[lbo-talk] Politics vs the DP

Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
Wed Jun 15 22:16:27 PDT 2011


On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 23:47:16 -0500 Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:


> Don't moralize. All that you claim can be supported and explained
> without the moralistic rhetoric of "sell out."

Point taken, and I agree with you about moralizing, as a general matter, but as I (at least) use the phrase 'sell out', it has no particular moral dimension unless, of course, the behavior it describes happens to be something one disapproves of.

For me it describes a concrete and rather common pattern of activity: e.g. an informer 'sells out' people who confide in him. It's a job description.

Approval or disapproval aside, if you convince a fellow inmate that his cellmate is a sellout, he's likely to stop confiding in the cellmate. Whether he does so for moral or practical reasons doesn't much matter; the point is to stop the confidences, right?


> Remember
> Jimmy Carter's "The World is not fair."

Wasn't that actually Mattress Jack Kennedy? And I remember it as "life is not fair".

-- --

Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net

http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://www.cars-suck.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com



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