Here at Drug WarRant, we don’t get a fraction of the kind of traffic that the major political blogs do, so I’m always pleased when they “discover” that drug policy is an actual, you know, issue.
Part of the problem has been that the drug war has been an equal-opportunity offender, with both the Democrats and the Republicans high on the bandwagon (even to the point where it was recently noted that the prison industries lobby Republicans for harsher drug sentences, while the prison guard unions lobby Democrats for harsher drug sentences). With both so thoroughly tarred, it’s hard for the political bloggers to bash the other side.
David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars found a way to do it with Republicans are clinging to their old ‘Reefer Madness’ mentality. It’s a good piece with a nice shout-out to our friend Lee over at HorsesAss.
The video of “Dr.” Tom Coburn getting all bent out of shape because we might not arrest every medical marijuana user out there is worth seeing (and getting riled up about).
Of course, on the other side (or perhaps his own side), Andrew Sullivan at Daily Dish has long been serving up marijuana policy reform. And Jeralyn Merritt’s lefty TalkLeft often promotes drug policy reform as part of its criminal justice emphasis.
It would be nice to see more of the A-list bloggers realize that the issue of drug policy reform is as big as just about anything else out there they discuss on a regular basis.
It is the same old story,and my only hope is that the regime in power now follows the science,as they have proclaimed from the start. No matter if the anti-drug
cartels spend their money or not,if Obama calls for the rescheduling of marijuana and lists the scientific evidence and the recent change by the AMA,any senators,or “Dr’s” that call for harsher sentencing and
arresting medical marijuana patients,will look like what we have always known they are,sorry pieces of dog excrement that depend on marijuana remaining schedule 1 for them to make a living. It is exactly how we want them to act,because more and more people are actually listening to our blogs and debates with less mindset than ever before,and the ranting and raving or their lies are being exposed for the propaganda that they have used since day 1,too sell prohibition to America,and less people are listening to them every day.
I expect any day for NIDA or maybe even a hired research team to come out with some study proclaiming irrefutable proof that marijuana causes your children to be born naked. They are digging and scraping the bottom of the barrel,trying to find anything that can bolster up their falling house of cards.
I hope Sen. Coburn gets cancer and the legal prescription drugs dont work for him. What a terrible human being.
So these politicians like Coburn are dead set on ‘SAVING’ us from cannabis,which I dont want or need, who will save us from the politicians? *crickets* Humm…guess we have to save our selves from them. That seems to be the way of things, they beat us to death and no one stands up, beat them to death and their cronnie friends stand up.
Pete,
The problem with the Big Blogs is that they become bought and owned by the same forces they were against when they first started (before getting big). I have been a reader of C&L since its inception and watched this phenomena happen.
True with the others, as well, in many cases.
But, as you say, at least there is more visible publication. I just wonder what the ulterior motive of Dave is.
(Raucous, gut-splitting laughter) Finally. Finally. I’ve been dropping in over that the very blogs being mentioned, almost every day, peppering their sites with some well-placed (and earned) verbal buckshot as to how the Wo(S)D is an issue so-called ‘progressives’ need to look at at right now. And, yes, I emphasize ‘so-called’ in order to exact a slight twinge of embarrassment as to their blindness in not seeing this as the civil rights issue it has always been.
Pete’s site, CannabisNews, etc.and others have always been on the bleeding edge of reform, and now we get these Johnny-come-lately’s suddenly realizing that the font of many of the fascist laws and civil rights destroying practices of the past 30 years – and especially the past 9 – was the DrugWar.
Welcome, all you day-late-and-a-dollar-short types. But don’t expect me to give up my seat on the bus for your big fat established-blogger arse to be planted on it and then loudly declare how you ‘discovered’ there was a bus to begin with….
When schedule #2 is a reality the prohibwingnut bunch can still make $$$ arguing for a re-illegalizing, back to schedule#1. Win…Win!
As with all the right-wing drug warriors, Coburn seems to have abandoned most of the principles that the GOP professes to support. For example, what ever happened to:
States rights?
Individual freedom?
Democracy?
Smaller government?
Less intrusive government?
Fiscal responsibility?
Market-based solutions?
That all seems to go out the window when an opportunity presents itself to create a huge and powereful bureaucracy that can spend unfathomable sums of money denying voters the right to determine the laws that affect their lives while exerting complete federal control and unprecented intrusion into people’s personal lives, homes, and medical relationships.
It must be great to be Tom Coburn and be completely full of shit while keeping a straight face. No wonder the Republican party is in the toilet!
Kaptin,
Just look at them as “reinforcements.” “Cherries” as we used to call them. Now, it’s their turn to walk point!
“So these politicians like Coburn are dead set on ‘SAVING’ us from cannabis,which I dont want or need, who will save us from the politicians?
Meanwhile, the banksters and the pin-striped bandits are raking in record bonuses and the economy sheds jobs and people’s livlihoods are cratering.
The politrixters (a set of lying, greedy bastards which includes Mr. Coburn) let the banksters and the pin-striped bandits get away with raping our economy, but cannabis is a problem? Most of the banksters and pin striped bandits like martinis.
I think the criminal collusion created by the 3 martini lunches, leisurely rounds of golf and off the record conversations involving insider trading have done more harm to our country than any amount of cannabis consumption.
Both Progressives in the Democrat party and Secular conservatives in the Republican party have utterly failed with regard to this issue. Both have fallen prey to the save the children, protect our communities by incarcerating everyone ideology. Not to mention people of color in general who are disproportionately affected by these laws. Where are their organizations like the NAACP? It is disgraceful and bewildering that so many people who you would think would find the War on Drugs to be so offensive stand idly by as it continues to wreak havoc on communities of people and taxpayers’ wallets
“Not to mention people of color in general who are disproportionately affected by these laws. Where are their organizations like the NAACP? It is disgraceful and bewildering that so many people who you would think would find the War on Drugs to be so offensive stand idly by as it continues to wreak havoc on communities of people and taxpayers’ wallets.
I have wondered that myself. Even if the NAACP doesn’t find some outrage, you would think that Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or even President Obama would have been calling for an investigation or at least expressing some disapproval. IMHO, the silence from these people indicates approval of the status quo and it is not acceptable.
A lot of the bigger political blogs have fallen for the “look at this shiny object over here” kind of diaries, along with pootie diaries and other diversions. The latest round of diaries seems to be mostly the Obama is/isn’t diaries. There is a lot to be said for single issue blogs because when you look at the drug war of the past 40 years a lot of issues that people of all political persuasions worry about the most are all related directly or tangentially to what we have been warning people about for years. Just like the MSM, big blogs tend to follow trends. Drug policy is now more in favor that it has been in the past, so we are seeing more and better discussions than in the past. I hope that this continues.
@ EZ: Oo-rah and A-Men! Let them stand on the same windy corner we’ve been at, facing that icy-cold blast we’ve weathered for decades.
@Cliff: I am reminded of something that I recall reading way back in the 1990’s, something that Jesse Jackson said about the ‘bad Black brother’. The implication was that he was more afraid of said ‘bad Black brother’ than he was of any White.
So why the silence about the obviously racial aspects of the Drugwar? Especially when those racial aspects are very clearly delineated in the writings of those who fronted for it early on? It only takes a little research to find out what the first promulgators of the drug laws felt about minorities: ‘cocaine n****rs; ‘crazed Messikins’; the ‘Yellow Peril’, etc.
Take it to a possible less than savory conclusion: the DrugWar has served as a ready means of incarcerating the ‘bad Black brother’ and getting him off the streets without the African-American community leadership having to dirty its’ own hands in the effort. Hence the silence of many African-American community leaders regarding the obviously racist aspects of the DrugWar; to complain about that is to open themselves to charges of hypocrisy for not having ‘policed their own’ regarding their conduct.
Hey Cliff, thanks for shedding a little more light on my point.
First of all, the progressives have had to focus on a lot of different things than the drug war: and it’s a community over at Big Orange.
Also if you’re a middle-class white blogger, the drug war is pretty distant. The drug busts happen in neighborhoods where middle class people either don’t go or quickly drive through. Why don’t minority leaders fight against the drug war? Well, substance abuse is a real issue in minority communities-the violence, the health effects. Supporting legalization seems to feed into supporting the gangs and the violence and neighborhoods not being livable. Not to mention feeding into the long-standing stereotype of minorites being unable to control their impulses and passions. If you are fighting for equal rights and dignity-standing up for drug legalization, no matter how well intentioned, feeds into the stereotypes.
There’s also a much-needed caution. Drugs, even advocacy of legalization, brings increased police scrutiny and sometimes harassment to an minority activist who’s already fighting other battles.
In addition, the backbone of the Civil Rights movement was the church-hardly the place for people who would approve of drug taking in the first place. Church ladies would not give or support anything that made their men even more intoxicated than before, let alone the basic Baptist/Pentecostal disapproval of anything mind-altering substance. Even today, the mainstream activist movements shy away from anything that would endanger their Church base.
It is no accident that the vanguard for fighting for drug legalization-has been left to largely white males who do not have to fear so much decades of incarceration, or to Rastafarians who at least have a religious rationale and a supportive community behind them. Both groups have the least to lose in fighting this battle.
just me;
No problemo, glad to throw my 2 coppers in to the discussion and that you felt like I enhanced your comment. I have been watching our economy tank for the last 15-20 years and our liberties are doing no better with either party in power, they are melting away like the nazi faces in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The government and corporate parasites are like the nanites in The Day the Earth Stood Still, eating every liberty they find and consuming all of our prosperity.
The downfall of our nation is a slow motion train wreck into the massive sun of debt.
Drugs are a fringe issue. In a world of celebrities and TMZ, drugs are just another hangnail in Americans’ manicure.
It takes people dying and mothers maimed by SWAT teams to draw any national attention it seems, and perhaps over the next 5-7 years we will see a more practical and objective approach to intoxicant policy.
Carol:
Thank you for shedding some light on what may be going through minority activists’ minds. Although their communities have suffered the worst, it is important to remember they are not a monolithic political group and many of them simply do not want drugs to be legalized.
Which goes back to the general point that legalizing drugs is not a left/right issue, although the left is more sympathetic. Up until now, leaders of all political backgrounds have seen much danger and little reward for talking about legalization, so they don’t adopt the issue.
Since I’m coming from the libertarian-right perspective, I will say my impression of Tom Coburn is that he’s pretty good on most matters of liberty and financial policy, but his drug policy views are depressing. Many Republicans have the right ideas with small government thinking, but when it comes to certain issues like drugs, all that high minded ideology seems to go right out the window.
I wish there was some way to persuade them to be more consistent in their views!
Carol, all of your reasons for minority community leaders not speaking out about the War on Drugs make sense. However, the complete turnaround that would occur in the neighborhoods of these minority leaders plus a stop to the mass disenfranchisement that would go along with putting an end to the War on Drugs would be so advantageous that it should almost be their duty if they really cared about those in their community to actively advocate for this position. I can only hope that in the future they can put their fears aside for the greater good. I also don’t necessarily think that advocating a position on this needs to be done on a street corner with a sign. I think there are ways these community leaders could go about advocating this position in a way that would not necessarily bring hell down upon them. I think it is getting safer by the day to be publicly down on the War on Drugs.
Carol, I’m sorry, but I beg to differ. I’ve read those excuses before, on various supposed ‘progressive’ sites, and IMHO they are still as invalid as they myopic.
If you look at the the history of drug law reform, particularly during the period of the mid-to-late 1970’s, you see that a golden opportunity was missed by both White and Minority reformers. Had they followed through instead of being complacent, we wouldn’t have need of this Website or be having this conversation.
Socially, the country had had enough of right-wing authoritarianism (as represented by the Viet Nam war, Watergate, Tricky Dick and his coterie) and was embracing decriminalization. It ‘helped’ that the economy back then was also in dire straights, thanks to the inevitable cost of the VN War’s end resulting in the 1974-79 Recession.
The socio-political oppression of minorities was no longer culturally acceptable…if only because it could prove ruinously expensive to insurance companies, thanks to large swathes of urban centers being trashed thanks to civil disturbances caused by the wrath of those minorities from their treatment by the authorities. (I remember all too well what happened after ML King was gunned down, my family lived in a suburb of DC and we could see the smoke rising from the burning city blocks.)
As to the dominant White culture, the idea of having little Johnny and Suzy Whitebread winding up with a life-destroying arrest record was too much of a risk to take.
The ‘progressives’ back then had had a perfect window of opportunity to expose the underlying racial aspect of the drug laws to apply the coup de grace to those laws…but chose not to. Had they done so, it is quite possible the country would have been spared the Neo(perhaps ‘Faux’ is a better word)Conservative Reaganite backlash and subsequent descent into crypto-fascism. All of the civil-rights-destroying laws formulated from the Reagan Era onwards were based on increasing the severity of the drug laws, and from those came the even more execrable ones such as the ‘PATRIOT Act’.
In short, the drug laws were the unacknowledged core of the same ‘Southern Strategy’ used first by Nixon and then later by Reagan, and had those laws been struck down when ‘progressives’ had the chance, those same ‘progressives’ would not have been consigned to political Purgatory for 3 decades.
And by attempting to offer those “I have better things to do than change pot laws’ excuses, this time, they risk being consigned to political Hell rather than Purgatory. For the power of those laws to destroy all civil liberties has grown immensely (the ‘Patriot Act’, remember?) and we saw during the reign of Bush Too (not a misspelling but deliberate) just how handy those laws were to those who view democracy as being the ‘babble of the rabble’…and the damn laws are still on the books. Where’s all the ‘progressive’ outrage over that?
These laws stand to rob us all of our liberties, yet I hear practically nothing from ‘progressive’ quarters about removing this giant Sword of Damoclese from over our heads. Now that ‘their’ man Obama is in power, the laws will never be used against the citizenry again…or so the woolly-headed thinking goes.
But that Sword is still up there, still hanging by a thread, and still threatening all our liberties…and the point of that sword are the drug laws that ‘progressives’ refuse to deal with because of a false perception of it not being that important. Like I said, it is a view that is an invalid as it is myopic…and it would seem that far too many ‘progressives’ are in terrible need of ‘coke-bottle’ spectacles because they can’t see the danger of allowing such laws to remain unchallenged and on the books.
The golden opportunity wasn’t there. The leadership was of a generation that didn’t normally partake and who, on many matters, shared the same opinion of drug policy as some of the folks who started it. There were younger folks, but the younger, more militant groups were still thinking about revolution and not necessarily about drug reform efforts.
Agreed,Nixon was an alcoholic,and it pissed him off when the Viet Nam veterans were outside his window at the
Whitehouse telling him to get out of Nam,along with even 0ver 100,000 hippies,and they were all smoking pot,all over DC and at every National monument and in public.
Add the fact that his daughter got busted for pot,he went ballistic. The rest is history,sadly.
oops,late 70’s,we’d already booted him out,but his war on drugs was going too strong by then. Can’t remember the Drug Czar then,but most of the police then were hunting powders instead of weed. They didn’t get serious about weed until after all those Cheech and Chong movie. I don’t think they caused the switch,but they didn’t help.
Well, I’ve written 340 posts on cocaine,200 on the war on drugs, 240 on medical marijuana, 70 on meth, 209 on narco-terrorism, 125 on legalization, 39 on decriminalization and who knows how many others on related topics, including every candidate’s position on drug policy since 2002, so I’m not sure what else I can do. The only topic at TalkLeft that competes at all is Guantanamo and the detainees and war on terror. (And of course there’s BTD with his non-criminal political writings.) TalkLeft writes an average of 15 posts a day. Over 7 years, it’s added up. While you are right that the Drug War isn’t the only topic, I think we cover it more than anyone besides Drug War Rant and NORML.
Since I write on what is in the news that day, the number of posts reflects in large part the news cycles. But as soon as I see a drug war or policy story that is something other than a rehash, meaning it provides a new insight or news bit, I write about it.
I’m sure I miss some, as I do have a day job, but all it takes is an e-mail from any one of you with a link to what you want me to read, and I’m almost always going to write it up, with credit to the person who sent it(if they want it.)
Traffic is down for all blogs, including mine. Part is, as someone said above, most have gone over to Big Media. I’m sticking with the “sole proprietor” route and no more than two other trusted lawyers blogging with me. For us, this is a hobby.
Pete, Thanks for including me in your post. I know you didn’t like it during the primaries when TL was more about the election than drug and crime, but as soon as the Dem. nominee was decided, I got right on board with Obama. We have 2-4 more years before we have to go through that again, which leaves a lot of time to write posts on drug policy reform, which as a criminal defense lawyer who represents drug trafficking clients, has always been my number 1 concern.
Feel free to send me posts you write that would be a good fit for TL, and I’ll do my best to write them up with links and credits to add to your traffic.
Twitter helps too.Let me know if you have a Twitter account so I can follow you. Mine is TalkLeft.
As I recall the cannabis scene was wide open in the late ’70s. I graduated high school in ’78 and was right in the middle of it. It seemed like a foregone conclusion that cannabis would be decrimmed until Reagan took office. If you look at his history as CA gov in the ’60s you’ll find he had the same problem with hippies that Nixon did. From my recollection it’s more Reagan’s war on drugs than Nixon’s. Had Carter been re-elected things in this country would have been very different. Of course Carter’s drug czar getting busted tooting cocaine with the good people of NORML really was the straw that broke the decrim camel’s back.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/media/smoke.htm
Carol, again, I beg to differ. The ‘leadership’ within reform circles was there…but fell prey to egotism rather than ‘revolutionary’ sentiments.
Those ‘revolutionary’ sentiments you mention had largely burned out after the end of the VN war, and as the following recession deepened, people were more interested in the same kind of economic survival issues then as they are being forced to face today. Conditions which are repeating themselves once again.
And so I reiterate that if the ‘progressive’ elements within society back then, those whose sense of social justice had not revolved entirely around opposition to the VN War and Tricky Dick’s outrages but also encompassed matters of civil rights, had made a concerted effort to expose the racial (and therefore, racist) aspect of drug prohibition, we might not have had to experience the rise of the crypto-fascism of the past 20 years, of which the DrugWar was a symptom.
I would recommend that anyone really interested in that period of drug law reform history read High In America by Patrick Anderson.
Published in 1981, it was the first book to my knowledge that covered what had happened in the early 1970’s to early 1980 regarding the derailment of the anti-prohibition movement. It’s not a pretty picture, as the major players involved in that derailment came largely from within the reformer camp, from within the ranks of putative ‘progressives’. And the circumstances of that derailment were verified by one who was a victim of that derailment in a PBS broadcast regarding the DrugWar.
Had there been more involvement of the greater ‘progressive’ community, instead of leaving the Herculean task of drug law reform to those who, quite frankly, were not up to the job, we might not have had to endure the ramping-up of the DrugWar we experienced these past two decades, with the concomitant erosion of all civil liberties (courtesy of that crypto-fascism I mentioned) to the point those civil liberties exist now only at government suffrage. (The ‘PATRIOT Act’, again.)
This is why it is so important now to end this madness while the economic, social and political circumstances have combined to present the opportunity…and why I am so critical of those who claim the mantle of ‘progressive’ for their short-sightedness in not wanting to take on this issue when it forms the core of so much that is wrong in this country and therefore should concern them.
What the hell?
isn’t a fundamental talking point of republican ideology “Smaller federal government involment”??
Whatever happened to states rights? the constitution clearly states that these kinds of things should be up to states to decide… This isnt a federal issue and it should be ANY kind of issue.
I should also like to point out that just as it was egotism that played a major role in the failure to end the madness last time, it still looms as a threat to the success of our efforts today.
The ‘players’ on the ‘field’ on the anti-prohibition side must not allow their personal beliefs, and in some cases, dislike of other personalities within the the reform movement, to blind them to the absolutely critical work of retiring drug prohibition for good and all.
Just as you don’t kill a venomously deadly snake by striking at its’ tail first and then letting it go, the reform leadership needs to make a serious effort to form alliances and work in concert to chop the damn thing’s head off in one blow. And if that means the major players swallowing their pride and ‘making nice’ with each other, then so be it.
And if they can’t, others will.. For, as Charles De Gaulle said, “The cemeteries are full of ‘indispensable men'” This is much too big and the stakes vastly higher than last time to allow for failure again…
Agreed,,,,,so when do we storm the Baptists?
Jesse, there are Republicans…and then there are RINO’s.
Dr. Ron Paul is an example of the classic Goldwater Republican, one who adheres to the original principles of traditional conservatism. Those same principles the NeoConservatives (who are almost all former Trotskyites!) who have taken over the Republican Party sneeringly refer to as belonging to ‘the fever swamps’ of political theory.
A traditional conservative would never have thought to use the power of The State to force social conformity beyond the limits the Constitution allows for. Whereas, for the NeoCons, since in their mind the end justifies the means (Trotskyites, remember?) they have no qualms at all in doing so.
A traditional conservative is for foreign non-intervention, sound currency, limited government powers, etc. Which puts them at odds with those who favor the intrusion of government in every aspect of daily life, to the point we have the situation where the government sees fit to tell you what you may or may not put into your own body….all for our own good (and their political and monetary profit), of course.
As to ‘State’s Rights’, because that had been used in the past by segregationists to justify maintaining an execrable practice , the original Brandeisian concept of States as bulwarks against the dangers of a centralized government has been tarnished. Even though the concept retains its’ merit, given how that overly centralized government has abused the power ceded to it with tragic results, ‘State’s Rights’ are still identified with savaging Black civil rights activists with high-pressure water-hoses and attack dogs.
We’ve gone far afield from what the Founders had in mind when they established this Republic of separate Republics. We have, in fact, become an empire, with the States-as-Republics become mere provinces…and we’ve been suffering from the Imperial Disease, whose symptoms include foreign interventionism, neocolonialism, and diminished domestic civil rights, ever since. Whether it’s too late to try to return government to traditional limits I’ll leave History to decide…but I’m damn well gonna do my part to try…
Don’t blame me I voted for McGovern. Great dialogue.
After listening to Coburns questions too Holder,I have too say that he is right. As long as prohibition stays in place,our children will be able to buy marijuana. Only by legalization will retail outlets that check ID’s be able to refuse to sell too minors,dealers never will refuse anyone with the cash.
The man is crying out for an end to prohibition,and no one is listening,not even him.
“Marijuana is addictive to people the same way sex is,anything that good needs repeating!”
Kaptinemo:
Goldwater Republicans are one of the Republican factions, but their numbers are not great enough to win elections. They must ally with other, somewhat sympathetic factions to win. That’s why the Republicans really are composed of what boils down to a War faction and a God faction. The Goldwater faction is the smallest faction, I think.
Goldwater Republicans are pretty much libertarians. They can tolerate the God faction, as long as it doesn’t try to push its values on other people, and they can tolerate War as defense of the country and as long as War doesn’t start anything crazy overseas. But since the Goldwater faction is the weakest, usually God and War and in charge and pushing their agendas, like the War on Drugs, war on Iraq, war on the Taliban, etc.
I’ve always wished we could have a realignment of the factions in the major parties to make them more attractive, but I’ve found that the Democrats are even more fractured and incoherent than the Republicans. I’m not sure the Democratic leadership could even really say what they stand for, besides an urgent need to take your money and give it to their friends.
So I remain a Libertarian and vote accordingly. Perhaps one day we’ll attract enough Goldwater republicans to force changes in the political balance.
Thanks for stopping by, Jeralyn! I’ve always been a fan of your criminal justice reporting. You provide a critically important service to the left side of the blogosphere.
Paul, I am quite well aware of the origins of the Libertarians…having been one politically for almost three decades. True, Libbers are the ideological descendants of the Goldwater branch of the R’s, but they’re more a distillation, a Remnant, if you will. Which is why they have, thus far, suffered the fate that their ideological forebear Albert Nock said they would. Nock also said that things would have to go to Hell before the ideas of the Remnant would ever be enacted.
And I think we’re seeing his prediction come true far sooner than he had anticipated.
It’s said that the Chinese ideogram for ‘change’ consists of the glyphs for ‘crisis’ and ‘opportunity’. We certainly are enduring both right now, and as the economic situation worsens, the principles of ‘the fever swamp’ may well return, if only because the present economic necessity requires the frugality that is a main pillar of those principles.
And for us drug law reformers, that means no more DrugWar; because, just as The Great Depression caused the end of alcohol Prohibition, the present economic circumstances will eventually trump ideology…and force a de facto return to the same lower-case “l” libertarian principles that were voiced in principled opposition to the drug laws when they were first proposed….but sadly, only by default, and not by conscious will.
@Kaptinemo
Agreed, it’s totally a Neocon issue, witch really has nothing in common with true conservitive principals.
This paragraph of yours rings especially true to the situation..
“We’ve gone far afield from what the Founders had in mind when they established this Republic of separate Republics. We have, in fact, become an empire, with the States-as-Republics become mere provinces…and we’ve been suffering from the Imperial Disease, whose symptoms include foreign interventionism, neocolonialism, and diminished domestic civil rights, ever since. Whether it’s too late to try to return government to traditional limits I’ll leave History to decide…but I’m damn well gonna do my part to try…”
provinces that they can now extort tax dollars from…
I smell American revolution vol.II down the road on this path.
“I smell American revolution vol.II down the road on this path.”
Or something much, much worse: Civil War Two
I read this book way back in the mid-1990’s, and 2/3rds of the author’s predictions have come true , including the financial meltdown and its’ domestic and international implications. However, unlike the author (who is an avowed and unrepentant racist), I do not see a race war looming, but a class war, with the forces of The State intimately allied with the Investor Class intent upon putting down any threats to their soon-to-be-naked power grab. Which is why we are seeing crap like this happening:
Microwave Weapons to be used for “Crowd Control”
SONIC WEAPONS USED IN IRAQ POSITIONED AT CONGRESSIONAL TOWNHALL MEETINGS IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY
I leave the reader to ponder the gravity of such a situation…and ask themselves where they might be standing with regards to the legitimacy of using such weapons to stifle dissent. I know where I stand…as do many others.
“I do not see a race war looming, but a class war, with the forces of The State intimately allied with the Investor Class intent upon putting down any threats to their soon-to-be-naked power grab.”
Right now, I’m reading Naomi Klein’s ‘Shock Doctrine’ and it is chilling how the events which took place in Argentina, Brazil and Chile are being repeated here, complete with “disappearances”, the hollowing out of the middle class, the dismantling of our production facilities and the widening gap between the richest and the poorest.
Witness the record profits garnered by Wall Street, while everyone I know is struggling harder than they ever have, guys with businesses having to shut down after years of profitable business, people going broke and becoming homeless. People working 2-3 jobs, just to make it. It is absolutely heartbreaking what is happening to our country.
I feel like I have been shocked by this doctrine. For the life of me, I can’t remember what it was like to have a real honest 40 hour a week job with real benefits. I finally lost my health insurance after paying them right off the top of my business, before I would even pay myself they got paid and what have I got to show for it? Nada. When the clients stop calling and the money dries up there’s nothing to pay with. I’m going out of business this month after 3 years. My night gig as a janitor has become my sole source of income. If it wasn’t for my family, I would be in the streets too.
There is an anger that is just beneath the surface of the illusion of prosperity. People know there is trouble ahead and they are scared and angry.
I pray for our country every night.
I think the human race has a funny way of balncing itself out.
The yin to the yang of these weapons you speak of would be an explosion of the full fury humanity has to offer
with such obvious personal endangerment people would FINALLY realize have to stand and fight.
It is like “the whip” the animals faced in animal farm
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