IVIV BIG DISCUSSION [spoiler] Compare & Contrast section, P. 32

[Michael Bailey]

rich wrote:
>> So what should've the kids done?
>
> suffer
>

well, alice wasn't quite so bleak as all that...
Philip Randolph was the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
(and, though there's a humorous bent reading of that title that leaps out at me,
that isn't quite the point) and arguably laid the groundwork (together
with AJ Muste and Bayard Rustin) for the Civil Rights movement

What alice is saying isn't something one doesn't wonder sometimes:
if TRP is in fact a Roosevelt-loving card-carrying leftie, where are the
expressions of solidarity for progressive social movements, for non-risible
Counterforces?  Where is the line drawn, is his opposition of Life-force and
Thanatos translatable into any political stance?

I'd argue  it's implied - but why?  Why not explicitly support leftism?

What this question (and alice) ignores is the tendency of leftist movements
to also become authoritarian and thanatopsic.  Pynchon, or any one with
life-affirming values who follows the news (dateline: USSR 1917-present, for
example) can't so easily ignore this.





-- 
"A single nonrevolutionary weekend is infinitely more bloody than a
month of total revolution." - Paris graffito