[happyrock]

I realize this is from 2000 but why would anyone think this person's trite and wholly conventional political opinions are in any way interesting or noteworthy? Strange psychology this guy has, like he's just trying to rattle off as many "controversial" "issues" as he can name, with no regard for his readership... the whole thing comes across as juvenile and narcissistic.

[ordu]

> why would anyone think this person's trite and wholly conventional political opinions are in any way interesting or noteworthy?

I would think so because Feuerstein's examples had shown that many people distracted by examples, that means that they are greatly interested by politics. If they didn't care, they would not notice the nature of examples.

The other side is readers are unable to deal with their interest to politics and to not be distracted from the main topic of the book. The goal of book is not to teach readers to concentrate on what they are doing, so maybe dull examples would be more appropriate.

[PhasmaFelis]

> trite and wholly conventional political opinions

It's weird that you judge political opinions on whether they're "conventional" or not, as if you're looking for only the most novel, original politics.

I'm imagining a stereotypical hipster sipping kombucha, going "Ugh, tax reform used to be cool before all the fucking college kids got into it. I've been into legalizing meth lately--it's so real, y'know?"

[happyrock]

There's nothing wrong with having conventional political opinions, and I wasn't really critiquing them as such. Again, my point was really about Feuerstein's weird psychology, in that he thought cramming his database programming book with such unremarkable observations was some bold act of defiance. I'm just picturing him at his keyboard, "I'm gonna blow these SHEEPLE'S minds... by opening their eyes to the TRUTH that companies profit from operating prisons."

It reflects an indifference to his reader and a general kind of solipsism about the proper role of political discourse. His subsequent explanation that "everything is political" reflects the possibility of an obsessive, neurotic mind, focused on every possible slight or injustice, restlessly waiting to explode at any instant with unwanted political diatribes. I bet he's a joy to be around.

[PhasmaFelis]

You've got an awfully rosy view of American politics if you think any of the issues he mentioned aren't depressingly controversial. I'm not sure how you can remain so naive with Trump in the White House.

(Of course Feuerstein was awfully naive to think that all his readers would joyfully embrace this sort of thing. I'm not clear why he was surprised that controversial politics cause controversy. But that's tangential to your point.)

[tormeh]

If these opinions were conventional/universal, then there would be no controversy. It wouldn't even be political. People wouldn't have made this much noise about something that was trite, like employee/payroll systems.

[mtpn]

> I'm imagining a stereotypical hipster sipping kombucha, going "Ugh, tax reform used to be cool before all the fucking college kids got into it. I've been into legalizing meth lately--it's so real, y'know?"

I realize this is a side note to a side note, but I think the attractiveness of this stereotype is a problem. I wonder if your prior judgements/experience lead you to misread the parent post and put them in that readily-available “hipster” box, where you could then safely roll your eyes at them for a point that I don’t think they were actually trying to make.

[chickenfries]

Juvenile, sure. No more juvenile than the other crap people put in examples. I mean really, programmers are notoriously juvenile, what's new? Narcissistic? Not so much.

[smacktoward]

If he was just trying to rattle off a list of maximally controversial issues, there'd be some right-wing ones on his list. If your goal is to offend for the sake of offending, it'd be self-defeating to only offend one side.

The guy has an ideology, he wants it to inform his writing. You may disagree with the ideology, but the simple fact of your disagreement doesn't mean it's incoherent.

[ianai]

17 years ago. It’s interesting how much things have changed and how much they haven’t. This was written a year before 9/11, for instance.