Subject: Re: source access vs dynamism
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/09/12
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3146111469145085@naggum.no>

* Raffael Cavallaro
| I've simply asked you to:
| 
| 1. Stop blaming oppressed people for being oppressed. 

  oh, now I see.  _that's_ what you've been reading into what I'm saying,
  and of course it makes sense for you to talk about oppressedd people in
  irrelevant countries in defense of oppressed people everywhere!  it all
  makes sense, now: you're nuts.  funny you didn't bring up the Holocaust,
  but maybe my rebuttal to that insanity was good enough so you had to try
  this insane stunt, instead?  geez, take your own advice, and stick to
  talking about Lisp.  no one has even been thinking in such terms except
  yourself.  no one has started what you ask me to stop, except yourself.
  think of something else, and this whole idiocy will vanish completely.
  thank you so much.

  I did get one insightful message after these encounters with political
  correctness in the freedom-of-speech-loving U.S. in mail recently, which
  tried to explain the incredibly oppressive conditions that Americans live
  under (that's my wording, not his), wherein any mention of certain words
  in or out of context causes a large number of people to feel morally
  obliged to go nuts in defense of whatever they feel very strongly about.
  it's like saying "don't mention the war" as advice to someone visiting
  Germany, except I can understand why that particular advice is sound, if
  not somewhat ridiculized.  what's the list of things you should never
  mention to Americans?  it seems to be awfully long, and getting longer
  and longer.  who should be "blamed" for this situation if not the people
  who have quietly accepted to have public discource bullied into silence
  by morons?  who should be "blamed" for a culture in which the mention of
  _facts_ causes people to see your defense of all kinds of atrocities that
  _they_ have never experienced themselves, but nonetheless connect with
  those facts?  why isn't this diagnosed and treated as a mental disorder?
  call it trauma-by-proxy or something, but get help!

  meanwhile, I'll take note of the fact that a lot of people are sick, and
  _try_ not say things that upsets them, but who knows what kinds of things
  will upset people who live in a culture where the principle that others
  can be blamed for something you associate with what they say is accepted.
  over here, we accept responsibility for hurting people on purpse, but
  this victimization high that the U.S. is on seems to be the reverse:
  people hurt others on purpose because they feel that whoever caused them
  to _feel_ hurt should be punished, and when someone feels hurt, it allows
  them to go bananas and sue _whoever_ and claim that they have done it on
  purpose to them, if they don't take the law in their own hands and just
  blame people for things they haven't done or riot or whatever it is you
  think you can do with impunity when you're a morally outraged victim.  I
  have long said that Norway has a culture of envious losers, but the U.S.
  looks more and more like it has a culture of victims or victims-by-proxy.

#:Erik
-- 
  it's election time in Norway.  explains everything, doesn't it?