MDDM Ch. 62 Slavery

[Doug Millison]

>Stig: " ... the 'new' Continent Europeans found, had been long attended,
>from its own ancient Days, by murder, slavery, and the poor fragments of a
>Magic irreparably broken." (612.10)


Europeans rationalized their rape of the New World in many ways.
I wonder, did the Native Americans proclaim themselves the heralds of an
Enlightenment, a new world order characterized by personal liberty, at the
same time that they practiced slavery?


>Capt. Zhang: "If you think you see no Slaves in Pennsylvania, [...] why,
>look again. They are not all African, nor do some of them even yet know,--
>may never know, --that they are Slaves. Slavery is very old upon these
>shores,-- there is no Innocence upon the Practice anywhere, neither among
>the Indians nor the Spanish nor in the behavior of the rest of Christendom,
>if it come to that." (615-6)


Degrees of slavery. If you want to argue that Washington and Gershom are
"equal" in the larger sense that they are both in some way "slaves", no
objection.  It was the lack of liberty that the Americans resented
vis-a-vis the King, after all. That doesn't alter the inequality of the
power relationship between the two of them, however.  Gershom remains
Washington's property, his slave.


Otto, my view is that pot smoking in itself is not a problem.  Pynchon
called it a "useful substance" and I expect he knows what he's talking
about.  I look at what's happening while those happy old hippies are
sitting around stoned, Reagan-Bush dismantling the 60s revolution while the
former rebels are watching TV, sucked back into that American Tube dream
while.  Look closely at the way Pynchon portrays Zoyd the pot-head in
Vineland, a novel that looks at drug use and addiction from many angles.