[VLVL] The Sixties

[Paul Mackin]

On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 08:58, Otto wrote:
> ----- 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
> 

Granted SDS had good intentions,especially in the beginning. However as
we all know Hell is paved with good intentions. You don't have to be a
neocon to recognize that after '68 SDS in very very significant part
(the leadership of SDS, that is)  was on the road to Hell. And this was
not merely weak strategy, squabbling, and betrayal. The quote from Mark
Rudd that strikes me as most telling concerns his bewilderment (and that
of his confreres) in looking back on those years in terms of what they
thought they could accomplish and how they came to think they might
accomplish it. 


http://www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/06/04/3eddb86212731?in_archive=1