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

[David Morris]

Conspiracy beliefs are the natural product of an inquiring mind.  Nihilism
is its opposite. Does the world make sense? Or is there no sense?  These
are the choices. Conspiracy is a component in this question only because
any sense that can be discerned is not freely given. It is hard to find. It
requires a quest. And such a quest implies an opponent.  Eventually the
questioner realizes the opponent is himself.  We have met the enemy...

David Morris

On Thursday, March 6, 2014, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I might suggest Conspiracy-beliefs and Paranoia are the mental warpings of
> a sick society full of the sado-masochistic warpings of history.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> 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 ROC
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