NP police kill protester in Genoa - eyewitness account

[Musashi Miyamoto]

Please read this extra carefully:

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
Behalf Of CyrusGeo at netscape.net
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 1:39 PM
To: Musashi Miyamoto
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: RE: NP police kill protester in Genoa - eyewitness account


"Musashi Miyamoto" <scuffling at hotmail.com> wrote:

>HM replies: Police are soldiers; soldiers are people. Some are 
>seriously bad. (A) few deserve to die. It depends, and shouldn't 
>depend, on where your sympathies lie. Yes, my sympathies would be much 
>stronger with the poor gay soc immigrants, but I like to think that, 
>even as emotional an animal as I am, I am still a reasonable person. 
>Don't any of you knee-jerk global anti-globalists read Pynchon?

Please read this carefully:
1. Everybody are people. That doesn't mean anything in this context. 

People defend themselves when their lives are threatened. There are
people who would suggest that soldiers and police must stand by
passively while assaulted until a weapon that was designed to kill or
maim (not a fire extinguisher) is produced, as opposed to normal people
who should, of course, be permitted to defend themselves against even
the threat of substantial harm.

2. Sympathies have nothing to do with this. 

Perhaps not for you, but many, myself included, consistently favor
either the underdog or the overlord.

3. Noone deserves to die. Nobody. None. Absolutely not. No way. 

Debatable. I'll leave it at that. 

4. Emotions often cloud judgement. 

And yet they exist. We are humans, not machines.

5. I am not a knee-jerk global anti-globalist. You don't know my
weltanschauung. I'm just angry that a young man was murdered for no
reason. It is always better to respond to specific views, rather than
hang labels on people's necks. 

Uh, I wasn't saying that about you, Cyrus. I don't know you. As far as a
young man being "murdered for no reason," would you be happier if there
was a reason? Pynchon, btw, is sympathetic with his angry young
characters.

6. I have read (and go on reading) Pynchon. Otherwise, what would I be
doing here? 7. It is not clear to me how what you've said relates to
having read Pynchon. Please explain, if you will.

Though he takes on the big questions, Pynchon is not about easy answers.
GR and Vineland, in particular, address issues of social vs. personal
responsibility. All of Pynchon's counterforce have worked for "them."
Even Slothrop was working for the man. As someone else has recently
brought up, "They is us." The excitement of the street (both sides, now)
and the seduction of leading and being lead, it's all there, baby. 

To whatever extent this killing was unprovoked, it was not a matter of
policy. If the powers that be had wanted to, they could have shut the
whole thing down before it began, or provoked a blood-bath that much of
the world would have thought was understandable in the face of "violent
anarchists." It was the act of an individual and as such warrants little
more emotion (see above), and perhaps less, than the out and out murders
and other inhumanities, both "reasonable" and "unreasonable" that occur
all around us since time immemorial. I have more sympathy for the
street-lady that I saw yesterday than for someone who was, at best, a
soldier who enlisted and was killed in the line of duty. It may be a
"shitty thing to say," (as realist Von Goll said) but shit happens.

Keep cool, but care. Or don't.

Henry