Pynchon as propaganda

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Mackin" <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2003 2:25 PM
Subject: Re: Pynchon as propaganda
> > >
> > > Paul wrote:
> > > I don't believe. You don't believe. The text neither believes nor
> > > disbelieves I don't imagine Terrance believes but I'll let him answer
> > > if he thinks the question is worth bothering with. Belief here is a
> > > complete non-issue.Not the point of the passage at all.The point of
> > > the passage is frightened men dying.
> > > >
> >
> > Otto wrote:
> > Isn't it about the fact too that religion is being abused for preparing
> > men to become killers and get killed, in WW-II like in most wars up to
> > the present one? Which makes religion a war-device, a part of psy-ops
> > imho.
>
> I honestly didn't draw that meaning.
>
> P.
>

"(...) no matter what it's been used for. . . ." (693.6-7)

But it is clearly about the abuse of speech and religion. 

In the binary opposition of speech vs script the speech, 
the word originally given by God is the higher, ruling pole. 
The soldiers take the chaplain's words for God's words, 
as a consolation that whatever happens He will be on their 
side and take their poor souls after being killed, or that He 
will not abandon them after having killed somebody else. 
Suicide bombing that promises 72 virgins in paradise isn't 
structurally very much different in its abuse of religious 
belief I suppose. 

We poor atheists only can find consolation in the beauty of the script. 

Otto