>
> On Apr 30, 2009, at 3:41 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
>> as for the anarchist thread, i do agree with carrol that, if you're
>> goin to ask questions, it's probably a point of principled debate
>> that
>> you bother to give your own stab at an answer, first.
>
> That's nonsense. Sometimes you ask a question because you want to know
> the answer. That's half of what journalism is about. (Alex Cockburn at
> Andrew Kopkind's memorial: "He was a real journalist. He asked people
> questions, wrote down their answers.") It's what I do on the radio
> every week. Only an ideologue asks questions to which he already knows
> the answer.
>
> Doug
well, a lot of people ask questions, hoping to corner their interlocutor into being unable to answer. a lot of people, right here on this list, believe that if someone doesn't answer, then wow, the question asker has "won" the debate (rilly rilly dumb assumption....) or has, somehow, gotten the other person to silently concede the points. two seconds pondering wojteks contributions to this list would suggest how rilly rilly RILLY dumb that assumption is, for sure.)
"Well, what would *you* do?!" is an excellent example of rhetoric that will be read as offensive -- as in on the attack.
You even said recently, "I've asked anarchists this question for years, and I never get an answer."
Like I said, I think you'd like an answer, but when you say stuff like that, and in the context of standard debate tactics where people are automatically suspicious of bad faith questions, it's going to be interpreted as if you're operating in bad faith -- whether you are, or you aren't. Doesn't matter. There's a bigger world out there where we're socialized into this "gotcha" mentality where the goal is to humiliate the other into silence with back-against-the-wall questions.
hence, I think, the need to reassure the other person that you really are interested in their answers.
On the other hand, at the end of Wall St. you basically make the point that people are rude if they dish out critique (like the anarchos) without ever coming up with answers.
shag
shag