The Fall of the House of Labor AtD.93 Republicans?

[alice wellintown]

What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck
the Spanish standard by way of wailing it for his royal master and
mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What
India to England?

***What at last will Mexico be to the United States? ***

All Loose-Fish.  What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the
World but Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but
Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a
Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the
thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself
but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a
Fast-Fish, too?

Tony Tanner's Introduction to Moby-Dick, available onlie, is a great
Introduction to Pynchon's AtD.

The Mexican–American War was an armed conflict between the United
States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S.
annexation of Texas. Mexico claimed ownership of Texas as a breakaway
province and refused to recognize the secession and subsequent
military victory by Texas in 1836.

In the very famous passage above, Melville voices his political stance
on the War on Mexico and the Imperial American Empire.
He even, as we have learned, critiques his own father-in-law; a
powerful man who supported Melville.

It's not that Pynchon never includes these kinds of critiques in his
novels. He does. They are often quite cryptic. Not as overt as
Melville's critique of the Texas-Mexico agression, more like the
critique that Melville levels against his benefactors and supporters,
against Emerson and Transcendentalism  ....when we read the the letter
from Melville I posted and we read Moby-Dick on the Pantheists and on
the navel gazing utopians we can unravel his critique, but it is not
on the surface, we have to dive deep.
The same with Pynchon. When we see Waite we think Tarot, but we need
to look to Waite, governer of Colorado. It's a big onion.
The Onion, a free satire of current affairs and events may be a layer.
I'm not saying it is, but it's possible and I'm listening to anyone
who wants to argue (not in the axe to grind sense) that it is. George
Washington Cable, Frank Norris and Ryder Naturalism to Jackson
Pollack.  Piss and Paint and Film. It's all in this Whale of a Book.