1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[Dave Monroe]

Well, first off, "those of a fascistic disposition--or
merely those among us who remain all too ready to
justify any government action, whether right or
wrong," if it does not equate them (though it all but
does), implies that the former are at least a subset
of the latter.  And/or vice versa.  From there on out,
said "disposition" finds "this sort of thing," that
is, the various antitotalitarianisms previously
ascribed to Orwell and "the 'dissident Left,'"
"irrelevant, if not indeed subversive."  And so forth.
 Unmistakable allusions to both The Blitz and 9/11
follow, e.g., "homeland."  "But the unseemliness of an
argument--let alone a prophecy--"-- that is, Orwell's
arguments, as outlined in the two paragraphs beginning
"This was not exactly Orwell's intention," for
example, or his prophecies, as found in, say,
1984--"in the heat of some later emergency"--say,
9/11--"does not necessarily make it"--them--"wrong." 
One certainly COULD argue that Bush's, er, Churchill's
"war cabinet had behaved no differently than a fascist
regime [...] subordinating civil liberties to
self-defined wartime necessity."  Difficult for me to
find most any other significantly different reading
anything but either uniformed or disingenuous.  And I
KNOW you're not uninformed, but ... but I'm hardly one
to deny the POSSIBILITY of alternate readings, esp. in
the face of them.  The PLAUSIBILITY thereof, on the
other hand ... well, being made to explain oneself
isn't the worst exercise one can be put through here,
so ...

--- Malignd <malignd at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> Either I'm missing something, or you are, or this
> writing is murky and ambiguous enough to persuade
> both readings.
> 
> Where do you find satire?  I get no sense of that.
> 
> I read and reread and reach the same conclusion.
> 
> You seem to take this as my beating of Pynchon with
> a stick; it's no more than my best guess after what
> he's trying to say.

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