VL-IV (14): Round vs. Flat

[Henry Musikar]

The drugs wars aren't winding down as quickly as many had hoped:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-sweeney/taking-the-pro-pot-positi_b_179653
.html 

Henry Mu

-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Tracy

I think the drug laws are important because they outline the  
hypocrisy of the cultural war: freedom through incarceration and  
spying, justice trough  police  planting evidence,   political and  
labor peace through murder, drunks and tobacco users persecuting  
Marijuana users and indulgers in halucinogens. In 1984 everyone was  
doing coke but only blacks were doing time. No healing, no reduction  
of gangs with guns, no large movement to healthier less addictive  
society,   no trust between generations to pass on some wisdom or  
deal with this stuff without jails and guns. The war on drugs is a  
big fat failure, and here is a voice outlining why.

Isn't Much Maas a "much more"  effective ambassador of the drug free  
life than Nancy Reagan?   Isn't freedom and experience, as long as it  
respects other's rights and freedoms, the best teacher in the long run?

Well  its been fun, but gotta do some work today.

-----Original Message-----
On Mar 27, 2009, at 2:08 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:

> Beyond anybody's complex analysis of postmodern tropes and other
> highbrow concepts too highflautin' to be even decipherable, Vineland
> is about Thomas Pynchon's passionate distaste for our nation's drug
> laws. Col. Washington's and Gershom's scene in Mason & Dixon also
> comes to mind-our founding Father smoked weed! Now get over it!-But
> more to the point, our drug laws are designed to create and maintain
> outsiders. Busting folks that tend to dissent in this fashion has
> become a pro-forma process, creating a semi-permanant Underground. It
> is an inherent vice of law enforcement.
>
>
> Do you really think that is all Pynchon has in mind, Robin?  I think
> it is one of the many strands woven into this wonderful novel as it is
> in OBA's other works.  But I get the impression, both from the quote
> below out of the Slow Learner intro, and from the many threads y'all
> have explored here and elsewhere, that Pynchon thinks marijuana laws,
> among others, are dead wrong and I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly
> even though it has been many years since I last took a toke.  Pynchon
> is truly a genius.  He works at depths of meaning that leave me gaping
> in awe now as begin to plumb some of them.  Pot's just a tool, not the
> objective, I think.
>
> No question of Zoyd's good guy status, non-union worker and all (I've
> worked both sides of that issue and it ain't about collective
> bargaining power anymore, wasn't in the '70s, and it ain't now -- it's
> another  big business with hands down the workers' pants.)   This
> actually sounds pretty personal as regards the parenting problem.  P
> is likely a househusband most of the time, assuming he's a married
> man, being a pop and all.  Probably changed a fair share of diapers in
> that role.  Probably felt some of the despair of helplessness in the
> early days of it.  The pot thing seems to me like a specter in the
> magic show, rather than the point of the scene.
>
> It is that continuing in the face of despair that resonates for me in
> this scene.  What do you do when everything goes wrong?  As the
> Zennies say, 'Chop sood carry water.'   Or, 'Change the diapers,
> Zoyd."
>
> -i