[MD] From each... to each

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Platt]
No offense intended but doesn't it strike you as ironic that while you  condemn
the purveyors of fear, doom and gloom that you purvey fear,  doom and gloom?

[Arlo]
Fair question. First, commenting on the "fear and nightmare" manufacture of
modern politics does not mean I believe there are NO problems. Take "illegal
immigration". I think this is a concern we need to address. But, I don't think
it The Giant Evil Boogeymen that pits Absolute Good versus Absolute Evil. It is
the "framing" of the issue that transforms it from a realistic item of concern,
to a cartoonish saga of the Great Superhero versus the Evil Villain. Another
example, if there are examples of professors failing students just for arguing
"conservatism", then these should be dealt with in the same manner as students
being failed just for critizing America. But to create the illusion of the
Academy as some Evil Force that threatens America and conspires against Good
Conservative Heroes is ridiculous.

Second point, what DMB is saying, and I agree with is that the REAL problem here
is the SOM foundations upon which western culture has been built. The
complaints he and I make are based on this one, large schism, demonstrated in
the one quote "part of the world not an enemy of it". The two schism of Pirsig,
the classic-romantic and the Indian-Victorian, are both demonstrative of the
effects of SOM in western culture, traceable back to Ancient Greece, but
manifest in the problems of modern life, which includes how modern political
discourse has come to work.

Arlo