From: silva@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Holly Silva)
Subject: Re: Americans! *smile*
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 22:08:21 GMT

 Hallam@zeus02.desy.de writes:
>silva@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Holly Silva) writes:
>
>|>	Patriotism, and honor were certainly _invoked_ by the 
>|>British leadership during the Boer War, fifty years after the date
>|>you cite above. It seems strange indeed that an anglo-South 
>|>African like yourself would manage to forget this. Strange or
>|>convienient.
>
>I am not a South African, Nor were my ancestors.
 
	I stand corrected. I'd thought you'd indicated that you'd
lived in South Africa during some point in your life, in another 
article you posted some time ago. I over-interpreted this to mean 
you were a citizen of that country.

>
>|>	Do you consider South Africa to be a part of the modern
>|>US neo-colonial empire, on the grounds that we helped your parents'
>|>generation set up Apartheid in the '50's, or a part of the British
>|>Empire, on the grounds that anglo-South Africans still benefit
>|>greatly from the socio-political systems installed under Britain's
>|>rule?
>
>Yet again you seem to have this competitive attitude. As if somehow by finding
>something that the country I was born in did which you can disapprove of you
>invalidate my observations on US society. As it happens you chose the wrong
>country. The only ancestors of mine that are known were either Scottish or
>English from the 1070s onwards and before that Norman. Bad lot them Normans you
>know.
>
>--
	Yes, actually they were, but I'd not need to go back that far
to dredge up instances of British atrocities in matters of conquest and
Empire. I could stop at the Boer War, for instance. 

	Phill, calling some of the statements you've made about the US
'observations on US society' is a blatant whitewash. You, and Till do
not make observations, you make accusations, accusations commonly larded
with emotive, symbol-charged language. In the article to which I'd replied
above, for instance, you'd likened a fairly innocuous sentence I'd
written to the propaganda of Nazi anti-semites. This was not an act of
discourse, Phill, it was rhetorical gamesmanship. If you're going to 
indulge in it, you will receive it back from me. 
	Insofar as your 'commentary' vis the US consists more of 
accusatory, leftish innuendo than valid, even-handed criticism you 
are fair game for ripostes. Even-handed, thoughtful criticism of the
American political economy cannot be invalidated by pointing out that
the critic lives in a glass house -- after all if the critic is not
throwing stones, the entire metaphor breaks down.
	But you Phill, 'throw stones'. Given that, it is entirely
reasonable for me to point out that there are targets nearer to you
which you convieniently choose not to aim at. Your selective choice of
targets is what realistically invalidates much of your rhetoric, not
my little act of highlighting that choice.
--
======================================================================
|| Holly Silva			I have nothing terribly clever to say||
|| Applied Earth Sciences	today.  You're in luck.		     ||
|| Stanford University						     ||
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