Pynchon mention re rock, paper, scissors game

[Terrance]

> I agree (have agreed, continue to...) and again, point to
> the almost total lack of the portrayal of the combined
> civil rights/anti-war movement (that coalesced around MLK, Jr.)
> in this novel, as another example of P. using the "presence
> of absence" technique, as he did in GR, to a large extent, with
> the Holocaust (I know you don't precisely accept that, but we
> are working on the same side...) to draw even more attention
> to the real battle, and more importantly, to the real enemy, as
> opposed to their tele-envisioned versions.

The real enemy is Hollywood? The Press? Journalists? 

Meanwhile, back in the book ...  Why do They name buildings after surf
legends at The College of the Surf? Hollywood, Oil, Construction, solid
California money, friends of Dick Nixon, build a college on a precipice
sandwiched between tow affluent and conservative counties adjacent to a
military camp, ostensibly to train people to work for them in law
enforcement, business administration, computer science. 

However, in 1969 "the same dread disease infecting campuses across the
land" corrupts the Conservative student body at what appears to be Their
College. 

Is it Their College? 

How could it happen at Their college? 

The students had been toking  "dirt-weed" that surfers were turning them
on to. The surfers don't go to The College of the Surf, they just sell
dirt-weed to the rich kids. 
The dirt-weed doesn't foster revolution. 

When, someone, probably a soldier from Their War,  introduces Vietnamese
Pot to Their Campus, all hell break loose, the students fight, call in
the Man, the Man breaks heads.

The Conservative students don't seize Mathematics Hall, they "surround
with a classically retrograde cult of personality a certain Mathematics
professor, neither charismatic nor even personable."  

The uprising flourished, good spirits grew in that darkening era. And
who would have imagined it would spread, cheerfully, not in desperation
or even defiance, but in simple relief from what had gone before. 

Research. You've seen Camps like this? Look it up Prairie! Look it up!
Do a little Research. Yeah, bust into the President's office and peruse
the files. NO! 

Anyway, these Conservative Students start Educating themselves, doing
Research, and they discover that Columbia is not the only School in
America where Land Development Deals are only disguised as a gift to the
people. In the name of the people (black people, white people, surf
people, the people) they decide to take it back. 

Rob, I'm confident I have not misconstrued Sale's critique of the
Columbia debacle. 
The students there were desperate and defiant, violent, polarized, and
Sale agrees with the Conservative critics of the events and the tactics.
Pynchon's ironic parody is a scathing satire.