1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[pynchonoid]

--- Otto <ottosell at yahoo.de> wrote:
[...]
> So why are you critisizing the people who dare to
> dissent from the official
> politicial line in times of war? If one is worried
> about things the
> government does one is obliged to stand up and
> speak, whether it's war or
> peace, unseemly or not. Because dissent is such a
> genuine feature of
> democracy. 

The increasing pressures against dissent, combined
with the erosion of civil liberties under
Bush/Ashcroft, the merging of the press with corporate
interests, and the anti-democratic way that Bush was
"elected" make the US far less of a "democracy" than
it might ever have been.  To pick up on Barbara's
point about the press, the legitimate question has
been asked many times in recent weeks, How would it
look or sound any different if the US had a
state-sponsored and controlled press (as in the PRC)?
Pynchon's writings show this trend away from American
democracy beginning even before America's so-called
"revolution".

Otto: 
> The course of action? Both authors only give the
> same answer: write a book
> or a grammar, preserve as much possible meanings of
> the word "freedom" as
> possible I'd say. Bulgakow wrote "The Master and
> Margarita" in the
> Stalin-era.

Amen.

> 
> What has steadily, insidiously improved since then,
> of course, making humanist arguments almost
> irrelevant,
> is technology. (xvi)
> (from Mutualcode's post)
> 
> I always got the impression from Pynchon's fiction
> that he's worried about
> the possibility that along with technical
> developments things just might
> happen, inevitably because the technique's there.

It's already always happening in Pynchon's work;
American democracy was doomed from the start.  The
Rube Goldberg/Jesuit technology in M&D shows that it's
not a matter of technical expertise per se, but
instead the willingness to use it for social control
that's the danger.



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