IVIV pot and LSD and killing

[dougmillison at comcast.net]

"Smoking a joint or having an LSD trip that opens his mind doesn't stop him from killing." 

I take this as a key insight into the 60s as a whole and I think the writer ( the P-list digest today doesn't identify who wrote this post) identifies a key insight of IV. 

Look at how much pot and LSD was consumed in the 60s, and since that time, by Americans and look at how many people overseas have been killed by Americans since then, either directly -- dropping bombs, shooting, etc., as in a long string of countries since Vietnam; the film Apocalypse Now is filled with beautiful scenes of stoned American soliders thus rearranging and decorating the SE Asian landscape according to the War's unseen blueprint -- and continuing in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc; or indirectly by proxy, i.e., medieval-minded Afghani warlords who enjoy US support as they rape, sell opium or heroin, etc.. In the 21st century, pot consumption may be increasing in the US with the move towards legalization in a dozen states, but it hasn't lead to a more peaceful nation inside US borders nor has it made the US any less belligerent or destructive in the world at large. 

I don't blame the poor suckers who have been programmed to do the killing, bombing, private eye dirty work for the pigs & etc., either. Pynchon's books show no way out: in Pynchon's novels we're all either Von Braun or Pokler or the living dead in the slave labor horror show that brings us the Space Age; if we're lucky, blessed, we may enjoy the kind of truce that Zoyd and family manage at the end of Vineland, at the edge of a very dark American night, that seems to be about as good as it gets in the world of Pynchon's fiction. 

IV gives glimpses of beauty, amazing sights, wonderful stuff-- but is that just a drug-induced light show repackaging a century's worth of pop paranormal conspiracy theories? Or just another firefight on a battle field far away, fought to secure the right of one fiend to sell opium/heroin in the terrritory instead of a competing fiend? I find Pynchon's vision in IV to be dark and depressing, some bright moments but it's a creepy pleasure -- laughing as hallucinating Japonica pilots the car, an edgy pleasure -- like the black light that illuminate the images in 1970-vintage day-glo psychedelic posters. 

P.S. None of this effectively undercuts Pynchon's endorsement/observation of marijuana as still a useful substance. Both/and. As Robert Stone put it in Dog Soldiers, and I paraphrase from fading memory: In a world where soldiers in helicopters shoot elephants, people are just naturally going to want to get high. 




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