AtDTDA 212 Spoiler/Political Spam

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

                    Dave Monroe:
                    Any thoughts on ...

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_1984.html

Oh, right, thoughts. . . .

                    Now, those of fascistic disposition—or merely those 
                    among us who remain all too 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. . . .

. . . .strikes me as being pointed in the general direction of
post 9/11 American propaganda. Wonder how an episode of 
"American Dad!" would have gone over, early 2002, how long it
could stay on the air in that political climate.

                    . . . .What in Keir Hardie’s time had been an honourable 
                    struggle against the incontrovertibly criminal behaviour 
                    of capitalism toward those whom it used for profit had 
                    become, by Orwell’s time, shamefully institutional, 
                    bought and sold, in too many instances concerned 
                    only with maintaining itself in power. . . .

This serves to remind us that not only does Pynchon note the 
nuances within the leftward movement in general, but can distinguish
twixt "Liberal" and Radical., useless and useful (or at least,
effective.)

                     This grouping of Britain and the United States into a 
                     single bloc, as prophecy, has turned out to be 
                     dead-on, foreseeing Britain’s resistance to 
                     integration with the Eurasian landmass 
                     as well as her continuing subservience to Yank interests—
                     dollars, for instance, being the monetary unit of Oceania.

Makes me think of the start of the war against Iraq and 
Tony Blair's involvement.

                     Orwell in 1948 understood that despite the Axis defeat, the 
                     will to fascism had not gone away, that far from having 
                     seen its day it had perhaps not yet even come into its own
                     —the corruption of spirit, the irresistible human addiction to 
                     power were already long in place, all well-known aspects of 
                     the Third Reich and Stalin’s USSR, even the British Labour 
                     party—like first drafts of a terrible future. What could 
                     prevent the same thing from happening to Britain and the 
                     United States? Moral superiority? Good intentions? Clean 
                     living?

Brock Vond?

http://www.notbored.org/vineland.html

                     There is always some agency like the Ministry of Truth to 
                     deny the memories of others, to rewrite the past. It has 
                     become a commonplace, circa 2003, for government 
                     employees to be paid more than most of the rest of us to 
                     debase history, trivialize truth and annihilate the past on 
                     a daily basis. Those who don’t  learn from history used to 
                     have to relive it, but only until those in power could find a 
                     way to convince everybody, including themselves, that 
                     history never happened, or happened in a way best serving 
                     their own purposes—or best of all that it  doesn’t matter 
                     anyway, except as some dumbed-down TV documentary 
                     cobbled together for an hour’s entertainment.

More echos of Tube theme related material from "Vineland".