On 3 Aug 2002 at 22:43, ben wrote:
> [Joe] For those who are interested, my political position is as
> follows: I am a fiscal conservative, a social liberal, and an
> international realist.
>
> [ben] I myself am a fiscal conservative, a social liberal, and an
> international man of mystery...
>
> [ben] I know I'm asking for it here, and I expect to get flamed in
> REALLY BIG WORDS from both sides for this, but honestly you both come
> off half the time sounding like overzealous Turing test programs, Joe
> on the pro-US and pro-Israeli side and Hermit on the exact opposite.
> Reading you two accuse each other of the same thing is at once amusing
> and surreal. I may not have as much time to read Jane's and the slew
> of "grassroots" news sources, but seriously guys lighten up.
>
Martin Luther King once said that you cannot push a man down into a ditch
without getting down in there with him.
We tend to both end up in the gutter when we debate and both feel passionately
about our positions when they are widely differential, and who is the original
pusher and who is the initial pushee is a matter that is always clouded by our fog
of linguistic war, and really not worth either of us determining unless we wish to
continue the "you did it first" "no, you did" childish one-upmanship game, which
is usually beneath both of us.
Either of us questioning the other's sanity (since we both are at the same time
quite sane and quite nonordinary) and/or objectivity (because that is an
impossible ideal for humans, anyway) and/or intelligence (because we have had
too much repartee for either of us to doubt the other on that score) function as
rhetorical devices meant to play to the gallery; both of us know that both of us
are both bright and as sane as is possible in such a troubling and bizarre world,
and neither can be objective, as that is humanly impossible (but I try, and I
believe that Hermit does, after his fashion). There is also mutual respect and, I
think, a dollop of real affection there, although in Hermit's case, he may presently
feel that to express it in the current context (although he did so recently, affirming
Casey's positive regard for my contributions here) would be to betray some sort
of weakness.
At the end of it all, we do have and enjoy, I believe, a genuine friendship of some
years' standing (at least on my end). But that simply means that, like good friend
football players whose opposing teams have to play to decide who goes on to
district, we compete all the harder when we are on the field.
>
> -ben
>
>
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