Into the Abyss

[ish mailian]

Another "America is Addicted to..." analogy that adds nothing, I would
argue, distracts and dissuades. This actually ties into the Grace
discussion. The reluctance to accept that Pynchon has written what
Nabokov so despised, what T.S. Eliot and the New Critics warned
against, that is, a novel of ideas, is partly a reluctance to stand on
the slippery slope of ideas that in America slips quickly and without
balance into the gutter of ideology. Of course liberals have long
diagnosed America as an addict whose drug of choice is ideology and
whose cure is liberal ideas. And so the reluctance, the distancing
from ideas, concepts, be they philosophical or theological or
political, or combinations of these by the critics is understandable.
Is a defense of poetry. But the separation of church and state does
not necessitate a divorce of  poetry from philosophy or from concepts
theological, political from ideas. Grace is a complex word and the
ideas it connotes are astoundingly so. The thrill of reading a novel
by P is exactly this complexity. Readers are willing to abide, even
embrace P's use of the term to stir to emotion and to fan romance, but
await, search, expect  the ironic reversal and contradiction, and P
delivers, but readers of P know that a negative capability is framed
in a novel of ideas, even in the form itself, even in the forms that P
parodies and poaches (McHale uses this term and other may and it).

On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 7:33 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> To Joseph's sense of this in history. See also Democracy in Chains, new
> book, for deep relevance.
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/13/america-white-supremacy-hooked-drug-charlottesville-virginia
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 11:54 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>
>> I am not at all persuaded these alt right ideas ever receded very much or
>> that they are only present when they take on the most blatant expressions of
>> racism and celebration of international aggression. They have always had
>> major voices in US mainstream politics from
>> Mcnamara to Kissinger, from Clintonian economics to Friedman.
>>
>> I believe most of US history has been steeped in this same aggression and
>> racism and post WW2 is not the exception but simply a time when these forces
>> were more expertly disguised because they were overseas or otherwise made
>> invisible( poor black areas becoming dumping grounds for toxics, stop and
>> frisk). The only reprieve and change of direction with any lasting impact
>> was FDR era socialism. The democrats have slowly but surely betrayed the
>> best of those reforms while allowing a token inclusion of Black americans.
>> For many individual americans of color this has been a dramatic positive
>> thing, but statistically the problems remain as severe in Democratic regions
>> as in Republican ones. Clinton’s policies of large scale incarceration as
>> nasty in its long term effects as Bush era policies.  Meanwhle the growth of
>> international militarism at huge taxpayer expense has been consistently
>> supported by both parties and most Media and is profoundly racist.
>>
>> Bernie showed there can be another voice with broad public appeal but the
>> media clearly saw that as a threat.
>>
>> What I am saying is that the answer is not just a rejection of the
>> undiluted fascism by imperial tweet, but the creation of a new body of
>> values and practical solutions that look toward the end of hegemonic
>> imperialism, and the beginning of  sustainable local economies and politics.
>> To give up on big ideas at this time seems wrong-headed to me.
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Aug 13, 2017, at 4:35 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > Well, Drudge IS Jewish, after all. So theee must be at least a tiny
>> > speck of consciousness about this kind of stuff... race memory, if you
>> > will. At least enough to give him a frisson of uncanny, generational
>> > recognition.
>> >
>> > Re: the look and attire of the right-wing mob this time... on Twitter
>> > the self-described "scumbag left" (like the Chapo Trap House gang) are
>> > calling this "the Pussy Riot" and comedian Doug Stanhope has stepped
>> > up with a great solution for the next time there's a tiki
>> > torch-wielding bunch of Nazis marching through your town: water
>> > balloons filled with gasoline.
>> >
>> > The footage of that Nazi plowing through the crowd of peaceful
>> > protesters is harrowing and disgusting in its blatant, brazen
>> > cowardice.
>> >
>> > But I have to agree with you, Gary. Positive (by which I mean
>> > negative) reactions to this affront set aside for the moment, I do
>> > believe that the waters of the Rubicon are lapping at our collective
>> > toes. It's like the Powers That Be (or, in this case, the rogue Deep
>> > State faction that I've been calling the New Fascist International)
>> > have perfected some new form of brainwashing - a technique that leaves
>> > the subject/victim's mind not only altered, but booby-trapped against
>> > any and all attempts at reasoning with it.
>> >
>> > Real journalism is "Fake News". Lies in the service of the Far Right
>> > agenda are Truth. BLM = KKK. Immigration = White Genocide.
>> >
>> > Booby-trapped brains. Impervious to reason, logic, or empirical
>> > evidence that contradicts their erroneous beliefs. And with every
>> > passing day, everywhere you look, there's more of these fuckers. For
>> > fuck's sake, they're working in the WHITE HOUSE.
>> >
>> > We are so royally screwed.
>> >
>> > Jerky
>> >
>> >
>> > On Sun, Aug 13, 2017 at 4:02 PM, gary webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> I don't know about the rest of the list but I've been unnaturally
>> >> disturbed
>> >> about the events of Charlottesville. As an American, I suppose I should
>> >> be
>> >> more cynical, and actually come to expect this sort of violence, but
>> >> there
>> >> is something off. Looking at the pictures, these Unite the Right guys
>> >> look
>> >> pretty unremarkable, like VCR repairman,not what I'd associate with
>> >> storm-trooper, AKA Puck Beaverton, the resemble Arendt's depiction of
>> >> Eichmann, not paramilitary types, which I've come to expect, but its
>> >> nonetheless remarkable in 2017, that the "Blood and Soil" movement
>> >> nonsense
>> >> feels it can make a big PR-push into the mainstream.
>> >>
>> >> I found the President's silence to be remarkable, and David Duke's
>> >> tweet,
>> >> and this all goes back to that NRA video Jerky posted a while back, a
>> >> campaign is afoot to provoke and demonize the left, and that's what
>> >> these
>> >> Alt-Right Nazis do, then the right has images which they spin to scare
>> >> the
>> >> hell out of paranoid suburbanites...
>> >>
>> >> It looks like the plan backfired, and an innocent woman was killed
>> >> protesting, and others injured by some kamikaze white nationalist from
>> >> Ohio.
>> >> But I'm sure in the coming months or years, they will have their Horst
>> >> Wessel... and the Right will continue to use these assholes as blunt
>> >> instruments, just like the Weimar right did, thinking that they can
>> >> control
>> >> them, until its too late...
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>
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