My one true Marxist state

[Terrance]

This is Doug at his absolute lowest. 



Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> What's really funny this time around is that jbor and I have kept the
> discussion pretty clean; despite getting a tad testy now and again, we both
> backed away from name-calling and focused, more or less, on M&D. (Having
> made his interpretation look so silly, I don't mind being magnanimous and
> overlooking the flamebait he offered at those moments when he ran out of
> ideas).  Can't say the same for Mackin, Malign, and Terrance, who have all
> piped in at intervals, and who have stepped in big-time with insults and
> diversions since jbor stopped applying bubble gum and bailing wire to his
> Rube Goldberg interpretation of Washington and Gershom.  But that's all
> they've done hereabouts for a long time now, and I doubt they'll change.
> 
> jbor can discuss Pynchon if he wants to, but he doesn't have a very good
> track record of sticking with an argument when others find its weak spots.
> DudiousMax demonstrated that, I have a couple of times now, as have several
> other P-listers.  When jbor can't get agreement, first he starts repeating
> his brain-dead arguments,  and when all else fails in comes his posse.  All
> very predictable.  But, then, the task he's set himself -- to rewrite
> Pynchon as the sort of American writer who can treat Reagan-Bush-Bush and
> their twisted version of America  with "respect" (which is where this whole
> thread started, if you'll recall, see below) -- is impossble from the
> get-go, and I do admire his energy.
> 
> At 6:35 PM -0700 7/15/02, Dave Monroe wrote:
> [...]
> >But Doug is hardly the only one flinging said shit
> >around here.  Some might perfume it up a bit, but ...
> 
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0206&msg=67421&sort=date
> Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 17:17:13 -0700
> jbor:
> >As far as Pynchon goes, it's pretty clear to me that the doesn't buy into
> >the partisan politics game in the slightest.
> 
> That may be true, although I'm at a loss to understand how might know this
> with any certainty.  It's certainly true that Pynchon has made a special
> effort to skewer a series of Republican Presidents -- Nixon, Reagan, Bush
> -- in his fiction, quite savagely, in fact.
> 
> His consistent anti-fascist politics and outrage at the very many forms of
> corporate exploitation and ruination of ecological systems -- just to name
> a couple of political viewpoints he upholds throughout his oeuvre -- would
> appear to cut across mainstream (US Democratic/Republican) party lines, but
> certainly political parties do exist that could accomodate them.
> 
> jbor:
> >Regardless of who it is, the President of the U.S. - the power and authority
> >of the office, at the very least - deserves respect.
> 
> How much "respect" does Pynchon show the future Pres. Geo. Washington in
> M&D?  That novel comes down pretty hard on the Founding Fathers in general
> (Franklin gets the treatment, too)...and it works overtime to distinguish
> class differences in Colonial America that the "revolution" (absent from
> the novel) will do nothing to erase but instead serve only to exacerbate.