OKC and other bombs

[Ted Samsel]

Stewart M. opines:
> 
> OKC has made me shudder down to the core of my Pynchonism, considering the
> congruencies between the Tristero (esp.) and today's rightwing underground
> -- or for that matter, the subterranean/paranoid world of _Vineland_ and
> the current militia movement.
> 
> Actually, the latest from the Unabomber has been more depressing than any
> revelations from OKC.  Check out his broadside to the NYT, or the letter to
> David Gelernter where he says, essentially, "I'm blowing you up because you
> help the economy grow."  For sure, a mad-growth economy is a Bus of Doom,
> but what does zero growth presume?  Population controls?  Eugenics?
> Euthanasia? -- especially when the opponents of growth are proponents of
> terror.  Can you say  "Stalin?"  How about "Pol Pot?"
> 
> Of course, lots of people read _Lot 49_ and _Gravity's Rainbow_ and
> _Vineland_ and do *not* turn into letter-bombers.  It's just that I get
> this feeling that at least one person read those texts (or others like
> them) and *did*...
> 

I don't address the literature aspect of such acts, but rather, would like
to interject an observation on this tragedy that my Dutch physician and I
came up with today when I visited him for a sinus infection.

The US is merely recieving a wake-up call, not from an ideology, but from
the situation in the rest of the world. Witness Basque bombings, the Red
Brigade, Baader-Meinhof, IRA, Senderos, usw. elsewhere in the world. He
opined that if this had happened in NYC, DC, etc., the response would
not have been so dramatic. Just think! The US is finally civilized; just
like Europe.

And as H Rap Brown said, "Violence is as American as apple pie."

ted samsel  tejas at infi.net