G'day Doug,
> One thought I've had is that after a couple of decades of
> marginalization of the left, some remaining stalwarts are those for
> whom their politics is a form of psychopathology: a paranoid,
> conspiratorial public structure to hang their private fantasies on.
> Them, and the more stubborn intellectual mediocrities.
>
> Maybe I'm just being too gloomy.
Well, I think a sane person could suspect some conspiracy goes on within our
institutions.
Conspiracy theorists are more convincing than their adversaries (where there
are any left) on stuff like JFK's shooting, the failure of the '68 peace
initiative and Watergate, after all. And the 2000 'election' kicked up some
pretty compelling stories, too. And are we to ignore completely the firm ties
between Shrubya and those who seem to do best out of his pronouncements
completely, for fear of being called 'conspiracy theorists? Didn't Adam Smith
express the opinion that wherever you found two traders in conversation it'd
be wise to assume something not to your advantage is being cooked up? And
doesn't Chomsky defend himself against all those rabid charges of
'conspiracist' by saying he's doing nothing but arguing that self-interest
among the elites are sometimes shared by them?
Seems to me that conventional wisdoms in the academy can have a way of
producing entrenched vested interests (indeed sometimes representing certain
interests from the off), institutional stasis, and hostility to heterodoxy,
too. That said, John didn't capture the list's interest, and need not assume
the worst for that. Some of us just didn't catch what he was throwing. But
to throw it again and again is to risk being charged with using mailing lists
as advertising media ...
Cheers,
Rob.
