The following is a hot-button email that I sent to a friend of mine this morning in Northern Virginia. Hopefully, it was inspired by a misunderstanding of a national news story that I browsed a few days ago -- in which case, like Roseanne Roseannadanna on Saturday Night Live, I will soon be posting an apologetic addendum to this page featuring her trademark disclaimer, reading: "Never mind." But even if I have misunderstood the story in question, this email should convey my misgivings of what I take to be the current left-wing excesses, bearing in mind that the author thinks that the greatest current threat, by far, is not from the left but rather from the right: viz. the desire to get rid of democracy and replace it with a cult of "personality" (for want of a better word) by empowering the one man in this world who has apparently never done anything wrong in his entire life: "Donald 'the Infallible' Trump."
Okay, I've done my best to soften the blow, so read on! [sigh]
Speaking of left-wing overreach, what's this talk about getting rid of Native American exhibits at the Smithsonian? It sounds to me like the rationale is as follows: "Only Native Americans can tell us about Native Americans." So why then does the Smithsonian purport to tell us about the Finns and the Russians?
I can see why the Smithsonian would want to employ Native American advisors in staging such exhibits, but it seems like the worst kind of identity politics to say that non-Natives can have no input on such things. We certainly do not say that Caucasians would be better off if they did not get the viewpoints of other cultures. Moreover, the most insightful book about Americans was written by a Frenchman1. There are certain benefits to being an outsider.
To me, it's another sign that America is living through a self-imposed Dark Ages of its own. When it comes to drugs, we think that the best policy is to lie. (That's why we have a National Institute on Drug ABUSE rather than a National Institute on Drug USE.) We think the same thing when it comes to history. And why? Because the affirmation of identity has become more important to us than mere facts -- and particularly facts that might suggest that a given minority group (like any group, minority or not) is less than perfect. We thus get a warped view of our history, through the lens of a psychologically dishonest sanctification of the people concerned.
But then such politicization of history probably comes naturally to a people who have been brainwashed by the cult of the Drug War, which is all about politicizing the subject of drugs.
Author's Follow-up: January 28, 2024
This identity politics is even more directly related to the war on drugs than I've suggested, since even as I type, Caucasians are not allowed to use peyote in America while Native Americans are2. Thus identity politics collaborates in the racist and xenophobic ideology of the Drug War. It makes one ask: how anti-American does a law have to become before it will be rejected by our courts? This is clearly a direct blow at my freedom of religion -- and yet no one is pointing this out. This should be front page news. But then this is the same Supreme Court, ideologically speaking, that told us in the '90s that merely riding a Greyhound Bus constituted probable cause for a drug search3.
If we cared about the elderly in 'homes', we would be bringing in shamanic empaths and curanderos from Latin America to help cheer them up and expand their mental abilities. We would also immediately decriminalize the many drugs that could help safely when used wisely.
We need to push back against the very idea that the FDA is qualified to tell us what works when it comes to psychoactive medicines. Users know these things work. That's what counts. The rest is academic foot dragging.
Thanks to the Drug War, folks are forced to become amateur chemists to profit from DMT, a drug that occurs naturally in most living things. This is the same Drug War that is killing American young people wholesale by refusing to teach safe use and regulate drug supply.
People say shrooms should not be used by those with a history of "mental illness." But that's one of the greatest potential benefits of shrooms! (They cured Stamets' teenage stuttering.) Some folks place safety first, but if I did that, I'd die long before using mother nature.
The problem with blaming things on addiction genes is that it whitewashes the role of society and its laws. It's easy to imagine an enlightened country wherein drug availability, education and attitudes make addiction highly unlikely, addiction genes or no addiction genes.
"The Legislature deliberately determines to distrust the very people who are legally responsible for the physical well-being of the nation, and puts them under the thumb of the police, as if they were potential criminals."
-- Aleister Crowley on drug laws
Using the billions now spent on caging users, we could end the whole phenomena of both physical and psychological addiction by using "drugs to fight drugs." But drug warriors do not want to end addiction, they want to keep using it as an excuse to ban drugs.
That's why I created the satirical Partnership for a Death Free America. It demonstrates clearly that drug warriors aren't worried about our health, otherwise they'd outlaw shopping carts, etc. The question then becomes: what are they REALLY afraid of? Answer: Free thinkers.
That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.
Every time I see a psychiatrist, I feel like I'm playing a game of make-believe. We're both pretending that hundreds of demonized medicines do not exist and could be of no use whatsoever.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Identity Politics and the War on Drugs: Why America is living in a self-imposed Dark Age, published on January 28, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, Identity Politics and the War on Drugs: Why America is living in a self-imposed Dark Age, published on January 28, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
