AtDDtA1: Permanent Siege

[Dave Monroe]

--- Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> "'As the ordeal went on, it became clear to certain
> of these balloonists, observing from above and
> poised everupon a cusp of mortal danger, how much
> the modern State depended for its survival on
> maintaining a condition of permanent siege--through
> the systematic encirclement of populations, the
> starvation of bodies and spirits, the relentless
> degradation of civility until citizen was turned
> against citizen, even to the point of committing
> atrocities like those of the infamous pétroleurs
> of Paris.  When the Sieges ended, these balloonists
> chose to fly on ...'" (AtD, Pt. I, Ch. 2, p. 19f.)

Cf. ...

"Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled
streets and alleyways in a Cartesian grid, sketched in
sepia, mile on mile.  'The Great Bovine City of the
World,' breathed Lindsay in wonder.  Indeed, the backs
of cattle far outnumbered the tops of human hats. 
>From this height it was as if the Chums, who, out on
adventures past, had often witnessed the vast herds of
cattle adrift in ever-changing cloudlike patterns
across the Western plains, here saw that unshaped
freedom being rationalized into movement only in
straight lines and at right angles and a progressive
reduction of choices, until the final turn through the
final gate that led to the killing-floor."  (AtD, Pt.
I, Ch. 2, p. 10)

Again, sorry, have been rushed ...


 
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