Joe writes,
““Everybody” and “nobody” is misleading. Misleading is not acceptable when you are trying to convey a message. Your credibility will suffer. Somebody attempting to give you information is not necessarily an opponent. It could be someone who wants to stack some chips on YOUR side of the table. It is not always a good idea to take an adversarial view of things. Your “opponent” may not be performing for an audience. He may be speaking directly to you and only you. That was some excellent wriggling, Bob, but I’m afraid you can’t wriggle out of generalizations. They are still generalizations. Pointing out generalizations is not quibbling. It is pointing out generalizations. Maybe readers don’t want to see things that they consider “boring.” On the other hand, maybe they’re too lazy or timid to ask, not sufficiently interested to pursue the subject, or have no business reading you at all. I don’t find you boring. My criticism is free. No cost. I’m not just one great big bag of criticism. I just today listened to your talk on “Incurable Fools” and I highly recommend that all your readers have a go at that one. It’s a humdinger. ”
Joe, I keep begging people to correct me on facts, and you have not been particularly bashful about doing so.
But take a look at the article I just wrote, “Elizabeth.”
Each point I write there has at least a dozen books dedicated to it.
Good books from a careful credibility point of view.
Every one of those books goes into excruciating detail. They are written to have credibility.
But the simple fact is htat they have had little or no effect on hte real disasters that result from the situation all those books, if you had them all and read them all, describe piece by piece.
I do not share your idea that someone who will not read all those books is not worthy to be reached. In fact, a person who is knee deep in all those books is precisely the sort of person who is useless in the real battle.
So I sacrifice what you consider “credibility” in order to string the whole obvious situation out in a short statement.
I am not writing a book on a defect in our intelligence system. I am stating that the whiole thing is, if you just put together what we know, unworkable and irretrievable.
Let me ask you to do something. Write what I just wrote with your own total credibility angle. See if you can say what I said in an article some reader, you know who I’m talking about, would consider an acceptable length.
Do it first, preach it afterwards.
Let me add that I, with my series of declarations, am more ACCURATE than those tomes that get credibility and no results. They are describing a workable worldview into which a workable intelligence community fits.
That, Joe, is the kind of thinking that comes from Mars. If you throw it together the way I do, you end up witht he world the way it IS, a set of absurdities which make American intelligence an insoluble mess from the word go.
You cannot have intelligence with Wordism in a free society.
Before this gets too long for you, Joe, I will devote another article to that contradiction.
By the way, Joe has just forced me to demonstrate my whole way of argument. He couldn’t have done that if he had been too awed or respectful to call me out.
Joe THINKS about it and just plain disagrees.
That is VERY stimulating on this end.
#1 by joe rorke on 12/29/2005 - 12:41 am
Bob, I didn’t say anything about anyone reading “all those books.” I suggested that they pay close attention to what you are saying. That’s what I do. That’s how I get to jack you back on track now and again. It’s misleading to suggest that I said that people should read “all those books” that have been written addressing the various points you have made over the years. I don’t recall having any objections to what you said regarding our “intelligence” system. It was clear to me what you were saying. I take your word for it. I accept it as gospel. I have to assume you know what you are talking about. If I said anything, I would have said that it is a miserable system that should be dismantled and thrown on the garbage heap.
Credibility is never an “angle.” It stands by itself. You either have it or you don’t. If you mislead people in any way…..any way at all…..you’ll lose it. Once it’s lost it’s almost impossible to get it back.
Much of what you write and speak about (audio archives) is absolutely marvelous. I agree with it almost entirely. I can’t think of anything about it I disagree with. I can’t figure out why, over all these years (you say fifty years) you have been ignored, you have been held in contempt, you have been put out to pasture. You, knowing politics far better than I do, know the answer to this question. If what you have had to say over the years has been so great, so mind-boggling, so earthshaking, why hasn’t our country conformed to your way of thinking, to your ideas? Hey, don’t swing at me, that’s an honest question. I’m not arguing with your position. I’m not arguing with your ideas. I’m just trying to give you a little fourth step here.
Where was Bill Rusher and all those other swine while you were making your points? Oh, you’re Mr. Unique and you have the best ideas to ever come down the pike and ten minutes later they forget all about you and your ideas as they go on calling themselves conservatives and evolve into real, honest-to-God “conservatives” like Rush Limbaugh who can tell the American people what real conservatism is all about. Where does Bob Whitaker and all his great ideas fit into this picture? Is he in the basement somewhere? What happened to his ideas that have been around all these years? Why am I looking at a multicultured society? Why am I having to hound my granddaughter into not consorting with people who will cause her progeny to be far less than they could be? Whatever happened to Bob’s ideas?
You would be highly mistaken, Sir, if you think I disagree with most of what you say. Au contraire. Fact is, I agree with most, if not all, of what you say. Didn’t know that, didja? You’ve got some real powerful stuff there. Everybody in the country should be reading “Why Johnny Can’t Think.” I haven’t read it. But I’ve read the reviews and the reviews tell me all I need to know. I agree with the reviewers. I know from experience what they’re talking about. The universities are an unflushed toilet bowl.