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

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Thanks so much for your substancial reply! I see the whole thread much
clearer now. My problem is, I guess, to make an abstraction from this
real historical case, because --- I stand to this --- a death of Hitler
in 1939 would have made a diference. Perhaps not regarding the war (I mean,
J. M. Keynes and Max Weber already said after Versailles 1919 that a new
war will probably take place), but perhaps regarding the Holocaust
and the so called euthnasia program. And so I cannot --- in this one and
only case (please excuse my national damage!) --- talk here about
"assasination" (and possible carmic consequences) per se. But I think I
understood you now.
 
Kai

------------------------------------
> From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: aw. RE: aw. RE: aw. RE: Why did Elser plant the bomb?
> Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:27:19 -0800
>
> On Feb 14, 2009, at 9:35 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>> Robin 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.
>>
>> Sorry, I don't get your point. Please explain!
>
> Michael says that assassinations do little to change policy, I say
> they do a lot in changing policy.
> Horrible retribution does a lot to change a neighborhood. I was in
> Watts in the aftermath of the insurrection of 1965. Basically, the
> police assassinated a child crossing the street. The fury that ensued
> spread into widespread violence and looting followed by a massive
> infusion of federal funds in the wake of all that rioting.
> Assassinations & Horrible Retribution significantly change public
> policy.
>
>>> 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.
>>
>> But you don't want to convince me that the Holocaust was karmic
>> business,
>> do you? I mean, I've heard this before from some, well, western
>> buddhists
>> who were telling me that the Jews (and the Gypsies and the Slavic
>> people,
>> not to forget psychotics, gays and epileptic people) must have all
>> done really
>> bad things in, as the folks believed in, former lifetimes to get
>> exterminated
>> like this.
>
> No* I don't, though it appears to me that the modern state of Israel
> is fueled by the bad karma of the Holocaust turned inward and then
> projected back onto the Palestinians. Seeing as you cited the views of
> young Jesse it struck me as very on point to cite the opinions of the
> older Jesse, showing how it was the perfect expression of the older
> Pynchon's concept of karma.
>
> My point is that assassinations have already done a lot to change
> policy. Martin Luther King's state-approved assassination completely
> changed the nature of the civil rights movement and the anti-war
> movement, much as Manson's slaughter instantly changed everyone's
> concept of Hippies and long-hairs.
>
> At the same time, while Nazism requires a figurehead/leader in their
> Führer many [not all] Nazis would drift in the same general direction
> without Hitler. I.G. Farben would probably would have continued to
> spit out Zyklon B and Bayer Aspirin. I suppose that would be Michael's
> point. However, since out own homegrown Führer has left office it
> appears that things have changed significantly. Any change in
> figurehead would produce a significant change in policy.
>
> Kai: 7) I've never heard a word here on Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.
>
> Some of that I.G. Farben backwash infecting far-right policy in the
> good ol' USA, I'd say. I.G. Farben begat the CIA, which begat
> Blackwater . . .
>
> " '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
>
> *But there is a negative karma attached to Capital, see Against the
> Day for more detail.