Pynchon as propaganda

[jbor]

on 6/4/03 1:45 PM, Mutualcode at aol.com at Mutualcode at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Clearly the intent of this passage is demonstrate that the army
> paid non-combatant soldiers to minister to the troops in order to
> keep them fighting, killing and dying. Any other reading is an
> exercise in self-deception equal to the deception that the "army
> chaplains" were perpetrating on the men.

The focus is on the dying, certainly, but not on the fighting or the
killing, nor does the passage anywhere imply that non-combatant soldiers
were paid to impersonate men of the cloth, or that the clergymen were
hypocrites. The inverted commas around "army chaplains" are there because
that is what they were called (it is the official term for military
clergymen who have the job of ministering to servicemen and women of all
denominations, like Father Mulcahy on M*A*S*H* for example):

http://www.armychaplains.com/shorthistory.htm

Characterising religious faith as "an exercise in deception" is enormously
disrespectful.

best


> They- the clergymen-
> were just another extension of the system, of "psy-ops." If they
> too are dead now, I hope they are in Hell, if there is one. Probably,
> however, there is only nothingness.
>