No subject

[Doug Millison]

Dixon proves what advocates of nonviolent action for social justice teach ,
as I understand it -- you can use force as an intervention to prevent
without necessarily injuring and certainly without killing the people whose
behavior you'd like to see changed.

The difference between nonviolence, such as that which was preached and
practiced by the likes of Ghandi,  Rev'd Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and
others, and the violence of war is that nonviolent activists use methods
that avoid injuring and killing their opponents.  The explicitly renounce
and refrain from the injuring and killing of adversaries such as we see the
Bush Administration and allies perpetrating in Afghanistan right now.  Bush
and friends in Afghanistan use the same violent tactics as their opponents.

Pynchon creates a Dixon whose act is congruent with the teachings of
nonviolence.  Dixon uses his body to stop the slave driver's violence,
leaves the slave driver virtually unharmed, removes the weapon so the slave
driver can't use it again -- Pynchon's rebuke of violence.


jbor:
In the episode with the slave-driver, for example, Pynchon
acknowledges through his portrayal of Dixon's "act" that the only way to
begin to achieve "justice" in certain extreme situations of injustice and
violence is to neutralise the adversary's potential to do violence through
an initial act of brute force. Just as with the international alliance
against terrorism and the military assault on al Qaeda and the Taliban.