PROFESSOR: Welcome to Torture 101 here at DEA University. I'm Professor Himmler. Check your schedules, people. "Subverting the US Constitution" is across the hall with Professor Goebbels.
There's no use in taking the roll while so many DEA recruits are wandering around the hallways like so many drug-addled zombies, so I'll just start lecturing and see what happens.
Earth to the students loitering at the door: this is Torture 101. Either shit or get off the pot.
Now then, what comes to mind when I say the word "torture"?
WILLIAM: A Justin Bieber concert.
*laughter*
PROFESSOR: Get out.
WILLIAM: I beg your pardon
PROFESSOR: Get out of my class. You disgust me.
WILLIAM: But—
PROFESSOR: This is a teaching moment, class: There is no room in the DEA for humor.
*gasps*
PROFESSOR: No, wait, I lie. It's okay to let your hair down and laugh at the folks whose rights you have trampled...
But we must reserve that talk for the break room, where we can gloat in peace over the lives that we have ruined.
Ach! More zombies loitering at the door. I can see that we're going to get nothing accomplished today.
Well, at least I can assign tonight's homework: I want you folks to go home and watch "Running with the Devil" starring Nicolas Cage, Laurence Fishburne and Leslie Bibb.
Notice that the DEA agent (played by Natalie) takes her drug suspect to a nondescript storage hangar and suspends him from a meat hook.
MIKEY: Isn't that illegal, sir?
PROFESSOR: Well, if you had taken Dr. Goebbel's excellent course on subverting the U.S. Constitution - which, by the way, is technically a prerequisite for this course on torture, young man - you would know that the DEA scoffs at the outdated precepts of the Constitution and wastes no opportunity to snicker at its impotent allusions to suspect rights.
Let's show Mikey some examples. Suzie, you're interviewing me and I demand to see a lawyer. How do you answer in such a way as to heap scorn upon my appeal to Constitutional protections?
SUZIE: That's easy, Professor. I just say, as incredulously as possible of course: "Lawyer? Here's your lawyer," and with that, I slap your forehead with the back of my gun, whereupon you fall bleeding to the floor and I kick you in your all-too-insolent ribs!
PROFESSOR: She shoots, she scores! Excellent, Suzie. You were really paying attention in Dr. Goebbels' knowledge-fest, aka "Subverting the US Constitution: How the DEA can get away with literally anything." A short round of polite applause for Suzie.
Still, Mikey does have a point, in spite of his seeming cluelessness about DEA values. You see, technically speaking, it remains wrong to torture suspects in any way.
*boos*
I know, right? It's a real drag. But the good news is, the DEA is such a big and authoritative organization that we can get away with almost any anti-American behavior, provided that we all keep our stories straight and have each other's backs when we... how shall I put this... "bend" the law a little. Wink, wink, wink!
CLASS: Wink, wink, wink!
PROFESSOR: I didn't get a wink wink wink from Cedric over there. Don't tell me that we've got an idealist in our midst?
CEDRIC: Wink wink wink.
PROFESSOR: That's more like it, Cedric. I've got my eyes on you. Why can't you be more like Suzie?
Suzie, you're good at this stuff. What would you say if I'm a reporter and I ask you: "Did you ever violate a drug suspect's rights?"
SUZIE: I'd say, "We read him all his rights, sir," neglecting to point out, of course, that the exposition in question took place while the drug suspect was suspended from the ceiling by a meat hook!
PROFESSOR: Ha! Now that really IS funny. I bet the suspect was even wearing a Speedo, which you had thoughtfully supplied him for the occasion, just like in the movie Running with the Devil.
SUZIE: You know it, sir! Anything to humiliate the beggar who presumes to sell naturally occurring plant substances to a fellow human being.
PROFESSOR: Mind you, it's the kind of thing that we should only laugh about around the water cooler, though... for legal reasons, you understand.
SUZIE: Word.
PROFESSOR: Now, of course, when you're in the field, you may have no access to a meat hook - but the point of the movie still holds: that the good DEA agent will make a suspect talk, Constitution or no Constitution.
NANCY: But doesn't Leslie Bibb end up actually murdering the drug king pin at the end of the movie?
*gasps*
PROFESSOR: Nice move, Ex-lax. You just ruined the movie for everybody in the class.
SUZIE: Oh, no!
PROFESSOR: But you do make a fair point. Torture may indeed work, but there are times when even torture is just not enough.
BOBBY: When is that, Professor?
PROFESSOR: Well, suppose that an American has been selling naturally occurring plants to his fellow Americans for decades and decades, in brazen defiance of the American Sharia against the use of Mother Nature's pharmacy.
JUNE: Oh, that's disgusting!
PROFESSOR: I know, right? And when a citizen thus makes a mockery of our belief in the evilness of naturally occurring substances, there's sometimes nothing left for us to do but to murder them.
*applause*
BOBBY: Serves them right.
PROFESSOR: Still, we must remember that murder, technically speaking, is not condoned by that pesky Constitution of ours.
*boos*
That's why it's important that the DEA come together as one single corrupt agency and deny that it's doing anything wrong, while meanwhile trashing the hell out of civil liberties, in ways that conduce to plausible deniability.
*bell rings*
Speaking of plausible deniability: I did not say anything in this course that encouraged illegal behavior, did I, class?
*silence*
DID I, Class?
CLASS: NO, Professor Himmler, you did not!
PROFESSOR: Good for you, class. Now you're catching on! Just be sure to refrain from snickering cynically about our anti-Constitutional predilections until you reach the break room down the hall! In public, the DEA must remain as American as apple pie.
SUZIE: Apple pie suspended by a meat hook, that is!
PROFESSOR: Stop it, Suzie! You're gonna make me laugh before I reach the break room!
Now you too can dangle drug suspects from grappling hooks and shoot them in cold blood while they're sitting across from you, unsuspecting, at their very own kitchen table. Learn from the experts as they teach you how to subvert the US Constitution, consequence free, all in the name of our most righteous and holy Drug War. (First 50 enrollees get free jackboots!)
Comedy
The drug war is laughable -- or it would be if the drug warriors hadn't deprived us of laughing gas, the substance that William James himself used to study alternate realities.
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
Almost all talk about the supposed intractability of things like addiction are exercises in make-believe. The pundits pretend that godsend medicines do not exist, thus normalizing prohibition by implying that it does not limit progress. It's a tacit form of collaboration.
The DEA is gaslighting Americans, telling them that drugs with obvious benefits have no benefits whatsoever. Scientists collude in this lie thanks to their adherence to the emotion-scorning principles of behaviorism.
We know that anticipation and mental focus and relaxation have positive benefits -- but if these traits ae facilitated by "drugs," then we pretend that these same benefits somehow are no longer "real." This is a metaphysical bias, not a logical deduction.
Proof that materialism is wrong is "in the pudding." It is why scientists are not calling for the use of laughing gas and MDMA by the suicidal. Because they refuse to recognize anything that's obvious. They want their cures to be demonstrated under a microscope.
It's really an insurance concern, however, disguised as a concern for public health. Because of America's distrust of "drugs," a company will be put out of business if someone happens to die while using "drugs," even if the drug was not really responsible for the death.
Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?
Who would have thought back in 1776 that Americans would eventually have to petition their government for the right to even possess a damn mushroom. The Drug War has destroyed America.
Many articles in science mags need this disclaimer: "Author has declined to consider the insights gained from drug-induced states on this topic out of fealty to Christian Science orthodoxy." They don't do this because they know readers already assume that drugs will be ignored.
The fact that some drugs can be addictive is no reason to outlaw drugs. It is a reason to teach safe use and to publicize all the ways that smart people have found to avoid unwanted pharmacological dependency -- and a reason to use drugs to fight drugs.
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
