MDMD: America

[Terrance]

Richard Romeo wrote:
> --------------
> potential is never discounted either, except in V. which is probably the
> grimmest book Pynchon has written. I am of the opinion that exposing
> America's wrongs is not a fruitless, throwing of the hands up, howl.  It's
> Pynchon's reversal of the false view of American exceptionalism that I find
> encouraging--we are not different from other nations, but these lofty, naive
> set of ideals remains part of the American mid-set, tho we seem to fail at
> reaching them.  But they remain.

Oh come now, get serious. America is exceptional. It is uncommon in so
many ways and in so many things above average, in some ways 
extraordinary. And if we are talking about the USA and not America, it
is clearly a very different nation than any other on the planet.  It is
not like China or  Brazil (although is has much in common with both
these giants) or any Nation I have ever been to and I've been to most
nations in America. American Exceptionalism is not the subject of debate
because the idea  is clearly so wrong-headed and absurd that only fools
and idiots would argue it. 

America is not a royal throne of kings, a sceptred isle, an earth of
majesty. This is the seat of Mars, the Devil's own Dynamo and the flying
Cross buttressed upon the cowering shoulders of misfits tossed cross
every sea. It has been and may yet be for some that other Eden, a
demi-paradise. And though it's towers are but dust, it remains always a
fortress built by labor's thick rough hand, impenetrable but by some
inside job underhanded and dastardly.  America is guarded by the seas  
against the ships
of war, guided by the rules of law, instructed by the farmer's toil,
driven by the mad bus driver across the night's unwinding nihgtmares,
spilled and broken and up off the floor swinging. Oh, Richard, blessed
are we, we happy breed of men and women, with giant hearts pumping blood
into the limbs of the infant and aging world. Oh, this prairie immense
and fathomless, this manifestation of the dead hand of reason and clock
time.  Ever the envy of less happier lands, this blessed Mall, this
Plot, this conspiracy, this America never was America to me.