Booman recently wrote a little piece about how he agrees with Rand Paul regarding the so-called “War On Drugs.”
He couldn’t resist belittling Paul by snarking on some media-amplified piece of crap regarding his college days.
So what, Booman?
So what?
He had the courage to stand up and speak the truth about a number of things in his filibuster, and yet the only idea on which you find yourself in some kind of agreement with him is that prison sentences for pot smokers is a bad idea?
Really?
Read on.
The real reason for “the drug problem” in much of the so-called the developed world has to do with the cultural dissonances now prevalent in the social systems of those countries, and nowhere is the situation worse that it is in the U.S.
Less-than-privileged kids are constantly fed a line of bullshit that says that they can become anything that they want to become, but by the time they have made it to about 4th or 5th grade it has dawned on most of them that the system actually fights against their education and upwardly mobile ambitions because said system needs a massive low-rent workforce. A huge depression strikes many of these kids around this age and they find that they are only free of that depression when they get high. They are still too young to understand that this relief is temporary and that it comes at great cost to their lives. By the time the reality of their situation sets in it’s too late for them. They then become fodder for our highly profitable justice and social help systems and that’s all she wrote as far as their lives are concerned. Down they go, making money for the drug trade and for the anti-drug trade as their lives spiral down.
Nice.
Kids from more privileged parts of the system also see the lies that they have been taught, but a smaller percentage of those kids become seriously depressed by that knowledge and fall into the drug trap. Why a smaller percentage? Because they at least have entry to the “things” world. They can buy “things” that distract them from the rot that surrounds us all here in the hive of empire, “things” that include almost guaranteed entry into the middle and upper classes if they are willing to pay the student debt price to buy that position.
So the drugs roll in and the rotted social system includes them in its morass of lies. Millions work in the drug war arena…cops, prison workers, social workers and so on…and in doing so prop up the economy. Billions of dollars are made both in the drug trade and in the drug war, further sustaining the nation financially. Eventually it gets to a place where…just as it has gotten in terms of the military industries…the country cannot afford to stop the idiocy. It simply pays too well. Money talks; nobody walks, and further down the sinkhole we go.
Stop the lies?
People like Ron Paul and Ross Perot have tried to do just that at the highest levels of government, and they have failed. The media lie machine steamrolls them because its very existence depends on those lies.
And the farce continues.
Down the sinkhole.
What to do?
Personally?
Stop believing the liars, for starters.
DemRats and RatPublicans both.
Why does John McCain suddenly seem to be on the same side of things as Barack Obama?
Because people like Rand Paul are calling out the lies that sustain the system. The lies that provide the controllers with power. McCain hasn’t switched sides nor has he moved an inch. He’s part of the controller group just as is Barack Obama, and both of them are being increasingly threatened by people who are calling their bullshit out in public. Rand Paul’s filibuster? The media were forced to cover it. And what were the salient points that he made? I quote his opening statements:
I rise today to begin to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination for the CIA I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court. That Americans could be killed in a cafe in San Francisco or in a restaurant in Houston or at their home in bowling green, Kentucky, is an abomination. It is something that should not and cannot be tolerated in our country. I don’t rise to oppose John Brennan’s nomination simply for the person. I rise today for the principle.
The principle is one that as Americans we have fought long and hard for and to give up on that principle, to give up on the bill of rights, to give up on the Fifth Amendment protection that says that no person shall be held without due process, that no person shall be held for a capital offense without being indicted. This is a precious American tradition and something we should not give up on easily. They say Lewis Carroll is fiction. Alice never fell down a rabbit hole and the White Queen’s caustic judgments are not really a threat to your security. Or has America the beautiful become Alice’s wonderland? ‘No, no, said the queen. Sentence first; verdict afterwards. Stuff and nonsense, Alice said widely – loudly. The idea of having the sentence first? ‘Hold your tongue, said the queen, turning purple. I won’t, said Alice. Release the drones, said the Queen, as she shouted at the top of her voice.
Lewis Carroll is fiction, right? When I asked the President, can you kill an American on American soil, it should have been an easy answer. It’s an easy question. It should have been a resounding and unequivocal, “no.” The President’s response? He hasn’t killed anyone yet. We’re supposed to be comforted by that.
The President says, I haven’t killed anyone yet. He goes on to say, and I have no intention of killing Americans. But I might. Is that enough? Are we satisfied by that? Are we so complacent with our rights that we would allow a President to say he might kill Americans? But he will judge the circumstances, he will be the sole arbiter, he will be the sole decider, he will be the executioner in chief if he sees fit. Now, some would say he would never do this. Many people give the President the – you know, they give him consideration, they say he’s a good man. I’m not arguing he’s not. What I’m arguing is that the law is there and set in place for the day when angels don’t rule government. Madison said that the restraint on government was because government will not always be run by angels. This has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with whether the President is a Democrat or a Republican. Were this a Republican President, I’d be here saying exactly the same thing. No one person, no one politician should be allowed to judge the guilt, to charge an individual, to judge the guilt of an individual and to execute an individual. It goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country.
And all the leftinesses can do is say that he’s a nutcase and/or that it’s all politics.
Bullshit.
Read the fucking transcript. It is not “all politics,” and what he is saying is said in support of the rights and freedoms that allowed the U.S. to grow in an unprecedented manner over several centuries. Those rights and freedoms are now under serious attack, and “the war on terrorsm” is the excuse being used to destroy them. The war on terrorism is just as big a lie as is the war on drugs. It’s all a hustle.
Wake the fuck up.
Station WTFU once again signing off.
I used to think y’all were better than this.
I’m not so sure anymore.
WTFU.
And goodnight.
AG
Please?
Please!!!
Please.
AG
As always – “follow the money”.
Rand Paul speaking to the second generation media control expert Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday…you know, where the big boys play…as reported by the original right wing control sheet, The National Review:
And there it is.
“I think the legislature is about 10 years behind the public. I would argue the Senate is not up to date with what the people really want.”
This is a true statement. In fact, it does not go far enough. “The people”…lots of them…are beginning to awaken from a 50 year-long, media-induced slumber.
Why?
How?
Because the controllers have gotten fat and lazy.
Because the licks that they are trying to lay on the public are getting seriously shopworn.
Do you really think that a 2001/2002 Iraq-style runup to a war with Iran would play w/the American people now? Stuffed uniform after stuffed uniform, stuffed CIA suit after stuffed CIA suit propped up on every available newscast and pundit show, images of of the rockets’ red glare and the fall of some version of the World Trade Center force-fed into the minds of the people until a consensus of doom is reached?
I don’t. That “consensus” is no longer available except among some percentage of middle-aged and older white people like the ones who infested the Republican National Convention 1n 2012.
So…who’re they gonna call?
Ghostbusters?
WarBusters?
Just go do the war anyway and fuck what the people think?
Please.
They will not be able to get away with that. We have too many other problems.
They been called out thoroughly and publicly, starting with Ron Paul’s campaign and now continued by his son.
More from that National Review article:
Now…think on that list for a moment.
Rubio is a deeply flawed candidate. He’s a crook, just for starters, and he can’t speak worth a damn. He’s the tail-end of a thoroughly execrable Cuban expatriate movement that is itself just about out of gas.
Santorum? Need I say more?
And that leaves Christie. Now…Chris Christie is if nothing else a very astute politician. He has proven himself to be able to turn on a dime when he deems it necessary to do so to continue to gather power in the political arena. If Rand Paul is indeed unelectable…I believed that to be true for quite a while but I now find myself having serious doubts about the idea…Chris Christie will successfully co-opt the anti-government rhetoric and use it in his own favor.
Watch.
Before the spring is over.
Watch.
And if Rand Paul is not unelectable…his brilliant filibuster tactic plus his ongoing transformation into a New Age pol-of-the-people are making me rethink his ability as a politician…HOO boy!!!
Watch out Dems!!!
That fool John Edwards made it a long way wearing pressed jeans, a never-before-worn “work” shirt and a $1000 hairdo.
This guy?
He covers all of the political bases in one outfit. And…he can go without taking a piss for 13 hours. Can you imagine the workload Chris Christie’s kidneys and bladder have to handle? I can’t.
The first hipster/working class preznit?
Could happen.
Watch.
It’s a long way to 2016.
Watch.
AG
The War on Drugs has been going on for as long as I can remenber (and I go way back) while the use and availability of drugs have only increased. So draw your own conclusions. Does it make sense? Well, anyone who says it does is either stupid or lying (a lot of politicians fall into both categories). It is horrifying that the USA cannot renew itself and reform itself socially in the interests of the people (25 percent of the world´s prison population and only 5 percent of its people, I read somewhere). Such things are never said in public, i.e. on TV which determines the reality in which the big majority lives. The USA-ians are living in the bubble that they´re generous and well-intentioned while every day more and more people around the world conclude that they´re arrogant, greedy bastards. As an aside, am I supposed to believe that Obama made such a public exhibition of himself at the holocaust memorial and completely ignored the suffering of the Palestinians? Talking about a crude, self-serving power broker. The man has an deep, stupid, mean streak, in spite of glitzy intelligence (for good measure his wife can be added).
Actually Quentin, on some level the War On Drugs does “make sense.”
It makes sense because it makes money in a win/win situation.
If the drug users can buy drugs…at inflated prices of course, because they are “illegal”…the government and economy get their cut. Bet on it. Just go back to Iran-Contra and/or the massive Vietnam War-era S.E. Asian drug trade to check the early rise of that shit. And it continues. Bet on that as well. The same banks that caused the recent recession/depression/call it what you will? They are laundromats for trillions of dollars worth of drug money.
And if the addicts cannot get their drugs or get too sick and strung-out to exist on any well-functioning level of the social system? They just sink to its lowest level, where big money is made in rehab joints, prisons, hospitals, the whole social welfare scam, the whole police scam and the educational system that trots out the functionaries that staff it.
Win/win.
Except of course…it is bringing down the very society off of which it feeds on either end. But criminals do not care about that. That’s why they are criminals. They are entirely self-motivated.
This is how every empire falls, one way or another. Not necessarily by drugs, but buy neglect of the moral considerations that supported that empire when it first started to become strong.
Can we turn the tide back again?
I dunno.
Keep the faith and fight like a sonofabitch.
That’s all I can figure out, myself.
Step by step and person by person.
Later…
AG