The intellectual origins of America-Bashing

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 3:23 PM
Subject: Re: The intellectual origins of America-Bashing
>
> > >
> > > Defiance? Shall we talk of defiance?
> > >
> > > It was not a statue of Marx or Lenin
> > >   or some French critical "text" impaled on the top
> > >   of the Eiffel or Ivory tower that the Chinese students
> > >   in Tiananmen Square raised as a symbol of their
> > >   resistance, their hope, their love for Democracy,
> >
> > The Chinese longing for democracy forgot that Lady Liberty was for the
white
> > Americans only, not for the Blacks. And that the Western governments
weren't
> > interested in that protest at all, as long as the good business with
Chinese
> > government was going on.
>
> Oh come on, Otto. The Chinese forgot? Give them some credit. I give them
> a lot.

Your credit won't get the dissidents out of the prisons and camps.

> No, Otto, you simply don't know what you are talking about here.

Just asserting that I don't know what I'm talking about is no argument.

> The students didn't forget. Others have forgotten. The Students knew
> exactly what lady liberty represents and that's why they built her and
> that's why they carried her in Tiananmen.
>

An empty symbol. Worthless symbolism. In 1886 Lady Liberty stood for a
racist country denying equal rights to large proportions of it's citizens
and ruthless exploitation. That's a fact and this fact has been something
the Students did not think about. Did the Americans help them? No, the
Students were run over by the tanks. I haven't forgotten the pictures that
went around the world and nobody really cared.

>
>
> >
> > >  it was the gift of the
> > >  French to the poor, low, tired, fragments of nations
> > >  tossed upon these American shores, the Statue of Liberty.
> > >
> >
> >  In 1886 the USA hardly were a "poor, low, tired" fragment of a nation.
>
> Oh, Otto, it's written on the statue.
>

It's written on the statue? Empty words.

> Ever seen it. Everyone should see
> her just once. See the faces of the people, hear and listen to the
> stories.

Memorials simply don't impress me. We've got too much of them here.

> I guess some people have to be soooooo cynical.
>

You mistake my realism for cynicism. I'm not cynical at all.

>
>
> >
> > >   In Prague, 1989, it was not Marx but Jefferson that the
> > >   students read in the streets.
> > >
> >
> > Wasn't Jefferson a slave-owner too? Something the Czechs had forgotten.
>
> Why must you put your ignorance on the Chinese

Why ignorance? You're ignoring the obvious facts that there was slavery in
the early USA and that the world community didn't give a shit for democracy
in China. Business as usual.

> and Czechs?
>

Ever been to a German whorehouse or the German-Czech border region since
1989? There you can meet the Czech girls enslaved by their pimps. The cops
are paid so badly that it's easy to bribe them. Business as usual.

Otto