http://unspeak.net/forum The Unspeak™ Forum™ en http://backend.userland.com/rss http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=193#193 193@http://unspeak.net/forum More rubbish from The Guardian: ‘Vladimir Putin’s undersized protégé did his masters bidding again’.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interac … dev-jintao Is that a fact? Could it be that he was acting on the will of the Russian people, or even the Ossetians who did not want to be bombed and attacked with tanks?But why waste time thinking when you can recycle neocon drivel in a ‘left wing’ newspaper? Of course not one of the twelve comments is positive, but the strange paradox is that the more The Guardian moves to the neo-liberal right, the less it appeals to its marketed audience. Fri, 08 May 2009 13:19:43 -0400 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=192#192 192@http://unspeak.net/forum After a few false starts, I have established a blog. Those who have read and remembered my posts (was that a tumbleweed I heard?) will notice that I am a real weirdo. My political ideology is an odd combination of Tsarist Libertarianism, Gallic social democracy, Periclean idealism, liberal consumerism, Vulcan logic and isolationist scepticism: http://deformablemirror.blogspot.com/My blog will not just focus on politics but will also include literature, pop-culture, philosophy, photography, Orthodox Christianity, technology, art and history. I love unspeak because as a political website it is pretty unique in its strong adherence to logic and reasoned argument. It is not like most websites where people scream that they are the most humane, sensitive, generally-wonderful person in the world for supporting policy X and opposing policy Y. Or that they are the most sceptical, logical person on earth because they’ve read a book saying that God does not exist, even if they think Tony Blair is honest.Anyway, I would be very grateful for any visitors. Sat, 25 Apr 2009 07:29:31 -0400 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=191#191 191@http://unspeak.net/forum Being a historian born in the early 1980s I often find it curious how the word ‘Thatcherist’ is used, both as a term of abuse and as a self-descriptive term. Whilst my own politics are liberal/ left I do not see that Thatcher did much that was not going to happen anyway. By most accounts I have read (though anyone who lived then is welcome to offer other views) the 1970s were pretty grim. Whilst Atlee’s 1940s reforms were ones that in principle I’d support, I also see that they do not fit in well generally with human nature and were only possible in the aftermath of the war. By the 1970s it seems that the Unions had tried everyone’s patience and also behaved brutally during the 1980s. Even Harold Pinter voted Tory in 1979    The most ideological, wasteful and stupid Conservative privatisation was the railways. However, this was done by John Major’s government, and Thatcher had previously opposed it. Yet no one calls themselves ‘Majorist’. Furthermore, Britain is both more and less democratic than people think. More because there is a parliamentary voting system which lets MPs of all parties vote, less because they often vote for the same policies. It seems to me that if the Labour party (and Liberals/ Social Democrats) really strongly opposed most of Thatcher’s reforms they could have made some impact during the 1980s.Lastly, the view of Thatcher as a ‘neo-liberal’ is not entirely accurate. John Gray wrote well about this is Black Mass pointing out that she started as a one nation Tory. However, he did not get the chronology entirely right. She called herself a Hayekian first, but after the ‘Chicago School’ reforms created higher unemployment, she distanced herself from her supporter, Milton Friedman. Also, whilst I think the Falklands war was an appalling waste of life, I remember seeing her being asked about sinking the Belgrano and replying ‘they were going to kill our boys’. Whilst the sinking of the Belgrano was an appalling act and possibly a war-crime, for someone of my age, seeing a British leader who sees British soldiers as more than gambling chips is oddly striking. Whilst Thatcher is now suffering from dementia, some say that she was sceptical about the Iraq war. Whilst she supported the war in Afghanistan she was sceptical about the concept of bringing democracy to the country.In her autobiography, some of her comments on the economy could come from someone to the left of Peter Mandelson, especially her praise for the NHS as it was at the time. Perhaps the word ‘Thatcherist’ is a word used by supporters because it is phonetically harsh and strong due to its fricatives rather than because she was an especially significant historical figure. The soft ‘Majorist’ would not sound quite so imposing. The word Blair, especially as blurted out by himself, is a gasping optimistic sound, which may be why people call themselves ‘Blairists’, even though he barely disagreed with the Tories on anything (though I doubt anyone would call themselves Brownist). Neo-liberalism has taken over all mainstream newspapers in Britain to such an extent that being sceptical of their claims reminds me of Ambrose Bierce’s definition of a cynic as ‘someone with the imperfection of seeing the world as it is rather than how it should be’. I think being a leftist now is being someone who sees capitalism as what it is not what it should be. However, I am aware that this is a ‘negative’ position. Whilst I greatly enjoyed Adam Curtis’s documentary ‘The trap’ (available in youtube) I felt that he did not offer any alternative to what happened, even though he acknowledged that the economy was in great difficulties in the 1970s. However, the economy after almost thirty years of neo-liberalism is still vastly wasteful and inefficient. As for the Hayekian (some would say ‘Thatcherist’) idea that liberty is helped by the free market, that is obvious drivel, as any look at Privacy International will demonstrate. As for the idea that it makes Britain more democratic, I’ve heard that Boris Johnson has installed even more CCTV cameras than existed under Ken Livingstone.Lastly, I’m not sure if Britain is more affluent under neo-liberalism. A lot of the economy is based on borrowing.All this makes me wonder if ‘Thatcherist’ is a term that will continue in use if neo-liberalism proves to be both ethically and financially a negative force? Sorry for this meandering post, which I’ve written very quickly. But I would be curious for any thoughts on whether ‘Thatcherist’ is more of a linguistic than a valid historical term (if that makes any sense) or for any illuminating recollections of politics at the time (eg. Did the Labour party generally oppose the Tories? Were people generally sympathetic to Thatchers enemies? Was Ted Heath missed*?). *No jazz conductor jokes please, even I wouldn’t be that lame Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:07:40 -0400 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=190#190 190@http://unspeak.net/forum Karl wrote:–adjective1.     raised up...Secondly, the use of the term 'elevated' to describe mortality rates suggests something has remained at a high level and not in fact that the rate of death, including suicides, increased dramatically during the early 1990s. The word elevated softens the blow whilst, of course, the word 'rising' is used happily in the first part of Sach's FT letter to describe life expectancy in 'Eastern Europe' Is the issue here the use of "raised" as opposed to "rising"? If he's talking about the early 90s then I think it's reasonable to use "raised" or even "elevated". It doesn't soften it, at least not to me. "Elevated" suggests a cause of elevation.It is theoretically possible that mortality rates could have been "elevated" / "raised" immediately after the Shock came into play and remained static since and also that life expectancy is still "rising" at present. It's possible that he didn't want to say that life expectancy is "elevating" because it sounds odd.FYI, actuaries use the term "exits" rather than "deaths". I only mention it as I find the euphemism amusing and it's sort-of topical in this thread, but I put it forward as Unspeak for the implication of an afterlife. Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:24:53 -0500 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=189#189 189@http://unspeak.net/forum Gregor wrote:The irony is that Blair has probably done more than most to ruin peoples’ perceptions of the intellectual and ethical merits of Christians. The idea that personal humility and a strong respect for life are at the centre of Christian belief would seem bizarre to anyone seeing Tony lying to the state, showing a disregard for life, supporting abortion and then joining a Church which says that life begins at conception and then telling everyone how Christianity has guided his life. In fact his 'philosophy' seems an odd blend of right wing foreign policy and self-help slushiness As an "aggressive non-believer", I would argue that WMDs, Anglicanism, Catholicism, "self-help slushiness" and a willingness to get up to various weird New Age practices are all part of a wider rejection of rationality by Blair. Ben Goldacre makes much the same point here, tactfully omitting religion but with a greater emphasis on the efficacy of magic crystals vs the MMR vaccine:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree … ce.commentOn the other hand, "unholy alliance" is a brilliant choice of cliche and I applaud Tony for it.PS It took great restraint not to append several other possible endings to the fragment: "The idea that personal humility and a strong respect for life are at the centre of Christian belief would seem bizarre to anyone seeing ..." Are you sure that you aren't merely projecting your own liberal values onto your faith and/or implying that your faith is representative of all Christian beliefs? Blair certainly isn't the only counter-example. Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:08:28 -0500 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=188#188 188@http://unspeak.net/forum I won't be making any new posts to the blog for a month or so. Feel free to talk among yourselves... Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:32:07 -0500 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=187#187 187@http://unspeak.net/forum ‘Your comment will be delayed up to 5 minutes before it's dispayed’ (sic)So I read after sending a response to this article:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho … 06233.htmlIt was the top choice at 6.00 AM until the editor decided that an article about a cartoon about a leather clad fictional lesbian was more important. For once I think the Independent editor was astute. ‘Bat-Woman the Red-Headed Lesbian is Unleashed at Last’, may be rather sensationalist, but it will not raise expectations too highly for an Independent article. Some poor soul may look for a fact-checked, balanced piece of journalism. Which isn’t ‘jam-packed’ with clichés. And they would be in for quite a shock. This article is about ‘a collection of aristocratic and upper-class English converts’ (is the parallelism really necessary? It isn’t a Psalm) and the wicked foreigners who are ruining their church and Britain in general. No more than that, it is a ‘battle for the soul of Orthodoxy’, according to someone who obviously knows nothing abut our faith. In truth it is not Moscow’s ‘tentacles’ violating our green and pleasant land. It is rather the result of demographic and theological change in the Russian Orthodox Church in Britain. Furthermore, only the Russians had viable Bishops for the role. I have a good friend who is English and she gets on very well with the Russian Bishops. However, my English friend is unusual for a convert. Many converts like her are wonderful people. But a very large number of them… imagine Jeremy Clarkson with ten times the smarminess, and not an iota of the wit and charm. Then add Pat Robertson’s self-righteousness, self-aggrandisement and bone-headed bigotry. Then you’d have one of these people. Whilst there is a lot of bigotry in Britain towards Eastern/ Southern Europe, the only Orthodox creationist I have met was a convert. Yet, it seems that many 'liberals' have a strong aversion to indigenous Orthodox cultures. As well as the dodgy politics, the factual errors in the Independent article are immense:‘the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople – who is the leader of all the world's Orthodox who are not Greek or Russian.’Is a major blooper, but this is worse:‘Across the nave is a high screen, the "iconostasis", which hides the church's inner sanctum from the profane eye of the ordinary worshipper’‘Profane eye’? Have the fact checkers at the Independent been laid off in the credit crunch? I heard they now share offices with the Daily Mail, so maybe they use the same fact-checkers. Facts are silly things anyway. Still, Mr Valelly tries to make up for it by being psychic:‘The points at issue largely concerned the minutiae of church life. There were disputes about whether marriages could take place on a Saturday, how frequent communion should be, how strictly fasting rules were to be observed, whether women were obliged to wear headscarves in church or forbidden from wearing trousers. But what lay behind all the nit-picking was a fundamental struggle for power.’Sorry to tell him something about our faith, but debates over the Sacraments are NOT nit-picking.  Later: ‘This is where politics re-enters the picture. Britain's relationship with Russia has been in a delicate phase since Moscow refused to hand over the agent suspected of killing the KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006, and the UK refused to hand over the dissident businessman Boris Berezovsky’‘Dissident’? And what’s this got to do with Ecclesiastical conflict?‘The last thing the Government needs is to irritate Vladimir Putin by ruling the wrong way in a small row over Church property’Ah yes, Vladimir Putin. Wondered when he would rear their head and fly into the picture. Not Dmitry Medvedev of course, but as always Vlad is to blame. Always.As well as knowing facts which are not true and knowing facts which are unknown, Vallely also has a unique way with logic:"I just don't recognise that," says Adrian Dean, a more recent convert. "No one asked Bishop Basil and his supporters to go," says Moscow's lawyer, Paul Hauser. "They just decided to leave of their own volition. No one has slammed the door in anyone's face. They are always perfectly free to return." But no one in the new Vicariate believes that. They suspect that what goes on behind the iconostasis is something that Moscow would prefer to keep from public view.’I can’t see how you can ‘believe’ or ‘disbelieve’ something like that. It is either a fact or it isn’t. And it is either a fact or I am the victim of a multi-ethnic conspiracy telling me that no-one has been banned from the Cathedral. As for the last sentence, it is so idiotic. 'They suspect... that Moscow would prefer', always good to use someone's unfounded suspicions about someone's motives.  Good show on the cliché count as well Paul:‘seize control’ ‘raise their eyebrows’ ‘the situation was untenable’‘hand over’‘emotions are high’.‘nit-picking’Just from a quick scan. I think AC Grayling will be reading it with ‘a death-like pallor’ and ‘a cold sweat on his brow’.  Paul Vallely was nominated for the Orwell Award. Natch. Bad writing, poor research, extreme bias, factual errors. I guess he just couldn’t compete with ‘Melanie Phillips’ in the long run, but he is still performing admirably.  I recently watched a documentary on Fox News. The sad thing is that I really think that some British ‘liberals’ see Alan Colmes and use him as a template. Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:41:03 -0500 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=186#186 186@http://unspeak.net/forum Being fair I don’t really see this as a strictly causal relationship. A Russian friend does tell me that his compatriots are indeed very unhealthy. Still, the shock therapy destroyed the healthcare system and many deaths by infectious diseases could be attributed to the free market reforms. Furthermore, both countries saw a vast increase in infant mortality. Whilst I am often shocked by the attitudes of left-wingers towards abortion, I do think the conservative support for neo-liberalism does reflect the parody of pro-life politics ‘life begins at conception and ends at birth’.  However, the neo-liberals do not generally speaking say that their policies make people healthy and happy, but that their economic system creates freedom and prosperity. It would be those two areas that the neo-liberals fail most strikingly and quantifiably, and this would be a better means of arguing against Sachs. Most dramatic free market reformers such as Augusto Pinochet, General Videla* and Boris Yeltsin were undemocratic, totalitarian brutes who ruined their economies. Whilst we hear about Putin ‘turning the clock back on democracy’, we hear little about Yeltsin’s suspension of parliament, followed by a shelling which killed hundreds. In fact he wouldn’t have been re-elected if there was a credible opposition or if he did not tell massive fibs about wealth redistribution. It was also Yeltsin’s idiocy and brutality that led to the First Chechen War (though this conflict seems to have undergone Putinification recently) and through this the Second Chechen War. Yeltsin also saw the GDP crash, whilst Pinochet’s allegedly wonderful free market reforms actually did very little to help the economy (and the most profitable sector was the nationalised mineralogical industries).As for freedom, I previously linked to an excellent piece of investigative journalism by Simon Carr on civil liberties. Carr claimed that Social Democrats generally like the state to have a paternalistic role. Whilst I can’t fault Carr’s infallible methodology (writing down what people say at dinner parties), if you look at this map:http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-559597Social Democratic Greece, France, Argentina and Germany seem to be doing rather better than free market Britain and America. We’re just above China. *Videla and his fellow creeps were granted amnesty by free market fanatic Carlos Menem, but this was taken away by Nestor Kirchner. Now do you think that Kirchner is viewed as a friend or an enemy of freedom by the neo-liberal press? Argentina’s society has better civil liberties than Britain and America, but Kirchner is described as ‘totalitarian’. Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:02:54 -0500 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=185#185 185@http://unspeak.net/forum The talk about the banks is largely revolving about how various employees have contracts guaranteeing them bonuses, eg The prime minister’s authority over pay is restricted by staff contracts guaranteeing the money. According to Richard Fox, head of employment law at Kingsley Napley, it’s virtually impossible to change staff pay deals without their consent.“Where bonus arrangements are contractual, it’s not open to parties simply to break the contract,” Fox said. “I’m sure banks have made commitments which with the benefit of hindsight are unwise, but they can’t just rip them up.” ...Ellam said the government is checking contracts “very carefully” to ensure they’re “watertight.” Chief Secretary to the Treasury Yvette Cooper told BBC radio that bankers had a “moral responsibility” not to accept the money “at a time when the bank is only still standing because of government intervention.”Bloomberg If they are guaranteed, why are they still 'bonuses'? Aren't they just commissions, or yearly salary? Was the word 'bonus' used just to avoid tax in some way? Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:15:02 -0500 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=184#184 184@http://unspeak.net/forum Well, he became Prime Minister earlier that year... Nonetheless, poor Hari. Really, if I found myself about to write that the Second Chechen War (assuming this is really what Hari is writing about) killed a third of the entire population of Chechnya, I would think to myself, "Hmmm, that sounds really, really, high, maybe I'd better try to check it? It will only take me a few minutes on Google or Wikipedia or something..."Meanwhile, what do you need to combat Tony's "unholy alliance"? A Holy Alliance, of course! Sat, 07 Feb 2009 06:49:59 -0500 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=183#183 183@http://unspeak.net/forum Interesting sentiments from Tony Blair:http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20090205/twl … f21e0.html"The extreme believers and aggressive non-believers come together in an unholy alliance," said the former premier.I could pretend to be puzzled by his meaning of ‘extreme believers’, because I figure that you either believe in God or you don’t. Could he be referring to Fr Paisius, who lived a life of austerity, love and contemplation for his belief? Or to other people who have sacrificed their own lives for their faith and for other people? But there is no point playing silly buggers by getting philosophical about Blair. I can only presume that it was an allusion to Christopher Hitchens agreeing with Hal Lindsay that invading Iraq was a good idea? Or to Sam Harris and Pat Robertson agreeing that Islam is such a threat that our civil liberties have to be suspended (or was Pat Robertson not that crazy, afraid I don’t know)? Or was ‘extreme believers’ a codeword for Muslims and could the religious term ‘unholy’ be replaced with the more secular ‘non-existent’? Really, I’m no fan of Appalling Clichés Grayling or Richard Dawkins, but their ‘unholy alliance’ with Islamist fanatics has yet to be proven (and given their 'alliance' is with ‘extreme believers’ I imagine they would debate how ‘unholy’ their pact was).  The irony is that Blair has probably done more than most to ruin peoples’ perceptions of the intellectual and ethical merits of Christians. The idea that personal humility and a strong respect for life are at the centre of Christian belief would seem bizarre to anyone seeing Tony lying to the state, showing a disregard for life, supporting abortion and then joining a Church which says that life begins at conception and then telling everyone how Christianity has guided his life. In fact his 'philosophy' seems an odd blend of right wing foreign policy and self-help slushiness:  "You don't need cheerleaders but partners, not spectators but supporters. The truest friends are those still around when the going gets toughest,"Ah, the Marcus Aurelius of 21st Century Britain. Did he steal those words of wisdom from Take That or Ronan Keating? Incidentally, I see another ‘militant atheist’ agrees with a man of faith (John McCain) on one cliché. They previously agreed that invading Iraq was a good idea, but they now agree that Putin has imperial ambitions:http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/co … 47608.htmlStepping down as President was a strange move towards becoming Tsar. Of course it might at first sight look like fundamentalist Christian and militant atheist swallow the same clichés that float on the pool of received wisdom. But no doubt the crafty Byzantine was just fooling us. Whilst Hari likes to see himself as a kind of Vulcan, whose every word is based on empirical evidence, I puzzled over where he got the figure of 1/3 of Chechens being killed (as no one was counting). I’m not denying that the war was horrific and vast numbers of innocents were killed… but Amnesty International (no friend of United Russia) has a much smaller official figure: http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/ … R460152007But then I re-read Hari:‘Vladimir Putin's 1990s bombardment of Chechnya, which caused the death of a third of the entire population.’Is that the ‘Vladimir Putin’ who became President on 31st December 1999? http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/articles/presidents_eng.shtml Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:22:03 -0500 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=182#182 182@http://unspeak.net/forum Belated thanks. I actually had a wonderful Christmas and the Priest staying with us brought an ethnic-Georgian Russian guest, with whom I became good friends. A wonderful chap, but… well, for us Orthodox being crazy is a matter of pride. And the political views of most Orthodox are beyond crazy. For example, my good friend Vachtang doesn’t like the Armenians because 800 years ago ONE Armenian showed the Turks a pass into Georgia. I also have a good Romanian friend who doesn’t like Greece because ONE Ottoman Pasha OF GREEK ANCESTRY brutally ruled Medieval Dacia. If being Orthodox biases my views on politics it’s a bias to have f-k all to do with my cousins on a political level. A casus belli could be a peasant being knifed a Millenia ago. The eXile is a real gem. I got to reading it after the recent post on Thomas Friedman. My absolute favourite has to be the genius who is ‘The War Nerd’. Incidentally, he wrote a brilliant sociopathic piece on the Ossetian war:http://exiledonline.com/ossetia-all-ove … e-whining/Crazy? Dangerously unhinged? Just compare it to the unmitigated horseshit of Timothy Garton Ash’s take on the issue:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree … /russia.euAsh is regarded as ‘a liberal’. I take this to mean that he insults the readers’ intelligence with a series of disclaimers about how neither side is perfect before a ‘but’, which is a hinge for right-wing propaganda. So this article is fairly formulaic. Emotional description of Georgian suffering (but not of Ossetian suffering) and an acknowledgement that Georgian leaders were ‘idiots’ (not evil) for bombing civilian areas. Sure enough, even before I got to it, I knew that ‘but’ would find its way in. After speaking about the faults of Georgia (and America’s war in Iraq where white phosphorus was used against civilians), the ‘but’ appears:‘But finding fault with the US (a sport at which Europeans excel) and Georgia (a faraway country of which most Europeans know nothing) reduces by not one jot or tittle the challenge Russia now poses to the whole way western Europe has tried to conduct human affairs since 1945 - and the creed most of Europe has lived by since 1989.’I don’t quite get what the US has to do with it really. The ‘fault’ was with tie chewing loon Saakashvilli bombing civilians for belonging to a different ethnic group. ‘That's our fundamental claim, which Putin's Russia now challenges head on. Its message is that the unilateral use of force in the advancement of national interests is part of what great powers do; that the EU's postmodern, multilateral, law-based order is a transient 20th-century anachronism; and that, in the words of Thucydides's Melian dialogue, "the strong do what they can, and the weak submit".’"the strong do what they can, and the weak submit"? Isn’t that Saakashvili’s ethos? Personally, I’d happily lay down my life for the EU’s ‘postmodern’ ‘law based order’. I thought the whole Georgia/ Russia thing was two autocratic, corrupt states fighting each other over poorly defined borders because the Georgians wanted to crush an ethnic group using tanks and artillery. The Ossetians wanted to join Russia, but the Russians didn’t want Ossetia in its borders. Which must have been a real disappointment for the hysterical twits like Ash, Cameron and Miliband.  By the time I got to Timmy blabbering about ‘a new Yalta’, I tuned out. But this stunning piece of bone-headed idiocy really stunned me:‘Our new working assumption, however, must be that it will for the foreseeable future remain Putin's Russia: a ruthless great power, determined to roll back the influence of the west and establish its own 19th-century style sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space’A ‘19th-century style sphere of influence’. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a retro sphere of influence. Why not a good 20th century style sphere of influence… like America had in Latin America and France has in Africa. Oh wait, they are probably a thousand times more lethal. Oddly enough, Ash’s soulmate John McCain said exactly the same thing, that Putin wants to resurrect the Russian Empire. And it still is ‘Putin’s Russia’ as far as Ash is concerned. Bah, I’m going back to reading the war nerd for common sense and a cohesive ethos. Sat, 31 Jan 2009 07:14:59 -0500 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=181#181 181@http://unspeak.net/forum Karl wrote:by any normal definition, Russia would be included in Eastern Europe It isn't according to the definition in the CIA World Factbook, for one. Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:24:18 -0500 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=180#180 180@http://unspeak.net/forum When I first arrived in the US I was startled at the treatment politicians got from journalists: a question would be asked, some response given (which did not necessarily bear much relation to the question), and on to the next topic without the possibility of appeal. Given this context, I guess I'm not surprised that "back and forth debate" seems tiresome. Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:11:39 -0500 http://unspeak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=179#179 179@http://unspeak.net/forum Thank you for drawing my attention to "pragmatism"! It's interesting in its efficient consignment of those who disagree to the category of ivory-tower-dwelling idealists, who simply don't have a grasp of what is practical in the real world etc. Perhaps it is close in this sense to the application of the term realism?I like WIIIAI's noticing of Obama's dismissal of "a back-and-forth debate". Presumably he will indulge only in forth debates. But it is depressing to see that political is a dirty concept for him too. Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:12:40 -0500