"fascistic disposition" paragraph

[Terrance]

Otto wrote:
> 
> I agree that this isn't limited to the post-9/11-situation in the US but I
> ask: when did it happen before that the USA have been attacked?
> Must've been around 1941 and even then it's been an attack on the
> US-forces at Pearl Harbour and not aimed at civilians.
> When did Americans make the experience of 'bombs falling' on their
> homeland, 'producing casualties among friends and neighbours' and
> 'altering the landscape' prior to 9/11?



 are you fucking kidding me? 


you ungrateful bastard.   

two usa soldiers were murdered today and you think they deserved to die. 

fuck you, otto, 


who the hell do youthinkyou are? 

> 
> I think compared to 'bombs falling' the remark of 'altering the landscape'
> is the stronger formulation, at least it's the one that immediately made me
> think of the possibility that the 9/11-events could be meant here. Later in
> the essay Pynchon speaks of a 'major subtext' that one has to see in
> 'Orwell's uneasiness over the 'peace''. So texts sometimes do have have
> subtexts. In using the term Pynchon makes me ask: what is the subtext of
> this Foreword?
> 
> Jim Knipfel:
> 
> "Early in the essay, he even hints (again without saying as much) at the
> events of September 2001 and the effect such events usually have on the
> political outlook of a nation. An attack on one's own homeland can suddenly
> transform peace activists into dangerous subversives in the minds of most
> citizens. It was something Orwell witnessed during the Blitz, and something
> we've witnessed over the past year and a half."
> http://nypress.com/15/33/books/
> 
> Knipfel (like me) seems to have no doubt that Pynchon is speaking to and
> about present-day America. I think Pynchon wouldn't have written these
> sentences this way if the September 11-terrorist attacks had not happened.
> In this I disagree to Keith.
> 
> Knipfel's 'something we've witnessed' isn't formulated as a question or
> possibility but presented as a fact. I can only agree. People who have
> critisized the US-government in dealing with Iraq and the UN have been
> accused of supporting Hussein only because of raising legal questions.
> 
> It has been asked why Pynchon doesn't say so openly, for example calling
> this or that person a 'fascist' -- well, first I think it's not his way to
> tell things like this straight away. Second I don't agree to Doug that the
> US today "is uncomfortably similar" to what Orwell wrote in "1984" -- if it
> was that easy to see more Americans would have been against the war. But
> there's a tendency, to me an obvious tendency that conservative America is
> trying a roll-back of developments in the society that have taken place in
> the liberal democracies in the 60's and 70's. In this (I do believe) the
> state of emergency is 'helpful' to those conservative minds in gaining &
> keeping control. Because pointing out this in times of war is unseemly and
> nobody would listen to it anyway it's absolutely ok to me to hide it in a
> neat little foreword. Knipfel is right in what he says about Pynchon's
> Introduction to Jim Dodge's novel "Stone Junction," "an essay which also had
> quite a bit to say on matters Orwellian."
> 
> Another point is for me that Pynchon is mentioning the Pentagon (which has
> been hit too) without using the name by alluding to the doublethink that
> lies in naming something 'Ministry of Defence' when all this institution
> actually is busy with is planning wars.
> 
> "We know better than what they tell us, yet hope otherwise. We believe and
> doubt at the same time - it seems a condition of political thought in a
> modern superstate to be permanently of at least two minds on most issues."
> 
> Which describes correctly what many people abroad think of the recent wars.
> We knew better when they told us they would hunt down the terrorists, smoke
> them out and bring them to justice. Yet we hoped they would succeed. We knew
> better when they told us this war isn't about oil yet hoped it could
> nevertheless bring freedom to the Iraqi people. We are eager to believe the
> world will be a safer place without someone like Saddam Hussein possessing
> weapons of mass destruction but we doubt at the same time that this safety
> can be guaranteed with arms.
> 
> Otto