Open Letter to Doug and Friends

[Paul Mackin]

Nice post, Great Quail, but get ready for the venon to spew.

        .
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "The Great Quail" <quail at libyrinth.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 7:20 AM
Subject: Open Letter to Doug and Friends


> I have been following the recent September 11 thread on the List with 
> a mixture of amusement, disgust, and wonder. And until now, I have 
> tried to keep quiet, because I didn't want to embroil myself in a 
> flame war with Doug, Barbara, and that fellow with all the consonants 
> in his email address. Also, as a New Yorker, indeed; as a witness to 
> much of the attack and as a person who has lost acquaintances due to 
> the jihad, I feel my own perspective may not be one of unbiased 
> coolness.
> 
> But I would like to address Doug's question of "excusing the terrorists."
> 
> Doug, I don't think anyone on this List -- even MalignD or David 
> Morris -- thinks that you are happy with what happened on September 
> 11, or that you think the actions of the terrorists were excusable. 
> You are obviously an advocate of human rights, and wrongful death 
> touches you deeply. But having said that, I do believe you open 
> yourself as a target of anger for several reasons.
> 
> 1. You almost fall over yourself in an attempt to show the 
> "legitimate" grievances of the terrorists. All your postings, all 
> your passed-on links, all your rhetoric, it is all aimed at one thing 
> and one thing alone: to show us that the US is a bad place, run by 
> bad men. It may not be an excuse, but it cuts damn close to the bone. 
> I mean, can't you even mix it in with some balanced stuff? So the US 
> is not the Palace of Righteousness it's painted out to be, but what 
> about its culture, its art, its people? This was not an attack on 
> just the military or the government, this was an attack on me and 
> you. These people see no difference between Kissinger, Chomsky, and 
> Tariq Mehmood, the Islamic kid who works in my corner Bodega and 
> dates an Italian girl. Some sensitivity and balance in your 
> relentless critique would be welcome. I am not saying you have to 
> shut up and accept everything that Bush says, but you paint 
> everything in such absolute terms, you tend to drive people into 
> corners.
> 
> 2. Your whole tone is objectionable. I feel that you adopt the tone 
> of a father confronting a child seriously injured by his own 
> misdeeds. It feels that with one hand, you are offering condolences, 
> but in the other you have a stern punishment ready. Indeed, I detect 
> a note of near gloating in your posts which I find repugnant. (And 
> you are not the only one who seems to have adopted such a tone around 
> here.) So while no one feels that you are excusing the terrorists, it 
> seems that you are using this situation to do nothing more than grind 
> your usual axes. It is distasteful -- it seems as if you hate this 
> country so much, you are blind to the suffering we are going through, 
> merely because you would rather adopt a more "universal" view that 
> places you on some perceived moral high-horse. To me, at least, this 
> seems a bit crass, and your CONSTANT harping about the evils of the 
> US curdles any real sympathies you may choose to show. And it's hard 
> to hide the smell of sour courtesy.
> 
> 3. You also fall over yourself to point out that the US has helped 
> create bin Laden and the entire Islamic jihad -- as if we didn't 
> know! You indict all media, you assume most Americans to be fools, 
> and you cannot even *conceive* of the fact that your government is 
> made of humans that do both good and wrong, rather than inhuman 
> monsters. The fact is, Doug, most of us KNOW that the Gulf War was 
> about oil, we KNOW that the US financed bin Laden, we KNOW that the 
> Afghan people are not the enemy. And yet, you keep pointing these 
> things out as if they were revelations. It's almost like you can't 
> conceive of the fact the US government has *not* yet carpet-bombed 
> Afghanistan, and the average US citizen may *not* be the blind, 
> drooling jingoist you assume them to be. I get the impression you are 
> almost disappointed that Bush & Co. have not lived up to your worst 
> expectations.
> 
> 4. Occasionally, it seems as if you are stuck in the sixties. This is 
> not Vietnam, its quite different, and the sixties are several 
> generations ago. Let it go, Doug. Much -- not all, but much -- of 
> your paranoid rhetoric is tired and inadequate.
> 
> 5. And the crowning glory -- and this is List specific -- is that you 
> feel compelled to drag Pynchon into *everything.*  You act as if you 
> are the High Prophet of Pynchon, armed with the only true 
> understanding of the Man's work, and it is, frankly, GRATING the way 
> you use "understanding of Pynchon" as an acid test for our 
> intelligence and political viewpoints. At the very least, if you 
> can't show some taste or flexibility with your polemics, at least 
> leave our "understanding" of Pynchon out of it.
> 
> I thank God this is not the Middle Ages and no one has made you into 
> an Inquisitor! I would hate to be beaten with a copy of GR, it's 
> quite a heavy book....
> 
> --Quail (aka "Big Bird")
> 
> -- 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> The Great Quail, Keeper of the Libyrinth:
> http://www.TheModernWord.com
> 
> "All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each
> event -- in the living act, the undoubted deed -- there, some unknown
> but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from
> behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!
> How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?"
>       --Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"
>