Terror Pot. Far Out, Man.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Keith - fantastic. :canabis:

The drill was part of the US Bureau of Reclamation's Critical Infrastructure Crisis Response Exercise Program, which started in 2003.

I beg your pardon. Volkland Security in its pompous mode.

Terror Pot is like a surreal flight of fancy in Pynchon's Reagan-era Vineland, published in 1990, which explored the deep, largely unacknowledged, power and psychological structures of the Counterculture and the dark shadow of the secret detention camps of REX 84.

From The Satirist's review of Vineland:

The Reagan-Bush Repression: The War on Drugs

The War on Drugs in Vineland is shown to be the latest chapter of the government's Repression, which stretches far into the past, but grows in intensity over time. It is here that Pynchon is politically engaging, for how many novelists have been willing to address this perpetual war against civil liberties? Many find it difficult even to criticize the War on Drugs, perhaps because the "debate" has been framed in such a way that those opposed to it are seen as condoning drug use. The mainstream press joins the chorus of praise for drug busts, instead of discussing the loss of civil liberties, or criticizing government excesses.

The CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Production) offensive of the government is disturbingly portrayed. In the past Zoyd was set-up by Hector with a huge monolith of pot planted in his house. The War on Drugs is so prone to abuse by police power, precisely because mere possession of controlled substances is an offense, and so easy to orchestrate, to “plant the evidence.” Its villains, notably Brock Vond, are irrational tools of the powerful.

The victims of the War on Drugs are people like Zoyd, an average doper of the Sixties, depicted as an honest, hard-working caring father and musician, who smokes pot all the time. Zoyd even builds his own house, bit by bit over the years, only to have it confiscated by the government under civil RICO. After he is framed for growing marijuana, he seeks legal counsel, and is told:

“What about innocent ’till proven guilty’?”

“That was another planet, think they used to call it America, long time ago, before the gutting of the Fourth Amendment. You were automatically guilty the minute they found that marijuana growing on your land.”

“Wait — I wasn’t growin’ nothin’.”

“They say you were. Duly sworn officers of the law, wearing uniforms, packing guns, bound to uphold the Constitution, you think men like that would lie?” (360)

Not only does the government frame suspects, bribe informants, burn marijuana plants, seize property, the final irony is that they are a ultimate source of drugs. Agent Roy Ibble, tells Flash that:

notice how cheap coke has been since ’81?…Harken unto me, read thou my lips, for verily I say that wheresoever the CIA putteth in its meathooks upon the world, there also are to be found those substances which God may have created but the U.S. Code hath decided to control. Get me? Now old Bush used to be head of CIA, so you figure it out? (354)

The “you figure it out” recalls DL’s admonition to Prairie about the detention centers, to “check it out.”

So the War on Drugs in Vineland is shown as a perpetual attack by a corrupt government upon its people. Agent Ibble is even seen gambling with government money.

Although Pynchon cannot resist satirizing the counterculture along with its fascist oppressors, there is no doubt on which "side" he is on the struggle. Many of the main characters take drugs, including Zoyd's marijuana use, Takeshi's amphetamines, Ernie Triggerman and Sid Liftoff’s cocaine use, even Hub and Sasha's Benzedrine inhaler. (290) Vineland's cover shows a burning forest, suggestive of the government's attempt to stamp out marijuana use, a great nation’s war on a botanical species.

Vineland is the story of the repression of the counterculture, and the origins of the wider culture wars. The War on Drugs is central to the current repression, and an important battlefield on which civil libertarians must defend their liberties.

http://www.thesatirist.com/books/Vineland.html