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

[David Morris]

What?


On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 5:03 PM gary webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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...
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>