Alpha males Cutting noses and spiteing faces

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

rj wrote:

>
>
>
>
> What I don't like is when some individual (or nation) sets him or her
> (or it) self up as autarch, dropping their scatterbombs and more
> insidious forms of rhetoric with pinpoint precision and then stepping
> back with all innocent bemusement and saying, "Oops, I had an old street
> directory. Sorry. Honest mistake." It's this whole thing of
> possession/ownership/might is right which is at the centre of capitalist
> democracy, and which extends to the cultural realm as well. The
> traditional critical lexicons are all wrapped up in the exclusivist
> mentality and demagoguery of the Western imperial regime in the way that
> they aspire to "possess" the one and true meaning of a cultural
> artefact. "Bow down now. We *must* read like this ... "
>
> Sometimes such intolerance and supremacist assumptions are just an
> honest error, but ignorance has always been a poor defence in my book.
>
> Terrance would have us stop our voices in order that our voices can be
> heard. But whose voices? This is a copout:
>
>
>
> Such misunderstandings can in fact always be quickly and painlessly
> clarified. A simple note or three. Further, what is the ideal state
> towards which Terrance's brand of censorship and temperance inclines
> itself?
>
>
>
> A "Brave New World" order, in fact.
>
> There's a phrase that you Americans have about "speaking truth to
> power". I think it's what Pynchon does in his literature. I don't like
> it when one individual takes it upon him or herself to talk down to
> others, as both Terrance and Max have done, and I'm going to make a
> point of registering it when I think that that's what's happening here.
> Fair warning. Strike up the posse if you will.
>

http://www.newsday.com/features/fcov0616.htm

Terrance-whos has been arrested for protesting war and censorship and is
quite proud of his family's commitment to peace and human rights.