BtZ42 48-54: Foxes once more

Wed May 11 05:29:49 CDT 2016

I might suggest that this is not one of Orwell's finest moments.
Too much here on how disparate the use is, which is a concession to
the misuse of language which he elsewhere is so smart on.

And that we can't define Fascism---because we have to make 'admissions'
that no groups want to make?

Orwell more usually tried to make such 'admissions'.

Maybe a bad war-weary day.

On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 6:09 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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/?listpynchon-l
>
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