Wasn’t that Stalin?
“It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”
2 Likes
Springfield tirefire then.
5 Likes
It might have been both. Consider the cast of Travesties:
Henry Carr (a minor historical character not notable enough for wikipedia
Cecily and Gwendolyn (from Oscar Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest)
Bennet, Carr’s Manservant
Though, Stoppard’s Jumpers might not borrow so many historical characters
1 Like
Yeah those were sort of my first thoughts too, but then I wondered, what kind of a person puts up with all that and for what reasons? Family? Political Power? More likely the latter, and career politicians and power/attention seekers are the worst sort of narcissistic trash. Ugh.
I think Stoppard was consciously imitating Stalin (the Stoppard line is from his play “Jumpers”).
I always liked the one about “Democracy – it’s your vote that counts. Feudalism – it’s your count that votes.”
4 Likes
Guess I’m preaching to the choir here, but there was a Robert Anton Wilson book - masks of the Illuminati - partially based on the premise that Einstein, Joyce and Lenin were all in Zurich at the same time (IIRC Wilson even places them in the same train compartment). It was a book that blew my mind on a first reading but did not hold up during a second.
1 Like
Very cool book, although I can’t recall if I gave it a second read or not. I don’t recall Lenin playing a major part in the book though. Was it perhaps just a brief cameo?
Pretty brief and he was portrayed as humorless and bitter (which may or may not have been historically accurate – same goes for Aleister Crowley’s sojourn in Zurich at the same time as these other luminaries)
It was 20 or 21 years ago when I re-read it so I wonder if it’s worth another try at this far remove. I read the Illuminatus trilogy in early '94 and again 10 or so years ago and that one did hold up better on a second reading. So did Naked Lunch but I don’t suspect Gravity’s Rainbow would (speaking of books that unscrewed my cranium, shook up my brain a bit, then put it back together).
I know when some of my partners and I were having a conversation comparing Trump to fictional characters like Lex Luthor and realizing that the comic book super villain would actually be a preferable choice, something’s gone seriously wrong in our country.
5 Likes
For all of their failings, at least the constant attacks on the Clintons have been successful in creating this impression. I keep seeing this opinion, but really, where’s the evidence other than from right wing blowhards?
2 Likes
Except the presidential candidate has been crippling them there as well. No ground organisation, no get out the vote efforts, and there is now a very real chance that they could lose both the House and the Senate due to lack of voter turnout.
Of course Luther is: the man became America’s greatest hero after somebody got launched from Krypton a few hours late; he was the only reason we didn’t get annexed by the Soviets.
Well, they were actually Hindu numerals and when it came to science the Indians weren’t doing too badly, but their societies got badly disrupted by Muslim expansion.
tl;dr: simplistic histories of of Islam are about as valid as simplistic histories of Christianity, but that won’t stop the stupid, the malicious and the ambitious from “othering” it.
2 Likes
Those are major factors, but you can’t ignore the contribution of (c) foreign interference.
British/French/Russian colonialism in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and North Africa; Napoleon in Egypt; Lawrence and the Arab Revolt; Axis vs Allies across North Africa.
Having to fight a war on your own territory is horrible; having someone else’s war fought in your homeland is even worse.
The USA went collectively nuts after one dramatic and tragic but strategically inconsequential attack fifteen years ago. How loony would Americans be if their homes had been a central battleground for every major foreign war for the last couple of centuries?
13 Likes
Have to ask,then – has Beechwood aged?
(yeah I’m sure you locals hear that all the time)
Neil de Grasse Tyson blames Hamid Al-Ghazali, of the 11th century.
Gravity’s Rainbow is up there with Moby Dick in the ‘unfinishable’ stakes for me. I’ve enjoyed other Pynchon books, but that one I can’t get more than a couple chapters in. One day, maybe.
I made it through all the pages of Moby Dick but I’m not quite comfortable saying that I “read” it. Sometimes my eyes go past the words on the page, yet I haven’t consciously read anything. There was more of that than usual, for me, in Moby Dick. There were enough parts where I was mentally awake that I can say I dug it, though.
Gravity’s Rainbow wasn’t easy but I read it when I was 23, during that couple of years when my brain was as smart as it had ever been, or was ever going to be. I “got” it as much as I was ever going to be able to get it. I later read Vineland (i.e. after my brain’s smart window had come and gone), I didn’t not like it but I was kind of “meh” about it. I’ve got Mason & Dixon sitting in the stack.
1 Like
Huh!? I usually just sit there with a book or magazine, I don’t think I… Oh. Never mind.
7 Likes
