Anybody interested in Project Paperclip should probably stay away from the Jacobson book

Thu Mar 6 11:59:52 CST 2014

Last paragraph in previous post: "My sons, about the same AGE when..." :-)

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 12:35 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've no answers for either of you about better tactics or democratic
> mechanisms, nor any very inspiring successes to show for my own efforts
> along those lines.
>
> Let me put it in terms of Pynchon rather than of history and policies and
> politics. His books are full of conspiracies and paranoia, and there is a
> school of interpretation that takes that at face value: TRP is himself a
> "conspiracist," one who believes that consensus history is a shadow play
> and that sinister cabals are really pulling the strings.
>
> I couldn't disagree more strongly. I think TRP is a moralist and satirist
> in the line of Dante and Voltaire and Mark Twain, who treats the
> conspiracist stance as a symptom, not a cure, even -- or especially -- when
> it's embraced by his most sympathetic characters.
>
> In GR, for example, consider the flaws of spirit and vision that took us
> from the London missile in 1944 to the Los Angeles missile in 1972. Are
> they all summed up in that crass, cruel, yee-hawing racist Major Marvy and
> in the big shots at the Potsdam conference? Or are there hints of them even
> in sweet, innocent Tyrone? Was it only the covert manipulation of Dr. Jamf
> and the SOE and the White Visitation that got him playing his special part
> in Opration Paperclip? Or -- maybe, just maybe -- could his all-American
> worldview, built (as Pynchon reminds us a hundred times) of Westerns and
> detective stories and Hollywood ("old fans, who've always been at the
> movies (haven't we?)") and friendship with that cool, dashing
> Cold-Warrior-to-be Jack Kennedy --  could that have been part of the
> problem, too?
>
> In Vineland: Is Zoyd Wheeler a victim in a vacuum, at the mercy of
> conspiracies of Reaganite power freaks and greedheads? Or -- maybe, just
> maybe -- did his withdrawal into weed and the woods after those fabulous
> Sixties, paying no attention, make things a lot easier for the Brock Vonds
> of this world?
>
> One reason I value Pynchon is that my gut tells me he agrees with me about
> who's in the big bad conspiracy and who's in the poor victimized preterite.
> But over time, I've come to value him even more because he cuts *nobody*
> any slack.
>
> Including seven-year-old me, watching Dr. Wernher von Spacefuture display
> models of yet-to-be-built Moon and Mars craft on Disney programs (along
> with 40 million other Americans), enthralled by how *totally cool* the
> American remix of the Raketenstadt was going to be.
>
> And hardly thinking at all about those other models lined up on the
> credenza behind him: Redstone, Jupiter, Thor, Atlas... all of them already
> built, deployed, and ready to make fireballs of Minsk and Rostov and
> Smolensk and Kiev, should the defense of freedom and democracy require it.
>
> I suspect that in 1944, seven-year-old Tom Pynchon was enthralled by the
> impending victory over the Axis of Evil (version 1.0), and looking forward
> to the shiny world of peace and prosperity (a-and ROCKETS! just like in the
> comix!) that the triumphant United Nations would create. Gravity's Rainbow
> -- so rich in Slothrop's childhood memes -- is, among other things,
> Pynchon's way of not cutting himself, or me, or anybody else, any slack for
> the way *that* turned out.
>
> And my sons? About the same edge when the Mosaic and Netscape browsers
> began bringing them all the information and music and video they could ever
> ask for, for FREE? Just for letting the web servers and Verizon collect a
> little user data here, plant a little cookie there? They get their turn in
> Bleeding Edge -- and if you think that book cuts anybody any slack,
> dividing the world neatly between us innocent surfers and the evil
> Ice/Windust/NSA conspirators, I suggest that you're missing something.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 2:48 AM, Michael Bailey <mikebailey at gmx.us> wrote:
>
>> But I didn't want them (Them) to do any of these nasty things!
>>
>> Somebody made those decisions against my protests. Whenever given a
>> chance I vote against them. I do what I can to choose other courses.
>>
>> So it's interesting to read about the concerted efforts of those who are
>> working in the other direction...and whose party I refuse to think of as
>> "we"...those fuckers are not one of me and I'm not one of them.
>>
>> I do wish them well in all respects, and the best wish I have is they
>> will learn the joys of peace....the error of their ways as it were...
>>
>>
>>
>> Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>  No, by "our own vast moral failure" I mean building nuclear weapons
>>> and delivery systems far beyond any rational need. During WWII we and the
>>> UK had already taken "terror bombing" of cities to a scale far beyond what
>>> we'd called horrible when enemies did it to Guernica, Chinese cities,
>>> Warsaw, Rotterdam, and London. In the decades that followed, we spent
>>> several trillion dollars systematically equipping ourselves to do a
>>> thousand times worse.
>>>
>>>  That the equipment has not yet been used (and that it has been
>>> modestly scaled back since the 1980s) does not make it less of an
>>> abomination. The decisions that led to that were made by Americans, not by
>>> German emigres. Millions of Americans (including young Tom Pynchon,
>>> cranking out Boeing technical documentation and company magazine articles)
>>> took part in the process. Details of bombs and rockets were secret; that we
>>> were gearing up for mass murder -- only if forced to it, of course! -- was
>>> not a secret, not a conspiracy.
>>>
>>>  One of the central concerns of GR (and the reason for its arc from a
>>> missile in 1944 to a missile in 1972) is to ask: "Given all the destruction
>>> and horror of the Zone, and 1945's opportunities for a fresh start... was
>>> Mutual Assured Destruction really the best we could do by 1972? Why did we
>>> fuck up all over again, only bigger and shinier?"
>>>
>>>  Wernher von Braun and his team brought the experience and technical
>>> _virtu_ to make one part of the process somewhat faster for the US. They
>>> brought their own guilt -- which as far as I'm concerned, is lost in the
>>> enormity of the larger enterprise. The process as a whole would have been
>>> very little different if Paperclip had never happened and they'd all been
>>> hanged. They weren't; neither were thousands of other Germans whose war
>>> efforts depended on -- and who spent years managing -- horrific slave labor
>>> operations.
>>>
>>>  Listen,  Joseph: against the enormity of what we (and the USSR, and the
>>> UK, and France, and China, and Israel, and India, and Pakistan, and...)
>>> have chosen to live with quite openly, I DON'T FUCKING CARE about Paperclip
>>> as a conspiracy, about Sekrit Nazis REVEALED!!! (for the 12th time since
>>> that Sekrit Gallup Poll in 1946). Or that (gasp) senior officers and
>>> statesmen LIED about it!!!
>>>
>>>  Paperclip is an acid-etched little bit of historical irony, rich in
>>> symbolism... and that's all. To the extent that we keep rediscovering it,
>>> and keep emphasizing (against abundant evidence) how Very Very Hush-Hush
>>> Top Secret it was, and that Now It Can Be Told, we're reassured that we've
>>> found the hidden root of evil.
>>>
>>>  Does everybody remember Pynchon's earlier title for GR? "Mindless
>>> Pleasures"? I don't believe he intends us to understand that historical
>>> conspiracies go on while we're distracted by mindless pleasures.
>>>
>>>  I believe he intends us to understand that a focus on conspiracies
>>> *is* another mindless pleasure, one that distracts us from what's staring
>>> us in the face.
>>>
>>>  In the mirror.
>>>
>>>
>>>  On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 5:43 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I don't really see the logic of what you are saying. 1st point) "our
>>>> own vast moral failure". 'Our own' meaning the majority of citizens who did
>>>> not want to import Nazi scientists? Or some other us who have the power to
>>>> ignore public opinion and the stated policy of the President and do as they
>>>> wish?
>>>> I agree that most of our national problems are plainly visible, but
>>>> isn't the fact that powerful policy makers in defense and intelligence
>>>> wanted  to skirt legal accountability for war crimes and bring in Nazi
>>>> science and policy people and wanted to do so against popular will and
>>>> against important opposition voices indicative of  something other than a
>>>> united expression of national will? Doesn't the fact that they went ahead
>>>> secretly also indicate how policy is made in the US regardless of
>>>> democratic process?
>>>>    We talk about the cold war as a battle with Soviet Russia and China
>>>> but big enemies are always a psychological part of totalitarian systems and
>>>> can be convenient cover stories.   Meanwhile all the actual fighting we
>>>> engaged in apart maybe from Korea was to continue colonial projects.
>>>>  Part of what GR is about is the tendencies within the culture of the
>>>> western allies toward the generation of systems of totalitarian control
>>>> which are parallel to the axis madness . It also points out the tendency to
>>>> override moral restraint and ignore human rights in the interests of a
>>>> paranoid strategic priority. This is what a conspiracy is  and there are
>>>> thousands of examples from Abu Graibh to the gulf of Tonkin to the
>>>> Tuskeegee syphilis  experiments to cointelpro to operation paperclip. The
>>>> idea that all have been exposed is naive.
>>>>   A modern parallel to operation paper clip is Total Information
>>>> Awareness, proposed by Dick Cheney publicly, roundly rejected, and made
>>>> operational secretly, and in contradiction to public statements, by Barak
>>>> Obama.
>>>>  So Mr Le Carre is all wrong. There is no deep state, there is no deep
>>>> state, there is.....
>>>>
>>>> On Mar 5, 2014, at 8:59 AM, Monte Davis wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > I liked some of Blowback, but also found in it some of the tacit
>>>> "Nazi magic" attitude I object to in l'affaire von Braun: in Simpson's
>>>> book, that our stance toward the postwar USSR was corrupted by a relative
>>>> handful of Germans with their own _parti pris_ and axes to grind; in von
>>>> Braun's case, that we don't have to think about our own vast moral failure
>>>> in missile/nuclear strategy, or the Cold War origins of the space race --
>>>> because hey, there were NAZIS providing a technical leg up at White Sands
>>>> and Huntsville.
>>>> >
>>>> > In both cases, there were so many other, broader causes at work that
>>>> when I ask myself: "Would US choices and policies have been materially
>>>> different if Paperclip had never existed?" the answer is "no."
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 4:59 PM, Thomas Eckhardt <
>>>> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>>>> > I enjoyed, if that is the right word, Christopher Simpson's
>>>> "Blowback."
>>>> >
>>>> > Thomas
>>>> >
>>>> > Am 04.03.2014 10:11, schrieb Mark Thibodeau:
>>>> >
>>>> > Here is what some "serious" conspiracy minded people think of Ms
>>>> > Jacobson and her work...
>>>> >
>>>> > http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37827
>>>> >
>>>> > YOPJerky
>>>> > -
>>>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>> >
>>>> > -
>>>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>>   -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>>
>>>
>>>  - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>
>
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