pynchon-l-digest V2 #3227

[Mike Weaver]

Jbor:
>No need to get all polemical. I've been talking about democracy versus
>totalitarianism, not "capitalism".

All the "democracies" of which you write are liberal capitalist economies. 
You cannot separate the political and economic aspects of a society.

>Relatively speaking (and your stats are
>ill-defined and lack even a pretence of validity, by the way), there is a
>great deal more "intellectual freedom" and "political equality" in the U.S.,
>Britain, European states (as well as in many former colonies which have
>adopted democracy as a system of govt) than there is under totalitarian
>regimes such as Saddam's in Iraq was.

I have no doubt that _relatively speaking_ you are correct. What you said 
and what I put in a more realistic context was

 >The great majority of people
 > living in Western democracies are "politically equal" and "intellectually
 > free".

Will Hutton and others have proposed that western societies these days 
split populationwise into a roughly 30% secure and well off, 40% doing okay 
and 30% spending most of their time bouncing along the bottom. My 
observations here in the UK suggest this is so and it is not getting any 
better.

Take into account what Mutualcode has just pointed out and the contrast 
between the virtuous Western democracies and the vile dictatorships fades 
into insignificance. The misery and mortalities generated by the workings 
of all these systems cannot be described as compatible with the rhetoric of 
the French or American revolutions, which I think we might all agree 
underpin the socio-political ideals of our western world.


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