Theos-Talk Archives (January 2004 Message tt00174)

leonmaurer@aol.com wrote:
> All of me says... 
> Bart said it like it is. (Barring the course language, of course, 
> which is his perogative.:-) 
Or pejorative...

To explain the crude method I gave (oh, it turns out my math was wrong; 
Bailley was more like 8 years old when Blavatsky died).

There is a technique, developed by philosophers of the radical left, 
called "consciousness raising". It is based on the fact that most 
reasonably intelligent people are basically polite. Therefore, if one 
makes a totally outrageous statement, most people, rather than call it 
for what it is, will try and meet one halfway, probably agreeing to a 
statement they would never have agreed to had it been presented as the 
initial proposition. Examples of such initial statements are "Blacks 
cannot be racist", "All sex is rape", "The United States is the most 
evil nation on the planet", etc.

In any case, there is one way to short-circuit such an approach: be 
impolite. Cut off the original statement, forget about the rules of 
civility. By using such tactics, the maker of the statement has given up 
the right to civility. So, by matter of habit, when someone makes a 
ridiculously outrageous statement, I cut it off quickly, and with no 
politeness whatsoever. It's not nice. But neither is trying to take 
advantage of the civility of others to try to get them to agree to a 
falsehood.

Bart