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themanintheseersuckersuit
- Posts: 7634
- Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:37 pm
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#1
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by themanintheseersuckersuit » Sun Mar 23, 2008 2:28 pm
Lazare Ponticelli, the last French foot-soldier of the first world war, died on March 12th, aged 110
http://www.economist.com/obituary/displ ... d=10875719
To the end of his life, Mr Ponticelli showed no interest in labelling anyone his enemy. He said he did not understand why on earth he, or they, had been fighting.
On March 17th he had his wish, or most of it: a state funeral for all the poilus at Les Invalides, and then a simple family burial. The government badly wanted this last foot-soldier to be memorialised; but he preferred to be uncelebrated and ordinary, even in some sense forgotten, and thus the more symbolic of all the rest.
Suitguy is not bitter.
feels he represents the many educated and rational onlookers who believe that the hysterical denouncement of lay scepticism is both unwarranted and counter-productive
The problem, then, is that such calls do not address an opposition audience so much as they signal virtue. They talk past those who need convincing. They ignore actual facts and counterargument. And they are irreparably smug.
