Not P but Moby-Dick (15)

[Ian Livingston]

The neocons strike me as the Barnum party. All show, no substance.

On Fri, Sep 29, 2023 at 7:42 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>
>
> > On Sep 28, 2023, at 9:43 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > From Chapter 37:
> >
> > What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think
> me
> > mad—Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild
> > madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I
> > should be dismembered; and—Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I
> will
> > dismember my dismemberer.
> >
> > What does "That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself" mean?
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
> In a way the passage seems a way for Melville to  indicate the triviality
> of a quest to take vengeance on a creature of nature as though the whale
> were the judgement of God rather than a creature of nature defending its
> life. Ahab is calm in that he is self aware enough to know he has deified
> his will to vengeance with calculated deliberateness, and "madness
> maddened" in that he knows that this may be, and will appear to others to
> be, a demoniac quest.
>
>
>  Non literary Aside: The neocons and their acolytes like Sean Penn are
> arguing for WW3. None of their previous failures speak to them. The threat
> of nuclear holocaust does not check them. Why? Power accrues to will, but
> will is self blinding self glorifying, self centered, and frequently more
> like cancer than growth.
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>