"fascistic disposition" paragraph

[Dave Monroe]

But again and again and agin, he's writing, publishing
(and from, in the USA, NYC, even), we're reading
(albeit rather moe widely distributed over the globe),
post 9/11 (a condition applying to us all) ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> It's not just the bombs, it's the use of the
> word "enemy".

This, however, I agree with.  To some extent the next
couple of sentences as well ...

> He's talking, specifically, about a war.  Moreover,
> it's framed as a hypothetical situation, and he's
> commenting on a general tendency for people to think
> in certain ways when something like this occurs.

Again, the schematic here, attack, response, response
to the response, et al.  The rest ...

> There are so many countries and populations which
> have suffered the experience of bombs falling on
> them, mostly bombs dropped by the USA, since 1942,
> but before and after 9/11 as well

... while to this point not untrue, is to this point
beside the point, after which ...

> that the inappropriateness of the metaphor which is
> being claimed for Pynchon here isn't just
linguistic.
> The general points he's making apply to every
> country across the globe, not just the USA.

... both tropic (not really a meatphor here, is it? 
But I can live with the general idea, okay ...) and
contextual specificity are once again elided ...
 
> You read "those among us" as Americans, now; I read
> it as people, in all times and places.

And again ...

> When Pynchon writes, three pages later on, "recall
> that in the present-day United States", that's the
> first time that he narrows the scope of his
> commentary. Discursively, this imperative
> construction tells the reader straight out that he
> is going to talk about "the present-day United
> States" at this point. What it also indicates
> is that before this point in the essay, he hasn't
> been talking about "the present-day United States".

Explicitly sets up a point of/for comparison ...

> If he had been, the direction to the reader
> here is redundant.

Explicitly sets up a point of/for comparison ...
 
> There's nothing in the paragraph, or the one before
> it or the ones after, which indicates that he's
> alluding to the USA in particular.

Now if anything should be obvious here, it's that
allusion, allegory, whatever work precisely by NOT
specifying what's being alluded to, allegorized ...

> If anything, the specific context is Britain in the
> late '30s and '40s, as it is for much of the
> Foreword. There are several specific references to
> the USA throughout the Foreword, and there's no
> question about those and what they do say, but
> there are a greater number of specific references to
> Britain and British history.

It IS a "Foreword" to 1984 ...

> I just don't get this great urgency to make
> *everything* about the US, 

No "urgency," no "*everything*," but Pynchon is
writing as a citizen, of the US, of NYC, as well as of
the world, and an apparently concerned one at that ...

> as though no-one else matters, no-one else suffers,
> no-one else has ever been bombed or lost family and
> friends in war. It's so self-centred. Perhaps
> it's because I'm not an American, but this attitude
> seems to me to be symptomatic of the idea of
> American exceptionalism - the way many Americans
> define themselves as being above everyone else on
> the planet - which gets on the rest of the world's
> goat a lot of the time. 

This is all beside the point, a distraction at best,
chaff ...

> Maybe it is Pynchon's attitude too. Maybe he did
> mean to allude specifically to 9/11 in the
> paragraph. I'm inclined to think he didn't.

Maybe not only, but my contention would be, primarily.
 Obviously, allusion, allegory, et al., work by
recognizing that there are at LEAST two similar,
comparable situations.  Again, taht much should be
obvious as well.  So we're moving from only the Blitz
to any and every attack ever then?

> But by all means focus on the US. Think of 9/11.
> Think of Vietnam. Or think of the Cuban Missile
> Crisis, for example. 

Which, by the way, involved precisely bombs NOT
falling on anyone's homeland.  Thank God.  Or, at
least, JFK and Kruschev, the ultimate sanity of the
latter in dire need of recgonition as well ...

> That was also a time of "strong leadership and
> effective measures", when warnings of the "homeland
> in danger" were to the fore. Think of the measures
> introduced by the government then. Think of the
> internment of Japanese and German people in the US
> during WW II. The comments Pynchon makes here have
> wider applicability in my reading of them.

Wide possibly to the point of dissipation (think a
flahslight/torch beam ...), not to mention
contradiction ...
 
> As I've said, I agree that a reader might apply what
> Pynchon's saying in the paragraph to the situation
> in the US after Sept. 11,

Ah, thank you ...

> and I acknowledge that some readers perceive an
> allusion to Sept. 11 in the paragraph itself.

You're kidding?  Who?  Name names.  Are you now or
have you ever been ...

> All things considered, however, I disagree with
> their interpretation, as do others here.

And vice versa ...

> The cases have been made, and no consensus has been
> reached,

Consensus, shmonsensus.  Irrelvant ...

> and that's about as far as the discussion can go.
> It is, after all, an argument about the writer's
> intention.

But here's where I disagree with you again, at least
insofar as it need not necessarily be, though I do
believe that, by and large, it is nonetheless, insofar
as that's where the stakes are perceived to be the
greatest by most involved.  WWPD ...

> In terms of the discussion here, it's about respect.

So let's see some.  Me, I don't get no ...

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