Pynchon and the current situation

[Richard Fiero]

Terrance wrote:
>Doug Millison wrote:
>. . .
>  Recall how the
> > military-industrial machine that developed as the U.S.
> > prepared for and entered WWII continued to expand and
> > drive the economic boom of the 50s, and when that
> > began to flag, another war (in Vietnam) kept the gears
> > turning and the money flowing and the oil pumping for
> > another decade or so.
>
>This didn't happen. The economy of the 1960s didn't flag and so it was
>not bolstered by the Vietnam War. During the 1960s the USA had one of
>its longest periods of uninterrupted economic growth, inflation averaged
>around 2% (although it did accelerate to around 5% by the end of the
>decade) and unemployment, which was 6.7% in 1961 declined to 3.5% by
>1969.
>   . . .

Terrance has not shown that the good numbers are -not- a direct 
result of the war effort as a jobs and investment program. 
Recall that on the War Memorial the first death is in 1954 and 
the last is in 1975. Altogether, it's been said that the 
Vietnam War cost about the same as the S&L bailout. If we are 
using something like Keynesian macroeconomics, we note that 
there is no "cost" in the war since the money didn't vanish 
from the system but was just directed in some other way. This 
is somewhat different from the S&L bailout where money appeared 
to actually evaporate when not lining unscrupulous pockets.

Doug Millison continued and Terrance replied:
>  . . .
>  Sure the U.S. economy is taking a dive, but
> > it's temporary, and as Bush and his buddies start
> > pumping money into this new war effort we'll pull out
> > of it the way the economy pulled out of the Great
> > Depression with WWII.
>
>How will this work?

Sorry, why wouldn't this work?


>If we want peace we will need to understand that we are not living in a
>Pynchon novel.
>We are living in a very complicated world. Pointing political fingers,
>calling people names, re-writing history, is not a very  constructive
>way to build a peace movement.

Now I am confused. If we are just talking about the World Trade 
Center and Pentagon strikes and since no US bombs have dropped 
that I am aware of, a peace movement has no function other than 
asking the terrorists to please stop killing US citizens. If 
our peace movement is opposed to attacks on civilians 
everywhere and at all times, then we need to pay a great deal 
of attention to Noam Chomsky. Your call, Toots.

With respect to Mr. Bush's well hidden intelligence, we have a 
great deal of material before us in his election verbiage, his 
choices of appointees and his truly weird unilateralisms 
(Kyoto, star wars, &c.) It would be difficult to find much 
right with any of it. I'm going to avoid mention of Mr. Bush's 
fiscal-monetary doings since they are transparently self-evident.

Best of all, September 11th found Mr. Bush hiding under his 
desk all day somewhere in Nebraska. The White House must have 
expected us to not notice. When we did, it said that Mr. Bush 
and his lovely White House had been targeted along with his 
ride, Air Force One. Now this is a flat-out lie based on really 
stretching the supposition that the plane embedded in 
Pennsylvania turf had been headed in that general direction 
several hours before. That's DUMB. I remain truly thankful that 
Gore-Lieberman are not around to muck things up.