Personally, I am revolted by the idea that people who disagree with me (on whatever -- religion, politics, how best to win at Half Life 2) are therefore scumbags or some other adjective of denogration.
People who don't agree with me are bad people. There is no way for rational people to look at the same evidence as me and come to different conclusions. This is impossible, for I am always right, and it's obvious to me that my beliefs are true, therefore their truth must be obvious to everybody, so if other people disagree they are willfully disagreeing with reality and goodness and therefore evil.
--- On Tue, 1/6/09, James Straub <rustbeltjacobin at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: James Straub <rustbeltjacobin at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Franken wins Minnesota
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Tuesday, January 6, 2009, 7:19 PM
> >
> Indeed.
>
> I really wonder sometimes. People on this left who talk
> about what pure views a person needs to have in order to be
> part of the solution rather than the problem, I wonder what
> they would think if they took 60 hours to go
> person-by-person in a working-class neighborhood in suburban
> tampa, south philly or rural wisconsin, and run their
> checklist of correct views by each individual. It'd be
> an unpleasant thing, to meet so many nice proletarians who
> qualify as scumbags, no? If carrol on lenin's tomb met
> even one person they felt had acceptable politics, I'd
> be surprised.
>
> Doug is fond of throwing around the number 10%, to estimate
> the percent of people in the US who have 'solidly
> left-wing politics'. But judging from what we think it
> takes for one's politics to be 'solidly
> left-wing', is there anyone on this list who thinks that
> there's really 30 million americans who fit the bill?
>
>