[VLVL] The Sixties

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Mackin" <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: [VLVL] The Sixties


> On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 01:30, Eulenspiegel7646 at aol.com wrote:
> > The Sixties
> >
> > It's a well-known fact that the winners get to write the history
> > books.  Over the last 25 years, the history of the sixties has been
> > rewritten and distorted by a series of ever-more conservative
> > politicians and TV anchormen.  (For that matter, the decade was
> > grotesquely distorted by the media while it was happening!)  Worst of
> > all, as time passes and fewer people actually remember the sixties,
> > this distorted picture becomes more and more difficult to challenge.
> > Vineland is Pynchon's attempt to take back his/our history; we (in the
> > person of Thomas Pynchon) must define the sixties, not the fascists
> > represented in the person of Brock Vond, the book's sadistic villain.
> > Vineland is about the power that inheres in memory.
>
> Is Mark Rudd a neocon?
>

-----------------------
PM: Is there a positive legacy of the Weathermen?

MR: Yes, that people can stand up, and should stand up against imperialism.
The U.S. government's attack on Vietnam was part of a policy to control the
world. And the current attack on Iraq and its maneuvers in the Middle East,
are part of a plan to control the world. And through the use of violence.

And in between, there have been a lot of wars, and a lot of attacks. People
need to stand up against imperialism, and speak out against it. And what's
good is that I had an understanding at that time, of what the United States
was in the world.

I saw Vietnam as military aggression, and part of larger policy to control
the world. I think we were right at that time, and I think that's about the
same situation we have now. And we have to keep calling it for what it is.
http://www.wbai.org/artman/publish/article_363.php
-------------------------------------

> What can one say about the sixties that isn't neocon?
>
>

Oh, you can critisize things worth critisizing (selfishness, sloth, drug
abuse, extreme hedonism etc) or you can say things like:

> > > Kerry, Dean, Bush, where were you when the
> > > communists and the militant radicals tried to destroy liberal
> > > democracy in the US in 1968-1969?

This is what I call a neocon pov on the sixties because there has never been
a serious attempt to overthrow the elected government in a coup d'état.

To take up the actuality Terrance has brought in here: Kerry has been a
Vietnam veteran ("bush vet") who organized demos in Washington against the
war later. Our tv presents those 70's pictures now that Mr. Kerry seems to
have a real chance to chase Dubya out of the Oval Office in November.

"Kerry was a co-founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America and became a
spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War -- Morley Safer would
describe him as "a veteran whose articulate call to reason rather than
anarchy seemed to bridge the gap between Abbie Hoffman and Mr. Agnew's
so-called 'Silent Majority.'" In April 1971, testifying before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, he asked the question of his fellow citizens,
"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?""
http://www.johnkerry.com/about/

So later this year it will be "The Veteran versus the Deserter" or, (quoting
Michael Moore) if Wesley Clark makes it, "The General versus the Deserter."

Otto