[FRIAM] wackos

[Eric Charles]

" I do not take wacko literally"

I would have also taken it literally, but not as expansively.

The problem is that there *are *Right Wing Wackos. Not only are there Right
Wing Wackos, there seem to be more now than there were a while ago, or, at
least, and they are more publicly visible, and more powerful and
influential, than they a while ago. And, at some point, many people seem to
lose the ability to distinguish Right Wing Wackos from Right Wing
non-Wackos. (RWnW?) I have had many friends assert, for example, over the
past 4 years that it is impossible to identify right-wing to any degree
without being a racist who hates freedom, loves government corruption, and
wants anyone who is not cis-hetero to kill themselves. At that point,
dialog is pretty close to impossible. So...  Given that there *are *Wackos
to be talked about, the interesting question is whether we can distinguish
the Wackos from the non-Wackos well enough to figure out who we *can *have
a dialog with.

Also, there are Left Wing Wackos. And when you stop distinguishing RWW from
RWnW, many RWnW reflexively reflect that mistake by claiming all LW are
LWW (denying the existence of LWnW).
----
Separate general note, I agree with Dave about the pseudo-ethnocentrism of
FRIAM in general. The interesting question for me is whether such a thing
can be maintained without becoming overly pretentious and imperialist about
it. America used to have a heavy sense of provincialism that served, in
part, to counter the overly-self-confident tendencies that homogeneity
encourages. Emerson could embody his area's mentality, and promote it,
without necessarily thinking it should be imposed on people who live very
different lives in very different parts of the country. (This is, in part,
why the Fugitive Slave Act was such a crucial event in setting up the Civil
War: It forced areas like Boston and Cambridge to be directly, rather than
indirectly, supportive of slavery, which was "The South" breaking poking a
significant hole in the provinical bubble.) But we seem to have almost
completely lost that ability. I see so many people who think "Everyone I
know agrees with me" as an indication that those who disagree must be
crazy. It is disheartening.



[image: image.png]

On Tue, Dec 1, 2020 at 8:08 PM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> OK. Well, *I* don't use it as a term for *other*. I count myself among the
> wackos. Any reflective misfit will count themselves that way. I ask myself
> on at least a daily basis whether or not I'm the crazy one. This reflective
> *awkwardness* is even a theme in most modern comedies. To think "wacko" is
> a synonym for "the other" misses a HUGE part of popular culture. So, I
> can't help but wonder who, here, is guilty of "ethnocentrism"? Perhaps it's
> those who think they understand a culture they don't understand? >8^D
>
> On 12/1/20 4:21 PM, Prof David West wrote:
> > I do not take wacko literally — that was my point about the psychiatrist.
> >
> > I do think that wacko is a synonym for "THEM," hence my focus on aliens
> and cultures.
> >
> > Have to affirm my ** observation/opinion ** vis-a-vis ethnocentrism.
> Happy to defend that position but doubt interest.
>
>
> --
> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
>
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