Connections & the Ice Princess

[Steelhead]

David Casseres is quoted--accurately or not--as saying that "boiling Pynchon
down" (If only we could. Imagine: Fat-Free Pynchon by the Olestra Press)
"we find the message to be: "Every thing is connected." Well, that's
certainly the paranoid point of view. The anti-paranoid pov being: "Nothing
is connected." Either mental condition is certainly justified given the
current dispensation. Both flip/flop across the pages of GR. But surely
Pynchon comes down somewhere in the middle: some things are connected, some
aren't. Some things that were connected have set adrift; some things that
were distinct have been artificially fused or synthesized.

Contemporary ecology has basically disproven the popular notion articulated
by Aldo Leopold of "everything being connected." Sadly, the fact is we can
log the spotted owl--and millions of other species--to extinction and not
pay much of an ecological price. We could even commit genocide against the
Huaronani, the Yanomamo, or the Jews and human culture would go right on,
replicating itself irrevocably. Hardly miss a beat. These wholistic notions
are nice new age metaphors, but usually bad, if not downright demented,
science.

This may come as news to people but Thomas Pynchon isn't Oliver Stone.
Conspiracy theories are just as paralyzing a force in P's work as nihilism
or narcissism. They help us get by, shivering little mice awaiting the end,
but they also keep us from venturing out to change things. Conspiracy
ideologies, of course, are usually planted--or at least subtly
encouraged--by those in Power to keep us diverted from finding the plug and
pulling it. Think about it: the single bullet theory is much more
frightening to the power structure than any CIA/Mafia scenario. I mean
anyone with a gun could....

The Ultra-right is, of course, quite right about Hillary, and I trust
Pynchon sees through the Ice Princess of our Republic as well. It Takes a
Village is a toturously written lie, a shameless appropriation of a
pleasant African proverb crudely refashioned to fit a truly malign
ideology. Her book is a kind of manual for the intrusive powers of the
State to the dictate behavior of children, parents, and the rest of us.
Hillary's "Village" is not the extended family, the flesh and blood of
kinship ties, or the experiential relationships of community. Her Village
is an Abstraction: the guiding, molding, and regulating hand of the State.

Surprised? You shouldn't be. This is, afterall, the same administration
that signed the Welfare Bill, consigning more than a million children to
even more desperate poverty, hunger,and probable death. It is an
administration that has urged school uniforms, rampant drug testing,
lambasted teen-age mothers as the scourge of the Republic, supported the
V-Chip, doubled the number of wiretaps on US citizens, and on and on. HRC
and Bubba are leading a virtual war against children. Why? The answer is
simple. They only pander to people who vote.

Plus HRC's a shameless whore for the corporations. She sat on the board of
LaFarge-Coppee, until she took up residence in the WH. LaFarge is a cement
company that fires up its kilns with hazardous waste, toxic sludge. It
builds its plants in poor communities inhabited mainly by disenfranchised
people of color. And they don't call it cancer alley for nothing.
Personally, I hope she's indicted.

When it comes down to the war of the Corporations and the State against the
individual (a war that has been going on for more than a few decades), I
hope I know where Pynchon sides.

Steely