NOT PYnchon but very obliquely semi-relevant

[Mark Kohut]

Under the title, what else happened while bombs dropped,

 there is this story in The Greif book: background.......major intellectual debates and positioning happening on whether MAN has a changeable ( human) nature ---Dewey a leading proponent with others and prominent as a celebrity. His pragmatism within History led him to that. Progressive, always hopeful. Hopeful that the US would not have to enter WW2 ( obviously pre , Pearl Harbor), for example. 

Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian and more,  growingly popular, believed human nature was " fixed" .
He argued that the US should enter the war on England's side. 
While he was delivering a lecture that became part of his deepest statement on this topic, the Nature and Destiny of Man, the Luftwaffe was bombing the Royal Navy near Edinburgh and the audience heard it. ," Niebuhr was so wrapped up in his message That he heard nothing," "he thought they were squirming about something he had said" " Niebuhr's anti-Deweyan permanent human nature message gained from that thunder. " 

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