Amerikaka (NP?)

[Jasper Fidget]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Weaver" <mikeweaver at gn.apc.org>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2001 10:12 PM
Subject: Amerikaka (NP?)

[...]
> The current attack on terrorism is an attack on a Hydra.  What can it
> achieve but more heads, smaller maybe, but more of them. Yes they declared
> war but it is not a challenge which can be fought militarily.
> There are plenty of positive ways out of here, but none of them are short
> term, and none of them are largely military, and all of them involve
> continued globalisation. Not of the corporate kind, but of the
> international co-operation kind.
[...]

Attacks of 9/11 magnitude are made possible only through the organizational
structures of hostile States.  They require financing, recruitment,
training, ideological coercion, and protected territory.  The military
removal of those states may not remove the enemies, but it will remove their
access to my kitchen.  It most certainly will not make them stronger.  And
it is far preferable to face an impotent hydra, than a powerful dragon.
(See, I've avoided your Herculean beartrap here, for Iolaus can only
represent genocide.)

I think the term "Amerika" as you've used it (to signify the capitalist
state/ideology) does not equate to capitalism.  The prime mover is
capitalism, but the main activity of the capitalism-sponsoring state is its
regulation as often as its lubrication.  This "Amerika" then is those states
which act in the service of their own mutated brand of capitalism (none of
them purely capitalist by any means).

Okay, so fine, you resent state-sponsored capitalism, and maybe you hate its
deeds (which include the protection of its citizens and their capitalist
interests from threats of force by any state, organization, or individual,
including monstrous groups formed in dialectically predicted vacuums)--in
which case you may happily talk to Doug for a while; I can provide you with
his email address--but do not confuse that with the philosophical and
economic system of capitalism.  Whatever your "positive opposition" to that
is, you should prepare to count its teeth.  (If you honestly mean some form
of Marxism, then I'll reserve my place in the hills, as that route is
historically blighted by far greater calamities than you could ever level
against capitalism.)

This may be largely a matter of semantics.  My point is simply that these
events and this situation cannot be distilled onto surfaces of pure theory,
as they tend only to reflect themselves rather than reality.  Personally, I
prefer to think of Amerika as a Kafka novel.

Jasper Fidget