> I find it rather amusing, this urge of intellectuals to search for the
> future in the external events of two or three days. In the past the meaning
> of such initial conflicts has never been visible except from the
> perspective
> of at least two or three years in the future.
>
> Carrol
OK, so the advice is this - pay no attention to intellectual interpretations of the meaning of contemporary events (at least if they are seeking - however tentatively - to suss out future meanings). Nothing written about Sept. 11, 2001 in the two or three years afterwards that addressed its future impact was worth a darn. Not a thing written about the prospective future meaning of the fall of the Berlin Wall for the two or three years immediately afterwards ought to have been seen as anything other than amusing. Anyone who was thinking that they could anticipate much of anything about the meaning of much of anything - from the West Coast General Strike of the thirties to Stonewall in the early 70s surely was little more than worthy of ridicule. All folks on this list who tried to understand the meaning of Obama's election by partial means of astro-net-turf-roots in Nov. 2008, really should have just shut up 'cuz they didn't know what was really gonna happen between then and later. The politics of the moment should not even try to think about futures 'cuz, heck, no one knows enough yet and therefore its all just amusing speculation, navel gazing and mental masturbation - and just as fecund.
Clearly, its not worth seeking out a range of perspectives on the possible future meanings of contemporary events - much less discussing them - because, hell, they could be wrong, or they might not be comprehensive, or they can only provide speculative triangulations... such things provide no useful insights (if they are at all oriented to the future), so it is incumbent on us to at least ignore all forms of anticipatory prognostication as we try to flesh out our own individual and collective political praxis relative to such debates.