Orwellian dude...was Religious Fundamentalism in ...

[jbor]

on 23/5/03 12:03 AM, pynchonoid at pynchonoid at yahoo.com wrote:

>> The parody makes fun of those who say that "the
>> Government" has turned,
>> holus bolus, into Big Brother.
> 
> Well, yes and no.  Pynchon makes fun of the way they
> talk, but he endorses the basic point they make and
> says there is nothing to stop the US and Britain from
> becoming like the third Reich and Stalin's USSR.

He dismisses both the simplistic conclusion they have come to, and the
process by which they have come to it. He writes: "Specific predictions are
only details, after all."

There's no more agreement with (nor condemnation of, really) this pair of
dim-witted "Bob and Ted" stereotypes than there is with the earlier group
referred to as "those among us" in the "fascistic disposition" paragraph.

But I agree with the more general point that US and Britain "circa 2003" are
not like the Third Reich and Stalinist Russia (or Orwell's Oceania), just as
they were not like them in Orwell's "1948".

best