pynchon-l-digest V2 #3227

[Terrance]

IF ONLY YOU HAD A MOTHER FUCKER IN NEW PILE OF DETH TO VISIST  
MOKTHER.   

ICK LOVER ASS HOLEW/

Mike Weaver wrote:
> 
> 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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