Government Lies?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

I am the one who started the Government Lies messages.
My intent was not to start a discussion as to whether
the US government or other governments lie in general.
It was my intention  to show the US government is
lying about the nature of the "surplus" and the
economy in general. That the uses for the surplus
raised by both major parties in the US are ill
advised. That the "surplus" we enjoy now is a paper
surplus. The federal budget is improving, but it still
has  along way to go. But to listen to the debates and
official releases of the US government, you would
believe all the economic problems related to the
budget have been solved and all that is left to do is
determine what is to be done with the excess money.
This is a blatant lie to the American people. However,
since most people don't care about the budget and
don't want to here things are still bad this issue has
received little attention. 

For those of you who think this has nothing to do this
TRP, I think you need to olld at the issues he raises
in his work.

--- Otto Sell <o.sell at telda.net> wrote:
> Terrance wrote:
> "I have no idea why we would want to discuss the
> S.S. System or the U.S.
> government budget here."
> 
> I must admit that I deleted all those "Government
> Lies?-posts" except this
> one because I thought the question was stupid. It
> goes without saying that
> every government everywhere necessarily lies, has
> lied and will continue to
> lie.
> Hey guys and gals, we've had 15 years of Helmut Kohl
> - what do you expect me
> to believe?
> But I've got nothing against US-members discussing
> their home politics here,
> it's nice to lurk.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
> Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Friday, October 20, 2000 12:56 PM
> Subject: Re: Government Lies?
> 
> 
> > This is the Pynchon list. What we discuss is up to
> us. I
> > will post about the religion in the novel V.. I
> will do so
> > not because I am religious woman or because I
> believe in god
> > or because I think Pynchon is a religious man or
> believes in
> > god. I will do so not as a preacher or moralizer
> and not
> > because I believe Pynchon is preaching to his
> readers or is
> > a moralizer. I will do so because I think religion
> is a very
> > important  subject in Pynchon's books. I think The
> Education
> > of Henry Adams and Mount Saint Michel and Chartres
> is an
> > important source for this novel. This novel opens
> with the
> > Catholic Virgin--Christmas EVE, she has been
> "shadowed",
> > like Oedipa Mass, it ends with Astarte, between,
> on 533
> > pages in my edition, religion is discussed more
> than any
> > other subject. If you don't want to read posts
> that discuss
> > the religious subjects in TRP's fiction, filter
> all of my
> > posts, because most of them, will include quotes
> from the
> > novel V. and the major sources Pynchon used to
> write it.
> >
> Only because he writes so much about Religion
> doesn't necessarily mean that
> he's a "religious man" as you wrote. If his target
> is Western
> Civilization -and I think you are right here- this
> targeting cannot be
> thought of without attacks on the System of
> Organized Religions who are
> responsible for lying at the people for more than
> 2000 years - just like the
> Governments. Cannot be thought without attacking the
> claim that History is
> able to tell the Truth. Cannot be thought without
> the attack on the claim
> that the Spoken Word stands above the script.
> 
> "Historians undertake to arrange sequences,--called
> stories, or
> histories,--assuming in silence a relation of cause
> and effect." - The
> Education of Henry Adams, from:
> http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/adams.html
> - many nice quotes on that. Adams uses scientific
> terminology and "laws" to
> explain cultural processes. This "mapping" like Leni
> explains on p. 159 of
> GR TRP has taken over from Adams. And done so
> ingeniously.
> 
> "In der Tat bringt Pynchon mehrfach und überdeutlich
> V. und Stencils
> besessene Suche nach V. mit den
> geschichtstheoretischen Spekulationen von
> Henry Adams in Verbindung, der dem ungebrochenen
> Evolutions- und
> Fortschrittsoptimismus der spätviktorianischen
> Epoche mit dem Sprengsatz des
> 2. thermodynamischen Gesetzes zu Leibe gerückt war.
> Ordnung, so heißt es in
> seiner Autobiographie, sei Projektion des
> menschlichen Bewußtseins gegen die
> Übermacht des natürlichen Chaos, von dem es sich
> umgeben wisse; und wie
> jedes System betreibe auch das der abendländischen
> Kultur in einem nicht
> umkehrbaren Prozess den eigenen Verfall. Indem es
> Energie verbrauche und
> freisetze, baue es sich selber ab, strebe es nach
> einem Endzustand der
> radikalen Demokratie und Gleichwahrscheinlichkeit
> aller seiner Elemente. Die
> religiöse Ordnung der Jungfrau und Gottesmutter
> (sinnfällig verkörpert in
> der Kathedrale von Chartres) und das neue Imperium
> der elektrischen Turbine
> (deren Anblick Adams 1900 auf der Pariser
> Weltausstellung den Atem
> verschlug) - in dieser Gegenüberstellung glaubte er
> die bestürzende Tendenz
> der abendländischen Geschichte zu erkennen:
> Kulturelle Energie wird zuerst
> allmählich, dann immer schneller, zuletzt in
> sprunghafter Beschleunigung von
> eben jenen Kräften aufgesogen, mit deren Zähmung sie
> sich zugleich selbst
> entmachtet: <<Die Natur läuft dem Geist davon<< -
> nicht Millenium steht am
> Ende der Geschichte, sondern Zusammenbruch und
> Auflösung."
> (Heinz Ickstadt: Fiktion, Geschichte und der Dämon
> der Verfalls in V. und
> The Crying of Lot 49, in: Gerhard Hoffmann (Ed.),
> Der zeitgenössische
> amerikanische Roman: Von der Moderne zur
> Postmoderne, Band 3, p. 249)
> 
> > This is hobby for me, I don't post about religion
> in TRP's
> > fiction to convert people or do the good works of
> whatever
> > gods there may be. Be that as it may, I contend
> that TRP
> > writes about religion and that he  is a satirist.
> I contend
> > that his target is Western Civilization. I contend
> the Novel
> > V. is not a post modernist fiction. I contend that
> it is not
> > a fable of subversion. It is a satire and it is
> corrective.
> >
> If it is not postmodern what else do you call it? It
> is not Pre-modern in
> the sense of 19th-century mimetic literature. It is
> not Modern in the sense
> of Joyce and other Avantgardists of the beginning of
> the 20th century. It is
> definitely something else. I never insisted on the
> name "Postmodern" 'cause
> it's useless arguing about the name. Let's leave
> that to later generations.
> But the literary techniques and the techniques of
> analyzing highly complex,
> "esoterical" (means: unreadable for the common
> reader) literature since the
> later Joyce and Beckett have been collected under
> the label of
> Postmodernism. Satire is a necessary element of
> postmodernist fiction. See
> Ihab Hassan on this.
> 
> > When I argued, during GRGR, that TRP takes a
> strong moral
> > position on Gender, I was applauded, but if I
> argue the same
> > on other issues, not PC and popular these days, I
> will
> > ridiculed.  Here, in our V.V., these early
> chapters,  the
> > treatment of women is outrageous and TRP's has
> sharpened his
> > satirical teach to bite the male YOU--there are
> two such
> > addresses to the reader here in the early
> chapters--right on
> > the ass. Deal with it.
> >
> > Jane
> >
> 
> The treatment of woman is outrageous indeed in much
> of Pynchon's fiction as
> it is in reality too. Why should he lie about that?
> 
> I agree with you that TRP takes a very high moral
> point - against the
> hypocrisy of religious preaching that on one hand
> says "Love each other" and
> on the other hand has no problem treating women as
> the "evil" in the world,
> 
=== message truncated ===


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