> How is funneling a static image?
It's not. To enter into your image for a moment, I imagine we'd all be squirming dynamically as we headed into your funnel. What I was referring to was the contrast between (and I think I can fairly equate your use of "space-time" and "reality") the "space-time warping by attractors" and "hardened reality." Warping is a dynamic image even if it does take geologic time. "Hardened" sounds pretty static to me. So I think I'd have different responses to your image based on its static or dynamic form. Like if it's in motion, I'd be curious to know how it's moving, or who is doing the moving, so that I could speak to them.
It occurred to me after my previous post that perhaps the two statements actually consistuted a single image: that these large attractors moving in geologic time were warping reality into a funnel which then hardened. Sort of a "black hole" idea. The question I have here is that to my mind, a funnel admits of no choice at all; it's a singularity. So I don't see how your funnel image bolsters your argument for binary choice, unless there is more than one funnel, which your pluralizing of attractors seems to suggest. But if you allow two, what proof do you offer that there are only two, and not more?
To get back to my original post, my question to the OP about binary choice addressed a very specific instance: the choice was between Ahmedinejad and Bollinger, and the insistence on the limit of two was clearly imposed by the OP, or his channeling of Ms. Furuhashi. Your response expanded the area under consideration to entire current situation around Iran, and reversed my question, turning it into an assertion you term a "wrong-headed belief". That "(the Western left) can alter the *terms* of the conflict facing the Iranians by merely reframing the discourse, by boldly escaping an artificially imposed discursive dichotomy."
I've re-read your post, and your argument for dichotomy (and hence the reframing of discourse) amounts to your image of "gravitational attractors" discussed above. Why should we grant a funnel axiomatic status in your argument? Did Noam Chomsky, for example, use this as a controlling metaphor for his analysis in _Manufacturing Consent_? Perhaps there's someone out there that has made an argument for a "black hole" theory of ideological consensus in the U.S., but I'm not familiar with their work. If so, I think it would have to take into account the Republican Party's difficulty in altering the terms of Dubya's war in Iraq, much less the Left.
Best, Charles