1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[jbor]

>> But the numbers and circumstances don't match like that at all. Saddam
>> murdered hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of innocent Iraqis.
>> Murdered them deliberately. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in the
> war,
>> deplorable though it still is, isn't even one percent of that number, and
>> they weren't killed deliberately. It isn't the same. They aren't
> comparable.
>> 

on 2/5/03, Otto wrote:

> Try to sell that to the demonstrating Iraqis.

The difference is, again, that under Saddam no demonstrations - of grief, of
protext, of dissidence - were permitted. Millions vs hundreds. Purges vs
accidental deaths. These are the differences.

>>> Nowhere at all; the "dissident Left" never won any power, in becoming
>>> "official" like Stalin it looses its "dissident" qualities.
>> 
>> I think I agree with this, and the examples you give. So, I repeat my
>> question. Is Pynchon anti-government? And, if so, what's the alternative?
>> Does he pose an alternative?
>> 
> Staying critical to all those who remain all to ready to justify any
> government action, whether right or wrong.

And I'm afraid I'm very critical of those who lump Bush and Hitler together,
and who equate, say, extra airport security to death camps.

> I'm defending him every time some idiot calls Mr. Bush crazy without
> being able to give proper reasons for this opinion, and I attack him every
> time he is praised uncritically by "Those who remain (...)."

But it's not either/or. Sure, some of the "emergency" domestic policies
which were implemented encroached on some of the civil liberties which
Americans previously enjoyed, and these can be itemised and criticised, or,
in some cases, justified. But none of it compares with the sorts of thing
Saddam or Hitler imposed and enforced in Iraq and Germany, and it doesn't
make America "fascist", or totalitarian, or comparable to the Third Reich.

One can criticise Bush and his policies - be "dissident" - without making
spurious comparisons which actually obscure the vast disparity in standards
of living and the levels of "intellectual freedom" and "political equality",
to use Orwell's phrases, which exist in Western democracies as compared to
the almost complete absence of these features under totalitarian regimes
like Saddam's, Hitler's, or Big Brother's.

best