[PEN-L:9562] RE: tiresome debates

["Max B. Sawicky" <sawicky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Look, I think that it is settled.  Brad and Max think that the left has
done unspeakable evil, while imperialism has done some rather bad
stuff. . . .
>>>>>>>>>>>>>

mbs: Which Brad and Max are those?  The same one alleged to have
said that genocides of non-whites were of no importance?
These burlesque paraphrases are tiresome.  We really do have
a failure to communicate here.

>>Most of us disagree about the relative enomaties, but what I am
reading is becoming repetitive.

One minor point.  From the standpoint of subjectivity, the slaughter of
the Native Americans was a holocaust.  Many people were intent on wiping
out the indigenous population to make way for "civilization."

Max, or was it Brad, said that slavery was not.  They wanted to get the
work out of the slaves rather than kill them immediately.   I am not
clear about the difference.
>>

That slavery does not equal holocaust does
not mean, for me, that authors of the former are 'better' than
the latter in a meaningful way.  But they certainly are different.
As well, from the standpoint of resistance, they present different
kinds of adversaries.  One is led to suspect they originate in
different types of social, political, and economic circumstances.
We're supposed to be analysts not drowning in emotionalism, right?

As for the difference, in the latter case, in my own personal
experience, there are all kinds of relatives I have never known,
plus the others I do know who get hysterical on matters they link
to Jewish survival.  In the former case, there is more memory and
life, albeit intertwined with terrible hardship.  Without passing on
whether one should prefer to live on their knees or die on their feet
(easy to say in the absence of a need for a real choice), we might
agree that slavery and direct extermination are different things.

I have to say I had a similar argument, slightly intense, w/my
wife.  She was thinking politically -- these things are all awful,
why not call them all the most awful term one can imagine --
holocaust.  There's no valid moral distinction among them.
I was arguing as here.  If you like, you can craft a statement
to the effect that treatment of native Americans, African-
Americans, Jews, etc. was as horrible as one can imagine.
I'd endorse it, but I don't think it wouldn't mean anything.

mbs