VLVL "closed ideological minds" (232)

[jbor]

otto
>> Thus, he's to the "left" of Ho Chi Minh, which puts him in
>> the same league as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
> 
> If he's left of the Left he isn't necessarily fond of Pol Pot. I wonder
> where you draw this conclusion from. Definitely not from the novel.

Again you need to change my words to launch your attack. Rex's political
sympathies are most definitely to the "left" of Ho Chi Minh (who, by the
way, was indeed a communist dictator and renowned for murdering and
otherwise disposing of political opponents and dissidents). In the context,
this does indeed place him in the same league as Pol Pot. I've not said that
the novel states he is fond of Pol Pot, however; the communist takeover of
Kampuchea and the murderous purges which followed (those "programs [and] ...
earthly sequences of cause and effect" which Rex hopes to see come into
existence in South East Asia) are still several years away yet.

And I don't envisage that Pynchon is an apologist for Pol Pot or a denier
(like Chomsky was) of the Cambodian genocide.

best