From: feren	Date: November 7th, 2002 06:01 am (UTC)		(Link)

[opinions are automatically supposed to be "wise" because they can be expressed in an uppity manner, demonstrating author's ability to "rise above" something]

No, opinions are like ass holes -- everybody has one.

[Having Congress full of lunatics and corporate whores is a loss in a very important fight]

So I guess your opinion makes you "wise?"

From: (Anonymous)	Date: November 7th, 2002 03:17 pm (UTC)		(Link)
Random People commenting in your Journal

Just because this guy thinks that he is smarter than everyone else doesn't make him a jerk. That came naturally...

-Shanedoll ;)

To copy an old newsgroup quote:

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

	From: feren	Date: November 7th, 2002 03:20 pm (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: Random People commenting in your Journal

Bored again at work, are you, Shane?

You need to just get an LJ account and be done with it.

	From: hartree	Date: November 7th, 2002 05:52 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I read your reply and the followups to it. You sound just as doctrinaire and uncompromising as the right wing religious zealots of the other side. Welcome to irrelevancy as that stance will sell to no group outside your own tiny circle and the only way it could have impact is for it to be imposed by you on others. And if you go to that end, then there's little to distinguish you from the authoritarians you say you oppose.

	From: abelits	Date: November 7th, 2002 07:43 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I merely think that recognizing enemies as enemies and flaws as flaws is important for any conflict over things that matter. Conflicts over things that don't matter can be smoothed out, carried in a way that "respects other side", etc.

Mainstream American culture values comfort and calmness over actual issues that conflicts are about, but this is precisely what makes people easy to manipulate -- they treat ALL conflicts as conflicts over things that don't matter, and base their ideas about life by whatever was told to them by whoever first "explained how the real life works". And after that they are locked, and can't participate in any argument about those things without crying "mommy, people that disagree with us are mean!" if their opponents don't follow the rules that favor them. In other words, they are zealots of the idea that nothing matters and that arguments are good only as long as you are guaranteed to end up smelling like roses.