More Vineland: pr3 84 Rex Bravo, Main Core, Weed's Spirit

[J Tracy]

More Vineland :  Does The People’s Republic of Rock and Roll ( pr3) represent the  imaginary enemies of Fascism? Reagan history: US jails and concentration camps, 84 Rex Bravo,  Oliver North, COG, Main Core

Below are 3 lines drawn from the last section of my review of Vineland, each posed as a question. The internal attempt to answer these questions has reframed my disappointment with the College of the Surf story as a deliberate cartoon by  the author. This cartoon is not coming from a realistic look at 60s movements; it is a mix of fantasy projected from an unacknowledged fear of freedom, from a lazy mainstream imperialist journalism, and from the political paranoia of the right that always looks for scapegoats to demonstrate how it will violently protect citizens by beating the shit out of anybody whose ideas of freedom include the participation of the poor in shaping the democratic ideal of a common good.  There was a real threat to the US empire in the 60’s . It was not weed, it was not sexual liberation, it was not civil rights for all, it was not rock and roll or anti-war activism, or honoring indigenous tribes and their localized wisdom. It was not even communism or socialism or any ism. In essence it was the revival of the pursuit of the revolutionary dream of freedom and justice for all. It was the painful process of looking at the failures  of  reductive materialism and war and  moving from violence to persuasion, from the pursuit of money and dominance to the sacredness of spirit and harmonious cooperation. Whether our Highly systematized  global civilization of materialism and its violent balance of power can be changed in time to prevent the suicidal outcome of its trajectory is another question Pynchon’s writing repeatedly probes at.  
Here are those 3 lines.
1)Vond wants Frenesi to bring him Weed’s spirit.  …..What are the implications of this line?
2) Is College of the Surf a cartoon meant to be understood as an untrustworthy cartoon?    3)The gov. crackdown is far more real and less hazy than any other part of the pr3 narrative. Is there a reason?

1)Vond wants Frenesi to bring him Weed’s spirit.  …..What are the implications of this line?
1) The satiric force of  any power or person wanting to capture or transport spirit  as though it were an object, or as though it were something that could be controlled or killed lies in it’s preposterous absurdity. Every faith grows stronger with martyrdom. No force on earth can compel the sprit of another to love  or honor it.  The hatred and cruelty that love despises and rejects will always be despised and rejected in a spirit that knows the liberation( moksha) of abiding in love.
   Weed Atman’s name has powerful implications for what he represents in the story. His  last name is a Hindu word meaning the eternal essence of a person, linguistically  the breath or spirit. It is thought of in different strands of Hinduism  as both personal and also as more of a supreme self, beyond individuality. Weed Atman is a mathematician whose language no-one else in the novel understands. Often mathematicians in the Hindu and other traditions were also mystics looking into the mystery of existence. His first importance in  pr3 events is because he is tall and can see further beyond the crowd than others. He functions more like Rajneesh style guru than a political revolutionary, but revolutions always have an aspect of spiritual change.  Maybe that is why Brock Vond is so obsessed with him. All Vond’s power is positional, but Atman is a person with charisma, insight, and , in Vond’s fears,  a person with spiritual vision that could go deep and far. It is as though Vond knows his real role is to man the watchtower of  the  political and material edifice of empire.  This fits with other things Pynchon has written about the replacement of  a humanity centered in trying to harmonize with divine mystery, or simply the complex mystery of existence itself, with more political  systems of seeing humans as parts of hierarchies of material, technological control.   Weed Atman’s first name is equally loaded ( pun not intended but noted with a smile). The chemistry of plants has many powerful roles in human culture and history. Hashish is the basis of  the name of a group of Shia warriors called Assassins( Hashishins) who were trained using copious amounts of hashish  and possibly courtesans to ignore their fear of death in anticipation of paradise in order to kill their enemies, often at the cost of their own lives. It has a long history as an alternative to alcohol in Islamic culture, possibly contributing to their preference for elaborate tessellation in architecture and interesting leaps of connection in literature. . In the 60s pot mostly had very different roles including the keen enjoyment of music and sex,  and of the present moment. It also took people out of their ordinary consciousness into various combinations of  unusual perceptual experiences, and to connect ideas and intellectual disciplines in new combinations, similarly encouraging creative musical leaps enjoyed by jazz and rock musicians.  Pynchon follows some of these threads in the effect of weed at the college of the surf,  but seems to me to leave off the kind of provocative questions that can happen. The College of the surf  is by no means a deep well of revolutionary thought. At any rate, Brock Vond, Nixon, Reagan and the right were from a culture of alcohol, white power, meat, prestige, legally defined marriage and a long history of killing indigenous people to turn the earth into resources and capital investments. They hated marijuana as a challenge to the state managed alcohol industry, and as a catalyst for cultural change.  Drug busts are also  ideal as a mechanism for political scapegoating , for fear propaganda, and for reinforcing a police state which is the story is where Vineland begins. It poses the deep question of whether our shallow use of the word freedom includes the freedom to explore the possibilities of consciousness,  knowing the risks and history  and hopefully guided by a healthy  family and community context and natural aversion to addiction and self destruction.    2) Is College of the Surf a cartoon meant to be understood as an untrustworthy cartoon?  
I address this question in my opening paragraph of this section. I think it is. The effect is hazy and experimental but also pierced by lightning shafts of truth about the deeper thinking and motives of Nixon and Reagan era oppression, the fantasies and potential for violence of the left, and the seductiveness and soul crushing effects of power, lies and money.  
 3)The gov. crackdown is far more real and less hazy than any other part of the pr3 narrative. Is there a reason?

This question opens the door to an arena of dramatic  historical information that will be unfamiliar to many, but not all, readers. In essence it is the story of how the government murders people who have committed no crime, and uses its power over legal proceedings and its power to plant false witnesses to deceive, to protect itself and hide its own criminal acts.  
Rex Snuvvle is the graduate student obsessed  and sympathetic with a far left branch of Vietnamese communists. He tries to influence Weed Atman and have a say in planning the pr3 revolt but has little effect with the close mouthed Atman. Frenesi lies to him later in the course of events telling him that Weed has sold out the students and is an FBI agent. She then supplies him with a gun. He shoots and kills Weed in a public meeting.  He is, as his last name implies pathetic, a sniveler/snuffler. His attempt at revolutionary purity is obsessive and  Puritanical. The double v is a classic Pynchon warning.  His first name , Rex, combined with the Orwellian timing of Pynchon’s  novel  set in 1984, connects him directly to an historically real plan to suspend the constitution and incarcerate dissidents by declaring a national emergency. The plan was called Rex 84 B and can be read about on Wikipedia. One of the key architects of the plan was Oliver North.  “During the Iran-Contra hearings in the late 1980s, then-
Representative Jack Brooks (D-TX) attempted to ask the following question to North: “Colonel North, in
your work at the NSC, were you not assigned at one time to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?” Brooks, however was immediately cut off by Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), who stated ” I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area, so may I request that you not touch upon that, sir.” Brooks protested, but North was ultimately not required to give an answer.
As the de facto leader of COG development and planning during the Reagan administration, North oversaw the creation of a controversial database that later became known simply as “Main Core.” The Main Core database, first built using the stolen PROMIS software , was essentially a list of American dissidents and “potential troublemakers.” A senior government official with a high-ranking security clearance and service in five presidential administrations described the database to journalist Chris Ketcham in 2008 as follows:
“A database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial
reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic might be
incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the
state’ almost instantaneously.”   https://dn721800.ca.archive.org/0/items/0000-00-00-00-whitney-webb-00/2020-03-23_What%20Newsweek%20Conveniently%20Failed%20to%20Mention%20About_Continuity%20of%20Government_.pdf
Ketcham said  that according to his source in 2008 the Main Core database held 8 million names. Considering our national trajectory it probably has not gone down. Rex 84 B was first  brought to public attention by the Christic Institute in 1984.Vineland was published in 1990. The events at the imaginary College of the Surf seem to be set in the 60s, but we do not know what the Continuity Of Government plans under Nixon were and the actions of Vond and the hidden concentration camps seem to be an accurate description of plans being carried out by Oliver North under Reagan, transposed into the 60s. We do know that  MK Ultra started in the 50s and was well under way and that there were numerous assassinations associated with the CIA and FBI in the 60s. These periods 60s-80s set the stage for the current attacks on dissidents and immigrants. But Pynchon was using the psychological , literary marker of Orwell’s 1984 as part of his exploration of West coast fascism vs, West coast free cultural exploration we find in COL 49 , Vineland and Inherent Vice.
1960s reminders
Patrice Lumumba 1961 CIA
JFK i963 nov.  CIA
Vietnam war escalates under Johnson.
Malcolm X 1965.  FBI
Che Guevara 19671. CIA
MLK 1968 FBI
Robert Kennedy  Fred Hampton  Mark Clark1969 FBI Cointelpro
SDS infiltrated by Cointelpro
1969 AIM occupies Alcatraz

please feel free to answer my questions in your own way, challenge my thoughts or otherwise comment.

more to come