Selective Memory

[barbara100 at jps.net]

Quail wrote:
While it may let you sleep at night -- knowing how awful this world is, and how you soundly protest it -- it tends to inhibit serious discussion of realistic alternatives. I mean, where do you realistically go from, if your position is that all who hold power are terrorists? 


Pynchon writes:
"*We can't help"..."there's never been anything we could do.*"

Oboy, Pynchon's sure got you pegged. "There's no alternative...We have to do what our government/master says..."



Original Message:
-----------------
From: The Great Quail quail at libyrinth.com
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 10:17:54 -0500
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: RE: Selective Memory


Richard writes,

>Quail, Quail, Quail.  I simply cannot follow your argument above. 
>I'm at a complete loss as to what the "loss of context" might be.

The context of the stated goals of the military action. The context 
of the real-world events surrounding the entire situation. Barbara 
seems to think that our "official" policy is to murder Afghani 
civilians in an "eye for an eye" retribution for our dead civilians. 
This is just ludicrous.

Though I see from your following diatribe, that you probably weren't 
serious about your question, but were trying to make a point of your 
own in broadening said "context" to include the evils of 
globalization, the madness of power, the infallibility of Chomsky, 
and so on....

>  It seems to me that an ever-widening context would include a very 
>large number of dead civilians at the hands of the U.S. and its 
>proxies in the prosecution of war by other means.

Yes, it would. The more we prosecute this war against terror, the 
more civilians that will probably die. You could state the same thing 
for any war ever fought, ever.

>I really don't think you'd want any mention of the total context.  I 
>believe that you have dissociated yourself from those ugly details 
>yet your tax dollars supported those efforts and your elected 
>representatives planned and implemented those acts.

I have actually said, on repeated occasions, that my participation in 
American society, my use of an automobile, plastics, and other 
petrochemical products, my patronage of transnational corporations 
such as McDonald's and Coke and so on; I have repeatedly said that 
this makes me share complicity in foreign policy actions driven by 
our hunger for energy and consumerism. I have said more than a few 
times that I think America is imperial, though I have defended its 
imperialism as being a natural aspects of a global power, and one 
tempered in our case by a moral system certainly better than most 
previous large powers. So, Richard, I am sorry to say, but your 
assumptions about my associations or dissociations are wrong.

>Oh, right.  Your take on Chomsky is negative because Chomsky reduces 
>the supposed complexity to simple motives and bodies rather than 
>over-intellectualizing and abstracting them away as Foucault did.

Well, that's one of my problems with Chomsky -- I think he focuses 
relentlessly only on the negative, I think he is unbalanced in his 
views and criticisms, and I think he tends to focus only on dead 
bodies caused by Western actions.

>The folks in power are not hawkish rednecks but opportunists of the 
>first order who have emptied the public treasury, suspended the Bill 
>of Rights and are fighting terrorism with unspeakable terror.

Well, that's nice that you believe that, though last time I checked, 
the Bill of Rights hasn't been suspended, and there is a growing 
outcry against the Draconian measures supported by Ashcroft. And I 
suppose if you think of war as "unspeakable terror," you have a 
point. But again, context is a key here. I ask you a question I have 
asked Barbara and Doug, though vainly: Do you, Richard Fiero, feel 
that violence and war is ever an appropriate response? And if "yes," 
has the United States ever "correctly" or "morally" waged war?

>Well, that's one way to do it.  The undeclared war proceeds and is 
>constantly referred to as a "war against terrorism"  but appears 
>more as a contest as to who holds a monopoly on terror.

That's an idiotic and even contradictory statement, and the exact 
kind of thing that makes me discount Chomsky and his ilk. What you 
are reacting against is the very formation, development, and 
self-protection of nation states; defining all violence and political 
will as "terror." It's human nature to use force to form and protect 
one's society, and there was never, ever, ever a time when all 
communities lived in peace. As Pynchon would say, "There is no 
return."

I guess my real problem with the views expressed by Barbara, Doug, 
and yourself is that they are essentially infantile. By protesting 
against all violence, all uses of coercive power, and by equating 
government with a monopoly of terror, you espouse more than idealism, 
you espouse a utopian fantasy. While it may let you sleep at night -- 
knowing how awful this world is, and how you soundly protest it -- it 
tends to inhibit serious discussion of realistic alternatives. I 
mean, where do you realistically go from, if your position is that 
all who hold power are terrorists?

Or am I reading too much into your rhetoric and making baseless assumptions?

--Quail



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