What if Bush Wins

[Will Layman]

Jolly, blaming the Bush victory on "academics, liberal elitists, writers and
literati, etc" is easy enough.  You might as well blame it on "People from
New Jersey" or "men with goatees."  Academics study, writers write, etc ‹
but there were plenty of liberal activists blanketing Ohio, Florida, PA.
They were working hard, speaking out, doing their best.  The problem does
not sit with the "liberals," it is in the fact that the country is ‹ my
perhaps a small margin, but by a growing margin ‹ conservative.

Those of us on the list who don't agree with your black-and-white view of
Pynchon's texts aren't fools about politics, morality and power.  Many of us
were out there fighting.  You don't have the moral or intellectual capital
on this list-serve to criticize us, and your self-righteous ranting and
ph-filled name-calling certainly doesn't validate your simplistic political
analysis.

w

On 11/3/04 1:03 PM, "jolly" <jollyrogerx99 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Part of the blame goes to academics, to liberal elitists, to writers and
> literati, to scientists.  The walmart goin', flag wavin' hordes can be
> expected to vote for the GOP and war and greed, but universities, professors,
> and writers made no effective effort  to challenge either the plutocrats or
> the blue collar hick masses that support them.  It's not surprising that
> millions of boneheaded evangelicals supported Bush ; liberals, leftist,
> malcontents should never underestimate the smith n wesson X-tians who would be
> pleased to put Dachaus right next to their breweries and nascar tracks; what
> is surprising is the tame and apathetic acceptance of  the plutocracy by
> academics, by neo-liberals, by minorities.....
>  
> Those academic and belle-lettrist types who spend years arguing about "avoidng
> binary oppositions, man" or some light-weight relativism do little to nothing
> in terms of real political or economic strategy. Indeed, it could be argued
> that post-modernism is symptomatic of the anti-political and generally
> apathetic mindset of academia and of the bourgeois.  A writer such as TRP, who
> can blithely ramble on in numerous books and essays about the IWW, anarchists,
> and various left-wing forces, took no concerted political stance except for a
> self-promotion stunt on the pop surrealist cartoon The Simpsons.  In contrast
> to the Garbo-like Great American Novelists,  William GIbson devoted himself to
> blogging and made some decent critiques of the Bush regime and the
> conservative "mouthbreathers."
>  
> Kerry did make some efforts at economic critiques of the Bush oligarchy, but
> it was mostly futile---the hicks don't seem to mind that, with the help of
> Hatchetman Bill Thomas, the GOP pretty much dismantled the estate tax and the
> capital gains tax. AS James Galbraith said, "His second term could finish the
> job, shifting the tax base to consumption, perhaps even abolishing the income
> tax for a value-added tax (as Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert now suggests).
> Virtually the whole tax burden will then fall on the middle class, on working
> Americans, and on the poor."  Wilkommen to the Monarchy of Tejas.....
> 
> Do you Yahoo!?
>  Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.  www.yahoo.com <http://www.yahoo.com>


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