From: Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li>
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 13:21:22 +0800
To: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Subject: Re: Assassination Politics, was Kiddie porn on the Internet
In-Reply-To: <199609212321.QAA07036@mail.pacifier.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.94.960921225528.24100A-100000@polaris>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Sat, 21 Sep 1996, jim bell wrote:

> At 01:51 PM 9/17/96 -0700, Steve Schear wrote:
> >>On Mon, 16 Sep 1996, Steve Schear wrote:
> >>
> >>> Someone wrote:
> >>> We've all heard these arguments, but are they true?  Who says so, and how
> >>> can they be certain? Jim's suggestion has never, to my knowledge, been
> >>> tried on a consistant, large, scale.  When all conventional alternatives
> >>> have been tried and fail, what have we or the starving children got to
> >>> lose?
> >>
> >>I think "Lord of the Flies" answers this question quite well.
> >
> >Does it?  LOTF was fiction.  Can you identify a recent instance in which a
> >non-governmental organization attempted to influence political/military
> >events via a concerted AP?
> 
> As you understand, I really have to question anybody who would take an 
> extraordinarily contrived work of fiction like LOTF and exrtrapolate from it 
> as some sort of "answer" to AP.  However, Unicorn is sufficiently confused 
> that it's not surprising that this would come from him.
> 
> While it's been well over two decades since I read it, LOTF engages in the 
> artifice of separating out a handful of near-pre-adolescent boys, who don't 
> seem to get along particularly well while stuck on an island after being 
> shot down during a war.  (Presumably, WWII.)  It's hard to understand what 
> kind of lesson we could learn from this, particularly since one person's 
> opinion of what might happen should such an extraordinary and unlikely event 
> occur can't be all that more significant or valuable than another.  
> 
> Or, what if such an event actually happened, and the outcome was quite 
> different?  What would that say about Golding's opinions?   Or, suppose a 
> similar event occurred, but instead of a dozen boys it was a co-ed college's 
> students, or a few geriatrics, or a family, or a few middle-aged women, 
> or...what?    What, exactly, are we learning from one specific speculation 
> that Golding happened to want to commit to paper?
> 
> Unfortunately (or, perhaps _fortunately_?) I don't think we're going to hear 
> from Unicorn why he thinks one particular dime novel is any more 
> revelational about human behavior than any other.

Your "grasp" of literature gives the list my answer without me having to
say a word.

I notice you chose to ignore the factual political examples I gave.  Not
that this surprises me.  "Your" concept, of rule by terror, has thousands
of examples in historical context.

I simply refuse to debate the matter any longer as it is clear you are not
open to reasoned debate, nor, it would seem, are you clearly possessed of
reason.

> 
> Jim Bell
> jimbell@pacifier.com
> 

--
I hate lightning - finger for public key - Vote Monarchist
unicorn@schloss.li