Because they had brought something into the world that out-imagined the mind. They didn’t even know what to call the early bomb. The thing or the gadget or something. And Oppenheimer said, It is merde. I will use the French. J. Robert Oppenheimer. It is merde. He meant something that eludes naming is automatically relegated, he is saying, to the status of shit. You can’t name it. It’s too big or evil or outside your experience. It’s also shit because it’s garbage, it’s waste material. But I’m making a whole big megillah out of this.
