Let It Bleed

[bandwraith at aol.com]

The hierarchy is moving ineluctably toward the ways and means of waging 
war without having to deal with the troublesome peculiarities of human 
nature, like the need to love and be loved- messy stuff which gets in 
the way of efficiency, often requiring "numbing" when the thrill of 
battle wears off. Fighters become part time sociopaths in order to do 
their "job" effectively- besides the bullshit P.R. about befriending 
the local populace, building schools and roads, etc.- futile imperial 
fantasies required to keep the flow of tax money flowing into the 
pockets of the profitteers.

Eliminating the human factor from the battlefield must have always been 
a perennial dream of the Top Brass. The need for control takes on a 
life of its own, however, and becomes an end itself. Initially, it was 
semi-grounded in the need to defend against or remove some perceived 
threat. (Another Top Brass dream-  neverending threat.) With the 
inevitable loss of clarity and  rational for continued funding, 
restless capital will look elsewhere for investment, but all the 
technologies of command and control will also seek integration into 
"civil" society.

This has happened after each of our modern wars. Much of our current 
medical technology, for example, was perfected in the M.A.S.H. units of 
Nam. Iraq/Afghanistan has provided a huge boost for the treatment of 
acute brain trauma and for prosthetics, and of course, for the removal 
of the human factor from the killing field- robotics, drones and all 
the rest of the new structures of monitoring and controlling. The 
unintended consequences of these technologies are hard to map, but 
mapping itself has certainly reached the borders of what it used to be. 
The map has become at least as important as the mapped.

The hobbled traumatized vet, in many ways, is just another resource for 
the continued application and perfection of these new systems.




-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sat, Jan 5, 2013 10:42 pm
Subject: Re: Let It Bleed


always been a problem, Gaddis had that troubled guy who dropped the
bomb in TR, Hemingway any number of unhappy vets, i myself picked up a
vietnam vet one time hitchhiking who wanted me to take him to a bad
neighborhood to score heroin and i actually sort of did but he
couldn't score and eventually i offloaded him gently because enough is
enough...