[Peace-discuss] Chomsky's analysis on the financial crisis

[C. G. Estabrook]

I know you don't mean it this way, but one might conclude from this "unhealthy 
tendency" that we needn't make an effort to understand what Public Figures 
and/or Progressive Leaders actually mean by what they say or do, because they're 
  rarely perspicuous.

But what then is to be done? Judge them on the "content of their character"? 
But how are we to know that, if what's said or done depends on an apparently 
unknowable context?

On the other hand, it seems to me that exegesis saves... --CGE


Ricky Baldwin wrote:
> ...most people are rarely that simple.  I've noticed an unhealthy tendency,
> here and other places on our beloved left (the right can sort out its own
> health, as far as I'm concerned), to find a quote by someone we wish to
> criticize (or, less frequently, to praise) and apply a kind of ephemeral
> "logic" to it - much the way some of us raised in certain settings might have
> seen many fire-and-brimstone preachers treat the etymology of a word, as if
> that had some magical connection to its current usage.   Likewise, Public
> Figure and/or Progressive Leader A said ot voted for/against x, therefore 
> he/she stands for y, which we take to be the same thing.  It may or may not
> be.  Context is very important...