Alan wrote: " jeez, is it any wonder that kids resist efforts to control their speech, to discipline their use of terms in informal exchanges and, basically, to ignore constant scolding Carrol, even people who agree with you conceptually tire of this line, this tone. . . ."
You are probably correct.
I will have to figure out a way to restart this topic in another tone. Part of the problem is that I really do _start_ my political discussions from the vantage point of the local activist, asking What to do now. And I have a hard time being interested in any empirical question that is not related to that, or any theoretical question that is not related to (leads to, illuminates, uncovers) the kind of empirical material that is directly related. (I assume that there is no direct link between theory and practice.)
I clearly need a better way of linking what others focus on to what I focus on.
The premise of collusion, it seems to me, leads directly to a practice of exposure, and that practice has (as actually most on this list agree) been demonstrated to be ineffective over and over again. When, for example, you demonstrate to someone (in personal conversation, so at least he/she knows you exist*) that the government lies, the response almost always is something on the order of, "Sure they do, everyone knows that." The implicit content being, Who Cares or Have you seen (such and such a movie? That is, no one is ever moved to action by finding out that the president, governor, etc is lying. Hence truth as such is _merely_ an academic concern, with no political relevance.
Carrol