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• Tuesday, May 27, 2008 10:05 PM

  @FranCB (and others)

  Your comment is just the catalyst for this one, so I don't mean to target you specifically but ...

  Had you considered the possibility that you could have been *wrong*?

  I know it's out of fashion. In this election season, going back over your initial impressions (which, among human beings, have a long history of needing subsequent revision) seems like a sign of weakness or lack of conviction.

  What's more, you're behind the curve, what with all that second-guessing, admitting the possibility that your initial impressions might need further elaboration to correct what might ... might ... be flaws. It's tough out there. You've got to grab onto the first thing that pops into your head and stick with it, otherwise you're just weak and flawed and worthless, after all.

  Everytime I (masochistically) wade into a thread like this, I see a lot of the same: people who would never even DREAM of the notion that their faultless first impressions of what was going on inside someone's head, whom they've never met, whose everyday movements, tracked as they are throughout the entire ordeal which most people have no clue about, have been mercilessly dissected and assigned meanings by others whose interests are not in making sure those assignments are in any way 'true', but instead, that they 'play', could be anything other than perfect, insightful, reflective of a true representation of complex reality.

  But then, truth is irrelevant. It's only how well we assemble the facts that serve our purposes, and how loudly we can scream at and insult the other side of ... our side. That's what really matters.

  The last eight years will leave a long shadow, indeed.

  —quickstrategy Read quickstrategy's other letters
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