Authored by: Why on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 01:40 PM CDT

Do you really think that the meat of his comments were about whether or not you said we were "winning"? It seems that wasn't the brunt of his comments at all yet that's what people decided to focus on. Call this observation "absurd" if you will. But whatever, we can let it die.

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Authored by: davidgraeber on Tuesday, October 16 2007 @ 02:21 PM CDT

this was Bill's first response to the piece:

>Bush and Cheney are still in office; torture is widely practiced and
called
>legal and justified by those who perpetrate it; none of Bush/Cheney's
>cohorts are in jail (not to mention swinging from trees); the US military
>is still in Iraq and Afghanistan and may soon be in Iran, too; the
election
>"results" of 2006 have proved to have been completely illusionary; all
of
>the Democratic candidates with any possibility of getting elected are
pro-
>occupation, pro-war and pro-Big Business; global warming and pollution
>proceeds at an ever-quickening pace; all kinds of products from WTO
>member state China are being recalled for containing lead; New
Orleans
>is still under water; snitches and FBI plants helped put away several
>ALF/ELF radicals; etc etc etc.

>If this is Graeber's idea of victory, I'd hate to see his idea of defeat.

then, when biofilo pointed out that wasn't my point, saying (accurately
enough) that I was pointing out, among other things:

>"We're a long way from winning, but we're actually contenders in a
fight,
>not spectators--at least when we choose to be--and that's an
important
>thing to understand."

he replied

>Good point: only it's not the point that Graeber makes: he thinks we
are
>winning, as if the anti-capitalist movement was like a soccer game

look, just give it up. The guy misread the piece completely and insisted
we all debate an issue that he invented even as he argued that it was
stupid. Thus he effectively prevented discussion of almost anything
actually in the text. Now let's stop - I shouldn't even be posting this, I
said I wouldn't, but I really find it tiresome to watch all this weaseling -
let's talk about something interesting for a change

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