aw. RE: aw. RE: Why did Elser plant the bomb?

[Robin Landseadel]

On Feb 14, 2009, at 7:37 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
> Ok, we're talking about Hitler, and the year is 1939.
>
> Michael says:
>
>> History also tells us that successful assassinations bring on
>> horrible retribution and do little to change policy.
>>
> This makes me speechless ... Would be interested what other P-listers
> have to say to that ... Especially Jewish, Gypsie, Slavic, gay and
> epileptic people ... Come on, don't leave it like that ...

Not to mention what happened to America's civil rights movement in the  
wake of the assassinations of MLK and RFK.

Couldn't help but notice Dave Monroe's citation of Dan Franklin:

	. . . Franklin called the book as "a joy. It's brilliant on LA—
	specifically LA just after the Manson murders—"

. . . the assassination of the hippie movement. I remember when it  
happened,  like a big tent getting blown over in a massive wind storm  
that hasn't [so far] abated.

B-b-but, as Jess—the all-grown up Jesse, several generations later— 
sez, quoting William James [quoting Emerson]:

	" 'Secret retributions are always restoring the
	level, when disturbed, of the divine justice. It is impossible to tilt
	the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of the
	world in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles
	forever more the ponderous equator to its line, and man and
	mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the
	recoil.' "
	Vineland, page 369

Our Beloved Author has a change of tune in Vineland, one that does not  
change key or meter in his subsequent novels. What was once a burning  
need for a justice that  the author knows will never come shifts mode  
into an awareness of the presence of karma, a law of nature & spirit  
akin to Newton's laws of motion and rest that eventually restores the  
level.

>>> B-but I forgot:
>>>
>>> "Jesse brought home as an assignment from school 'write an essay on
>>> What It Means To Be An American.'
>>> 'Oboy, oboy,' Reef had this look on his face, the same look his  
>>> own father
>>> used to get before heading off for some dynamite-related activities.
>>> 'Let's see that pencil a minute.'
>>> 'Already done.' What Jesse had ended up writing was,
>>> IT MEANS TO DO WHAT THEY TELL YOU AND TAKE WHAT THEY GIVE YOU AND  
>>> DON'T GO
>>> ON STRIKE OR THEIR SOLDIERS WILL SHOOT YOU DOWN.
>>> 'That's what they call the 'topic sentence'?'
>>> 'That's the whole thing.'
>>> 'oh.'
>>> It came back with a big A+ on it." (Against the Day, p. 1076)
>>>
>>> kfl
>>>
>>> "Each bird has his branch now, and each one is the Zone." (GR, p.  
>>> 519)