and why I cannot understand how enemies of the drug war could do otherwise
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 29, 2024
This election to me is not about the issues. I do not want to fix the economy (or ruin it, for that matter) if it means putting a man in office who does not believe in the American democratic process and who has done everything he can to make us distrust the mainstay of democracy itself: the voting process. Nor is this election about the propriety of alternate lifestyles or of Confederate war memorials or even Roe v Wade (about all of which I believe that people can rationally disagree). This election is about fundamental democratic principles: the basic principles upon which America was founded, most notably the voting process in which all political parties have historically participated in order to ensure not just fairness, but the all-important perception of fairness, which alone can guarantee the survival of any democratic country by giving a measure of recognizable legitimacy to anyone who enters the Oval Office as Commander-in-Chief.
As a young person, I often volunteered to work at polling stations for presidential and state elections, and it was always inspiring for me. I saw people on both sides of the political divide working together to ensure accuracy, transparency and fairness. This is why a shiver went down my spine when Donald Trump made it clear in his September 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton that he did not trust the voting process and was already reserving the right to declare himself the winner if the votes did not go in his favor -- this after Al Gore in 2000 conceded an election result that he could have justifiably challenged, and why? Because he did not want to put America through a divisive and time-consuming recount process. How utterly different from the self-serving instinct of Donald Trump, who would happily put the country through any and all levels of unrest provided only that he be declared the winner.
I state this publicly here in answer to the cowardice of Jeff Bezos, who, for obvious financial reasons, has told his editors at the Washington Post (one week before election day, no less) that they cannot endorse Kamala Harris for president. Of course, I have slightly less "reach" than Bezos, but since this is a matter of principle, even we little people need to take a stand.
I am surely flattering myself to think that this essay of mine will either gain or lose followers for an online non-entity such as myself. That said, I assume that those few who do read my essays are, at very least, against the War on Drugs, and I cannot understand how someone with such views could support Donald Trump, a man who embodies the Drug War strategy of the "Big Lie." Say that American elections are unfair often enough and loudly enough and people will begin to believe it. And may Trump be cursed for all time for using that strategy to damage, and perhaps destroy, American democracy.
I know, I know: Kamala Harris, at best, represents "Drug War Lite," and will obviously have to be goaded by progressive state laws and public pressure to end her oppressive D.A. mentality when it comes to drug use. But she does appear to be open to common sense and not actuated merely by the desire to appear "tough on drugs." Meanwhile, Donald Trump has called for the execution of drug dealers and for the bombing of Mexico to stop the flow of drugs into the States. In other words, Donald Trump is determined to take the colonialist intolerance of the Drug War to its natural catastrophic conclusion: gleefully destroying the lives of minorities and foreigners in the process, like his fascist populist buddy, former Mexican President Obrador. You remember Andres. He was the guy who labeled the press "necrophiliacs" for attempting to determine the fate of the 60,000 Mexicans who have been "disappeared" as a result of Mexico's U.S.-sponsored War on Drugs1.
This populist madness is all about leveraging hatred for political gain and needs to be snuffed out at the polls, while we still have polls - something that Donald Trump appears to feel is unnecessary since he is, of course, always right and must of necessity be the eternal victor. (Trump is the epitome of the pathologically cocksure 'right man' discussed in The New Inquisition by Robert Anton Wilson.2)
The irony is that Donald Trump is right when he says that the election process is unfair, but he is right for the wrong reasons. The election process is unfair because millions of minorities have been removed from the voting rolls and thrown in jail thanks to drug laws that were written precisely for that purpose.
Drug War propaganda is all about convincing us that we will never be able to use drugs wisely. But the drug warriors are not taking any chances: they're doing all they can to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Today's drug laws tell us that we must respect the historical use of sacred medicines, while denying us our personal right to use them unless our ancestors did so. That's a meta-injustice! It negatively affects the way that we are allowed to experience our world!
If daily drug use and dependency are okay, then there's no logical or scientific reason why I can't smoke a nightly opium pipe.
Imagine if there were drugs for which dependency was a feature, not a bug. People would stop peddling that junk, right? Wrong. Just ask your psychiatrist.
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.
After a long life, I have come to the conclusion that when all the establishment is united, it is always wrong. (Harold MacMillan)
Until we legalize ALL psychoactive drugs, there will be no such thing as an addiction expert. In the meantime, it's insulting to be told by neuroscience that I'm an addictive type. It's pathologizing my just indignation at psychiatry's niggardly pharmacopoeia.
The Drug War is based on a huge number of misconceptions and prejudices. Obviously it's about power and racism too. It's all of the above. But every time I don't mention one specifically, someone makes out that I'm a moron. Gotta love Twitter.
AI is inherently plagiaristic technology. It tells us: "Hey, guys, look what I can do!" -- when it should really be saying, "Hey, guys, look how I stole all your data and repackaged it in such a way as to make it appear that I am the genius, not you!"
Richard Evans Schultes seems to have originated the harebrained idea (since used by the US Supreme Court to suppress new religions) that you have no right to use drugs in a religious ritual if you did not grow up in a society that had such practices. What tyrannical idiocy!
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
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