In Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow, one of the characters explains a ‘European-style gangster hit’, which he says consists of three shots: head, heart, and stomach. Yes, that should definitely ensure the target’s demise!It strikes me that this comprehensive approach to high-certainty murder provides a pretty good analogy for what is going on in America and in many other Western nations. In my analogy, ‘stomach’ represents the basic, essential physical infrastructure of society–energy and food supply, in particular. ‘Head’ represents the society’s aggregate thought processes: how decisions are made, how truth is distinguished from falsehood. And ‘heart’ represents the society’s spirit: how people feel about their fellow citizens, their families, friends, and associates, and their overall society.\
I reflect that this analogy is a fruitful one, but that the analogy can be furthered. The Mozambique Drill is a more effective form than this European one: the gangsters are more or less wasting the shot to the stomach, as stomach wounds are not immediately fatal, giving ample time for surgeons compared with wounds to the heart, lungs, or brain. Thus, 'two to the chest, one to the head' offers a greater surety of success at a similar preservation of ammunition (where ammunition preservation is not a concern, you can adopt the alternative 'two to the chest, face gets the rest' approach).
Likewise in the analogy, the execution is more certain if you can destroy the morale of the nation and the people; and destroying its stomach, as it were, leaves one in possession of less goods in the event of one's final victory. It would be wisest to preserve the 'stomach,' and to focus on destroying the heart and the head.
The failure of the analogy -- all analogies always break -- may lie in the fact that there is no assassin. The forces destroying the stomach are actually intending something else which they are allowing to destroy the thing that worked. In this way they are much more like a cancer than a bullet: the hope is to replace the functional organ with a set of 'green' things that would consume and replace the organ, but which can't actually fulfill the organ's functions. The head has quit working because it has grown old and ossified, with so many layers of decision-makers and processes that end up pursuing their own agendas in the place of their actual purpose. It is the kind of failure that attends natural death, the breakdown of the body's functional ordering of things that had been the feature of its youth and health.
For me, the technique applied depends on the goal and the message, if any. The lack of immediate utility of the stomach shot depends on the order of shots taken. If the stomach shot is last, it's a statement shot, with no lethal purpose intended. So it is with the head shot in the "two to the chest, one to the head" technique, especially if they're delivered in that order. The head shot becomes physically superfluous--especially if it's a "behind the ear" shot--it's another statement shot.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, even if the stomach shot is first, lethality may be less important than the infliction of pain, whether as a statement to others, or for the sake of the pain to the one. The other two shots then may or may not be mercy shots, or they're taken simply to end the matter and move on.
Generalized to a national level, the metaphorical stomach shot may well leave[] one in possession of less goods in the event of one's final victory, but whether that matters depends on the victor's definition of victory. In some struggles, victory isn't achieved until the enemy has been exterminated, even if that takes burning to ashes the enemy's physical "goods." In other struggles, the lack of physical goods is less important than success in enslaving the surviving population.
These purposes, at the national level, are pretty common.
Eric Hines
Mozambique puts the two chest shots up front, then takes the third shot only if it's necessary: if they weren't stopped by the first two, drugs or body armor may indicate that a headshot is necessary. None of it is 'for show,' though I take your point about how it could be; none of it is shooting to wound or cause pain, either, though again I see where you're going with that.
ReplyDeleteIn some struggles, victory isn't achieved until the enemy has been exterminated, even if that takes burning to ashes the enemy's physical "goods."
Abraham Lincoln accepts that possibility in his Second Inaugural, though he hopes to avoid it:
'If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."'
There are some who would reopen that question, and see if it wasn't possible to destroy the rest of what remained as well as everything that came after it. I don't think they are the ones in real power, though.
Part of it is the decline that tends to occur in all institutions over long enough time periods *if* they are not renewed by inspired leadership. Part of it is due to people who are imposing their own psychological and spiritual problems on society as a whole. Part of it is people who honestly believe very bad ideas. And some of it is people who don't seek to benefit personally regardless of the effect on the institutions for which they are responsible. re that last point, see Larry the Liquidator is Now Your CEO.
ReplyDeletehttps://ricochet.com/1028483/larry-the-liquidator-is-now-your-ceo/
Just realized my above Ricochet post never made it past the Members page, hence, can only be read by those who are members of the site. Here's a link to my earlier version of the post at Chicago Boyz:
ReplyDeletehttps://chicagoboyz.net/archives/64191.html
In some struggles, victory isn't achieved until the enemy has been exterminated, even if that takes burning to ashes the enemy's physical "goods."
ReplyDeleteAbraham Lincoln accepts that possibility in his Second Inaugural....
There is that, but I was thinking more of today's Iran and the mullahs' desire to destroy Israel and the United States. I've quoted Rafsanjani on the matter before. Iran has no interest in occupying either Israel or us, the only thing we have that they want is our deaths.
Eric Hines