What does "America" deserve?

[Joseph Tracy]

Sure Thibodeau. You really think that is what I am saying? No, I mean really,  I never even liked the ending of GR. I am for mercy as part of judgement,  even on the worst war criminals. But does a  mass murderer deserve special exemption because they were president, because they only voted for it to keep the local military contracts, because they somehow didn’t know that Iraqis or Vietnamese or Jews or Native peoples were human?
The idea of justice is not as good as the idea of grace, or charity or even of treating others as you would be treated. But the fact is that when you vote for war and weapons, your ‘enemy’ may do the same. 
   
Missiles raining down?  It is America that refuses to renounce its vaguely stated first strike nuclear option. It is powerful spokesmen for  the US government and from our media who have been openly proposing the viability of a nuclear assault on Russia.  Putin never once threatened a first strike nuclear assault and you cannot produce such a quote despite many pundits and Biden spokepeople’s open lies that he did. Russia has a clear no first strike policy.  What Putin said is what everyone in the world but the head of Strategic air Command knows. Nobody wins a  nuclear war.

   I do not think Pynchon has a nuclear missile headed for LA because he thinks Nixon or America deserves it,  well.. maybe Nixon, but that would be the ultimate in overkill. He does it because WW2 released a new wave of mass violence and imperial ambition  along with a weapon that can no longer be used without inviting our own destruction, and cannot be contained without a deep change in the patterns of civilization, and because people reap what they sow whether they deserve it or not.  Some mistakes cannot be corrected. That, in my mind is the warningof the final scene in GR.  Was it mingled with a youthful passion for getting what we deserve? Was it his version of 'Damn you masters of war'. I don’t know but perhaps not beyond possibility. Who among us has never felt or said such things. In Ukraine, the latest source of WW3 madness,  I am for stopping now and negotiating before it is too late. Even the head of the Joint chiefs thinks this. In the broad picture I believe peace is possible without threatening others or trying to maintain miitary and surveillance control of the entire planet. I think it is time to grow up and stop blaming all our social violence and political corruption on Russia or Islam or Trump. 


   Anyway the Taibbi  article is not about nukes at all, it's about Trump and a  NY Times editorial. 

 If you want to challenge or ask about my ideas I suggest responding to the death wish post before this. It is about nukes and empires and fascism and it is a more serious attempt to say something and ask the kind of  dfficult questions Pynchon has brought into my thought process. Please don’t put words in my mouth. I am perfectly capable of saying clearly what I mean and clarifying my own intent if is unclear. 
   
  

> On Nov 19, 2022, at 9:11 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> America and her citizens deserve to be showered under a nuclear holocaust of missiles raining down upon them?
> 
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2022 at 8:46 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net <mailto:brook7 at sover.net>> wrote:
> https://taibbi.substack.com/p/no-new-york-times-you-dont-deserve <https://taibbi.substack.com/p/no-new-york-times-you-dont-deserve> <https://taibbi.substack.com/p/no-new-york-times-you-dont-deserve <https://taibbi.substack.com/p/no-new-york-times-you-dont-deserve>>
> 
> The empire’s rag of record, the Lady Macbeth of US journalism gets some well written, closely argued, wryly funny, and viciously pointed  pushback.  Probably damn close to what they deserve.
> 
> And what does "America" deserve?  What did Pynchon in his Gravity’s Rainbow phase propose as an answer to this unfair and absurd question?  I would not be surprised if P himself was attending the very LA movie theater on the date in question. He was so much older then, he’s younger than that now.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l <https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>