AtdTDA: [38] p. 1083 " Look at 'em down there."

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          "LOOK AT 'EM down there." 

          "All that light." "All that dancing." 
          The Garcons de '71 were having their annual convention in Paris. 

A useful cross reference from the Pynchon Wiki:

          During the Siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, 
          1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad 
          stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail 
          and passengers out of Paris.

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Lighter_than_air/military_balloons_in_Europe/LTA4G2.htm

          "The Boys call it the supranational idea," 

A definition of "supranational"  from Forbes "investopedia":

	  An international organization, or union, whereby member 
          states transcend national boundaries or interests to 
          share in the decision-making and vote on issues 
          pertaining to the wider grouping.

	 The European Union and the World Trade Organization are 
          both supranationals. In the EU, each member votes on 
          policy that will affect each member nation. The benefits 
          of this construct for the EU are the synergies derived from 
          social and economic policies along with a stronger presence 
          on the international stage.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/supranational.asp

          "There is, unfortunately," Lindsay was eager to add, "another 
          school of thought which views the third dimension not as an 
          avenue of transcendence but as a means for delivering explosives." 

The marriage of the Chums with the "Bindlestiffs of the Blue" 
strikes me as much like the official gvmnt. [Chums] and its
"invisible" "intelligence" agencies, like the C.I.A.:

         She referred to the document by which the girls had agreed 
        to join their fortunes with those of Inconvenience, only on the 
        understanding that they would always operate independently. 
        They would be frigates, the boys a dreadnought—they would 
        be freebooters and irregulars, the boys Military High Command. 
        The boys would sail along, keeping pretty much to the ship, in 
        an illusion of executive power, and the girls would depart the 
        ship at right angles to its official course to do the adventuring, 
        engaging the Exterior, often at great risk, and returning from 
        their missions like weary commandos to Home Base. 

These is, at the same time, the sense of essential difference
twixt male & female, the "Inconvenience" in full daylight
representing the official story, but doing the real work with
co-operation of the night, the yin, the female and the veiled.