Can this be serious? It seems fairly obvious this ‘weak’ sense of “feign” is not at all what Holbo meant to imply. Or at least he profits unjustly off the ambiguity.

Feigning the performance of things does not by necessity make their sentiment any less sincere. One is often heavy-handed in order to be more direct or explicit (taking into account the various nomalizing veils and buffers of decorum, propriety or collegiality).

More direct and explicit, for better or worse.

when you get to the point where you can’t even fool yourself into thinking you agree with me…it’s time for everybody else to read the links for themselves (I don’t particularly care about convincing you – because frankly, I think you’re hopeless, and hopelessly confused).

How odd; they do for me.

OK, I’ll bite. Do you care to explain why you see it that way? I’m genuinely curious? In exchange for an actually sincere mini-historical account I even promise not to snark, no matter what you say. I clicked on the links but, frankly, they don’t seem to bear on the question.

For me, it has been a long, hot week framing houses. Our job site is about two clicks from a reserves airfield; the noise from the jets and planes is nearly constant. And today, we discovered that one of the kitchen walls wasn’t quite plumb; it required a lot of convincing from a sledgehammer. This is my line of work, should anyone be curious. For all matters philosophical I happily direct elsewhere (to Michael’s posts on Theory Tuesday, for instance, or those on symbolic politics at Long Sunday.)