Watching the news w Pynchon yet, able to breathe, luckily.

[alice malice]

You may be right, Mark. I would only add that in NYC a close
examination of the legacy of
Bernard Kerik is worth looking into. The wars, Obama's wars now, are
revolving doors for soldiers who work in NYC corrections, and on the
police department. While the so-called progressive mayor disappointed
most of his supporters with his appointment of Bratton, the recent
resignations, "retirements" of Black and Latino leadership is even
more frightening...the recruiting of whites from the suburbs, and the
placement of rookies in the toughest assignments (for example in the
Pink) is an other problem, a union, seniority problem that has an
apartheid impact on housing, education, courts...etc...so, a complex
web or entrenched power, but the wars, the fucking wars, and the way
the wars are brought home to poor neighborhoods is the major problem
here in NYC.

David, though awkwardly, is on to something when he speaks of the
body. Matthew Pratt Guterl, in the The Guardian, takes on this issue
recently:

This fear and fascination with the superhuman black male body is a
longstanding sightline – a “racial script”, as the historian Natalia
Molina calls it – in which a confused, delusional vision of the
dangerous black male body is repeatedly invoked as a reason for some
terrible, violent response. This is the story of Emmett Till and Eric
Garner, and a thousand stories in between. It is a reminder that the
story of King Kong is a metaphor for racial fear. It also points, as
Khalil Gibran Muhammad reminds us, to the myth of the coked-up
criminal, immunized from pain and impossible to bring down. We should
be recognizing that each and every one of these dehumanizing fears is
dangerously – and tragically false – but time and time again, we
refuse to admit it.

On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 8:41 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> we have read Pynchon's essay on the mind of Watts.
>
>  I Repeat that Radney Balko's The Militarization of the Police
> traced the start of SWAT teams to the LAPD as an organizational response
> To those riots.
>
> for 40+ years, and esp since 9/11, the police departments all over the United States
> Have militarized themselves, prepared for " riots" instead of " freedom of assembly",  have allowed o'er the top Jacobean-like revengeful anger to build
> And build until: The Bigfoot cops can choke, gang-up on, beat and shoot at will.
>
> TRP did know exactly when the cops turned. Inherent Vice.
>
> Sent from my iPad-
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l