More Nixon. No Jesuits.

[Ian Livingston]

What a world.
Will it get better if everybody just gets high?

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 10:49 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>
> >
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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