Reagan and Vineland

[Doug Millison]

>"Vond is conveniently "faded out" (via a budget cut) in Chapter 15 to enable
>the Happy Ending."


Vineland doesn't actually say a "budget cut" is the cause (and I wouldn't
call it a Happy Ending):
"Reagan had officially ended the "exercise" known as REX 84, and what had
lain silent, undocumented, forever deniable, embedded inside." (Vineland,
376)

It's more likely a line item in a budget that Congress doesn't even know
about, given the "silent, undocumented, forever deniable" nature of the
program.


I don't think this is the "shocking" development alluded to in that
Vineland review quoted here the other day -- more likely that would refer
to the novel's revelation that Prairie's infected with the same
fascist-loving death-trip bug that taints the American bloodstream and
makes possible a Nixon or a Vond or a  Reagan in the first place.

Reagan can afford to end Brock's project because there's no longer any need
for any overt coup -- the kids, even Prairie, long for fascism, and the
adults have embraced the Tube -- Reagan, and the forces that look to Reagan
as a figurehead, win without the need for fightin, time to trade in the
cowboy hats and boots and move to Wall Street -- it's the War that Never
Ends (as in that paper on Clausewitz and Pynchon that was mentioned here a
while back).  Those who oppose this vision of America must go even deeper
underground, and like the Traverse-Becker family, now that Vond is suddenly
deus-ex-machina'd out of the picture, wait for those more of "secret
retributions:" that "are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the
divine justice" as Pynchon quotes Emerson on page 369.


Vineland's linking of the Reagan Administration to the Nazis is the more
telling characterization of the US President who held office in 1984, for
my money.


"Brock [...] leaning darkly in above her like any of the sleek raptors that
decorate fascist architecture." (Vineland, p. 287)


"led by the notorious Karl Bopp, former Nazi Luftwaffe officer and
subsequently useful American citizen." (Vineland, 221)