TRP and enemies as mirrors

[J Tracy]

> On Aug 6, 2025, at 2:35 AM, Michael Lee Bailey <michaelleebailey at pm.me> wrote:
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> Sent from Proton Mail <https://proton.me/mail/home> for iOS
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> On Mon, Aug 4, 2025 at 7:39 PM, J Tracy <brook7 at sover.net <mailto:On Mon, Aug 4, 2025 at 7:39 PM, J Tracy <<a href=>> wrote:
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>> TRP and enemies as mirrors 
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>> Oh the glory of advanced technology. Humans now have the power to erase themselves and much of life with nuclear weapons, or turn our planet into a burning hell with global warming. It would be as though everything we as individuals and societies had ever done had never happened.
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> The Akashic Records would preserve it all until such time as the Sacred Vows are fulfilled as referenced by Salinger in “Franny and Zooey”: However innumerable beings are, I vow to save them; however inexhaustible the passions are, I vow to extinguish them; however immeasurable the Dharmas are, I vow to master them; however incomparable the Buddha-truth is, I vow to attain it.”
Not a big fan of Salinger, but I like the vows of the aspiring Bodhisattvas.
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>> The missiles are poised and the wars escalating. I40 degrees F in Doha. Arctic and antarctic ice melting, fires and floods around the globe . If a nuclear war starts will a few seconds of blaming someone be our last consoling thought before incineration. Or will the final thought just be “No!” A ‘no’ that should have sounded through every sane person and society, but was stifled, a “no” that might have been, might have prevailed, and was clearly needed but wasn’t sounded loud enough, long enough, insistently enough.
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> Thank goodness you are sounding it!
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>> One of the powers of art is to mirror the conflicts that threaten us, expose the tragic flaw, the healing that can come when the heart turns toward humility, love, peace, painful truth, or the destruction that emerges from lies, violence, theft. The artist plucks every string that vibrates the soul of an audience, to draw their full attention: laughter, wonder, abuse, kindness, adventure, sex, wildness, terror, desire, edge of the seat curiosity. One of the forms this drama takes in the human psyche is the conflict aroused by the monster, the cruel enemy, the evil spirit or conspiracy attacking the given order: Goliath, Beowulf, Satan, Loki. Aggressors are just as likely to embrace this mythos as those literally attacked. It’s a story with primal human appeal. It is also just as likely to be a self serving lie as an accurate picture of what is happening, because it so effectively masks less noble motives, allowing the cruelest and basest of actions to be seen as the needed defense of the righteous.
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> Right on!
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>> Pynchon delves into this phenomena of mirrored enemies as a consistent theme. One of my favorite versions of this occurs in Against The Day in the characters of professional political thinkers Werfner of Germany and Renfrew of England. Each, like political pundits of today imagining every degree and nuance of sinister destructive plans in the other and the enemy society. The mirroring is so complete even their names are the same letters spelled from back to front. In Gravity’s Rainbow nuclear armed rockets mirror each other across time, authoritarians on each side of WW2 engage in cruel “medical experiments”, pursuing machine like control of human behavior, driven by personal ambition and debauchery, driven by market forces and the pursuit of more perfect technologies. The central character is one of these experiments gone wrong but in a way potentially exploitable by the war effort. He has an erection as a chemical response to imipolex G used in the V2 rocket and allied spies hope he can be used to predict rocket strikes. Probably not the first writer to note a connection between the pecker and war. But Slothrop has had enough authoritarian control already in his Calvinist background and he flees, moving through many visions and variations of the complex relations of sex, killing, exploitation, paranoia, addiction, resistance. Over time the earth pulls him to her bosom and he is absorbed into a rainbow. For those Slothrop has left behind, the only rainbow is the sheen of oil and the arc of missiles; the psychology of imperial colonialism and war for dominance continues on. Nazi scientists and secret police are recruited into new roles in the west, and speeding ahead through time nuclear destruction becomes immanent.
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> Yeah, there is that. A lot of more fun stuff in the book tho’, I maintain.
So I should have spent hours writing about fun stuff in Pynchon in  my short essay on enemies mirroring each other?. I comment on the fun stuff regularly, but to be honest it is comic relief  and satiric truth telling that bypasses defense mechanisms.   It’s not the main arc for me.
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> And the “no” resounding from it may have helped stave off some of the direness in favor of more humanistic outcomes. 
Of course that is what I think every artist aspires to do. 
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>> By the time the imaginary herero missile was about to hit Los Angeles in GR, over in the non-fiction world, Russians, who were most effective in defeating the Nazis, had become the new enemy and grabbed their own colonial empire called the Soviet Union, taking advantage of the fact that most anti fascist resistance had been led by communists.
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> Once you have an army, it’s so tempting to use it, especially if you’re pushing an ideology. 
As is the United Staes and at that time Russia. 
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> I’ve avoided the problem by not having an army, but you’re implying we’re all responsible to various degrees. Hard to argue that you’re wrong. I point with pride to my Armylessness, but I suppose I could be doing more.
My concern in what I wrote here is only try to get at how easily we divide the world into good and bad, put ourselves among the good,  and miss the humanness and universality of both qualities. 
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>> The cold war was never cold in the colonized world and US colonial wars in Africa, the middle east, SE asia and South and Central America gave leaders who sided with the US the all purpose excuse or ‘communism' for crushing movements for justice , whether socialist or nationalist. Along with the bloodshed, lots of US bribery and “aid” ended up in the Swiss bank accounts of our favored dictators.
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> Yeah did that ever suck!
> We peaceful ones, using peaceful methods, continue to issue forth a strong counter-tendency, and sometimes gain ground. How can we ethically buttress our influence?
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>> Corruption and repression <was>
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> were
good edit
>> also rampant in the Soviet empire and Stalin went completely mad with paranoia, power, prisons and killing . This burgeoning of corruption and violence is the history of every empire, and the question of who caused the most suffering in the cold war will be shaped by which victims you are looking at and maybe how much hypocrisy is involved
Still does. 
> A more interesting question is which forces have continually nudged events in a more positive direction which carried through will begin to remedy ills; how can I associate with the people who are doing other, better stuff than that, and how can I help?
Sure and I would love to hear thoughts on that and have thought much about it myself, but these paragraphs  are my attempt  to focus on a certain narrow phenomena.
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>> The problem for the west is that we have, until China changed the picture, been the most effective at retaining imperial global dominance and that requires constant fear propaganda about the evil other while we indebt future generations to pay for weapons, wars, and surveillance.
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> Three ghosts will visit the masters of war and change their point of view.
> The Grinch’s heart will grow 3 sizes that day, when the people of Whoville unite in song.
I actually believe powerful changes of heart can happen  but am not so sure it is a guaranteed outcome. 
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>> In the case of Russia, even after they ended the Soviet union, had a devastating fling with US economic criminality, and slowly rebuilt their country under the popular strong man Putin,
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> Ahem, perhaps not 100% popular.
Who is? 

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> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68318742
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> (Navalny)
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> Perhaps “popularity” is in the eye of the beholder
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> https://stacker.com/stories/world/vladimir-putins-history-conflict-former-soviet-nations-timeline-and-human-cost
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>> who reined in oligarchic corruption and vastly improved the life of citizens,
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> Or did he make them sit at his right hand?
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> https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/29/1088886554/how-putin-conquered-russias-oligarchy
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>> we continued to demonize Russia. First allowing the Clintons and Obama to corrupt national intelligence to foster Russiagate, and then fostered a coup in Ukraine followed by a proxy war.
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> Putin invaded Ukraine. Ukraine didn’t invade Russia. 
> Dude! That’s crazy talk!
Actually the coup government of Ukraine attacked the Russian speaking part of eastern Ukraine when the eastern oblasts refused the authority of a violent coup and the attempt to end the use of Russian in their schools. When the Kiev govt was losing the civil warfare they settled on the Minsk accords agreeing to return the Eastern oblasts to their former legal status and that neither NATO nor any foreign army would enter Ukraine. This was signed with many witnesses but as Merkel admitted Ukraine and the West never intended to keep the peace , they re-armed and resumed their assault on the Donbass.  That is when Russia went to the border . Then  when the Kiev assaults on the Donbass escalated Russia  initiated their military operation.  Why? 1)to defend Ukrainian Russians from the Banderite hatred and violence 2) to defend themselves :
3 times Russia was invaded through Ukraine. Nato is demonstrably not a defensive only org. The far eastern region of Ukraine is very close to Moscow a huge temptation to nuclear first strike. . The US has used nuclear weapons, we ended the intermediate missile treaty, our Ukraine strategy was directed by Neo-cons who demonize Russia and want regime change. IMO Russia would have been crazy to give in to the US puppet that is Ukraine. Zelensky is 10 times the dictator as Putin, outlawing elections, eliminating all critical media, and allowing no political opposition. He was again offered a Minsk based settlement and refused, He is much richer and tens of thousands of Ukrainians were killed.  In the end there will be neutrality and no NATO or US in Ukraine. Either that or there will be nuclear war since the West has no way of taking back the territories who have aligned with Russia in their elections, and the US( without our weapons there would be no war)  has lost this war, like several others in recent history. 
Nothing crazy here , I think it is you who are misinformed about this history and have allowed in only one side.. 
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>> The truth is this has been more beneficial for american billionaires and politicians than for Ukrainians, Europeans or anyone else. Meanwhile our years of demonizing Arabs who don’t support Israel and our denial that Jews and Israel can commit crimes like humans everywhere has paid off in open genocide, supported by both parties.
> But not in equal measure. People do speak against that, as you are doing, and in perhaps more influential fora. Relative numbers much higher in Democratic circles. 
The democratic president and candidate and congressional majority are with the Zionists. The majority of citizens have for well over a year supported an end to the genocide, but that has not translated into serious political  action.  
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>> The truth is that social norms and systems of government are in constant flux while the habit of demonizing others has a kind of reliable religious durability.
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> I never demonize anybody - well, okay, Stalin…Bush 41 & 43, Netanyahu, Reagan, Rupert Murdoch, a few more exceptions - but I try not to dwell on it.
> I’ve heard that 3 ghosts will visit them on Xmas Eve and change their point of view.
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> I prefer to Simonize (what the heck is that anyway?) rather than demonize.
I’m talking here about media norms, and political norms and how that filters down into social norms.  I’m not intending a universal judgement. 
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>> Our political debates and elections are no longer about what we stand for,
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> Mine are. 
> I hope some day you’ll join me, and the world will live as one 
I think I have long ago  joined you and the late great Johnny Ace in  this sentiment, but I also think it is a reasonable characterization of our commonly witnessed elections. 
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>> but who we hate the most. Our mainstream media is a swamp of propaganda that ignores real issues and crimes and feeds self righteousness and hate.
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> Some media outlets more than others, a lot more - some less, a lot less. Caveat emptor!

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>> These addictions are manifesting as oligarchic fascism of the most blatant kind. What Werfner and Renfrew, and the US fear and project on their enemy is what they are becoming. Dorian Gray comes to mind. 
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>> -- 
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> I think you need a hug. Bring it in, let’s hug it out!

You are quite wrong about that . Well everyone needs hugged and I am hugged, embraced, and have in the last 3 weeks laughed with and seen the pleasure of 10 students 5 adults in 1 week , 5 teens in another as they made  stained glass windows and fused glass bowls . The real pleasure for me is seeing students get excited about what they can make with hands a, heart, mind.  On 4 hot days  I have floated happily in a deep pool in the creek across the road. I have had an auditorium with over 100 teen students laugh at one  of my poems  and a few said they cried at another about birds. I have sat at a campfire with teachers and their children and played music and made jokes and yes also worried about what is happening in our country and grieved over Gaza. I worked in my garden and played my flute with the birds, some jazz players and tonight with my talented daughter visiting from California with her Israeli, German American boyfriend and talked with them late into the night.. I was invited during these same weeks to read my poems at  a music performance.  I hugged old friends during an adult arts program.   I have also bought an air purifier to deal with stinging eyes and lungs due to smoke from the fires in British Columbia and also broke down in tears over the starving people of Gaza. I have read excellent books by Stefano Mancuso, and Paul Hawken.   I find much solace in hopeful truth tellers like these, but admit that my hope for the near future is weak, I see what I see, and tell it straight but I am not moping along, I enjoy life. 
  It may be quite foolish of me to think my attempts in writing  to understand how modern humans got ourselves into such a mess contain anything worth thinking about, but Pynchon and the list still speak to me so here I am despite the insults I get.