In which I am dumbfounded by very old news.

So okay okay, maybe I'm just naive or woefully underinformed, but given the amazing paucity of information on the topic online, I don't think I'm TOO much dumber than your average bear. Anyway, this just blows my fucking MIND: The Campaign Against Marijuana Production. Which, since 1983--twenty-five YEARS!--has been flying helicopters all over California looking for pot plantations to destroy. Yes, this is depicted in Pynchon's Vineland, but I assumed the situation was being exaggerated for effect. It turns out, not so much. Incredible. I expect the only reason they're not actually using napalm is because of those durned librul environmental regulations. So let's see: a massive, futile struggle against guerilla forces in a dense wilderness? Is there ANY way to read this other than "those dirty hippies lost us the War in Vietnam, so now we're going to get them on their own territory?" Only this time, it will NEVER END, because nobody knows about it, and if they did, they wouldn't care. Hoo boy. This revises my conception of this country, I'll tell you that much.