The secretive team that ran the OSRD and ran the Manhattan Project and ran America's go-it-alone atomic bomb foreign policy that ruled the postwar world were not elected officials of course.
(We are talking America , after all.)
They were instead five white protestant native-born well paid male scientists, further linked together in a consensual intellectual circle jerk by all having very strong Massachusetts-based academic connections.
It all began with Vannevar Bush, who was born and raised in Massachusetts and who eventually became prominent in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) administration.
FDR let him pick the key members of the all powerful OSRD (and its predecessor agency).
He began by picking Karl Compton the current president of MIT (though Compton was raised in the Mid West).
He then welcomed another ex-student and staffer of MIT, Frank Jewett , the president of Bell Labs and of the NAS , a man who came from old Massachusetts stock (through he was born and raised in California) and whose engineer father was an MIT grad.
And he picked Richard Tolman , another Massachusetts born scientist and BSc/PhD grad of MIT.
Finally, for just a tiny bit of variety, he picked another Massachusetts born and raised scientist, James Conant , the president of Massachusetts based Harvard University.
Fifty states in today's America but all of the men who effectively ran America and the world during WWII came from one tiny state up in the North East.
Maybe John Birch really was onto something when he talked about all those bastards in the eastern establishment !
Intellectual incest/inbreeding and dangerous groupthink are the inevitable result of such un-representative selection decisions....
(We are talking America , after all.)
They were instead five white protestant native-born well paid male scientists, further linked together in a consensual intellectual circle jerk by all having very strong Massachusetts-based academic connections.
It all began with Vannevar Bush, who was born and raised in Massachusetts and who eventually became prominent in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) administration.
FDR let him pick the key members of the all powerful OSRD (and its predecessor agency).
He began by picking Karl Compton the current president of MIT (though Compton was raised in the Mid West).
He then welcomed another ex-student and staffer of MIT, Frank Jewett , the president of Bell Labs and of the NAS , a man who came from old Massachusetts stock (through he was born and raised in California) and whose engineer father was an MIT grad.
And he picked Richard Tolman , another Massachusetts born scientist and BSc/PhD grad of MIT.
Finally, for just a tiny bit of variety, he picked another Massachusetts born and raised scientist, James Conant , the president of Massachusetts based Harvard University.
Fifty states in today's America but all of the men who effectively ran America and the world during WWII came from one tiny state up in the North East.
Maybe John Birch really was onto something when he talked about all those bastards in the eastern establishment !
Intellectual incest/inbreeding and dangerous groupthink are the inevitable result of such un-representative selection decisions....
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