American Death (and hope?)

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Well, it's Tuesday and hag's terrorist bomb has been sitting, ticking away subtly, 
like a European, for several passages of the good ol' Amurrcan sun.  The thread 
seems to have run its course, but not according to my erratic summer schedule!  
Still fresh as  an ear of tall multicolored Indian corn.   So, having just read and not 
reflected, since I wouldn't want to taint my .02 US eye pyramid dollar with reason, 
or temper it w/ tolerance, it seems to me that hag's the most nationalist-minded of 
all. 

>I happily concede that there is plenty of 'hope' in TRP's fiction. 
>It's just not on the level of the overtly political, though - no 
>cavalry to the rescue here. There is never going to be an 
>announcement of the 6 o'clock news stating that Their rule has 
>finally been overthrown.

 Gosh, nobody around here wears Leave it to Beaver Bomber helmets and sits 
around watching Jimmy Stewart beat down the cold war meance in STRATEGIC 
AIR COMMAND (well, maybe on a saturday . . .)  My use of the idea of hope never 
even whiffed at the smell of the nation/state.  God! (oops, sorry dear secularist, I 
mean, Egad!)  If hope for america depended on the nation/state, I'd be agreeing w/ 
your screed.

>And "hope for America" also has to be qualified. The USA as a state, 
>as a nation, is from the very beginning, from the moment of its inception, 
>and by its very design, a commercial strategy to avoid responsibility to 
>a social and political cause.

But that's just a currently fashionable revisionist thesis, hag, as radical in its way as 
the claim that the holocaust was just a film!  Those purple mountain majesties will 
eventually reduce all ideologies to alluvial dust, from whence might spring--?

> I'm quite surprised that people on this list seem to 
>think in terms of national identity. Quite startling on a list 
>dedicated to the most unAmerican of American writers.

Look, to state the obvious,  for all his exotic settings and cribs from Herero, TRP is 
an American writer.  It's in the bones of everything he's ever written, most of it in 
opposition to anybody's received notion of  *America*.  And IMHO his America 
means that there's still a chance, a last first place, and if it's anywhwere, it's here, in 
a place aptly named by the Firesign Theater way back when as only  
TEMPORARILY HUMBOLDT COUNTY.  Don't set up false dischotomies over 
bitter beer.  To posit hope requires as little allegiance to a nation/state as to posit 
redemption or salvation require an anthropomorphic, patriarchal god, er, gad, er 
whatever.

Love ya, you old curmudgeonly--whatever you are

john m