VLVL Re: PR3

[pynchonoid]

jbor taunts:
>Are you endorsing Chomsky's denial of the Khmer
>Rouge genocide?

I won't dignify that with a response, but offer a
question in return:  

Are you denying that Pres. Bush (father and son),
Reagan, Nixon, and the rest of the post-WW II US
Administrations have relied on brutal thugs and
dictators to achieve US foreign policy objectives? 

And another question:  if you don't deny this
happened, do you endorse the actions of  thugs, such
as Saddam Hussein, while in the service of US foreign
policy objectives? 

Toby, I don't have my copy of Vineland here with me,
but I do think the novel offers enough evidence to
date the PR3 stuff. Whether or not this dating
coincides with Berkeley's Free Speech Movement,
Pynchon does seem to have conflated a spectrum of
protest/revolutionary activities at a variety of
locations throughout the 60s in his portrayal of PR3. 
Protesters and their leaders grew more sophisticated
throughout the 60s; Pynchon's satire is on the money. 
Comparing the relative lack of sophistication of the
PR3 protesters with the savage focus of the
neo-fascist forces aligned against them, it's pretty
clear that Pynchon's working hard to show that these
hapless students don't stand a chance against what
Pynchon has called the Nixonian reaction. The PR3
students and their leaders may inspire jokes, but
Nixon and his lackeys inspired fear.

At any rate, jbor doesn't appear to have any
first-hand knowledge of the era, apparently wasn't
anywhere near any of these protests, and thus is
hardly equipped to put Pynchon's portrayal in its
historical context, except on the basis of second- and
third-hand reports, of which jbor selectively chooses
only the bits and pieces that serve his political
stance. This ignorance, selective use of the
historical record,  plus an apparently irresistable
need to blame "hippies" and left-wing protesters for
the ills created by the US government policies over
which ordinary citizens had no control, equals
propaganda of Reaganite proportions. 

I can see how it might be an entertaining project,
thus to stand Pynchon on his head, but for me, old
enough to understand as it was happening what it meant
for Nixon to subvert the Constitution in his
determination to crush his political opponents and the
60s counterculture more generally, and as I now watch
the current Administration taking the same tack, it's
a sad spectacle.


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