WE/nosotros/us

We does not mean everyone Jim just two or more. Fricking? I am descendant
from hidalgo's, you know, a 'son of something'. So, political is acting in
society selfishly or can it also be selflessly also or is that impossible
for the Marx minded? It seems that when we apply the word political to
every act or deed we are just using it to describe the old fashioned
struggle of human nature. I would think that if we left it for describing
more formal governmental interaction the word would be much more specific,
you know what 'they' say "To generalize is to be an idiot." So which class
of people are pushing for the politicization of the allegiances that are
reflected in our language?
Daniel

Daniel -- Well if you mean "you" then refer to yourself as "I" and not "we"
unless yer fricking royalty and I've just been missing that :) . Otherwise,
you are making yourself out to be someone talking for everyone.

we, is the little me, as in the we folk of bonnie Ireland. All this defense
of politics and someone's talking for everyone.
Daniel

Scottie --

I have mixed feelings about this:

 By your definition, it seems to me you're damned (or political)

    if you do & damned (or political) if you don't. 'For evil to flourish,

    it requires only that good men to do nothing....etc'. Yet surely,

    to be at all useful, the word must imply some degree of active

    participation.

On the one hand, I want to make the point that we are indeed damned if we do
and damned if we don't, that all our actions (and our inaction) have
political ramifications and that we're kidding ourselves if we don't admit
this.

On the other hand, I have to agree with what you say about the word losing
meaning if you make it mean everything.

I think I've avoided this by just making my point explicit -- that
everything has some political ramifications, that it's the expression of a
specific political and social point of view even if it's not directly and
deliberately working through existing political systems.

As for this:

You could, I suppose, call these approaches 'political' acts, though they
seemed to me more like good old golf-club networking, backstairs corruption
... whatever ... made by people who thought - mistakenly as it turned out -
that their incomes were threatened.

Maybe it's different over there, but this sounds like the very definition of
US politics. Heck, wars are started over fear for someone's income.

I think the point here is that the arguments revolved around income/funds
and not the immediate welfare of the patients who, even though they were
more directly affected by this decision than anyone else, sound to me like
they didn't have much of a voice in the decision at all. This is the result
of a network of attitudes that support the idea that it's the people with
money who really know best (ultimately for themselves), and is also
supported by the notion of "class" which, we see here, very much determines
who gets to make these kinds of decisions and who gets listened to when
they're being discussed.

This entire structure can easily be supported by a lot of people with no
direct involvement in the political life of a nation, but certainly
determines how its run.

Jim

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Received on Tue Jul 29 12:35:11 2003