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From: crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Heinlein's panegyric for the Bomb
Message-ID: <8573@duke.duke.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Sep-86 13:35:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: duke.8573
Posted: Mon Sep 15 13:35:16 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Sep-86 02:40:09 EDT
References: <1071@hoptoad.uucp> <571@dg_rtp.UUCP> <1084@hoptoad.uucp>
Organization: Duke University CS Dept.; Durham, NC
Lines: 180
Xref: linus net.sf-lovers:15308 talk.politics.misc:156
Summary: Where's the REAL Tim?  And who's this jerk? (Defense of truth, love, and the Aristotelian way.)


Tim Maroney: I am going to assume that someone has snuck onto your
account and is purposefully posting these amazingly vapid and stupidly
inflammatory notes under your name while you are too busy to catch up.
You probably had better change your password.  It may seem like an
amazing conclusion to reach, but I know the real Tim personally, and
while he and I don't necessarily agree, I don't think he would resort to
the tricks and blatant fallacies used by Fundamentalist preachers and
pro-censorship rabblerousers to try and force people to agree with him
without thought.

So the rest of this note is addressed to the piratical psuedo-Tim;
please don't take it personally.  My love to Pam, and congratulations on
the *Locus* job.

Now:  psuedo-Tim:

>>Aaaaaah yes, the old "quote out of context" ploy.  Most ingenious.
>
>It is highly questionable whether any quote eight paragraphs long can be
>reasonably said to be "out of context".

It is even more questionable that eight paragraphs out of a 100,000 word
book would completely encode the meaning of the book.  I notice that
*you've* conveniently ignored the fact that your "Pie from the Sky"
quote was made clearly ironic by THE VERY NEXT SENTANCE.

Not to mention the fact that the article it was quoted from stated in so
many words that a nuclear war would lead to an atomic stone age, and
that it would be a bad thing.

*Farnham's Freehold* objectively includes the following events (at least):

1) A nuclear war that completely devastates the US; it leaves Hugh
   Farnham so despairing that the only reason he has to live at the
   beginning of the book is to take revenge on the Soviets who started
   blew up his home.  Farnham has a wife, a son, a daughter, and an
   expensive house with houseboy who is attending business college in
   his off time.  Also with them is a friend of his daughter's from the
   college.

   He finds little pleasure in anything except bridge, and is trapped in
   a despair-filled marriage to an alcoholic wife by leftover love and a
   feeling of honorably fulfilling a promise.

   After the first few bombs fall, Farnham believes he is going to die.
   Talking to Barbara (the daughter's college friend) he says he thinks
   the war may have the good effect of weeding out the stupid or
   unthinking preferentially.

2) A particularly powerful event which transports the entire fallout
   shelter into a different context (which we will later see to be the
   far future.)

3) They are apparently alone, and must learn to live without the
   luxuries of civilization: Kotex, running water, and milk products,
   among others.  They succeed *partially*, but Farnham's marriage
   finally breaks up, his daughter dies, and they are all in real
   trouble.

4) They are rescued by a technologically advanced but decadent culture
   in which it happens that the dominant "race" is black, and in which the
   white "race" is submissive and owned as property.  This society is
   explored through about 1/3rd of the book.  In this, we see Farnham's
   ex-wife and son make the transition to being housepets and chattels,
   see the household workings intimately, and see the black houseboy
   make the transformation to being a slaveowner rather than a
   submissive house servant.

5) Farnham attempts to escape but fails.  Rather than being immediately
   killed, they are used as experimental animals, and transported back
   in time to just BEFORE the atomic war.

6) They survive the war and manage to survive the time afterwards.
   However, the time afterward is so dangerous that using landmines
   around your home (with a warning sign) is apparently acceptable, or
   at least not illegal.

In that synopsis, only *one paragraph* applies to the quote: and I had
to mess with the "scale" to fit it in.  Now, how is it *possible* that
eight paragraphs out of an entire books (let's say nominally 30,000
paragraphs) could be taken out of context?

Let's assume that I am writing a fictional story in which a Jewish
character says in eight paragraphs, while trying to keep up his spirits
in the face of the German annexation of the Suddeutenland, says that
maybe Nazis won't be so bad -- maybe they'll at least be better than the
current government has been.

Let's say further that in the rest of the book, his wife leaves him and
marries an SS officer; his son joins the SS as well, protected by the
step-father; his daughter is raped and killed by a squad of German army;
and he and his new love are used in experiments from which they barely
escape with their lives.

Have I written a pro-Nazi book?  Not bloody damn likely.  Not unless you
assume that the ONE eight-paragraph part saying it might not be too bad
is my "auctorial voice" and the rest of the book is camoflage.

The real Tim is an admirer of Aleister Crowley I know: psuedo-Tim, find
him and ask if Crowley couldn't have an eight-paragraph chunk exerpted
from something he wrote and made out to be a greatly evil man.

>
>>Here, I *am* more familiar with the context, and, as I suspected, the
>>quote in context is far less clearly nucleophilic.  Consider:  The quote
>>explores the hypothesis that a nuclear war would cull the "unfit", and
>>that hardy, freedomloving folk might selectively survive.  (Even so, it
>>is worth noting that again he did *not* say that the net effect would be
>>beneficial.)
>
>YOU LIE!!!  He said that the war would be good for the country in the very
>first paragraph.

Psuedo-Tim:  this wasn't me, but I came to the same conclusion: call me
a liar to my face and see how I take it.  This IS NOT a very pleasing or
useful rhetorical device.

Ignoring the abuse (look up the "ad hominem abusive" sometime), even if
he did say unequivocally that nuclear war was good for the country in
the first paragraph -- he didn't: he said it *may* be good -- the rest
of the book pretty clearly shows it was good for the country in only a
very rarified way.  It may have been good for the RACE, but it was utter
destruction for the country.

And as it turned out, it wasn't all that good for the race either: a
large part ended up bred for food and slavery, and with the desire to
disobey authority bred out.

>What the hell is wrong with you jerks, can't you read
>perfectly plain and straightforward English?
>Am I to be reduced to simply
>quoting him again and again while you deny that he said what he said in the
>very clearest possible terms?  Tell me, what does it mean to you to say that
>something will be good for the country?  That the country has been going
>downhill and that this will be the turning point?  Tell me which particular
>word you don't understand and I'll be happy to define it for you.

Tim, have you heard of Aristotle?  He wrote a very nice book called the
Rhetoric which would be of great help here.

>
>Oh, I forgot.  HEINLEIN said it.  Therefore, it can't say anything wrong.
>If it does say something wrong, just squint during that sentence.  I notice
>not one of you Heinlein supporters has had the balls to include the relevant
>quotes I gave from "Farnham's Freehold", because if you did, the discussion
>would be over.
>

Well, if I'd have saved the FF messages, I would have quoted them: as I
said before, you seem to have conveniently ignored all the people who
showed the "Pie from the Sky" quote to be blatantly out of context, and
carefully chosen to distort a strongly ANTI-nuclear-war article into a
pro-war one.  This is at LEAST as reprehensible as the clowns that say
that Wicca is Satanism, and then persecute Wiccan witches on the basis
of Malleus Malleficarum.

For me, I've got to say, I don't think I find

> YOU LIE!

and

> ...you jerks...

convinces me of anything except that the person writing can't come up
with any more convincing arguments; it makes me think they are trying to
force me or threaten me into agreeing with them for fear that they will
abuse me, call me a "fascist" or a "jerk" -- and if they can grab the
power, put me in jail or shoot me if I dare to disagree.

PsuedoTim, you're entitled to think that way, but if you try to enforce
it against *me*, expect trouble.  For me, I'm with Thomas Jefferson:

    "...I have sworn eternal hostility toward all forms of dominion over
    the mind of Man."
-- 

			Charlie Martin
			(...mcnc!duke!crm)