"As anyone not insulated by wealth from the cares of the day is obliged to be. Sir."
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Think about how often conservative talking heads on Twitter accuse young people and socialists about being ignorant of history. And then think about how much research and study and reading Thomas Pynchon has done on the history of the United States and then he writes something like this in Against the Day. Sure, I agree that Ray Ipsow's dialogue does not necessarily equate to Pynchon's beliefs. He's also writing Scarsdale Vibe's dialogue. How could both represent Pynchon?! But also realize that he's spent an awful lot of time showing the reader how contemptible, vile, and unempathetic Scarsdale Vibe is. He's so cartoonish that he's obviously the villain. And Ray Ipsow is the little man standing up to him, unafraid to have his say. But also adding "Sir" to the end just to show he means no disrespect and doesn't actually want to be beaten within an inch of his life by Vibe's bodyguards. No wait. He adds the single sentence full stop sir at the end as a contemptible sign of disrespect, acknowledging he understands that Scarsdale's previous "sir" wasn't in earnest.
What I mean to say is think about how ignorant of history you actually have to be to believe the kinds of things Charlie Kirk or Dinesh D'Souza or Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham say. I'm sad I even know those names. Just vile, terrible people with less remorse than Vonnegut's Howard J. Campbell from Mother Night (and I'm not quite sure how much remorse he really had! He was pretty apathetic about most of his life when you get right down to it. Which might have been a large part of Vonnegut's point. "Look how much evil you can do when you just shrug your shoulders and don't give a shit.").
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