"But the world isn't like that."

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

                Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?

    http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/luddite.html

(From paragraph 20)

    The Gothic attitude in general, because it used images 
    of death and ghostly survival toward no more responsible 
    end than special effects and cheap thrills, was judged not 
    Serious enough and confined to its own part of town. It is 
    not the only neighborhood in the great City of Literature 
    so, let us say, closely defined. In westerns, the good people 
    always win. In romance novels, love conquers all. In whodunits, 
    murder, being a pretext for a logical puzzle, is hardly ever an 
    irrational act. In science fiction, where entire worlds may be 
    generated from simple sets of axioms, the constraints of our 
    own everyday world are routinely transcended. In each of these 
    cases we know better. We say, "But the world isn't like that."

The essay goes on to detail things that even luddites, pre-WW II, might 
have thought unbelievable, but became all too real:

    By 1945, the factory system -- which, more than any piece 
    of machinery, was the real and major result of the Industrial 
    Revolution -- had been extended to include the Manhattan Project, 
    the German long-range rocket program and the death camps, such 
    as Auschwitz.

The unbelievable, the horrific has become reality, even routine. "But the
world IS like that," he seems to be saying. Once more, there is, now more
than ever, as he said Eisenhower warned against:

    a permanent power establishment of admirals, generals and 
    corporate CEO's, up against whom us average poor bastards 
    are completely outclassed...

Question is, are we "all supposed to keep tranquil and allow it to go on, 
even though, because of the data revolution, it becomes every day less 
possible to fool any of the people any of the time...?"

I don't think so.

Come, October 26, to Washington, D.C. (fuck the sniper, he ain't Oboy, might 
even be some rogue, ex-trained killer, tryin' to keep us all scared and away)

and help:  STOP THE WAR!

regards