Vietnam ,Vond, and Civil vs. UnCivil War

[Joseph Tracy]

Malign D<<"By 1968-9, the time depicted in the novel, the
counterculture had forgotten all about civil rights
and the Vietnam War,"

Wrong!  May I be so bold as to share some personal memories.Martin Luther King's assassination was still fresh on our 

minds,and he had increasingly identified The Vietnam war as a 

civil rights issue, the radical press was following the struggle of 

militant blacks intensely, my mixed race girlfriend was the first 

black valedictorian of her high school class, the anti-war 

movement was spreading like wildfire, my conscientious objector 

status appeal had been denied and when I quit college I would have 

gone to prison if I had't lucked out with a high draft lottery 

number. Drugs, sex, and rock and roll definitely took its toll on 

the movement, but  civil rights issues and the war forgotten? No! 

I was there, and I remember.Some of the largest marches were in 

the 70's and they had a powerful impact on the consciousnesss of 

the country. It was the pull out from vietnam, and the success of 

the watergate investigation that defused the  unified radicalism and sent 

things in different directions

. 
 
Civil wars are a recurrent theme in Pynchon's work along with dark 

dealings on the periphery of empire. Both come into focus in the 

vietnam years. I think this war  worth some reconsideration at this time.
 
First , Vietnam had always been one country. America invented South vietnam because that is what 

remained of the militarily  and culturally defensible French Colonial occupation, 

and our leaders would not allow the scheduled  election by the 

entire Vietnamese People, because the outcome would be contrary to to our 

plans for a "democratic" southeast asia.Kinda paradoxic but 

obvious if you have your head up your own butt.  Rather we 

"installed" a Viet born man from New Jersey( I think his name was 

Chalabi, or was it...) Is anyone seeing a pattern here? Surprise, 

surprise; the number of vietnamese who were happy about our 

creative restructuring of their country was very limited. 
But having created South Vietnam and being in a creative mood we 

decided to creat a civil war in Vietnam. Americans love civil war reeactments and this time we got to play the south.
 Civil War is something america is good at. 


Brock Vond is fighting the war on the home front and he is no 

caricature, no fantasy land giant,anymore that Nixon,Kissinger, 

Mcnamara, Ashcroft, Dick Cheney, Perle, Breszinski, Alan Dulles, 

J. Edgar Hoover or any other american faces of fascism. Many of 

these guys have shed way more blood than Mussolini, and while the 

guys working the  psy-ops homefront are officially prohibited from 

the use of bloodshed they often share the same purposes, power , 

and mentality as the rest.

Pynchon is offering a satirically  comic look at a recent phase of 

the continuing civil war in America. The fact that since WW2 the 

blood  in this war is spilled along the outposts of the empire 

does not make the warfare any less real or signifigant.



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