alt.conspiracy.pynchon.waco

[Terrance]

Otto Sell wrote:
> 
> We Ain`t Comin Out
> 
> WACO as an acronym.
> I don`t wanna judge the American freedom but this is what it leads to if you
> let every religious fanatic his personal freedom to molast whoever he wants.
> But it seems to me that this freedom is only "real" for the "right" side. I
> bet, a Black Panther Community or a modern Charles M. would`ve been attacked
> much earlier. Think of the Bhagwan-story in Oregon. Old Buggy was not
> molasting children like David Koresh, simply collecting Rolls-Royce and
> telling jokes...
> 
> Saying that TRP could be the Unabomber is crazy. Just compare the texts.
> There`s not even no evidence but the Unabomber writes very simple, his
> arguments are flat, whereas Pynchon`s Luddism-essay is elaborate and a
> pleasure to read.
> 
> Otto


	Agents of the law 
        Luckless pedestrian 
        I know you're out there 
        With rage in your eyes and your megaphones 
        Saying all is forgiven 
        Mad Dog surrender 
        How can I answer 
        A man of my mind can do anything 

        CHORUS:
        I'm a bookkeeper's son 
        I don't want to shoot no one 
        Well I crossed my old man back in Oregon 
        Don't take me alive 
        Got a case of dynamite 
        I could hold out here all night 
        Yes I crossed my old man back in Oregon 
        Don't take me alive 

        Can you hear the evil crowd 
        The lies and the laughter 
        I hear my inside 
        The mechanized hum of another world 
        Where no sun is shining 
        No red light flashing 
        Here in this darkness 
        I know what I've done 
        I know all at once who I am 


The United States is a land of paradox and irony.  Paul
Mackin's post on Religion in the U.S. said it better than I
can, so I won't  muddle his clear thinking with my murky
thoughts. It was on this day, June 14, 1943, that the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled schoolchildren could not be compelled to
salute the flag of the United States if doing so would
conflict with their religious beliefs. This week, American
Universities will graduate some of the best and brightest
from the best and brightest, but as Jonathan Kozol's latest
book reminds us, for our children, the Savage Inequalities
in America's schools are a sober reminder of the worst and
the blackest. At one of the brightest and best, nearly as
many women took degrees as men this year, and for the first
time, undergraduate women graduated from Harvard College
only and did not have an additional signature on their
diploma from the President of Radcliffe College. On the
front lawn of Andover Hall, I shook hands with Cornel West.
I thought again of  the irony that professor Gates, not a
Rhodes scholar, who went to Cambridge University, on a
Mellon Fellowship, the first black, to win one, was so very
disappointed that he did not win the more prestigious Rhodes
Scholarship. I never gave a minutes thought to Harvard's
Teddy or Cuddles, the Divinity School conferred a Masters in
Divinity to one of my dearest friends, who despite his pious
humility and his mother's prayers, will not be a priest but
will go to work for a dot-com--Pragmatic paradoxes and the
golden rule. Noam Chomsky and Nicolaas Bloembergen received
honorary degrees.  Bloembergen was forced into hiding 
during the Nazi occupation of Holland. His work in Physics
helped the Americans become the Super Nuke Power and win the
Cold War. Noam Chomsky, an opponent of America's military
involvement in Vietnam and Central American, was one of the
voices crying in the wilderness (the others being the
Catholic nuns that risked their lives and imprisonment for
traveling to Iraq) during the Gulf War, and who was recently
ridiculed for being an intellectual by Tom Wolfe in a
Harper's Magazine essay, received an honorary degree. He
received a Doctorate of Laws. I wonder  how Stanley Fish,
once a Milton scholar, now a Doctorate of Laws, feels about
that. Well, I'm sure Fish won't mind that now when someone
tells a joke about lawyers at the bottom of the sea, he will
be able to pull out his copy of Tom Wolfe's essay and
explain that his reader response theory proves that an
intellectual is not a lawyer but linguist and lawyer and a
Fish. I think it's ironic too, that Chomsky has to use the
media to attack the media. He's at a great disadvantage,
guys like Drudge eat intellectuals inept at media like
popcorn and as jbor's comments on McLuhan and the
message/medium reminds us, it's not easy being Green and
Kermit the frog reporting for Sesame Street News at the same
time. Judge American freedom, American religions, American
media, American literature. We need it, we're young, but
it's no easy thing to do, America is paradoxes and ironies
and that's one of the things that makes Thomas Pynchon and a
traditional American author.