ST ch 12 still the same dirt-stupid gorilla

[Robin Landseadel]

After Hicks has his very uncomfortable interview with Grizbee at the Federal Building,
we find him back at Unamalgamated Ops. Boynt eager to get Hicks to take the
Daphne Airmont ticket, Hicks knowing full well that he’s being taken for a ride but,
sap that he is, gets talked into it anyway:

“Oriental Attitude, discipline, serenity, call it what you
like, wallow as deep in it as you can get, but he’s still in
there, Hicks, still the same dirt-stupid gorilla always
ready to take short pay for beating up whoever he’s told
to. You think you’ve gotten past it, but those we all report
to, they know better, they know that once you’re down
here with us, you’ll never change, there’ll be no getting rid
of that inner torpedo. Whenever they need him, they will
know how to call him out to do their bidding.”

“They.”

“The federals who had you in are likely just a front, OK?
ST pg. 76

Some interesting language follows:

“They.”

Something Maxine said about paranoia and garlic?
 
Proverbs for Paranoids: #5. Paranoids are not paranoids because
they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves,
fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.

 “The federals who had you in are likely just a front, OK?
It’s the outfit that’s behind them,

Note the term here is “Outfit”.

. . . a nationwide syndicate of financial tycoons, all
organized in constant touch against the forces of evil,
namely everything to the left of Herbert Hoover . . .
ST pg. 76

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace 
(formerly the Hoover Institute and Library on War,
Revolution, and Peace), commonly known as the 
Hoover Institution, is an American public policy
think tank which promotes personal and economic
liberty, free enterprise and limited government.
While the institution is officially a unit of Stanford
University, it maintains an independent board of
overseers and relies on its own income and
donations. It is widely described as conservative,
although its directors have contested the idea
that it is partisan. In 1959 Hoover outlined the
Institute's mission including, "The purpose of this
Institution must be, by its research and publications,
to demonstrate the evils of the doctrines of Karl Marx
whether Communism, Socialism, economic
materialism, or atheism—thus, to protect the
American way of life from such ideologies..."

Hoover Institution - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Institution

If that’s non-partisan, I’m a Hottentot.
 
U.S. President Herbert Hoover, at the Bohemian Grove, circa 1939. Credit Hoover Institute Archives. Principal Investigator/Project: Analog Conversion Project | DPLA https://dp.la/item/ad7cf2bf4745a36f9ee6dd9cb6f4a01c

A great book on the roots of Stanford U:
 
. . . Palo Alto deserves many readers—not only those who already
share Harris’s political views, but also those who remain
bewildered that operators like Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel could
amass so much power. And it should be a clarifying read for
anyone who is affiliated with tech but feels vaguely uneasy
about its effects on society. On any given day circa Obama’s
second term, I would walk the Stanford campus and see an
alarming percentage of undergrads wearing free t-shirts that
advertised the war-and-surveillance profiteer Palantir, who
at the time were headquartered only a short walk away. If at
least a few engineers look askance at their old Palantir swag
after picking up a copy of Palo Alto, Harris will have done a
public service . . .

Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris Reviewed | Dispatches Magazine https://dispatchesmag.com/stories/review-heart-of-darkness

Herbert Hoover’s son, Herbert Hoover Jr, had numerous communications with
Allen Dulles:

Allen Dulles To Herbert Hoover, Jr. About US Aid To Shah (1955) https://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/biography/allen-welsh-dulles/letters/herbert-hoover-jr/

The foundation of the Hoover institution:

In June 1919, Herbert Hoover https://everything.explained.today/Herbert_Hoover/, then a wealthy engineer
who was one of Stanford University's first graduates,
sent a telegram offering Stanford president Ray Lyman
Wilbur $50,000 in order to assist the collection of primary
materials related to World War, a project that became
known as the Hoover War Collection. Assisted primarily
by gifts from private donors, the Hoover War Collection
flourished during its early years. In 1922, the collection
became known as the Hoover War Library, now known
as the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, and
includes a variety of rare and unpublished material,
including the files of the Okhrana and a plurality of
government documents produced during the war. It
was housed originally in the Stanford Library, separate
from the general stacks. In his memoirs, Hoover wrote:
 
I did a vast amount of reading, mostly on previous wars,
revolutions, and peace-makings of Europe and
especially the political and economic aftermaths. At
one time I set up some research at London, Paris, and
Berlin into previous famines in Europe to see if there
had developed any ideas on handling relief and
pestilence. ... I was shortly convinced that gigantic
famine would follow the present war. The steady
degeneration of agriculture was obvious. ... I read in
one of Andrew D. White’s writings that most of the
fugitive literature of comment during the French
Revolution was lost to history because no one set
any value on it at the time, and that without such
material it became very difficult or impossible to
reconstruct the real scene. Therein lay the origins
of the Library on War, Revolution and Peace at
Stanford University.

Hoover Institution Explained https://everything.explained.today/Hoover_Institution/

"I didn't wake you up, did I," he began, dry. "You sound so
frightened. How are the pills, not working?"

"I'm not taking them," she said.

"You feel threatened by them?"

"I don't know what's inside them."

"You don't believe that they're only tranquilizers."

"Do I trust you?" She didn't, and what he
said next explained why not.

"We still need a hundred-and-fourth for the bridge." Chuckled
aridly. The bridge, die Brucke, being his pet name for the
experiment he was helping the community hospital run on
effects of LSD-25, mescaline, psilocybin, and related drugs on
a large sample of suburban housewives. The bridge inward.
"When can you let us fit you into our schedule."

"No," she said, "you have half a million others to choose from.
It's three in the morning."

"We want you." Hanging in the air over her bed she now beheld
the well-known portrait of Uncle that appears in front of all our
post offices, his eyes gleaming unhealthily, his sunken yellow
cheeks most violently rouged, his finger pointing between her
eyes. I want you. She had never asked Dr Hilarius why, being
afraid of all he might answer.
CoL 49, pg. 8

Project MKULTRA collection, 1977 - Archival Collections at Stanford https://archives.stanford.edu/catalog/sc0860

“Boynt. No. We had a deal, you said, I heard you say it,
no more out-of-town jobs from now on, nothing further
than half a pack of smokes down the Dubuque, Madison
& Waukesha.”
ST pg.77

As far as I can tell this refers to a stretch of road from Waukesha WI to Dubuque IA,
about a 3 hour drive:

Distance between Dubuque, IA and Waukesha, WI https://www.distance-cities.com/distance-dubuque-ia-to-waukesha-wi

A Ticket to the opera?

“Too bad you never got around to the Civic Opera before they shut down.
ST pg. 77
 
The opera Boynt's speaking of is La Boheme:

. . . For instance, you know how puzzled civilians always get when
some frail little tubercular seamstress turns out to be a good-
size specimen healthy enough to belt out her numbers to the
back rows of the cheapest balcony seats in town and beyond?
Well, which is she, they keep wondering. Answer is, is she’s
both—but neither as important as what she really is, which
is the love of the tenor’s life—and he’s not necessarily any
Valentino either. Educational point here is you never know
who’s apt to be smitten gaga by whom, which guarantees
plenty of job security for everybody in the business.”
ST pg. 77

The Civic Opera House shuts down:

The company's closure in January 1932, after its final performance,
stemmed from the Great Depression's economic fallout, which
devastated ticket sales and Insull's personal fortune through his
utility empire's bankruptcy, though he was later acquitted of fraud
charges. Despite its short lifespan, the Chicago Civic Opera left a
lasting legacy in advancing professional opera in the Midwest,
influencing successor organizations like the Lyric Opera of Chicago
(which took over the renamed Lyric Opera House in 1954), and
symbolizing the intersection of commerce, culture, and ambition
in early 20th-century America.

Chicago Civic Opera — Grokipedia https://grokipedia.com/page/chicago_civic_opera

Orson Welles cited Insull as an inspiration for "Citizen Kane,"
based on the legend that Insull had built the Civic Opera
House for his wife, the actress Gladys Wallis. Welles denied
that Gladys was the basis for the movie's Susan Alexander
character, but elements of the Insulls' life did appear in the
script, and he used a photo of Insull to develop the look of
late-life Charles Foster Kane. Another Chicagoan, Harold
Folwer McCormick, the son of inventor Cyrus Hall McCormick
and chairman of the board of the International Harvester
Company, was cited by Welles as another inspiration;
McCormick's second wife Ganna Walska was an opera
singer that many contemporaries believed to have a terrible
voice.
 
Civic Opera Building Historical Marker https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=236406

Boynt is selling the ticket like it’s some career upgrade:

“You’re trying to tell me something.”

 “Nothing against the suit, Hicks, the cigarette burns,
the multiple reweaving, buttons that don’t match up
with buttonholes, personally I think all that adds
character, a just-folks image that may’ve worked fine
once among the less sophisticated, but the more we
expect to be face-to-face with the well-to-do, you get
it? Hiring gorillas who’ll take short money to get
beatings they probably deserve, that’s so out-of-date
now—these days they’re looking more for William Powell, . . .
ST pg. 78

William Powell, stage-trained with a voice perfect for the talkies, starts here as
sophisticated P.I. Philo Vance:

https://youtu.be/O4VtgBtHdhE?si=ox7MLANp4yF2L_KA

Philo Vance:

Vance was frankly a cynic, but he was rarely bitter; his
was a flippant, Juvenalian cynicism. Perhaps he may
best be described as a bored and supercilious, but
highly conscious and penetrating, spectator of life.
He was keenly interested in all human reactions; but
it was the interest of the scientist, not the humanitarian.

Philo Vance - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Vance

. . . some brainwork, some class, which for one thing will
mean a higher price tag suit, trust my sense of style here,
the Prince of Wales and I both subscribe to the same
fashion magazines—and now as to the shoes…”
ST pg 78

Whilst politics and his role as King were not his strongest attributes,
one thing the Duke of Windsor was world renowned for was his
impeccable sense of style, not only by his choice in clothes, but how
he matched them and how he wore them with pride.
 
For the time, he was extremely modern in his approach to clothes,
having them made for comfort, which he described as “dress soft”.
One element of fashion that he was particularly keen on was pattern
and this is evident in a large amount of his outfits. His passion for
pattern was particularly interesting due to his height of just 5’5”,
however he was clever in his cuts and his jacket waists were
abnormally high to elongate his legs, which in turn meant he could
carry off bold prints.

How the Duke of Windsor became a style icon | The Gentleman's Journal https://www.thegentlemansjournal.com/article/style-icon-the-duke-of-windsor/

In the late 1930s, after his abdication, Edward and Wallis visited Nazi
Germany. They met with Adolf Hitler. Photos exist of Edward giving
what appears to be a Nazi salute. During World War II, there were
concerns about Edward’s loyalties, which is partly why he was sent
to the Bahamas as Governor-General—a prestigious-sounding
position that was essentially gilded exile.
 
After the war, captured German documents suggested that the Nazis
had plans to restore Edward to the throne if they successfully invaded
Britain, believing he was sympathetic to their cause.
 
The Nuance:
 
Jane’s research suggests the answer is more complicated than a simple
yes or no. Edward was certainly naive about Nazi Germany. He visited in
1937 at a time when many British elites were still hoping to avoid war and
saw Hitler as someone they could potentially do business with.
 
Edward had expressed interest in Germany as a modern, efficiently run
state. In the 1930s, before the full horrors of the Nazi regime were
understood (or at least publicly acknowledged), some British aristocrats
and politicians viewed Germany as a bulwark against communism
and admired aspects of its economic recovery.
 
Was Edward VIII a Nazi? The Abdication Crisis, Unpublished Memoirs, and a New Perspective on Britain's Most Controversial King - Anglotopia Podcast https://podcast.anglotopia.net/was-edward-viii-a-nazi-the-abdication-crisis-unpublished-memoirs-and-a-new-perspective-on-britains-most-controversial-king/
 . . . And so forth—Hicks figures a real bottle of beer is worth
sitting through ten or fifteen minutes of this, though any
longer might have to be negotiated.

“…as the P.I. field in general begins to shift from skips and
small-time offenses into more of an espionage racket, along
with that comes the need for a snappier getup, European
Fascist uniforms at the moment, as you may have noticed
from the newsreels, being widely admired and commented on.”
ST pg. 78

https://youtu.be/YduoJoC5dXQ?si=N4SHDq6SJ9YV-3a3
 
“You’ll be happy to hear in any case that we’ve set up a
get-together for you and the family lawyers. Even thought
maybe I’d tag along.”

“Just to add that uptown touch, thanks, Boynt.”

The magazine selection in the outer waiting area at Godwin
Zipf . . .
ST pgs. 79/80

Godwin’s Law is a term first promulgated in 1990 by author and
lawyer Mike Godwin:
 
Originally intended as a lesson in information “memetics,” or how
the evolution of information spreads and evolves on the Internet,
the term is used to describe the phenomenon that the longer an
online discussion about politics lingers, the more likely it is that
someone will make a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis.

Godwin's Law - Political Dictionary https://politicaldictionary.com/words/godwins-law/

Zipf's Law can be understood intuitively by considering that in any
language, there are a few extremely common words (e.g., "the,"
"of," "and") that are used very frequently, while the vast majority of
words are used relatively infrequently. This distribution of word
frequencies follows a power-law distribution, where the frequency
of a word is proportional to its rank raised to a negative power.

Zipf's Law - GeeksforGeeks https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/nlp/zipfs-law/
 
That Chippewa/Ojibwe stuff comes up again:

“Are you aware of the American Indian belief, referenced in
depositions filed on Miss Airmont’s behalf, that once you save
somebody’s life, you’re responsible for them in perpetuity?”
ST pg. 80

The Ojibwe have influenced modern culture in many ways, one
of which is the presence of dreamcatchers in culture today.
According to history, dreamcatchers originated with Asibaikaashi,
the Spider Woman. She helped to care for Ojibwe infants and
adults. But as members of the tribe moved around North America,
it became hard for her to care for everyone. 
 
As a result, Ojibwe women started to make magical webs for their
infants to protect them. These webs would catch bad dreams and
release them in the daytime, while the feathers at the bottom
would let the good dreams be passed along to the children. 

The History and Culture of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) Tribe https://blog.nativehope.org/history-and-culture-of-the-ojibwe-chippewa-tribe

Ojibwe - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe

As a matter of fact, Hicks wasn’t aware of that Ojibwe responsibility when he rescued
Daphne from the funny farm.

“No. No. I didn’t save her life. Which first,” Hicks explains,
“means she had to be in some danger, which she never was,
see, it was all timing, location—” . . .

Like being having the keys to all those speedboats the prohis confiscated, getting
Daphne on the boat just in time and landing her in territory outside of Federal territory?
She’s underage when this happens, Hicks is risking a Mann act rap in the process,
getting himself and Daphne into a major storm in the process:

. . . November gales out here being respected for their violence
and deadliness, having over the years carried off Lake
navigation of all tonnages, sending to the bottom lumber
schooners and daysailers, working steamers and pleasure
yachts, sparing nobody, arriving without warning, proceeding
without mercy, not leaving till they decide to. Tonight’s is
turning out to be one of those . . .
ST pg. 97

Karma’s a bitch.

 “Yes, turning briefly,” paper-shuffling, “to the words of the
young woman herself—‘It was a crucially decisive
intervention. The few hours’ time it bought me then have since
represented all the difference between growing to normal
adult maturity and being condemned to a lifetime of infantilized
misery.’ ”

“Funny, she sounds just like a lawyer.”

“Given that ear for nuance, you may also appreciate the distinction
between saving somebody’s life and changing the course of it, which
considering also that Wisconsin law doesn’t apply on Ojibwe
territory could be argued in court forever,” a shrug from which some
private merriment may not be entirely absent.
ST pg.81

Tee hee. “Argued in court forever” sounds like a jackpot for a high-priced legal firm.

 . . . Boynt comes back from down the hall looking strangely feverish,
as if he’s fallen off a wagon too recently hammered together to
have a name yet.

“How much?” Hicks asks once they’re outside.

“Hefty to whopping. You’ll see.”
ST pg.81

The fix, as they say, is in.