Please feel free to check out my website...

[Dedalus]

...as I worked hard on it.

The rhetoric is a bit far-removed from the norm here, but the concept was inspired by the eternal quest to try and do something besides "preach to the choir," i.e. I am trying to get a bipartisan readership, and a bipartisan readership would certainly be an advantageous thing to have.

Please post your thoughts in this thread, if you have nothing better to do.

The site is www.the1585.com

[Bjornsdotter]

1. I've book marked it

...to read later. Lots of interesting stuff to read.

Cheers

[Dracos]

2. cool site

will check it out on a regular bases

[The Straight Story]

3. kick for ya! (nt)

[Dedalus]

4. Hey, "The Straight Story"...

...Thanks for checking out my site and providing a link to your own work. I checked out the poems on your site, and it happens that I actually have an MFA in Poetry from Iowa (for all the good it's doing me!), so if you want some advice here's something I can tell you right off the bat.

Lose the center alignment!! It's the #1 thing editors look for to determine whether they should read any further, and if a submitted poem is center-spaced, it's going right in the recyclables! I'm not saying it's fair, but I can tell you for a fact it's true.

You also might want to think about how you're breaking your lines--you appear to use mainly "easy" breaks, i.e. always breaking around prepositional/dependent clauses, resulting in short, staccato lines. You have a good ear and a good eye for imagery, but the layout on the page is working against this, not in favor of it.

If you're just writing for your own pleasure, then sorry if I offended you, but if you ever send your stuff out I figured you'd want to know.

[The Straight Story]

6. No problem

and yeah, I write just for myself (and the wife) :)

and another kick for ya!

[ninkasi]

5. Thanks

it looks interesting. I bookmarked, for later.

[PreacherCasey]

7. Interesting site. Questions regarding your "code":

What is "awesome" about intellectual violence?

How can you condemn violence in one of it's manifestations (physical) and condone it in another (intellectual)? The intent of each manifestation is the same, to injure another.

:shrug:

[Dedalus]

8. It's a metaphor...

...by "intellectual violence" I mean kicking someone's ass with *words* as opposed to physical force. Like I said, I am trying to establish bipartisan readership, so part of the rhetoric is involved with asserting that it is "macho" to write philosophical essays about things.

Is this kind of silly? Yes. But I am trying to build common ground with the segment of conservatives who are just conservatives because they like talking down to people... So what I do is establish that "1585 Liberals" are not against talking down to people on general principle, as long as the people deserve it. I know lots of conservatives who are not fundies or anything, but are conservatives just because they are "tough guys," so I am trying to establish that you can have left-wing opinions and still be a "tough guy." I know WE know this, but THEY don't, and this is the problem.

Another way of putting it is that the site is designed as a kind of "left-leaning South Park," i.e. just because you lean left doesn't mean you can't have fun at the expense of others.

[PreacherCasey]

10. I figured as much. I understand what you are saying

and agree that it will probably strike a chord with the people who you describe.

That being said, those people are still ignorant. I contend that accepting violence in this more subtle, cerebral form is a fundamental error made by "progressives" (and indeed all other humans) in their arguments. Violence divides people by nature. It pits one person against another. It begs for an equally violent response from the target of the original attack, then a response from the initiator, and on and on into perpetuity. The question should be: How is it that people can not see the futility of this course of action and inevitably go on waring with each other?

IMO we are talking about a basic, negative human impulse which has become all the more dangerous as our species and its technology has evolved. It is evident to me that all violence is negative. The scale of the violence makes no difference, except in our perception of it. For example, show anyone a picture of an Iraqi child with his arms blown off and body burned from an errant US bomb and they will say that it is negative. But this overt, physical violence did not come from out of nowhere. It began as intellectual violence in the form of greed, nationalism, hegemonic foreign policy, religious intolerance, ect. I'm not saying that all intellectual violence will blossom into physical violence, but ALL physical violence grows out of intellectual violence.

I don't think we can give ourselves a free pass on this subtle violence and call ourselves progressive.

[Dedalus]

11. Okay, true...

...but you also don't want to be all Neville Chamberlain about things when there's a serious threat. The idea here is to say to the urban conservatives "Look, there are people on your own side who are way better to make fun of--why don't we make fun of them instead?"

Some of the people we're attacking on the site would bring the country back 500 years by force of arms if they had the chance. We would try to convince them, but they're insane, and every reasonable means has already been tried and there's just no point. And if we keep up the "let's tolerate them and just talk gently about how much they are hurting our feelings," then the only result is that the right-leaning centrists don't want to back us up because we sound like "pussies" and they thing they fear most in life is being aligned with "pussies."

It is your basic divide-and-conquer. Your objections would be a legitimate concern if we were running for something, but we're not--we're just writing essays. Up 'til now, the right's advantage is that they have hatchetmen who don't hold office (e.g. Limbaugh) to do their dirty rhetorical work for them in ways that can't be pinned on the party proper, and our disadvantage is that all our footsoldiers have been holding themselves to the standards they would have to observe if they were candidates.

And we certainly have no qualms about trimming the far-left fat from our audience, because the far-left has shot us in the foot by P.C.ing it up so much over the last 15 years that it's now next-to-impossible for anyone to ever tell anyone they're full of shit about anything, even the religious nuts. This has enabled the right wing to fall back on "Why can't we say it, if it's true" like a fucking mattress, and now I'm going so see how much *they* like "Why can't we say it if it's true."

[PreacherCasey]

12. I agree that attempting to reason with the willfully ignorant is a

futile pursuit. Personally, I don't waste much time on these people. For instance, if they can't agree that an Iraqi or Sudanese child's life is equally as important and meaningful as an American child's, then there is no use in speaking with them. Yes, they are dangerous and they need to be opposed. If your website helps to bring people to the cause, wonderful, but their understanding will be incomplete because they haven't renounced violence. I submit that a truly strong man will stand up for what is right regardless of the epithets and insults thrown at him. It is weak people who resort to name calling and labeling people. I grew up fighting in the streets as a kid, playing football in HS and for a year in College, and training in Mixed Martial Arts. I met a lot of tough dudes and consider myself pretty tough. One observation I've repeatedly made in living in this type of world are the guys who call other people pussies or fags or whatever are usually very insecure and self loathing themselves. They may be all muscled up, fight a lot, talk tough about war, ect but inside they feel weak and scared and have to assert themselves physically to make the feeling of inadequacy go away. They are the real "pussies" as they are slaves to their egos!

I concede the point that a "progressive" with some regressive tendencies is better than hard line religious conservative hell-bent on making everyone else adhere to his world view. I just hope that as their minds begin to open to the possibilities, they will take their new found progressive spirit and "go all the way". I don't advocate non-violence because I think a "Democrat/Liberal/Progressive" should. I advocate non-violence because it is the logical conclusion of a progressive and empathetic train of thought. IMO any retention of violence denotes a lack of understanding of the fundamental problems we, as a species, are facing.

It is a difficult problem. At least your doing something about it by reaching out to people on your website. I appreciate the fact that you are doing something and am glad to see some philosophical debate on this board. (In my few months here I feel it is lacking) I welcome your thoughts on this issue but it's off to bed for me now, so I'll respond tomorrow.

[The Straight Story]

9. I will say though I disagree with some things :)

What are coding the html in, notepad? Or a wysiwyg?

I am working web pages right now myself for work (.net with sql backend for stuff).

If ya ever need any help let me know (with data bases and web pages).