OFFLIST Re: Complicity and _GR_ (was and still is Re: IBM, Disney, Bush: Nazis?)

[jbor]

Hi cfa

Thanks. If all that stuff is true, and I don't doubt it, then why wasn't it
brought to light before the election when it surely would have changed the
result? I agree that all the ulterior motives for full-on military campaigns
and the insider trading is heinous -- and I suspect that if some or any of
those more serious charges could be brought in a criminal court then there
would be an indictment.

And, then again, you've got Clinton's presidential pardons of drug dealers
and other big-time crooks -- his final legacy for the U.S. as its Prez --
and the revelation last week of that Rodham sibling on the take as well. I
find it hard to have any sort of faith or trust in anybody who has been at
or near the helm over there since ... I can't even supply a name.

There is one line of argument that would say that the sensationalist and
largely illogical bleatings about Bush and his ancestors profiting from the
Holocaust, or last week's Baghdad bombing "echoing" Nazi policies
(overlooking Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Vietnam altogether it seems), actually
serve to *obscure* the true and specific crimes and misdemeanours he and his
brothers and father should answer to. Sorting the wheat from the chaff is
difficult if all they throw at you is chaff (but I guess that was one of
your points about the NYT.)

The more I read about the Bush clan the more I agree that the worse
candidate won. However, now that you (and we in the rest of the world) are
stuck with him for four years, unless someone can somehow manage to get him
kicked out of office by due legal process (heaven forbid he be shot and
martyrised) in the meantime ... even then there would be a backlash of
sympathy (cf. Nixon, Ed. Kennedy etc) and the next Bush generation might be
up there on the hustings before the decade is out ... some sort of
rapprochement needs to be struck with him and his cronies, so the focus
needs to shift, I think, in order to ensure that they are kept as "honest"
as possible while in the position. This would mean concentrating on the
"now" and future stuff rather than all the spilt milk of the past. It's not
the ideal, its just practical common sense.

I can catch glimmers of your meaning in the last two paragraphs, and I think
I might agree with you, but the point/s you are making are actually too
complex or the linking explanations aren't in place and I don't quite get
it. The picaro is unable to "order" the world but can certainly see and
present it in a true, or truer, light because he is constantly moving from
place to place and level to level. One of the flashes of insight -- the
major one, probably -- of P's postmodern picaro, Slothrop, is how he has
been connected and is actually implicated in all the "bad" stuff (by what
happened to him as an infant, the attitudes he grew up with, through his job
and "mission", by what he stands for to the various communities and
individuals he comes into contact with etc). The more he finds out the more
he tries to wriggle free and dissociate himself from the "entities" of which
he finds himself an agent. I don't know that he quite succeeds, or could, or
what his ultimate fate is ...

Actually, I pretty much understand and agree with your second last
paragraph, except for the distinction you make in the last sentence there,
but the last one has me totally stumped.

Anyway, hope you are well and prospering

best wishes

rob j

ps You'd be aghast at what happened to the Manly-Warringah Sea-Eagles. There
were all sorts of corporate takeovers and mergers, media magnates (Murdoch,
actually) became involved and split the competition and stuffed up the rules
of the game, and it's only just coming back together. Anyway,
Manly-Warringah were forced to merge with North Sydney Club and are now
called the Northern Eagles. No-one was happy about that.

----------
>From: calbert at tiac.net
>To: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
>Subject: Re: Complicity and _GR_ (was and still is Re: IBM, Disney, Bush: 
Nazis?)
>Date: Sun, Feb 25, 2001, 2:40 AM
>

> jbor:
>> What is less defensible is the
>> filibustering and inflammatory rhetoric which greets these reports,
>> the overt or covert ulterior motives of the filibusters to discredit
>> the Bushes,
>
> I applaud the principle, but find its application to this specific case -
> particularly from jbor, puzzling. To tar today's IBM with the sins of
> Tom Watson is specious, the same could be said for Microturd and
> Disney - but the Famiglia Bush has not modified its MO in the least.
> The sins of the grandfather Prescott are reflected in the actions of
> George Sr., his brother Prescott, and George Sr.s three sons.
>
> For a REASONED account of their many misdeeds, covering the
> last thirty or so years, I ASK jbor just to take a minute and scan the
> following
>
> http://www.mediafilter.org/MFF/BushFamilyPreys.html
>
> For reasons I cannot fathom the extensive footnotes which were
> once provided with the story have been excised, but I can confirm
> that much of what is told has been reported in the Wall Street
> Journal. For the purposes of this discussion I care less about the
> particulars than I do about their infinite repetition and the attendant
> impunity.
>
> I would also urge jbor, or anyone else who may be in doubt to
> investigate the tale of George Jr. and the Texas Rangers Stadium
> deal. But for the fact that one of the houses they stole belonged to
> another Texas power posse, the Curtis Mathes Television heirs, we
> may never have known the extent of the perfidy associated with this
> matter.
>
> http://www.georgebush2000.com/Baseball3-Mathes.html
>
> After reading this story, a reasonabale person might ask why it
> received LESS media coverage than the alleged "overstatements" of
> Al Gore, which consumed an inordinate amount of soy ink. Once
> that nut is breached, the question of media complicity in the painting
> of an emtirely false picture of the candidate gains velocity.
>
> The Pynchon connection? Ironically, I see it as follows -
>
> There is a good reason, beyond its functionality in the picaresque
> realm, for Pynchon's use of the schlemiel. Such a figure finds it
> sufficiently impossible to "order" the inanimate - how can any entity
> or clique hope to "order" anything as complex "history"? Yes,  all
> P.s work deals with forces which strive to effect such controll, but
> I've never gotten the sense that he is resigned to their success in
> such efforts - quite the contrary. Furthermore, he hints at a
> hierarchy in which such actors may themselves simply be the tools
> of "higher" powers. Hence the "six degrees of separation" between a
> Slothrop and I. G. Farben may not only be one of associations but
> also of "purpose" and , ultimately "effect".
>
> That such entities may "pass on" objectives or methods to
> successors reflects, imho, not necessarily the immutability of their
> purposes and ultimate success, but rather the echoes of the
> discreet elements which retain a degree of utility, but won't
> necessarily do so for many more generations. Entropy applies no
> less to the TANGIBLE manifestations of power than it does to its loci
> of concentration. Coming full circle, I would suggest that such an
> interpretation is consistent with the principle, if not necessarily the
> specific ( the Bush example), of Jbor's argument.
>
> love,
> cfa
>
> How about an update on the Manly-Warringha (sp.?) Sea Eagles?