Vineland revisited

[Phil Wise]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Millison" <DMillison at ftmg.net>
To: "Pynchon-L (E-mail)" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 9:52 AM
Subject: Vineland revisited


>
> "Friday's protest was leavened with whimsy: Shortly after the anarchists
> tore down the wall, a medieval-themed faction rolled up its catapult and
> flung pink stuffed animals at the police. There was street theater, a
Statue
> of Liberty on stilts (later damaged when police rubber bullets knocked it
> down), a group of "pagans" symbolizing a river and trying to heal the
crowd,
> young men in suits with signs like "Trees or Bush: It's Your Choice" and a
> young man, dressed as the Easter Bunny, handing out chocolate eggs to
people
> as they recovered from tear gas attacks."
> http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/04/23/quebec/index1.html
>
>
> They are media-savvy, able to turn the media against themselves, aware of
> paradigm limitations in a way that not many of the '60s crew were, and
they
> have access to the 'net as an organizing tool. I wonder if Pynchon might
> rethink Vineland's dismal view of the possibilities for meaningful protest
> in light of today's anti-globalization movement.
>
> Doug Millison, Senior Editor
> Knowledge Management magazine
> (415) 348-3054
> DougMillison at ftmg.net
> www.destinationKM.com
>
> [only my personal views and not my employers' of course]


Maybe so, or is it an emerging pattern... if the 50s sold out the 30s, and
the 80s sold out the 60s movements, and now we have 90s/00s movements, how
do we prevent the "mild heard creatures" of our own generation from being
turned over like the PR3ers?  How do we prevent the pattern repeating?  And
by the time the 2010 generation comes along, will the system all our
Governments are busy negotiating - I'm sure even George W doesn't realise
what the potential consequences of these negotiatins are - have become a
fully fledged totalitarianism?

What they're negotiating seems to me to be pure GR's Cartel.  Each of the
previous totalitarian movements - Stalin's USSR, Hitler's Germany, Mao's
Revolutionary China - began with widespread popular support because of the
advances in quality of life they were supposedly going to achieve.  Each
needed huge numbers of people to achieve a genuine state of totalitarianism,
and each once they did this, began to devour their own population when an
outside enemy wasn't available or sufficient.  In addition, those who helped
establish and\or enable these totalitarianisms had no idea what they had
wrought.

As the paradigm of the market extends itself more completely into social
life (cf Claude Lefort's definition of totalitarianism), and sets all around
them into motion (cf Arendt's), will or won't these protesters seem
prophetic?  Or will we all be too numbed to know?

Phil, moved enough to emerge from lurk mode