SLSL Succession of the Criminally Insane (was Has anyone seen a Pynchon book lately?)

[Paul Mackin]

On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 14:43, Malignd wrote:
> This is actually a favorite of mine, valid considering
> the activities and mindsets of world leadership in
> this post-Holocaust, post-Hiroshima era of rocketry.>>
> 
> You find this a valid descriptor, do you?  "That
> succession of the criminally insane who have enjoyed
> power since 1945"?
> 
> One after another, all criminally insane?  That, say,
> Eisenhower, hauled into court and charged for his
> actions in the political arena would be fairly found
> guilty of felonies and/or misdemeanors?  And,
> evaluated by competent medical practitioners, he would
> as well be judged insane?  


If the activities and the mindsets of the leaders have been insane, then
what of the activities and the mindsets of the followers?

A memorable passage in Vineland comes to mind:

Brock Vonds's genius was to have seen in the activities of the sixties
left not threats to order but unacknowledged desires for it. While the
Tube was proclaiming youth revolution against parents of all kinds and
most viewers were accepting this story, Brock saw the deep--if he'd
allowed himself to feel it, the sometimes touching--need only to say
children forever, safe inside some extended national Family. The hunch
he was betting on was that these kid rebels, being halfway there
already, would be easy to turn and cheap to develop. They'd only been
listening to the wrong music, breathing the wrong smoke, admiring the
wrong personalities. They needed some reconditioning.

Observe here the difference between Pynchon the good novelist and
Pynchon the at times a woefully deficient essayist

P.