blatham wrote:craven
I confess I'm surprised by your response. His voice is strident, surely, though that's true of firefighters in California right now as well. So I'll assume you don't believe there is a fire, or that it's on a different mountain than the one Compsky carries his water towards. You could fault him on facts - a dangerous undertaking, if you ever hear him in debate...he has a memory like no one I've ever known. Or you could fault him on what he does with those facts - some imbalance in analysis through prejudice. But I'm not sure where your disagreement might sit because you are being careful not to make me cry, unlike setanta, who puts spiders in my pajamas.
My qualms with him are that he seems to have defined himself as a dissident, nothing wrong with that but when it's a definition of one's being it indicates a tendency in thought. In shourt I'd rather hear from a thinker than a dissident.
His use of facts in his largely rhetorical arguments is misleading and in some cases simply absurd.
For example, he played up the fear that Cuna might be a US target. He mentioned the US claim that Cuba was making chemical weapons as his evidence.
That was a bit absurd, the US claim was such an obviosu fabrication that I am certain that some regretted it's utterance, but more importantly the claimwas made only to undermine Carter's visit and was not used again.
Lots of us justifiably challenge those who would say that a slippery slope leads to ruin. And these arguments can be tricky. When people were saying that the limited evidence in Saddam was going to produce a mushroom cloud I maintained that it was a bit of hyperbole. And the opposite also needs censure because they are as guilty of the brainfarts.
"The sky is falling" is a chorus from both side's extremities and it appeals to the stupid and dogmatic while alienating the rest.
From what I've read he seems more caught up in his role than with objectivity. He makes some good points but in what I have seen they are the minority of his statements and the majority looks like a role, a role that is big on dissent and not as much with objectivity and reason.
I don't fault him for being a dissident or being extreme. I fault him for letting those qualities affect the quality of his thinking. It's indicative of a position he holds and views the world through, not a position the world is in and he comments impartially on.
It's a failing of everyone in politics so it shouldn't be a huge knock on him or anything. I simply charge that his objectivity suffers because his role is not objective. A dissident is rarely objective, they can serve a very valid purpose as a countermeasure to sycophants but subscribing to their ideology is probably unwise. They start with a position and argue from there.
