Well put! She got evolution, the rest of us got parthenogenesis i.e., clones. ;-)
On Jun 16, 2009, at 3:36 PM, Eric Beck wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Chris Doss<lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Dabashi: "Poor people = suckers"
>
> You might want to read the next sentence. Or are you reading Dabashi
> like you read Foucault.
Here are the next two sentences:
> It is important to keep in mind that Ahmadinejad’s supporters come
> from the poorest and most disenfranchised segments of Iranian
> society, subject to his and his campaign’s populism and demagoguery.
> From this fact one should not conclude that all the impoverished
> segments of Iranian society, suffering from double digit inflation
> and endemic unemployment, are on his side or fooled by his
> charlatanism. The supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi and the
> Reformist movement come from a vast trajectory of Iranian society.
Let us read it as one might a logical inference process. Here is how that turns out for me, and you tell me how you might break it down:
1. A's supporters come from poorest and most disenfranchised segments 2. These segments or supporters are subject to his populism and demagoguery 3. A is a charlatan 4. But not all poorest/disenfranchised support A 5. So some poorest/disenfranchised are not fooled by A 6. Mousavi draws support from various parts of society
(that's how I can sensibly parse "vast trajectory", but I may be wrong here) 7. So some of the poorest/disenfranchised support Mousavi
#2 seems to stand out on its own, irrespective of all the following sentences, in validating Chris Doss's equation. But to go further:
#6, #7 are offered, I presume to back up #5. No matter. Let's take that at face value. We could benefit here from a Venn diagram, but I am too tired to do ASCII art, so let's be verbose. Say those who vote among the poorest/most-disenfrachised are a big set P, and those within that set who voted for Ahmadinejad are in the subset X and those who voted for Mousavi are in the subset Y. For #2 to not be a *general* statement about the poor/disenfranchised, #5 has to be significant i.e., Y > X. But given that Ahmadinejad is not Ralph Nader, but runs up huge numbers, X cannot be a small number. And given #1, X has to account for an overwhelming majority of Ahmadinejad's votes. To restate: if his supporters are poor/disenfranchised, and he gets lots and lots of votes, then lots and lots of poor/ disenfranchised people support him.
That makes it highly unlikely that those who support Mousavi from that community (the subset Y) is anywhere close in number to those who support Ahmadinejad (subset X). A statement about X, therefore, is pretty much a statement about P (the set of all poor/disenfranchised), as far as real world statements go.
You could argue of course that there is nothing wrong with saying that some people get fooled by opportunists due to the vulnerability of their situation. That would be a different argument, I think.
--ravi