What if Bush Wins

[Otto]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: jolly
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 7:03 PM
Subject: Re: What if Bush Wins

>
>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.

Generalizations as usual. No proof, no evidence.

>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;

No, they shouldn't, and what's my impression from before the election, they
didn't, but there are simply some more reborn Christians than liberals &
leftists in your country. Bill Graham rules the world finally.

>what is surprising is the tame and
>apathetic acceptance of  the plutocracy by academics, by neo-liberals,
>by minorities.....
>

When 89% of the Black Americans have voted for Kerry at least the last
assertion is simply wrong. What is much more troubling is that so many young
people voted for Bush. Nur die dümmsten Kühe wählen ihre Schlachter selber.

>Those academic and belle-lettrist types who spend years arguing about
>"avoidng binary oppositions, man"

You can't avoid binary oppositions.

>or some light-weight relativism do little
>to nothing in terms of real political or economic strategy.

Where's my AK-47?

>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.

The "message" that I did get out of GR is that the bomb has already fallen,
that the chances are over for good.

His Simpsons-appearance was great, but haven't you read his "1984"-Forword
yet? Your way of  telling "history," even it's only the history of Pynchon's
politics is very selective:

"Now, those of fascistic disposition--or merely those among us who remain
all to ready to justify any government action, whether right or wrong-will
immediately point out that this is prewar thinking, and that the moment
enemy bombs begin to fall on one's homeland, altering the landscape and
producing casualties among friends and neighbours, all this sort of thing,
really, becomes irrelevant, if not indeed subversive. With the homeland in
danger, strong leadership and effective measures become of the essence, and
if you want to call that fascism, very well, call it whatever you please, no
one is likely to be listening, unless it's for the air raids to be over and
the all clear to sound. But the unseemliness of an argument--let alone a
prophecy--in the heat of some later emergency does not necessarily make it
wrong. One could certainly argue that Churchill's war cabinet had behaved no
differently than a fascist regime, censoring news, controlling wages and
prices, restricting travel, subordinating civil liberties to self-defined
wartime necessity." ("Foreword," pp. ix-x)

"Doublethink also lies behind the names of the superministries which run
things in Oceania-the Ministry of Peace wages war, the Ministry of Truth
tells lies, the Ministry of Love tortures and eventually kills anybody whom
it deems a threat. If this seems unreasonably perverse, recall that in the
present-day United States, few have any problem with a war-making apparatus
named 'the Department of Defense,' any more than we have saying 'Department
of Justice' with a straight face, despite well-documented abuses of human
and constitutional rights by its most formidable arm, the F.B.I. Our
nominally free news media are required to present 'balanced' coverage, in
which every 'truth' is immediately neutered by an equal and opposite one.
Every day public opinion is the target of rewritten history, official
amnesia and outright lying, all of which is benevolently termed 'spin,' as
if it were no more harmful than a ride on a merry-go-round. We know better
than what they tell us, yet hope otherwise. We believe and doubt at the same
time--it seems a condition of political thought in a modern superstate to be
permanently of at least two minds on most issues. Needless to say, this is
of inestimable use to those in power who wish to remain there, preferably
forever." ("Foreword," pp. xii-xiii)

Maybe we should discuss the Forword again.

>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."
>

But what for? Did it change a single vote or wasn't he preaching to the
already confessed like Michael Moore? I liked the film, but did it help? Did
it work? It seems not. What did work was Osama's help -- a true family
friend.

>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.....

Yes, welcome indeed ... you've made the mess, you clean it up. Wait until
Uncle Arnold gets you  . . .

   Otto
<^><^><^><^><^>
Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga?