Thanks everyone for taking the time to respond to my posting – some personally, off list, others to the list. I especially appreciate those responses that took what wrote seriously and offered various insights or suggestions.
At the same time, however, I find it ironic that people pass judgments about personalities of those whom they never met in person, and all they know about them is their posting to an internet discussion group.
It is like saying that an actor who plays a villain in a motion picture is a morally corrupt person. I do not think many people on this list would entertain such thoughts about thespians, yet they often do it about internet posters. Strange, is not it? I think it was only Ravi who briefly hinted at the possibility of different real life and internet personalities before falling into the same old judgment trap.
Contrary to what some of you who never met me suggested, there are not many - if any at all - people whom I actually hate or consider unworthy. In real life, I am generally a sociable and helpful person, I do not hold grudges (for more than 15 minutes,) have no personal enemies, and most people I have met tend to like me, even those who dislike my ideology. What I rant about is characters, not real people, or to be more exact - roles that people sometimes play. As a matter of fact, I almost never mention personalities of other lbo-sters in my postings, or engage in ad hominems (except perhaps one time with Dennis Claxton, which in the retrospect was probably not such a good idea.)
One of those roles I dislike is self-righteous indignation - wrapping oneself in a flag, ideology, religion, cause and rebuking and moralizing others from that "high road." I admit that I have obsessive aversion to anyone speaking with cock-sure certitude, self-righteousness or authority. I have it since my childhood, and I had many problems because of that. When I see people on this list posting things that smack of this, this really irks me and I react by mocking and ridiculing it. I guess that is the reaction I learned when I was growing up on the other side of the iron curtain, where jest and ridicule was a standard way of deflating the ex-cathedra bullshit.
In real life, I met many people from many walks of life, most of them probably from the working class (including my #2.) I have generally no problems listening and empathizing with others, albeit I do have a tendency toward lecturing which I admit can be annoying. What is more, for the past 14 or so years I have lived in the crime capital of the US - Bodymore, Murderland as it is sometimes called here -surrounded by all imaginable kinds of delinquency. Unlike most of my neighbors, I could afford moving to the "burbs" but I chose not to, mainly to be consistent with what I preach. It may sound strange, but for the same reason I chose not to send my kid to a private school or apply to one myself.
I have to admit that those 14 years took some toll, and I am getting tired of gunshots, homicides, police helicopters, break-ins, muggings, noise, trash, bottles, needles, condoms, bums shitting on my doorsteps, people yelling and screaming obscenities at each other. But I still live here, volunteer for my community as much as I can and resist the temptation to move to segregated burbs.
However, when I hear self-styled radicals, living mostly in suburban or college campus communities that separate them from what I experience every day, and extolling it as a higher form of living while bashing "yuppies" i.e. people like me – it gets on my nerves. It is the cultural trope, the self-righteous speak of self-styled radicals that I ridicule, not the people like my neighbors.
One final thought. While the US society as a whole is quite diverse, it consists, for a large part, of many monocultures with high level of internal uniformity and little tolerance of deviance from that uniformity.
Whether one is a member of a country club, youth gang, or a radical group – one is expected to follow highly scripted roles, dress codes and forms of expression. A rebel group may be rebellious toward the mainstream or other groups, but it is highly conformist inside. I think this is precisely why people like me or Michael Pugliese, who never personally attacked anyone, touched more raw nerves than people who regularly hurl obscenities at other list members. Obscenities do not question the script that defines the group’s identity and its interpretative frameworks, dissenting opinions do.
Wojtek
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