Fwd: [PEN-L] US Presidents acting nuts

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

in response to an off-list communication about my previous missive in
this thread:

I appreciate the fact that "nuts" or "crazy" are stimatizing terms.
But in context, I mean those only as the apparent opposite of
"rational." (I _totally_ reject the idea of dismissing anyone's point
of view as "nuts" and that's not what I was doing.) One of the points
of my missive was that "rationality" (as defined by neoclassicals,
game theory) can be "nuts," so that they are dialectically related,
not true opposites.

For me, the world "nuts" is distinct from the legal term "insanity";
it usually means self-destructive. So-called "rationality" can be
self-destructive. (Of course, the meaning of (almost?) all words is
contextual.)

I think that psychoanalyzing Bush is a mug's game (we can't win,
partly because we can't really do it at a distance). More importantly,
there's a Bush League, an organized group (led by Cheney and Rove) and
their rise to power represents more of a sociological/political/economic
phenomenon than a psychological (individual) one.
--
Jim Devine / "There can be no real individual freedom in the presence
of economic insecurity." -- Chester Bowles