The American Dream

[Monte Davis]

"...the Indians of Peru, before we Christians had come to them, had certain
and particular modes of swearing, distinct from ours. They had no assertive
oaths, such as ‘by God’ or ‘by heaven’ but only execration or curses…Once
when I asked a chieftain in a certain province f Peru] if he was a
Christian, he said ‘I am not yet quite one, but I am making a beginning.’ I
asked him what he knew of being Christian, and he said: ‘I know how to
swear to God, and play cards a bit, and I am beginning to steal.’ "

Fray Domingo Santo Tomás, Grammatica, o Arte de la lengua general de los
Indios de los Reynos del *Peru, *ch. xxiii (1560)


On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 10:31 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> To Benjamin Dill, the corridors of the Carroll Arms still reeked of
> old-style tag-team politics, and of its cheap scent and loveless sex and
> hundred-proof bourbon and cigars that came wrapped in cellophane and were
> sold for a quarter one and two at a time. Although he considered himself a
> political agnostic, Dill liked most politicians – and most laborskates and
> consumer fussbudgets and civil rights practitioners and professional whale
> watchers and tree huggers and antinuke nuts and almost anyone who would
> rise from one of the wooden folding chairs at the Tuesday night meeting in
> the basement of the Unitarian church and earnestly demand to know ‘what we
> here tonight can do about this.’ Dill had long since despaired that there
> was not much anyone could do about anything, but those that still believed
> there was interested him and he found them, for the most part, amusing
> company and witty conversationalists.
>
> From Briarpatch, one of the better novels of 1984.
>
> 2015-04-21 16:13 GMT+02:00 Otto <ottosell at googlemail.com>:
>
>> Ferguson...
>> http://cdn1.spiegel.de/images/image-838388-galleryV9-iqgx.jpg
>>
>> 2015-04-21 15:56 GMT+02:00 jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>:
>> > That question is rhetorical, right?
>> >
>> > 2015-04-21 15:44 GMT+02:00 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:
>> >>
>> >> Why isn't that last sentence as oft-quoted as the famous Amer Dream
>> >> sentence at the End of Gatsby?
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 9:00 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >> > "Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that
>> was
>> >> > worth
>> >> > controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely
>> >> > inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system
>> >> > created.
>> >> > Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers,
>> if
>> >> > they
>> >> > asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved
>> >> > henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for
>> >> > committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the
>> >> > American
>> >> > dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of
>> >> > cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun."
>> >> > -- Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965
>> >> -
>> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> >
>> >
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>
>
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