I was speaking to Daniel, a concerned, upscale dude who graduated from MIT with a degree in something I can't quite grasp. He was asking me about the recent unrest in Harm City as he drove me across town. Toward the end of our drive he asked me for a concise cause.
I replied, "The drug war is a war on the underclass, therefore you have an alienated and restive underclass—the police force is an army of occupation, an understrength army."
Daniel continued. "I can see what you mean. I ran in the D.C. Marathon last weekend, and the police who secured the route were all very polite, helpful, professional—until this one officer ignored a traffic signal and nearly hit me. I yelled at him, 'Hey, that's against the law! You can't do that.'"
"He then stopped and addressed me in manner that was chilling in its menace. Sure, he was only one cop out of the bunch, but, in his mind, he was above the law and very willing to impose his lawless will on a person of the class he is ostensibly serving and protecting. So I could well imagine if I were a low income kind of guy how bad it could be. So your point is that this is probably one of those cops active in—and therefore callused by—this war on drugs?"
"Yes, it becomes a culture. A culture does not require full participation for its norms to be imposed."
"Norms, which, in this case, constitute a culture of intimidation?"
"A necessary culture of intimidation if a small number of cops are to impose their will on a relatively vast underclass."
"Okay, so what is the solution?"
"I don't believe in solutions."
"I am sick of hearing that. You have named a concise cause, so name a concise solution."
"Okay, send me back in time—you can surely build a time machine—so that I can murder William Bradford and his Pilgrims when they land at Plymouth Bay. That out to nix the drug war, and prohibition."
"Yes, prohibition was such a roaring success it is astonishing that we walked into this 'War on Drugs' so wide eyed. Thanks for the food for thought."
"Thanks for the ride Daniel, and please, don't mouth off to a Baltimore city cop—okay."
Hey James, I'm reminded of my high school days. Back then female students would occasionally ask the young men on the wrestling squad for advice on weight loss. The young ladies imagined, that given the constant struggle the wrestlers engaged in to make weight in order to compete, they must know some clever tricks on how to lose weight quickly. The wrestlers would invariably answer that the process of making weight was pretty simple and straight forward: don't eat and work out vigorously. However, none of the young ladies found this advice to be at all helpful. It was not the solution they wanted to hear. Likewise I'm sure that when you say you "don't believe in solutions" James, many people think that is a cop out. But really, what do people expect to hear from a contrarian crackpot like yourself James? LOL! In your defense, the fact is at this point in time there are NO solutions to our social problems. At least none that everyone in our presently divided "multicultural" country will find acceptable and palatable. We are not even in agreement on what constitutes a societal problem or not. Consequently we will likely remain at an impasse on even the most threatening issues until something falls apart and forces us to act in some way. Any way. Even then, given our lack of ability agree on anything, we are probably as likely to pick an ineffective or even counter-productive course of action as an effective one. The fact that many Americans still imagine that the Republicans and the Democrats can still be made to work together illustrates the depth of their self-delusion. That is akin to being a German in 1932 and expecting the National Socialist, Communist and Social Democrat parties to all work together for the "greater good". In reality the Communists and National Socialists would have destroyed the Social Democrats and then turned on each other. The Communists and National Socialists would never have ceased trying to destroy each other and establish one-party rule of their country, since in their paradigms they alone represented the "greater good". The Communists and the National Socialists were each completely anti-democratic, so even if they could have found reason to work together, would a coalition totalitarian oligarchy have been any less unpleasant than a one-party ruled totalitarian state? Similarly, if the Republicans and Democrats, as both parties are constituted today, ever decide to work together hand in hand in total harmony, you can kiss any notions of you have of freedom, self-determination and unalienable civil rights goodbye forever!
FYI, the War on Drugs has its origins way back in the Prohibition era. Prior to the passage of the federal Harrison Act of 1914 one could buy heroin, opium, cocaine and marijuana at your local apothecary or general store. Both the prohibition of drugs and of alcohol were part of the Progressive movement to use the power of government to solve social problems. It wasn't until after WWII that narcotic drug use became largely a vice of the urban poor, since prior to that the urban poor in America didn't have the disposable income to spend on expensive drugs (alcohol was much cheaper). Idle rich people using narcotics (as was largely the case 100 years ago, particularly among whites) didn't elicit the sympathy or call to action than the problem of poor people destroying their lives and their families' lives with drug use did in more recent times. Nowadays heroin addiction is a major social problem in dirt poor agrarian countries as well as in super wealthy industrialized ones.
stripes.com/news/middle-east/report-drug-use-plagues-millions-of-afghans-including-children-1.345742
So this guy goes to the doctor and says "Doctor, I keep getting these terrible hang-overs. Is there something I can do to prevent them?" The Doctor replies. "Yes, quit drinking so much alcohol." "No really Doc, be serious!" the man says," What can I do to stop these hangovers?"
He even brought up 'the law of unintended consequences' and still wanted to find a solution.
I depressed him, I think.
Yes James, there is still the unexpected, isn’t there? LOL! What I find rather astonishing is that Daniel actually imagined that the D.C. police officer would quietly accept a rebuke from him instead of immediately becoming hostile. Even in small towns cops don’t accept criticism gladly, particularly from impecunious members of the citizenry. What a cop whom I know once told me was that what he liked about working in law enforcement was that “the customer is always wrong”. But I guess I should not be surprised. Talking back to authority figures is clearly a white millennial generation thing, just as much as it is a black ghetto thing, in its own way. We white Baby Boomer and Gen X types generally discovered that John Cougar Mellencamp was correct: “when I fight authority, authority always wins”. There are times when discretion is the better part of valor; best to just keep your mouth shut over the petty injustices of life inflicted on you by the powerful and connected. On the other hand, if the cop running the light had hit the young man, he would have really had something to complain about; he could have also sued the city for huge sums of money because of the cop’s negligence. In that case go for it!
As for the law of unintended consequences, I think on close inspection we will find that many of these consequences were neither unintended nor unforeseen. The Woman needs chaos to get the public’s support for her radical transformation of American society. The Woman doesn’t really care about the collateral damage caused by her polices. The media will help her cover them up. Even should anyone in the public notice the harm done, The Woman has always been able to blame it all on the Republicans, uncaring Conservatives, racist white people, etc. It’s all about gaining more power and control for The Woman over people’s lives. Consequently we Conservatives have come to mistrust authority as well, much more than you might think. Even then we don’t see anything to be gained by demonizing the police. In fact Conservatives believe our cities need more police officers on the streets, but public safety isn’t a high priority with The Woman.
It isn’t just happening in this country. Radical Leftists are also working diligently in the other English speaking countries to “transform” their cultures. John J. Ray of Australia has chronicled this on his various blogsites.
“I record on this blog many examples of negligent, inefficient and reprehensible behaviour on the part of British police. After 13 years of Labour party rule they have become highly politicized, with values that reflect the demands made on them by the political Left rather than what the community expects of them. They have become lazy and cowardly and avoid dealing with real crime wherever possible—preferring instead to harass normal decent people for minor infractions—particularly offences against political correctness. They are an excellent example of the destruction that can be brought about by Leftist meddling.”
“I also record on this blog much social worker evil—particularly British social worker evil. The evil is neither negligent nor random. It follows exactly the pattern you would expect from the Marxist-oriented indoctrination they get in social work school—where the middle class is seen as the enemy and the underclass is seen as virtuous. So social workers are lightning fast to take children away from normal decent parents on the basis of minor or imaginary infractions while turning a blind eye to gross child abuse by the underclass.” -John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) Brisbane, Australia, Political Correctness Watch, Dissecting Leftism BlogSpot.
“Until you accept that the aim of Leftists is to hurt, not help, none of their actions makes sense.”
-John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) Brisbane, Australia, Dissecting Leftism BlogSpot
The problem I think Daniel has here in pondering actuality is he believes that the government is here to serve us and that we have the real moral authority.
The solution is Ebola