Justice --
I know that my endorsement of you might be the kiss of death -- but I don't see how my compliment is "backhanded." Rather, I compliment you and slug Pat in the same sentence. Nothing backhanded about it.
Also, I think Pat is on to something when speaking of a "Virtual Zimbabwe." The problem is, like Hillary Clinton's, Pat's rhetoric casts stark light on his own defects as a leader -- defects that in large part caused the sorry state in which we find ourselves. Pat is a gifted idealogue and a talented legislator, but his gifts are ill-suited to institutional leadership of a multi-partisan body. In other words, he is a lot like me.
Also, I think we are beyond sniping and have reached the full bare-knuckle brawl stage. I acknowledge and applaud the calls for us to, at least, return to Queensbury's rules -- but there is a lot of slugging left to do. We are fighting about things that matter -- issues of substance and critical process which do no less than define who we are as a community.
Also, for the record, given my prickly personality, I need to clarify the following (in my backhanded complimentary way): I like and respect Justice, and nothing will change that; I like and respect Jon Seattle (even though he does not like me much at the moment), and nothing will change that; I like and respect Moon, who is a gem of a person and a true asset to our community; in fact, including Pat, there is no one in our community who I think is dangerous, power-hungry, or fundamentally unpleasant (for a change). However, I think that we have serious disputes about who we are and where we are going -- and some of us are personally invested in their own ideas and principles to an unhealthy extent. It is important to have principles -- and to stand on them and to try to further them -- but we all need to maintain a healthy separation between our principles and personality.
The problem is that we are a civil community. As such, we contain multitudes. We are many things to many different people. In fact, we are contradictory things. This makes some people uncomfortable, leading them to call for us to figure out who we are to root out the contradictions. I disagree. I think that the contradictions prove that we have succeeded in creating a true civil community. Civil communities are paradoxical -- we should bask in, rather than worry about, the paradox -- and ride this project wherever it takes us. Not all who wander are lost.
Beathan
Let's keep things simple enough to be fair, substantive enough to be effective, and insightful enough to be good.