By Nicholas Stix
“I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.”
~~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, Notebook E, 1775-76
Thanks to the Mild Colonial Boy, wherever he is.
Shorter version, from my son, in a different context:
Because that’s what I do.
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4 comments:
I totally get where Lichtenberg is coming from. I haven't wasted my time with anything close to a protracted political debate with the other side for years. It's a fool's errand because you'll never convince them. That and for all my snark, my powers of persuasion are rather average. Most people who engage in political debates already have their minds made up. I can assure you that people who don't have their minds made up don't tend to frequent political chatrooms, websites and blogs.
So why do I blog? For our people, for people who are on the verge of being our people, for people in the middle ("unwashed masses"), and to piss off the other side.
And also..it's the perfect medium for sharpening my nails of snark.
“my powers of persuasion are rather average”
Likewise. I think the people with the strongest “powers of persuasion” do it through lying their asses off.
I blog for all the reasons you do. It’s incredibly important to say what “everyone knows.” If no one does, everyone loses all hope.
People keep asking, “What will it take to wake whites up?”
The answer is: Nothing. Everyone knows what’s going on, and has for roughly 50 years. The point is, to light brushfires in men’s minds, and for some to act. If we wait for whites to wake up, we’re all dead. But if enough of us take the initiative, others will follow.
And so that when posterity too perhaps reads the letters they will know that regardless of whatever issue was at stake, not 100 % of persons were in total agreement.
NS,
The more people like you and I that are blogging, the more it encourages and gives our people hope that they're not alone.
That's sort of the point I made in my post about the desirability of the ObamaCare staredown you linked to a few days ago. People just don't willy nilly on their own punish the people responsible for screwing them, they have to see that someone is actually engaging in combat on behalf of them, then they'll get in the game.
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