More Nixon. No Jesuits.

[Mark Thibodeau]

Indeed. Excellent find/commentary.

J

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 6:26 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> from Jonathan Schell's The Time of Illusion. Which I picked up
> because I have 'always' wanted to read it and now the key theme
> ---illusion and its effects---seemed it might offer some insight into
> the current US admin's massive shell game of articulated illusion.
>
> This: we are reminded how Nixon ran and won as the peace candidate who would
> get us out of the Dem war in Vietnam. The anti-war voices at all levels
> shut down at the '68 convention. How he convinced many of the nation's
> influential opinion-mongers that he was a 'new' Nixon, not the one who had
> ended
> his own career earlier. How he actually had a post-election lunch with
> Humphrey--to
> show the nation's new unity; how he spoke of how 'the Negro"--the word faded
> quickly around this time--would rise higher under his administration's
> policies; how
> his administration would be so transparent, the whole nation would be
> reassured.
>
> Then he beagen the absolutely secret bombing of Cambodia; he ordered a plan
> to
> 'round up' anti-war protestors; he wrote memos on how PR image-making was
> the only way to publicly
> run the admin; he ordered wiretaps on some aides and five major reporters
> (previous
> AG Ramsey Clark declared the recent law re warrant permission
>  was unconstitutional and he would never); Schell argues that even a couple
> of bills
> were presented that were INTENDED to fail so that where Congress stood vs
> his
> admin was evident to all.
>
> Schell shows how Nixon's PR image campaign then became a "domestic war"
> against
> any kind of nay-saying. Even invading Cambodia was a test of national
> resolve and commitment not real horrible policy.  Which lead to Kent State,
> hard hats beating up on protestors, among other horrors.
>
> Hating Nixon, which almost any writer worth reading,  not only Pynchon, did,
> and was the least we should have done.
>
> And Nixon did in secret what Pres Trump does openly, is one way to frame it,
> Trump's base image-making just for his base.
>
> What a world.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 2:57 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> https://twitter.com/americamag/status/895357514061144064
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 9:50 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Yes.  As were also the Jesuits.
>>>
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 8:09 PM Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>>> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> In some respects the East India Company can - especially with view on
>>>> Pynchon's work - be characterized as an early IG Farben ...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-east-offering-its-riches-to-britannia-191140
>>>> http://brugger.weebly.com/uploads/2/0/1/4/2014824/empire.pdf
>>>>
>>>> > ... It is sometimes said that the British acquired their empire in a
>>>> > fit of absent mindedness. The evidence as shown in this painting dating from
>>>> > a time when the British colonial expansion in India was really just
>>>> > beginning may, however, suggest that the early founders of the British
>>>> > Empire were not absent minded at all but knew exactly what they wanted ... <
>>>>
>>>> Am 29.07.2017 um 08:42 schrieb Kai Frederik Lorentzen:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "Something richer than many a Nation, yet with no Boundaries, --- which,
>>>> tho' never part of any Coalition, yet maintains its own great Army and Navy,
>>>> --- able to pay for the last War, as the next, with no more bother than
>>>> finding the Key to a certain iron Box, --- yet which allows the Britannick
>>>> Governance that gave it Charter, to sink beneath oceanick Waves of Ink
>>>> incarnadine." (M&D, p. 140)
>>>>
>>>> > ... The process of colonial rule in India meant economic exploitation
>>>> > and ruin to millions, the destruction of thriving industries, the systematic
>>>> > denial of opportunities to compete, the elimination of indigenous
>>>> > institutions of governance, the transformation of lifestyles and patterns of
>>>> > living that had flourished since time immemorial, and the obliteration of
>>>> > the most precious possessions of the colonised, their identities and their
>>>> > self-respect. In 1600, when the East India Company was established, Britain
>>>> > was producing just 1.8% of the world’s GDP, while India was generating some
>>>> > 23% (27% by 1700). By 1940, after nearly two centuries of the Raj, Britain
>>>> > accounted for nearly 10% of world GDP, while India had been reduced to a
>>>> > poor “third-world” country, destitute and starving, a global poster child of
>>>> > poverty and famine. The British left a society with 16% literacy, a life
>>>> > expectancy of 27, practically no domestic industry and over 90% living below
>>>> > what today we would call the poverty line.
>>>>
>>>> The India the British entered was a wealthy, thriving and
>>>> commercialising society: that was why the East India Company was interested
>>>> in it in the first place. Far from being backward or underdeveloped,
>>>> pre-colonial India exported high quality manufactured goods much sought
>>>> after by Britain’s fashionable society. The British elite wore Indian linen
>>>> and silks, decorated their homes with Indian chintz and decorative textiles,
>>>> and craved Indian spices and seasonings. In the 17th and 18th centuries,
>>>> British shopkeepers tried to pass off shoddy English-made textiles as Indian
>>>> in order to charge higher prices for them.
>>>>
>>>> The story of India, at different phases of its several-thousand-year-old
>>>> civilisational history, is replete with great educational institutions,
>>>> magnificent cities ahead of any conurbations of their time anywhere in the
>>>> world, pioneering inventions, world-class manufacturing and industry, and
>>>> abundant prosperity – in short, all the markers of successful modernity
>>>> today – and there is no earthly reason why this could not again have been
>>>> the case, if its resources had not been drained away by the British ... <
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/08/india-britain-empire-railways-myths-gifts
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>
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