BE -- "death wish for the planet" why the internet?

[David Morris]

Most of your comments have nothing to do with Pynchon's fiction. Your world
view is yours. Ish's views likewise. Arguments in search of validation.

David Morris

On Wednesday, March 2, 2016, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> First, I definitely blew it in my recall,  thinking Ernie was Maxine’s
> husband rather than her Dad( I read BE as a library book and didn’t have a
> copy to check). So Ernie was not a “prophet of the Market”, that was Horst.
> My bad. But my real question was about the internet and this post adresses
> that in a very satisfying way. It also refutes brilliantly Ish’s
> characterization of Ernie’s role, particularly in regard to this internet
> issue where he sees the direction of government surveillance and fascist
> death-wish infused tendencies behind it.  It is not long before Maxine
> comes to discover, through her own tough minded investigation, her  naivete
> about the corruptibility of the internet by both government and corporate
> interests.
>
>    Anyway thanks for several enlightening historic details.
>
>  I am still dumbfounded by the implications of the fact that only a
> stong-willed President Kennedy stood between the world and home grown
> American madmen calling for an all out nuclear first strike. We tell
> ourselves certain things can’t happen, but this shows how close those
> things have been to the minds of the most powerful people around. There
> shouldn’t be anyone that crazy with that kind of power.
>
> As we  hear calls for rebuilding the nuclear arsenal, watch a formerly
> unthinkable drone program spread, see mass surveillance on an un-dreamed of
> scale, all bi-partisan, I, for one, feel there is little to bring the
> continuity of cold war madness into question.
>
> I  question the Chabon take that this book is all about the endurance of
> family. What I see is family and decency in the last outpost of retreat
> before the succsexy-death-wish- one finds lurking behind doors, on
> rooftops, in the Ice-see basement, following the numbers,  falling from the
> sky and anyplace else one isn’t supposed to look.  Maxine does look( as
> many real citizens did) and must shut her mouth because the society
> provides no safety for  whistleblowers.
>
>
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> > On Mar 2, 2016, at 4:37 PM, Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >
> >> Why is Pychon using Ernie, a kind of prophet of the market to draw
> >> attention to a death wish contained in the internet? Why the internet
> >> in particular?
> >
> > As I stated before, I believe the main political theme of the novel is
> the continuity of cold war structures after 1989. Ernie's statement is
> highly relevant in that context ("(...) and don't think anything has
> changed, kid.").
> >
> > As you wrote in an earlier post, "This question about a collective
> death-wish for the planet runs like a cold shiver through all Pynchon’s
> writings."
> >
> > Why the internet?
> >
> > First, the facts as far as I can sift the wheat from the chaff:
> >
> > Ernie's statement that Arpanet was an element of
> Continuity-of-Government-planning after a nuclear attack is controversial.
> Sez Ernie:
> >
> > "Your Internet, back then the Defense Department called it DARPAnet, the
> real original purpose was to assure U.S. command and control after a
> nuclear exchange with the Soviets." BE, 419
> >
> > This is from a randomly chosen website:
> >
> > "It was not, however, created as part of any command and control system.
> Nor was the notion of surviving a nuclear attack a consideration according
> to statements from those who were in charge at the time (...)"
> >
> > http://www.alphr.com/features/369490/top-ten-internet-history-myths
> >
> > The RAND Corporation, however, referenced on p. 419 of BE, supports
> Ernie on this:
> >
> > 'US authorities considered ways to communicate in the aftermath of a
> nuclear attack. How could any sort of "command and control network"
> survive? Paul Baran, a researcher at RAND, offered a solution: design a
> more robust communications network using "redundancy" and "digital"
> technology.'
> >
> > http://www.rand.org/about/history/baran.html
> >
> > Ernie, in what I believe is a conscious reference to JFK's speech on P's
> part (I had not thought Kennedy was much different from other US Presidents
> until I read James Douglass' brilliant "JFK and the Unspeakable", the
> "unspeakable" referring to nuclear Armageddon), takes the relation to COG
> planning for granted. The rhetorical flourish of the "bitter-cold death
> wish for the planet" may be interpreted psychologically or spiritually but
> I prefer to see it as P's trademark technological Gothic. The internet is
> being anthropomorphized -- "It was conceived in sin, the worst possible."
> -- a child out of a horror movie.
> >
> > The real meaning of this develops in the course of the conversation
> between Maxine and Ernie. It starts with Maxine's observation "Maybe TV
> back then was brainwashing, but it could never happen today. Nobody's in
> control of the internet." BE, 419.
> >
> > If there is any satire here, and I believe there is, it is surely
> directed against Maxine. Just listen to her:
> >
> > "And look how it's empowering all these billions of people, the promise,
> the freedom." BE, 420
> >
> > Understandably Ernie gets a little annoyed:
> >
> > "Call it freedom, it's based on control. Everybody connected together,
> impossible anybody should get lost, ever again. Take the next step, connect
> it to these cell phones, you've got a total web of surveillance,
> inescapable. (...) What they dream about at the Pentagon, worldwide martial
> law." BE, 420
> >
> > Neither P nor Ernie are obliged to present a coherent argument. If I try
> to make sense of Ernie's various points, it would go something like this
> (see http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19871.htm for
> further background information): We remember that VL on the political level
> was also concerned with COG planning and martial law in the US. The
> internet now makes total surveillance possible, and thus brings fascism
> ever closer to our doorsteps -- put bluntly: total surveillance makes it
> possible to pick out the dissenters and card them off to the camps (REX 84
> made it clear that this is not a conspiracy fantasy). Fascism also brings
> us closer to nuclear Armageddon because the people in charge then may just
> be MAD enough to think it is in their interest to finally initiate the
> nuclear first strike against Russia that the Joint Chiefs of Staff planned
> for at the beginning of the 60s -- when JFK openly opposed them.
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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