In a word, yes.

It's increasingly clear that marlowe's Amerika--the conception of the country and its mission, I mean, that floats his boat--has little to do with some of the nobler (or, if you're feeling jaundiced this morning, by turns pious and pretentious) conceptions and ideals that have been held aloft times past to frame the national narrative. Sure, he pays occasional lip service to some of these (the USA as a beacon of liberty, enlightenment and progress, yada, yada), but never with anything like the warmth he brings to bear on the subject of the exercise of brute power as its own end. We can only guess at the exotic contours of marlowe's rich interior life, but breathless little credos like "The pen is only mightier than the sword when the pen is backed up by a gun. And when our pen is backed up by a tank, our pen is mightier than theirs" suggest a certain, ah, Viennese topography, don't you think? But apart from marlowe's private obsessions and insecurities I don't think it's necessary to go all the way back to Freud to understand him. Eric Hoffer nailed his type over and over again decades ago, as in "The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause" or "Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."

With so much of his sense of self-worth invested outside himself it is scarcely to be wondered at that marlowe resents questioning or scrutiny of the military machine onto which his identity is projected, and glories in the apparatus at work in its crudest, gaudiest and cruelest forms. It is possible to make too much of this (cf. Brandioch), but one is tempted to wonder which schoolyard persecutors, which unrequited love objects from our boy's childhood are summoned forth when he contemplates those insolent reporters and savors the just retribution visited thereupon.

cordially,

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