{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3539",
    "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": 3539,
    "subject": "PEACE: section 5, the decline and fall",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-11-01T18:55:45+00:00",
    "last": "2002-11-01T18:55:45+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0211-2018@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-11-01T18:55:45+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) PEACE: section 5, the decline and fall",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It seems to me that there is a historic sweep to PEACE that reaches its\nclimax in \"The President.\"  In ways it reminds me of Coetzee's WAITING FOR\nTHE BARBARIANS [1980] in incorporating the interplay between urban\ncivilization and pastoral nomads.\n\nIn section 1, Weer talks to Hannah as practically the last person around to\nhave seen an American Indian, probably an Iroquois (c. 1853).  She prefaces\nthe tale by saying \"You make it sound like a show.  It wasn't no show\" (hc,\n30).  This reminds us that yes, there really were \"Wild West\" circus shows,\nfeaturing American Indians.  It makes the clear linkage between displaced\naboriginal people and the nomadic, mysterious entertainers of the carny\nworld.\n\nIn section 3 we learn that Tilly made a pact with the nomadic carnies\n(before 1923).  He had something they wanted, the ability to create freaks\nfrom normal people.  He helped them, they helped him, trade flourished.\n\nThe Iroquois/American treaty (once real, then forged) is revealed in\nsection 4 to be contingent upon Blaine having a son.  Blaine has no son in\nhis old age (1953).\n\nWe come to section 5, with its surface focus on the Tang factory (1974):\nautomation, industrial decline, unions.  But the low level workers are\nAmerican Indians from Central America.  More crucially, the \"contract\"\nbetween carnies and the chemistry empire has come up for renewal: Charlie\nTurner seems to want the same deal with Weer that he had with Smart, and\nTilly before Smart, but Weer is an engineer, not a chemist.  There is no\nlonger any basis for a relationship, so the carny nomads leave the\nalliance, which in my mind seems like the Germanic tribes who had been\nwelcomed into the Roman Empire as frontier guards and then later reverted\nto their barbarian ways to aid in the dismembering of the state when Rome\nfailed to keep up the relationship/bargain.\n\nThe Indians are in the factory; the roving carnies will not accept tribute\nany longer; the Americans are sterile, dying of their own poisons.\n\nThe Doris letter is about the savage future ahead: one can join a nomadic\ngroup, but there will be no mercy for the weak.  Doris represents the last\nof the dying civilization, crumbling in the face of barbarian onslaught.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}