Jerry West writes:
" Michael, could you put the paragraph [referring to the SLA, appended
below] in plain, terse English telling us whether you support the shooting of
Marcus Foster or condemn the SLA for doing it? The [paragraph] looks like
obfuscatory prose used in an attempt to avoid the heart of the issue."
Jerry, I'm sure that you did not intend your post as an illustration of the
problem of dysfunctional manners discussed in mine, but it may serve in part
as such. You've taken an ancillary paragraph out of its context (discussion of
list-behavior), and used it to poke at me in a manner completely unrelated to
the content of my post. Yet the problem here is less in this formality, than
in how you've done it. You seem to be trying to reduce the meaning of my
contribution to a black/white litmus test: am I for or against the SLA? But
what is the meaning or use of such a challenge? The paragraph makes my
feelings about Foster's murder clear at the very start -- that I found it
abhorrent should be plain, terse English to anyone who can use "obfuscatory"
so precisely -- before venturing its brief meditation on an irony of
historical perspective. That irony, and the content of the issues I cited, is
worth considering, independent of whether I'm for or against the SLA,
Stalinism, character assassination, or whatever. What business does anyone
have in loyalty-testing me rather than dealing with the content of my
contribution? I hope you did not intend this, but that's how it comes across
-- particularly since the very next paragraph in context quotes someone else
(Mr. Unmannerly) doing the very same thing! Such extraneous, distracting
challenges degrade the very cli mate of conversation, as well as its content.
I realize only now that I began the paragraph unconsciously in defensive
posture, putting myself on record as being on the side of the angels in a
fruitless effort to deflect precisely this kind of loyalty-testing, so
irrelevant to what I had to say. Whether I was sincere in my angelic
pretention may perhaps be judged better by the poem reproduced in the digest
(#341) bearing your post. I hope it will not lead you to see and dismiss me
simply as someone who can't (or won't) give a straight answer; and I will try
to credit you with somewhat similar complexity of feelings and perceptions,
beyond the evidence of this isolated posting I critique.
Michael Rossman <mrossman@igc.org>
[The cited paragraph:]
Although I abhor such violence as much as the next pacifist, even
at targets less-generally respected, it's instructive to review the
rationale given by the SLA for the assassination of Marcus Foster. As I
recall, they saw him as presiding over the military pacification of the
public schools -- the key points being their fenced enclosure with armed
guards, and the drugging of then-termed "hyperactive" students,
particularly with Ritalin. Although the paths of development since do
not coincide with SLA expectations, the irony of the present situation
is apparent. For the degree of protective fortification and policing has
advanced significantly, not only in inner-city schools but in spreading
to those more privileged; and the degree of drugging, across all social
levels, has multiplied remarkably with the popularity of ADD/ADHD
diagnosis and the general trend towards pharmaceutical management of
personal and social problems. Ironically also, perhaps, Foster's
assassination was a significant factor in disrupting the development of
analyses and activism concerned with the conjunction of these two
continuing developments.
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