IVIV (12): 195-197

[alice wellintown]

This passage, a favorite of several P-Listers and many an academic,
has been debated and debated. Those who need to point a finger at the
person or people or group can find little solace in this passage as
the text will direct them to a seat in the theater/theatre. Obviously,
people build extermination prisons and murder millions. The Rich and
Powerful build War Machines and go to war and kill millions. Rockets
don't build themselves. Rockets don't land on our heads unless humans
build them and launch them.

	"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all
theatre, all just to keep the people distracted . . . secretly, it was
being dictated by the needs of technology . . . by a conspiracy between
human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of
war, crying, 'Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is
at stake,' but meaning, most likely, *dawn is nearly here, I need my
night's blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more*. . . . The real crises
were crises of allocation and priority, not among firms -- it was only
staged to look that way -- but among the different Technologies, Plastics,
Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by the
ruling elite . . .
	Yes but Technology only responds (how often this argument has been
iterated, dogged and humorles as a Gaussian reduction, among the younger
Schwarzkommando especially), 'All very well to talk about having a monster
by the tail, but do you think we'd've had the Rocket if someone, some
specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn't *wanted* to chuck a ton of
Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians?  Go ahead,
capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it'll make you feel less
responsible -- but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the
eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless
hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they
are --'" (V521)


The text works on many levels and passages like the one above are
undercut by others.

Those who prefer the reading that points a finger at the Ruling Elite
may be satisfied.