Absences in VL

[Peter Petto]

On 12/4/98, Sebastian Dangerfield wrote a lot of good stuff about Vietnam,
including:

> Vietnam appears in chapter 11 as the source of marijuana.  Not to knock
> the ganja, but interesting that one of the War's few appearances is as a
> means of transmission of one part of the holy trinity
sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll.

I like the image of sex, drugs, and rock & roll, as a kind of holy trinity.
I have the sense that the Vietnam War had a huge effect increasing the
contact between white-bread America and drugs; in the same way it and the
previous two wars progressively increased the contact between white and
black Americans.

And sex, drugs*, and rock & roll, can have a serious effect seperate from
the fun. Each has its place along the personal-shared continuum, wherein
one can have a transcendent spiritual experience that can later inform
political sensibility.

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* - drugs in this case meaning marijuana and psychedelics