Meshugginah posts, and other things sundry

[MantaRay at aol.com]

Jester clowns:

>Maybe.  But comparing it to the Holocaust is bullshit.  That is an entirely
>different animal.  I would admit that there are similarities, but it's
>propoganda to use words with such obvious emotional connotations as
>Holocaust in an argument/debate about drug use.

I disagree. I have a serious problem with the canonization of the Holocaust
in the Great Tragedy Rollcall, rendering it off-limits to any comparison to
anything like the current War on Drugs (which still continues), just because
it holds very serious emotional connotations for a certain segment of the
populace. It was an event like anything else and is not untouchable. There
were material, racial and political advantages in the remorseless seizure and
extermination of the Jews which resonate with the current material, racial
and political oppression of minorities in our own country. A book called
"It's Not About a Salary . . ." has an extensive list of the wrongful deaths
(the ones actually reported to the LAPD) brought about in South Central L.A.
in a small period of time. Their reasons for occuring are very similar. Daryl
Gates was a mini-Hitler in his own right. These comparisons are only
incongruent because, like Jules and his privileging of his idea of experience
over that of others in critiquing Vineland, they conflict with individual
feelings that have no bearing on the legitimacy of the comparisons. 

MantaRay

P.S. I second Jules' assertion of Hitler's artistry: he was a
master-fictioner. Who else but an artist could delude an entire world in
backing his pathetic attempts at genocide?