MDMD: Lambton Worm

[Paul Mackin]

Take heart everybody. He's in the final draw-back-as-gracefully-as-possible
stage. Didn't we know the whole thing was a big joke. He was funning us all
the time. We're a bunch of silly boobs who don't even know when we're being
ribbed.That Doug is such a scamp.

P.

Doug Millison wrote:

> I agree with davemarc, those terrorists are bad guys and should be brought
> to justice for their crimes.  They should be brutal, they learned from the
> best -- the CIA. et al., during the Reagan-Bush Administration.
>
> al Qaida takes on a mythical dimension (in the sense that I read in
> Pynchon's work) as the Bush Administration II cowboys puff al Qaida up
> (beyond their already brutal bad guy proportions) to make themselves look
> more macho as they scare us all and win support for everything they want to
> do under the name of the "war on terrorism," and as we internalize them as
> mythical figures and respond to them as such instead of dealing more
> immediately in the here and now.  GR studies this process in some detail,
> but it's a recurring theme throughout Pynchon's work.
>
> Hold al Qaida responsible for their crimes -- a position I've held since
> September 11 -- but let's do the same for the Bush Administration and other
> governments responsible for terrorism,  war crimes, and other crimes
> against humanity.
>
> Most observers agree that the results of the  "war on terrorism"  have been
> primarily to scatter al Qaida across the globe, erode civil liberties here
> in the US, kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan (and elsewhere),  and
> cause untold suffering in Afghanistan, as it transfers billions and
> billions of dollars from the US government (taxpayers) to suppliers of
> weapon systems and other defense-related products and services. Far from
> eliminating evil, this war increases evil, violence leads to more violence
> and suffering that will continue, I expect, down through the generations,
> as in the  story of the Lambton Worm that Pynchon includes in M&D.