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

Thu Mar 6 18:59:17 CST 2014

I might suggest Conspiracy-beliefs and Paranoia are the mental warpings of a sick society full of the sado-masochistic warpings of history. 

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On Mar 6, 2014, at 2:25 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:

> A symptom. Right. So in BE Maxine and March, though sympathetic (in
> the traditional sense of a sympathetic character), are satirized for
> their paranoia and for the conspiracy theories. And for tossing around
> phrases like "Late Capitalism" and the cant of the preterit
> psudo-intellectual (see V. and the Freudian cant the Sick Crew speaks
> at the local watering hole). So, yes, the Sick Crews are, while more
> sympathetic than the corrupt aristocracy, the Elect and Elite and
> their Henchmen, still subjected to the satire, to the moralist's irony
> and his clever plays and puns.
> 
> Sure.
> 
> But Conspiracy and Paranoia are symptoms of what?
> 
> The moralist would name it, the satirist would offer correction. But
> not Pynchon. In his works, their is no way out, no cure, no
> treatment...only...well...there is humor.
> 
> As Horst sez, Humor is Sacred.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 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
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l