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

[Joseph Tracy]

 My sense is that your first response to any discussion about conspiracy is that all concern about conspiracies is paranoid and distracting. When I ask distracting from what? I get no answer. When I point out that there really are a great many conspiracies producing very real suffering then you want to say all such conspiracies are obvious and that Pynchon only takes so much time with them in order to show that they are not worth spending any time on. Come again?
  My only argument has ever been that conspiracies, conspiracy theories and paranoia are part of the fabric of society and human experience . It is reasonable to pay attention and ask questions and to be particularly skeptical about those who want allegiance to their conspiracy theory or to their conspiracy.  Which would also be my take on Pynchon's treatment of conspiracy.  

David:  I understand  the idea that conspiracy thinking can develop from the  human search for explanations.  This has not for many years been new or revelatory thinking to me.  In no way am I of those who think that some revelation of the real "them" is critical to some great global  or personal liberation. But, in general, accurate information  and open conversation  is good for us. 

I don't think reading about operation paperclip will be old news for everyone . For some, it will force a re-thinking of US history in the WW2 era. It challenges the greatest generation myth that some are enamored with. My sister was cum laude at UC Berkeley and often describes WW2 as our heroic intervention to stop the holocaust.   GR can have the same effect concerning the mythology of WW2 at a deeper level of skepticism and re-consideration.

The idea that readers  will read this kind of book and think that it explains everything and"lets them off the hook" since it's all them evil Nazi's running the show seems very far-fetched.  Maybe the Alex Jones crowd, but that group can't be taken seriously.  



On Mar 7, 2014, at 12:17 PM, Monte Davis wrote:

> Joseph, if I run into anyone who denies that there are and have been real government conspiracies, or that the national security state has subverted law and the Constitution on many occasions, I'll certainly pass on your message. 
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> On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> Beliefs probaby differ in  origin and nature depending on the belief and the person.  Some are tentative working hypotheses and some are inherited fundamentalisms, some emerge from experience or revelation.  Operation paperclip was not a matter of belief but of real actions
> 
> What you are saying about beliefs is  relevant to  certain conspiracies and theories about conspiracies. But that is not what I have been talking about at all.       From 1946 to 1948  in Guatemala The US Health service deliberately infected prisoners, soldiers, and patients in a mental hospital with syphilis and, in some cases, gonorrhea, with the cooperation of some Guatemalan health ministries and officials. A total of 696 men and women were exposed to syphilis without the informed consent of the subjects.
> This is the kind of thing I am talking about when I am talking about a government conspiracy- a secret illegal action involving several institutional decision makers. I am not talking about something inside anyone's imagination but an action that injures others to achieve a goal by means that ignore due process of law and normal ethical constraints.
> 
> A conspiracy theory is a hypotheses about  a conspiracy. It could be a wild guess or  a very accurate estimate based on evidence.
> Because there are conspiracies and because they hurt people, there are legitimate reasons to investigate suspected abuses of a conspiratorial nature. The fact that many people with selfish motives publish half baked and stupid conspiracy theories does not discredit the good work that gets done and sometimes saves lives or brings compensation to victims.
> 
> The degree to which the national security state has subverted constitutional government is open for debate, but the fact that the FBI, CIA, NSA, and military intelligence have all engaged in secret criminal acts is a matter of clear historic record. The fact that those crimes are organized around a fairly consistent geopolitical strategy should produce reasoned but aggressive efforts to define a proper constitutional role for these agencies and to limit their unchecked growth.
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> On Mar 6, 2014, at 10:54 PM, David Morris wrote:
> 
> > 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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