Journey Into the Mind of the South Bronx

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Am 27.04.2020 um 21:21 schrieb ish mailian:

 > All those cars in Vineland got me thinking about the Bronx.
 >
 > And RR's theocratic police state America c 1984.


"Theocratic", yes. It is there in Pynchon's "Christer pins", for 
example. David Thoreen writes:

-- At the top of Hector's list of weird vibrations are the "red Christer 
pins" worn by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) higher-ups, 
followed by:

'[L]ong lines of civilians at the gun shops [..]. and the pawnshops, and 
all the military traffic on the freeways, more than Hector could ever 
remember [...] troops in full battle gear, and that queer moment the 
other night around 3:00 or 4:00 A.M., right in the middle of watching 
Sean Connery in The G. Gordon Liddy Story, when he saw the screen go 
blank, bright and prickly, and then heard voices hard, flat, echoing.
"But we don't actually have the orders yet," somebody said.
"It's only a detail," the other voice with a familiar weary edge, a 
service voice, "just like getting a search warrant."'--

The quote is from VL, p. 339.

And:

-- The "red Christer pins" are another reference to FEMA and Rex-84. 
According to Ben Bradlee:

"There had been considerable anxiety within the agency about the 
legality of the Rex-84 exercise. [One FEMA] official said he had never 
seen such security around any other activity inside FEMA, and that 
agency General Counsel George Jett had ordered the installation of a 
special metal security door into the hallway of the fifth floor of the 
FEMA building in Washington where all planning for Rex-84 was 
conducted.... FEMA officials with the highest security clearances had 
been prevented from going into the restricted area.... only Giuffrida, 
Jett, and FEMA Deputy Director Frank Salcedo--all of whom were 
inexplicably reported to have been wearing red Christian crosses or 
crucifix pins on their lapels--were allowed in."' --

There is more, much more, in David Thoreen's remarkable essay. It is 
easy to overlook the specific references -- the "red Christer pins", 
"NSDD # 52 of 6 April 1984",  -- but following them Thoreen has found 
the political/parapolitical heart of VL: The action of the novel, past 
and present, personal and political, is driven by and takes place within 
the framework of a series of counterinsurgency operations targeting 
domestic opposition in the US -- most prominently COINTELPRO (FBI) and 
Operation CHAOS (CIA) in the Sixties, REX 84 (in the context of the 
government's illegal Iran-Contra operation) in 1984.

The Wiki entry for "Operation Garden Plot" also provides some important 
context:

'The Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan, also known by its 
cryptonym GARDEN PLOT, was a general US Army and National Guard plan to 
respond to major domestic civil disturbances within the United States. 
The plan was developed in response to the civil disorders of the 1960s 
and fell under the control of the U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM). It 
provided Federal military and law enforcement assistance to local 
governments during times of major civil disturbances.

The Garden Plot plan—drafted after the Watts, Newark, and Detroit 
riots—captures the acrimonious times when the document was drawn up. The 
"Plot" warns against "racial unrest," as well as "anti-draft" and 
"anti-Vietnam" elements."'

We remember "A Journey Into the Mind of Watts", of course.

 From this perspective, Iran-Contra was only the latest example of an 
executive going berserk in trying to implement its foreign policy 
objectives. Because of the Boland Amendment, the Reagan administration 
had to keep secretive about its actions. It also developed plans to 
quash domestic dissent in the case of a decision to invade Nicaragua:

-- Brock's unwillingness to wait for authorization for PREP foreshadows 
the climax of executive aggrandizement as it is presented in the novel, 
Reagan's approval of National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) #52, 
authorizing Rex 84. Ben Bradlee explains that the exercise:

"was predicated on [Reagan's] declaration of a state of national 
emergency concurrent with a mythical U.S. military invasion (code-named 
"Operation Night Train") of an unspecified Central American Country, 
presumably Nicaragua. While the FEMA exercise was in progress the 
Pentagon staged its first annual military exercise involving U.S. troops 
in Honduras--blurring, for some, the distinction between exercise and 
the real thing."

But what if? What if NSDD #52 were not predicated on, but accompanied 
by, a declaration of a state of national emergency? And what if the 
already blurry military activities in Honduras were accompanied by a not 
so mythical invasion of Nicaragua? As Pynchon illustrates it, the United 
States was one auto-pen signature away from martial law. --

Compare VL, p. 340.

In my view, VL cannot be properly understood by anyone who is not 
familiar with this short clip:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4797423/user-clip-north-questioned-rex-84