BtZ42 48-54: Foxes once more

[ish mailian]

Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning.

George Orwell.     What is Fascism?    TRIBUNE    1944


It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely
meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly
than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social
Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922
Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek,
homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology,
women, dogs and I do not know what else.

Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning.
To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some
of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the
régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if
‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I
have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others.
Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in
every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By
‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous,
arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except
for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any
English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That
is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.

But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot
we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we
shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long,
but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism
satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists
themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are
willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with
a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done,
degrade it to the level of a swearword.

On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 6:45 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dogs are used and are valuable in the war. Foxes? Lions? Princes?
> Leaders may have their foxes and lions.
>
> Humans are valuable. For killing, dying, working.
>
> And they are in short supply, in high demand.
>
> Children?
> When you look a bit closer, the first question that strikes you is:
> Why is it worse to kill civilians than soldiers? Obviously one must
> not kill children if it is in any way avoidable, but it is only in
> propaganda pamphlets that every bomb drops on a school or an
> orphanage.
>
> http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/tribune/AsIPlease19440519.html
>
> http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/07_14_44.html
>
> On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 5:52 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Pointsman gathers dogs (for his experiments). Pointsman calls his patients
>> Foxes. "anything but humans" gets said.....
>> how about an octopus "they don't bark"....
>>
>> He can't experiment on a human...."is this ethical" asks
>> Spectro.....[measurer for measurer].....raising his hand ...in almost a
>> Fascist salute.
>>
>> Foxes are smart, elusive, skilled at escape, a prey in fox-hunting; but
>> Slothrop may be like a fox, hunting his own prey [Jamf].
>>
>> How often have we read/heard that scientific 'experiments on animals do not
>> necessarily say anything about human beings reactions.".
>>
>> Yes, unless we humans are reduced to animals...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> SPOILERS (if that matters to you)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ***
>>>
>>> I like Laura's brown fox and lazy dog, but GR is going to recycle both in
>>> more complex configurations than just Slothrop vs lab dogs... not least
>>> because, as noted before, both dogs and foxes can appear as prey or
>>> predators depending on context (remember Mike Jing's recent query about the
>>> imagined "personal Rockets" that will track each of us like hounds).
>>>
>>> A few of the later fox references that seem especially salient (Viking
>>> edition pagination):
>>>
>>> 53.30
>>> the snow tracked over by foxes, rabbits, long‑lost dogs, and winter birds
>>> but no humans.
>>>
>>> 58.28
>>> A skulk of foxes, a cowardice of curs are tonight’s traffic whispering in
>>> the yards and lanes.
>>>
>>> 131.19
>>> The true king only dies a mock death. Remember. Any number of young men
>>> may be selected to die in his place while the real king, foxy old bastard,
>>> goes on.
>>>
>>> 138.19 They gather, thicker as the days pass, English ghosts, so many
>>> jostling in the nights, memories unloosening into the winter, seeds that
>>> will never take hold, so lost, now only an every-so-often word, a clue for
>>> the living—”Foxes,” calls SpectroE across astral spaces, the word intended
>>> for Mr. Pointsman who is not present, who won’t be told because the few Psi
>>> Section who’re there to hear it get cryptic debris of this sort every
>>> sitting—if recorded at all it finds its way into Milton Gloaming’s
>>> word-counting project—“Foxes,” a buzzing echo on the afternoon, Carroll
>>> Eventyr, “The White Visitation”’s resident medium, curls thickly tightened
>>> across his head, speaking the word “Foxes,” out of very red, thin lips
>>>
>>> 242.24
>>> [General Wivern:] “Slothrop, there are no ‘SG’ documents.”
>>> First impulse is to rattle the parts list in the man’s face, but today he
>>>  is the shrewd Yankee foxing the redcoats.
>>>
>>> 450.16 [re the facilities of the toiletship Rucksichtslos]
>>> “Crew morale,” whispered the foxes at the Ministry meetings, “sailors’
>>> superstitions. Mirrors at high midnight. We know, don’t we?”
>>>
>>>             The officers’ latrines, by contrast, are done in red velvet.
>>> The decor is 1930s Safety Manual. That is, all over the walls,
>>> photograffiti, are pictures of Horrible Disasters in German Naval History.
>>> Collisions, magazine explosions, U-boat sinkings, just the thing if you’re
>>> an officer trying to take a shit. The Foxes have been busy. Commanding
>>> officers get whole suites, private shower or sunken bathtub...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l