pynchon-l-digest V2 #1818

[FrodeauxB at aol.com]

cfa,
I beleive it was Joe Stalin, FDR and WC's buddy, who sent henchmen across the 
Pacific, but I thought it was the Atlantic (maybe it was the great circle 
thing that threw me off). 
Whatever. Here's a little diddy for all you cool cats and hot chicks-or is it 
hot cats and cool chicks? Or is it Trotsky today and Chile tomorrow?
Subj:    <nettime> Amerika for Theorists (fwd)
Date:   5/10/01 8:22:32 AM Central Daylight Time
From:   sondheim at panix.com (Alan Sondheim)
Sender: nettime-l-request at bbs.thing.net
Reply-to:   sondheim at panix.com (Alan Sondheim)
To: nettime-l at bbs.thing.net



Amerika for Theorists


Understand we are a mean country first of all; social Darwinism on the
most brutal and vulgar scale dominates our thinking. Never mind we are
down on the quality of life indices; we demand to be counted the greatest
country on earth, one which is god-given. Understand our compassion comes
at a price; if you do not place us on human rights commissions, we will
bomb you, withhold funds, throw more of our own in jail.

Understand we are not a democracy; our "president" was not elected by a
majority; our gunlaws go wildly against the demographic grain; our health-
care is dominated by drug companies and professionals who wreak havoc
among the poor and elderly.

Understand we are guilty of the worst racisms, the largest jail popula-
tions, and one of the most violent societies on the planet. Understand we
believe in white male superiority, the punishment of the poor, and the
exaltation of violence which makes a man, a man.

Understand our ignorance; we do not know the capitals and heads of states
of our neighboring countries, much less their policies. They are our bor-
ders and our dominions; they are independent by virtue of our kindness.
Understand free trade is free profiteering without regard to environmental
regulation and protection. Understand Amerika comes first and we do not
care about global warming or pollution unless these are cost-free and
immediately economically beneficial to our upper classes.

Understand our poor are already our walking dead; that our poor come in
all colors; that they are irrelevant; that we believe their votes can be
bought, sold, and ignored; that we believe they are diseased and obstacles
to greater and greater wealth.

Understand our meanness is tied to our greed; that our rapaciousness knows
no bounds; that ignorance can be fought by the blunt edge of the sword;
that we do not care if we make enemies and more enemies. Understand our
word "freedom" is our word, not yours, and all of us are perfectly free in
this great land of ours.

But above all, understand our meanness: to those of us whose voice is
irrelevant, to those of us who oppose us, to any country our demographics
that crosses our beliefs, to our own creative artists. Understand we
possess the violence of the Taliban, ready to unleash it; that our jails
are overpopulated by victims of our Apartheid; that we possess, at a
moments notice, the bludgeon of Nazism. And understand that we are the
Panopticon; we have the god-given right to spy on each and every human on
the planet, and to destroy him or her at will.

You must understand this if you are to extract the marrow from the bone,
the muscle from the brain; you must understand this if you are to defeat
us, reduce us to ash and fragments of contaminated flesh, in our god-given
country, the greatest of them all.

Subj:    RE: <nettime> Amerika for Theorists (fwd)
Date:   5/10/01 3:50:35 PM Central Daylight Time
From:   bruce at duocash.com (Bruce Fancher)
Sender: nettime-l-request at bbs.thing.net
Reply-to:   bruce at duocash.com (Bruce Fancher)
To: nettime-l at bbs.thing.net


Understand first of all that we are intellectuals and as such we are
entitled to judge the rest of society and when we find it lacking to
dictate how it should be properly organized.  Never mind that we live and
work cloistered away in ivory towers, detached from the lives of most the
people of this country and the world.  Understand that real actual reality
does not matter, all that matters is our perception of reality as
distorted by our self-hatred and wish fufilment.

Understand that those who disagree with us will be attacked and demonized
as racists, sexists, homophobes, fascists.  Understand that those whose
lives we feel entitled to shape and distort using the coercive power of
the state are desperately in need of our help, despite what they or anyone
else might believe.  We will disregard the destruction we have brought on
them and instead blame the failure of all of our earlier efforts on the
malevolence of our enemies.

Understand that while living the good life made possible by free markets
and democracy in the most peaceful, free, tolerant and prosperous country
ever to exist in the history of the world, we will attack the very system
and citizenry who make our level of freedom and material comfort possible.  
We will hold our society up to impossible standards, demanding utopia, but
ignoring the day-to-day and year-to-year improvements in the lives of
ordinary people.  We will ignore the freedom and wealth, beyond the
wildest imaginings of our ancestors, which virtually everyone in our
society enjoys.

Understand that we will ignore the 100 million innocents murdered and the
hundreds of millions more who have led lives of poverty and repression in
Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua and
everywhere our beliefs have actually been put into practice.  Understand
that although we defended those regimes and held them up as examples to be
emulated, we will pretend that those crimes had nothing to do with us or
our beliefs.  We will delude ourselves into believing that next time
someone puts our beliefs into practice it will be different, like an
unrecovered alcholic who believes that next time he picks up a drink he
will be able to control himself, despite all past evidence to the
contrary.

Understand that the death, destruction, poverty and repression we have
visited upon people here and abroad are nothing but abstractions.  What is
truly important is our vision of "social justice," not the actual lives of
the people who have suffered under the conditions our vision has brought
about.  Understand that we will detemine the validity of all truthes
solely on the basis of whether they support our belief system.  We will
ignore all evidence which is contrary to what we wish to believe and
denounce as a bigot and liar anyone who dares to speak against us.


TTFN,

frodeauxb