The Politics of Gene Wolfe

Jeff Wilson · 04 Jul 2010, 16:57 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Sun, 04 Jul 2010 11:57:52 -0500
Subject: (urth) The Politics of Gene Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <4C308F02.4080402 at verizon.net>
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	<4C308F02.4080402 at verizon.net>
Message-ID: <4C30BD90.8040300 at io.com>

On 7/4/2010 8:39 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> Below.
>
> Jeff Wilson wrote:
>> On 7/4/2010 6:48 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
>>> Of course fascism hadn't been invented yet. Nor had lynching and armed
>>> race riots.
>>
>> I'm not sure how much of this is humor or rhetoric.
> Neither. Just the facts.

I'd agree on texbook fascism then, but lynching and armed race violence 
go back to biblical times. There was also no shortage of mob justice and 
score-settling under the pretext of political differences before during 
and after the Revolutionary War.

> Although one could argue that absent any police force or guard at all,
> either of these "rights" may suddenly become useful. And that's what SF
> is good for---exploring such situations. Zombies, for example. Don't
> take that argument to the SC, though.

That's just what they did not have; there was nothing like the modern, 
full-time municipal police force for the great majority of people then. 
The context is different today, thank god, but one still cannot count on 
immediate police response in general, chiefly because they have finite 
resources, to make demands on their time is easy, convenient, and 
subsidized, and there are signficant legal, financial, and political 
consequences to the police for responding and acting in way later judged 
improper, but essentially none for their failure to respond in a timely 
fashion or all.

To maintain thread relevance, this is the sort of lamentable systems 
failure from perverse incentives so many of Wolfe's characters remark upon.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >

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