Giant Paranoids (was Giant Adenoids)

[Craig Clark]

MantaRay sez:
> Wiesenburger's companion to GR asserts that some of the Conspiracies are a
> little paranoid, like the Byron the Bulb story, but even seemingly ridiculous
> conspiracies allow us to engage, within and without the text, our capacity
> for recognizing connections, esp. in regards to power relations. The supposed
> Paranoid at least sees connections, whereas the rest of the 'normal' world is
> trapped beneath an elaborate denial that takes everything for granted.
Of course the "Byron the Bulb" conspiracy is ridiculously paranoid, 
but there's several nuggets of truth in it: I suspect that the 
Phoebus Cartel or something like it did exist, and of course "planned 
obsolesence" (commodities designed to wearout so you have to buy 
another) is real enough - and could be read as a "conspiracy" by the 
owners of the means of production against the consumer. Similalry, 
the faceless Them who stage the war in _GR_ are a ridiculous 
exaggeration, but the role of large multinationals during the war is 
not. 

> One only has to look at today's media to see this in action. What about
> Independence Day, the so-called "good old-fashioned return to American
> violence," (Medved's words), which seems innocuous enough as a work, until
> you take into account all the cheerleading the Establishment is doing so it
> can fill up again on Defense funding. It is no accident that the release and
> huge success of this movie coincides with probs with Immigration and the
> renewal of legistlative interest in Star Wars defense tech. Sound paranoid?

No, sounds very plausible to me... I'm intrigued by Medved's 
response, which sounds (from your comment) to be negative. 
I suppose asking for consistency from a man who clearly has little to 
do with the truth or with rational thought is asking a bit too much, 
but one of the things which I found most irritating about _ID4_ is 
that it seemed to have been written with a copy of Medved's 
_Hollywood vs America_ in hand.

Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"