BAP, BAM, and other 1960s Batman phrases on the river to the Heart of Darkness

[gary webb]

I'm not going to dub this NP because Pynchon factors into the discussion (as Always...). To put it mildly, my modern political awakening took place in 2016. I live in the Midwest US of A, though despite what is commonly assumed, there are, believe it or not, certain parts of this sprawling myriad region that aren't mired in Dark Age squalor, and thanks to the Internet, the coastal bubble culture of the 21st Century can be transmitted, like the interstate highways of the 20th or the Transcontinental Railroad of the 19th, into the frothing veins and arteries of our media junky Country. As most social media denizens, particularly those of the oft derided Millennial cohort, I was shocked and dismayed of the perverse spectacle that was the ascendancy of Donald Trump (even though I live in a state which narrowly gave him the election), of Brexit... of all the recent malaise manifestations that exploded to the forefront almost 4 years ago and have continued to linger. Smart people no doubt saw all this coming, have been sounding the alarm for some time, and hindsight as always demonstrates, the hubris and the fraught nature of the Clinton and Remain campaigns... this, I know, is the tedious splitting of hairs, these "new" manifestations constitute half their respective constituencies, and remain bitter and divisive to this day, but the political will to reconcile, or to find the sacrosanct middle way amongst groups with common interest or cause, remains utterly elusive and/or unattainable, so that instead of coalescing to form new broad coalitions that can effectively challenge these peculiar manifestations (ie Trump, etc.), once like-minded groups are irreconcilable and hopelessly fragmented. 

And, I apologize in advance to those not in the Anglosphere... Since the squalid reach of American Tech is global and somewhat ubiquitous, all of us, whether we want it or not, are forcibly subjected to the daily Greek Tragedy probe, or Satyr Play, depending on your point of view, surrounding Trump, or Brexit... There was a joke, or a concern, after the election in the States about the regrettable Thanksgiving dinner after, about the arguments and ferocious awkward debates that would rage among warring factions at the table, and now it appears we've all been at the fucking dinner for almost 4 years, and as a merciful plea to all of us regrettably ensnared in the bullshit...it's time to get on with it, or at least get on to dessert... There are much more interesting and consequential things happening elsewhere...anywhere.... but nevertheless, we persist... 

I go back to Napoleon Bonaparte’s quote: 

“To understand the man you have to what was happening in the world when he was 20.” 

Now, as with all Bonaparte quotes, they’re  egregiously self serving, and this quote is no doubt is due to the fact that he was 20 in 1789 ... but I’ve always found it to be interesting... and perhaps vaguely self-revealing...

I was 20 in 2006. A year notable to the P-list community for the release of Against the Day, but also notable because it was a midterm year, and the Democrats were able to reclaim majorities in both houses after Republican bicameral control. These were the so-called “Bluedog” Democrats. This was, I believe, the first iteration of the populist movement. It was a reaction to the mismanagement of the Iraq war. It was a reaction to the federal response after Hurricane Katrina, which I know was in 2005 but later in the year a fresh issue of contention on the mind of the electorate (remember Kanye’s reaction on national television, and Mike Meyer’s weirdly befuddled reaction... almost like the Republicans in the debates 10 years later...). 

So here were are almost a decade and a half later, and most of us sensible folk, many of which constitute the community of this site, what the fuck happened...?

The works of Pynchon always course through my mind, and I’m a Gravity’s Rainbow acolyte. If Gravity’s Rainbow is about anything, it’s about the state of the individual in this ad hoc post war order, it’s about control vs. freedom... where it exactly comes down is a matter of  immense debate, but it is no doubt NOT an anti humanist novel, is of course a matter of debate, no less because the “principal protagonist” literally disperses, in a quantum sense, but still... the episodic fragments certainly lend themselves to our discretized, or digitized space...