VLVL2 (14) The Natch, 311-312

[Paul Nightingale]

"But Mucho, with a spaced and born-again look to him, only announced in
a robotised oracular voice, 'Why brothers, the new trip, the only true
trip, is the Natch, and being on it'."

[...]

"Eat at the mission, sit still for the sermon. But Zoyd was ready with a
lecture of his own."

This brief scene isn't just about two contrasting arguments juxtaposed.
Mucho speaks with the passion of a recent convert, Zoyd with an
authority born of experience. He recognises a distinction between
repressive and ideological state activity, ie "[putting] people in the
joint" to avoid becoming just "another show on the Tube": only "going
after dope [when] Prohibition was repealed".

Of course the kind of repressive activity he has in mind includes his
own recent experiences, contextualised as part of "the great northerly
migration" described in the following pages.

However, one should also recognise that repressive activity signals a
breakdown of ideological activity. Hence, the state is most secure
precisely when able to masquerade as "another show on the Tube".

Mucho has "a spaced and born-again look to him". Reagan allegedly owed
much to the fundamentalist Christian movement, often called the Moral
Majority.

For an overview, see:
http://www.sociology.ed.ac.uk/TeachingandLearning/Undergraduate/Sociolog
y2/2002_3%20lecture%20notes%20etc/RJ%20Lecture%202.pdf

Perhaps the most famous (rock industry) rebirth was that of Bob Dylan:

"Dylan's refusal to bow to the myths of rock - he'd always kept an
ambiguous, open relation with 'rock' anyway, what with his folk roots,
the frequent diversions into country, blues and anything else that took
his fancy - and his insistence on his personal salvation had cost him
heavy with critics and fans. 

"To some of them, any type of born-again Christianity smacked of U.S.
president Ronald Reagan's 'moral majority', even though Dylan's new
songs have consistently spelt out an anti-establishment stance, the
protest era rekindled if anything. There again, any spiritual values
smack of humbug to a sometimes insensitised youth culture, more caught
up with the materialist and consumer values it professes to despise than
perhaps it realises or cares to admit."

At: http://www.interferenza.net/bcs/interw/81-aug15.htm

Zoyd cites "Harry J Anslinger [and] ... the Marijuana Menace".

Anslinger, in 1937: "This drug is as old as civilization itself. Homer
wrote about, as a drug that made men forget their homes, and that turned
them into swine. In Persia, a thousand years before Christ, there was a
religious and military order founded which was called the Assassins and
they derived their name from the drug called hashish which is now known
in this country as marihuana. They were noted for their acts of cruelty,
and the word "assassin" very aptly describes the drug."

At:  http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/taxact/anslng1.htm