BEER -- chapters 10 and 23 (possible spoilers) -- PROMIS 1.5

[Joseph Tracy]

KInda like the joke about 3 Jews and 4 opinions. Works the same way with the Irish. 
I agree that it is not as simple as I made out. Just trying to get a feeling for what P is up to here. 

One thought that comes to me is the gravitational  appeal of a default to patriotism ala Windust despite the intellectual warning..  History tells us this path of paranoid violence is so bad that we  should be extremely wary , but it is far easier and more convenient to hide it from ourselves ( Chile, Vietnam, Indonesia, Iran.....)  and pretend those mistakes were all for the best and we've learned our lesson etc.   Beside which, many Americans, probably the majority,  never encounter  many of these stories and know virtually nothing about history.  The worst is always far away and easily begins to seem unreal especially in the hands of of a red white and blue blooded media. George Bush has not yet showed Maxine's Family that nothing has really changed. 

Is violence  and danger that has not yet become real, sexier than a commodities trader who looks like Sterling Hayden  and likes watching The Mikhail Baryshnikov Story? He's talking about the packaging and selling of images.  Is Windust in some ways another version of the George Bush image. Sure he loves Laura back at home, his darling schoolmarm, but his real passion is for you the american people,  especially doggie style, could you loan me a little cash babe?   

Are these the only choices for the single mom that is America? On Dec 11, 2013, at 6:30 AM, Fiona Shnapple wrote:

> page 101. the end of a chapter. Maxine often wonders if her upbringing
> on the UWS, Ernie's (her dad's) fables about capitalism, steered her
> toward fraud investigation, her sister Brooke toward Avi and his
> techie version of politics.
> 
> Elaine says Avi is just another computer guy, not very political.
> Ernie (a teacher, professor perhaps, of media, politics or history
> maybe?), thinks Avi is involved in software that annihilates Arabs.
> Her mom, Elaine doesn't like Horst. She thinks Windust looks like a
> good catch, the clothes, the suit, no wedding ring (top of 100). Are
> these political parents, the parents who got arrested with March,
> still on the same political side? It seems Ernie is not a Zionist,
> right? He seems on the side of the Left of the Left Jews on the UWS
> who see Israel as a threat (to Iran and to the US). Elaine seems to be
> about matchmaking her daughters. So, she seems more progressive than
> Heidi's mom, not a FOB of Eastern Europe on either side of the
> arranged marriage madness. What about the Tosca allusion here. Ernie
> suggesting that nobody should marry a Fed less they've seen it? And
> why is he pushing Maxine to call Windust? In the end, Ernie says it
> wasn't him but all those cop shows drove Maxine into Fraud. Something
> ain't Kosher here, right?
> 
> On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 10:55 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> Really good work.  The whole thing sets up a really weird tension. Maxine gets this from  hard rightist, hands-bloody Windust. Asks her Israeli brother in law about it, another kind of conservative; is following trail connecting Ice to US intelligence and possible software and bandwidth coup, with secret connections to Islamic banks. Ice has hired Avi.  She loves lefty parents who are divided on Windust and Avi.  Also is renewing friendship with March( on Washington).
>> 
>> Who's a girl to trust?  All of these conflicting and overlapping loyalties bearing no small resemblance to  US and international politics.
>> On Dec 10, 2013, at 3:52 PM, Thomas Eckhardt wrote:
>> 
>>> If you have come this far with my PROMIS/BE series, you really need to read this:
>>> 
>>> http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/new-afp-system-developed-in-israel-20130809-2rnth.html
>>> 
>>> Thomas
>>> 
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> 
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
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