Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Tom Lord]

My biggest objections to Pierce are that:

        a) He's mostly very boring.

        b) He tries to shift debate from the hot issue that attracts
           the interest of many raeaders to a lesser issue for which
           he has lots of prepared responses.  A reply to his specific
           points would, for the most part, be a digression from the
           original topic.  I, for one, have trouble regarding him as
           an honest debator, therefore.  (E.g., a debate topic about
           structural facism arising in the u.s.?  pierce wnts to turn
           that into a debate about the objectivity of the press.).

           On this point it is a blessing that we have so many
           non-USians participating:  Pierce's outright absurdities
           and non-sequitors have resonance within the US that I think
           they mostly lack outside the US.

        c) One lacks the sense, in speaking with him, that this is a
           debate conducted for our mutual enlightenment -- rather,
           one senses that he is in this thread to "win a game" rather 
           than to be an intellectual.   (Cites do not an intellectual
           make.)   I've never felt as though any of his posts towards
           me ask a question about my views that I might answer;
           rather, the consistent feeling is that his posts towards me
           invite me into a debate that can be prolonged,
           meaninglessly, indefinately.

 
My tentative and reluctant conclusion, therefore, is that people
should mostly ignore him except where it is expedient to formulate a
real message as a reply to one of his bogus messages.  _We_ have work
to do.  _He_ has an abstract debate to win.

-t