CENSORED AGAIN AT NIAGARA TIMES BLOGSPOT

Well I guess I got my dis-invitation at Hobbes’ Niagara Times blog spot. They will be happy to know I won’t be returning. It was quite an experience trying to have a reasonable discussion with people who prefer to define politics as war in which anything goes just in order to win and gain power.

After being censored a second time the message is clear. Apparently in the name of “sticking to the point” Hobbes justifies censoring free speech and keeping the level and quality of “discourse” on the reservation. They obviously aren’t interested in raising the level of discourse. Some of the fragile souls that frequent the site think I’m talking down to them when I really presume a much higher intelligence on their part than they do.

It undoubtedly was very naïve of me and a sign of my inexperience in local “politics” to expect anything more. But that is really a kind of experience I don’t need and can only learn so much from. It is an experience in which one can learn what politics should not be. But for such people their one-dimensional existence doesn’t admit what “ought to be” or “can be” as a determinative force in their considerably violent, irrational, hysterical, paranoid and moralistic world.

But if you want the down and dirty inside scuttlebutt, Hobbes’ site is the place to go. I’ll keep reading his/her site. It’s good to know what’s happening in “the real world.” But I won’t be inhaling nor exhaling while I’m there. I thank him for sharing the information, distorted interpretations and self-serving manipulation not withstanding.

There is a German legal scholar by the name of Carl Schmitt. He uses the basic category of “friend-enemy” to define the political realm. But I don’t think he had in mind the psychological warfare that distorts community relations and alienates people who have everything to gain by highlighting and nurturing the values they have in common. The abusiveness that goes on at Niagara Times indicates that the Niagara County leadership must at least tolerate if not condone or even encourage this viciousness and manipulation of community relations, issues and problems. This is instituted demagoguery and Orwellian doublespeak. The political “enemy” is in the best and most authentic sense your best friend, that is, a noble enemy. Such an “enemy” is an honored opponent from whom one can hope first and foremost to learn about the right, the true and the good if not the beautiful in life. But in Niagara County, as far as I can see, ill will and destructive hostility prevail. They treat the enemy as the absolute foe, such as we would a terrorist who doesn't want to do anything but kill you. But to Schmitt the enemy is not a foe. That distinction has to be kept clear to get the point and the productive insight.

The political realm can be stipulated as a space of new beginnings and openness. It is a place of creative contention not destructive witchhunting, human derogation by one’s virtual neighbor. It can be a place of forgiveness and rebirth. It is surprising that so much sordid vindictiveness in local political pseudo-discourse comes from Christians who should be the first to practice such very Christian ideas. This might actually be why Nietzsche is still vindicated in having said that it looks like Jesus may well have been the first and last Christian.