get the gang of reactionary repugs repeatedly elected. Noone can deny that.
Otherwise, it is a very diverse country with a lot of interesting, intelligent, and progressive people.
I have another question - why do you think people on this list, including yourself, consistently refuse to address my point about the institutional influences on people's views and electoral behavior and insist on viewing that behavior as an individual preference or choice? I do not mean "agree" but "explicitly acknowledge," even if only to flatly reject it. As any decent sociologist would attest, institutional norms and expectations have a powerful effect on individual behavior - so the point I am trying to make is not something totally off the wall, not even worth being taken seriously.
As to my views about HL - I think his understanding of human behavior and social interaction was rather pedestrian, especially vis a vis that offered by modern social sciences. I think his greatness lies in his penchant for stalking out the 'mountebanks' that infest the US public discourse - self-styled, bigger than life moralizers, ideologues, preachers, gurus, politicos, do-gooders, demagogues and rabble rousers. They give the US public discourse a really bad flavor.
Wojtek
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