Jim Straub wrote:
>
> Are you serious?
> I... don't think most 14 year olds associate the hammer and sickle
> with the soviet union, and wouldn't be surprised if a majority of the
> general public didn't either. The semiotic language that is
> lbo-talk's milleu is simply not a part of the general discourse in the
> US. I guess one could proceede from that to a belief that everyone
> else is 'incurious', 'untutored', 'solipsistic', and... feral??!?!
> But that seems like projection to me.
>
> But maybe I'm jumping the gun and you were being sarcastic in a way I
> can't read.
I jump to the chance to agree totally on something with Jim. A constant attribute of this list is a tendency to underestimate the intelligence AND knowledge of the u.s. public, a failure grounded in the assumption that the only kind of intelligence is the writer's kind, and the only important knowledge is the writer's knowledge -- which makes it easy to call a couple hundred million people stupid and ignorant.
Carrol