Religious Fundamentalism in Orwell and Pynchon

[Dave Monroe]

While we're all being so nitpicky here, Hawaii wasn't
admitted as a state until 1959.  Further ...

"Most Americans probably believe that continental
United States has never been bombed. The relative
isolation of America, plus the defensive strengths of
its Air Force and Navy, have supposedly eliminated
such a threat. But is that really true? The answer is
no--America has been bombed from the air, not once but
twice. These little-publicized events took place in
September 1942, and the attacker was an aircraft
launched from a submarine of the Imperial Japanese
Navy...."

http://history1900s.about.com/library/prm/bljapanesebombwc1.htm

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/wwii/jbb.htm

http://www.texasalmanac.com/bombing.htm

... keeping in mind that a jetliner is no more
technically a "bomb" as we tend to think of one than
were the "bombs bursting in air" that inspired F.
Scott Key, though both aren't too far off, either ...

Main Entry: bomb 
Pronunciation: 'bäm
Function: noun
Etymology: French bombe, from Italian bomba, probably
from Latin bombus deep hollow sound, from Greek
bombos, of imitative origin
Date: 1684
1 a : an explosive device fused to detonate under
specified conditions....

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

But, again (and again and again ...), the important
element in that passage isn't the bombs per se, but
rather, on the one hand, government response to an
attack, an emergency, a crisis, whatever, and, on the
other, the response of the citizenry to that response.
 Allusion does not require exactitude ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> I can't remember when "enemy bombs" fell on the USA
> since Pearl Harbor either.

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