fascism

[Joseph Tracy]

  I believe it was Terrance who wrote:belligerent nationalism and racism, these are simply not part of the
history of USA
 the USA is not and never has been dangerously close to fascism.
Scoff at my assertion that Pynchon is a conservative and a Catholic. 
But that's what people tell me and that's what I read in his books.

I would like to know what is the evidence beside your opinion that Pynchon is a conservative Catholic. Are you a conservative catholic, seeing your own ideas in an admired writer? In what sense is Pynchon conservative? I think Vandana Shiva and Wendell Berry are far more traditional and conservative in their  values than the Reagan Bush republicans. 

 Whether america can be characterized  by the word fascism  is far more complex than your arguments admit. It is obvious that Brock Vond does represent this tendency and possibility of an American version of Fascism, and that he is odious to Pynchon and frighteningly powerful. 

>From my perspective and using a large body of historical events and patterns I believe I can give a strong argument that america behaves like a decadent plutocracy at home (the 50 states) and as a ruthless, imperial power prone to fascistic alliances and tactics wherever it serves its purpose in the larger world.

The spirit of fascism takes many forms and frequently occurs under the banner of some other ideology as was evident  in Maoist China, Stalinist Russia,  Suharto's Indonesia, Pinochet's Chile, and in America's treatment of those it designated subhumans: slaves, native north americans, and the Marshall Islanders are some of the more extreme examples which easily rival Nazi atrocities. America's invasions and wars( the tribal lands of North america, Cuba, Haiti, Panama,the Phillipines, Vietnam, Iraq, Nicaragua, etc.) along with its wars by proxy( Iran, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Columbia,Uganda,Indonesia, etc.) are driven by the same mix of racism, brutality, greed,and arrogant triumphalism as was exhibited by Mussolini or Hitler.

What is terrifying about the current power structure is that it does not rest on mortal despots, but corporations with indefinite lifespans. Bush is not a leader but a fundraiser for a corporation whose members appear and reappear in different administrations.

Finally, I was pretty involved in the 60's and don't remember a refusal to acknowledge of the crimes of the so'called communist states, rather a refusal to dismiss the crimes of so called anti-communism. The bombs we dropped  to save Vietnam from the Vietnamese were no more just,  and no less cruel, than the bombs dropped on Guernica to save Spain from the Spanish.


Joseph Tracy
brook7 at earthlink.net
Why Wait? Move to EarthLink.
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