{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2632", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 2632, "subject": "Digest urth.v030.n108", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2001-05-09T15:22:30+00:00", "last": "2001-05-09T15:22:30+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-05-09T15:22:30+00:00", "subject": "(urth) RE: Digest urth.v030.n108", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Mantis wrote: \nMy sense, and I've only read the story one time, is that there is\nindeed something odd about the president: that he is \"new,\" and his\n\"newness\" is not due to having just been elected. Something other\nthan that." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, he's been through some kind of inauguration, but I can't find\nany statement of his being elected. OTOH, there's no direct hint that\nhe wasn't. \n\nHe's worried about some future re-election, though. \n\nOne explanation that _seems_ to me to fit all the facts: he was the\nvice-president and was elected when his predecessor's term ran out.\n(Weird variant: his predecessor was re-elected for a second term but\ndied between the election and the inauguration.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "My feeling as I was reading was that he was perhaps some sort of\nusurper and/or doppleganger and/or otherwise unelected-to-the-\nPresidency. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Don't want to dismiss M's feelings, but I'd need evidence." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The \"easiest\" solution to all this seemed related to the alien\ndingus: that he had somehow used it to make himself president\n(yet he was seemingly already president when he got the dingus,\nso it couldn't have been at that moment without some serious\ntimewarping going on). " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Right, that won't work.\n\n(Snip, cut.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As for the timeline: my strong sense was that the Constitution\nhas been suspended; " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Huh -- no; there's an election scheduled, even if it isn't for a while." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "the nation is in a state of emergency, martial law, perhaps even\na new War Between the States. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now THAT is an interesting point... In the previous American Civil \nWar, there was a group among Northern Democrats who favored making\npeace with the South and letting them have their independence from\nthe Union. And what was the common name for this group?\n\nWhy ... Copperheads ..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If the situation is as bad as I suggest, then it is obvious to\neveryone that there won't be an election in four years, and\nnobody expects \"life as usual\" to go on until the crisis is\nresolved. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I suppose it's not worth pointing out that no previous war has \ndelayed a Presidential election by so much as one day?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There is talk about a fire in Idaho that cut short the\npresidential vacation. (The old president and others could\nhave been killed in a fertilizer/fuel bombing--are you getting\nthe contemporary details here?)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I got a whole different set of contemporary details -- when I \nread \"fire in Idaho,\" I think of a mutated combination of Waco \nand Ruby Ridge. But then I'm just plain paranoid about Janet \nReno..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Funny thing about the title: I immediately thought of the snake. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah, me too. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But the way that the new president is fixated on that maple tree," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not quite ... \n \"There was something in there, something under the\n leaves, and I guess my hand tightened on the Changer. \n It must have, because there you were.\" \n\nSomeone (sorry, I can't recall who) suggested a day or two ago that \nshe'd been swapped in for a snake under the tree, and this makes \nsense to me." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Since there has just been a suicide (with a weird Vince Foster\nfeel to it), " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "One of the (many) reasons I suspect this of being some kind of\nobscure anti-Clinton screed. It does indeed remind me of the\nVince Foster thing, but then it seems to have little or nothing\nto do with the rest of the story.\n\nThis piece is _very_ disjoint." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I supposed that the suicide was related to Copperhead herself\n(and her dalliance with the new president has a Monica feel to\nit, no?). " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "See previous comment." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "What's with the barking trees and winding ram's horns?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I assume that's just Wolfe's way of saying \"he's a in a very weird\ncognate of our reality.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I agree. I was reminded of the weird other world in George\nMacdonald's LILITH; that degree of weirdness. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ummm... assuming for a moment that \"Copperhead\" is another world's\nSatan/tempter/snake/Lilith/Eve (some combination thereof), and that \n\"dhose boyss\" are its Cain and Abel ... doesn't it make sense to\nsuppose that this is that world's Eden? Or perhaps its uh, wherever \nthe postlapsarian Adam lived?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But is NP from Earth, or is he now coming home again, or is he\nfrom the other place and now visiting the third universe (a\ngrand tour)?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think Occam applies here. We have no reason to suppose he's from\nsomewhere else and some reason (the fact that he was already President\nwhen the Changer was found) to think he's from \"here.\"\n\nRoy writes: " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"Vhas a groose.\", I translate as \"[He] Was a grouse.\" In\nAmerican slang, a grouse is a person who habitually complains. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dunno. I've seen \"to grouse,\" a verb for a kind of habitual\ncomplaining, but I've never heard or seen a nominal form.\nMW on line only lists (as noun) the bird and \"a complaint.\"\n\n\nOther possible words might include \"cruise,\" \"crews,\" \"cross,\" \n\"grows,\" \"gross,\" -- but the next statement, \"nawt lak 'ou,\" \nclearly implies that she's talking about a person. \"He was a \ngrouse?\" \"He was cross [with her]?\" \n\nBut why, I wonder, doesn't the \"glorious\" naked man speak with\na similar accent..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "... when Lilith grabbed the Changer and pressed the button, *she*\nexchanged the NP for the old Adam she disdained, who \"grunted\" over\nher, who is the very tall man at the end of the story. And he is a\nman, not God; Wolfe conflates the biblical passages alluded to so\nthat it is the new Adam who does both the cursing and who \"shall\ncrush your head under my heel.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Umm... is it maybe both? You put the words there: \"the new Adam.\"\nWho, in Pauline terms, is Christ, is the God-and-Man, and in fact\nthe one who crushes the serpent's head underneath His heel.\n\n\n\n--Blattid/Dan'l" } ] } ] }