“Strange, the impact of History, the grip it had on us, yet it was nothing but words. Accidental accretions, for the most part, leaving most of the story out. We have not yet begun to explore the true power of the Word.”
The quotation by the narrator affirms that the specifics of history are in the most part accounts with omitted parts for self-interests. Dick Nixon takes notice of how the communists have used propaganda to create hysteria and direct history. Hence asserts how they could also manipulate information and semantics in order to play the same dirty game in the Cold War. The cold war between The Phantom and Uncle Sam, the embodiment of each side, relied on information or manipulation of information thereof. Thus, each side viewed one another as a threat and handled the accounts in a way that would favor their cause.
“Oh, he shouldn't be surprised, he's a Marxist and has nothing but contempt for the bourgeois capitalist press, yet paradoxically he is also somehow an Americanist and a believer in Science and Freedom and History and Reason, and it dismays him to see cruelty politely concealed in data, madness taken for granted and even honored, truth buried away and rotting in all that ex cathedra trivia--my God!
In the statement the narrator describes Julius Rosenberg’s state of mind in regard to political ideologies, media, and propaganda. It encompasses Rosenberg’s attitude towards The New York Times, in that as much as he is American, he is also a spy for the communist Soviet Union and harbors disdain for capitalism. Julius as one half of the American couple that provided top-secret information to the Soviet Union is portrayed as having ideologies that overlap each other in the quotation. Thus, puts to scrutiny the perception of evil versus goodness during Cold War, in that each side is barely a representation of either but rather an amalgamation of both virtues.
“I loved to debate both sides of any issue, but thinking about that strange space in between made me sweat. Paradox was one thing I hated….”
The assertion further accentuates the paradoxical nature of trying to consider each side in the Cold War between Marxism and capitalism. Uncle Sam views the Red threat as the evil Phantom that must be destroyed to pave way for the future. However, as the novel depicts each side views themselves as the rival of darkness and evil since their cause is noble to them. Henceforth in the quote as Nixon deliberates he finds the compromise too contradictory to even fathom considering the depth of the rift between both ideologies among the public.
