Bleeding Edge's pear tree....yes?

[Mark Kohut]

To finish.

How the ideals were betrayed later.....70s.80s    how the new emergence of
fascism arose
in these United States when, in the sixties, what the Tristero threw up
instead was the counterculture,
its ideals.....and. to repeat.how the right movement to change our society
for the better economically
went under.....

On Tue, Sep 15, 2026 at 2:53 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks,Joseph.....as written I was all wrong. You point out what the
> sixties meant and
> I concur in general...and I think Pynchon does to in many themes of all
> his books
>
> What I should have written was that a Vineland major theme was how
> the ideals, particularly the ideals of a political/social movement that
> changed America more, and for the better, more
> particularly as Pynchon himself wrote, how the New Left, the best vision
> of Social change America ---The Port Huron Statement
> is a wonderful near-utopian document that was not utopian (in the sense of
> nowhere possible)
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2026 at 9:34 PM Joseph Tracy <coypoet at mailfence.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I think that is an absurd assertion , both about the 60s and Vineland.
>> The 60s was a time of remarkable change and liberation, releasing forces
>> and Ideas we still live with, many rooted in the core ideals of
>> constitutional liberty and hearkening back to revolution against empire,
>> but equally important was the ecology movement, the renunciation of
>> McCarthyism, a challenge to imperial war, the women's liberation
>> movement, the civil rights movement, the farmworkers movement, the
>> revival of grass roots folk music, the mainstreaming of black  R&B black
>> entertainers and feisty black athletes like Muhamed Ali, psychedelics,
>> Food co-ops with healthier food options,  a flourishing of all arts, ...
>> the list is long and I could go on. Some of the best leaders of this
>> liberating change did not fail at all. They were murdered, not by lone
>> nuts, but by the state. State criminality was exposed, in MK Ultra,
>> Vietnam, This is something made quite explicit in Vineland. By any
>> measure state violence and war crimes far exceeded any leftist
>> revolutionary violence.
>>      Like all big changes some shifts were shallow, passing,
>> commercialized, but I had enough of a taste of Mcarthyism and Nixon  and
>> LBJ to know why the opposition was so powerful and necessary. The
>> culture wars and the real wars and the warlike addictions of both
>> political parties continue, but change begins within and spreads through
>> the cultures we build..  If there is failure it is much larger than any
>> ten years or any of the human movements of an era. We have to take
>> responsibility ourselves. We are all creating history in our affinities
>> and lived lives.
>>
>> On 9/14/26 7:02 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>> > I read Nixon's novel as not unlike Vineland. Why the sixties failed...
>> >
>>
>