Comes Now the Ghost of "Decrim"

http://www.counterpunch.com/gardner12302006.html


Nixon on Pot, Booze and the Fall of the Roman Empire

Along with the man who pardoned Nixon, a man who disappointed Nixon left us this month: Raymond Shafer, a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania appointed in 1971 to lead a bipartisan "Presidential Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse." (Such a commission had been mandated by Congress in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.) Nixon told Shafer he wanted a report that would blur the distinction between marijuana and hard drugs, according to declassified oval office tapes. Instead, the Shafer commission would call for decriminalization of the personal use of marijuana.

Nixon's public rationale for rejecting decriminalization made good sense: "I do not believe you can have effective criminal justice based on the philosophy that something is half legal and half illegal." The oval office tapes reveal Nixon's more nuanced views on marijuana. On May, 12, 1971, as the commission was beginning its investigation, Nixon told his aide Bob Haldeman, "I want a goddamn strong statement about marijuana. Can I get that out of this sonofabitching, uh, domestic council? I mean one on marijuana that just tears the ass out of them."

Two weeks later Nixon saw something in his news summary that inspired him to tell Haldeman, "Every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob, what is the matter with them? I suppose it's because most of them are psychiatrists, you know, there's so many, all the greatest psychiatrists are Jewish. By god, we are going to hit the marijuana thing, and I want to hit it right square in the puss. I want to find a way of putting more on that."

-snip-

Nixon: At least with liquor I don't lose motivation
----------------------------------


because of ignorant racist bastard Nixon our prisons and private prisons are full of so called pot 'criminals'.

and how stupid 'we the people' can be to let criminals become president surrounded and abetted by fellow criminals.

america, the ignorant, lazy, snookered.

is the modern witch hunt.
We hate the young, the happy, the sexual.

In 1968, our psyche's twisted to the breaking point after JFK, RFK, MLK, Vietnam, Bull Conners, Selma, Oxford MS, the Cuban missile crisis, and the fear of the new youth culture of sex, drugs, and rock and roll was so successful that it created a counter revolution of anti life (not in the way the anti-choice folks us it) hate driven bastards. From Merle Haggard to Ashcroft, the fear of the happy celebrations of San Francisco to the total commitment of the peace movement were signs of a generation that had gone commie, pinko, and fag.

What did they hate? See above, and add that it was "those damned college students" whose fault it all was.
That could be one reason that we have spent less per capita on education every year virtually since 1968.


Now fast forward 30 years, and see where sex, drugs, and rock and roll has gone. Sex is hidden, and the shame prevents teens from being rational about sex. The drug of choice in my neck of the woods is crank. Two houses within a block of me have burned down with their crank labs exploded... one only 2 doors down. And say what you like about today's music as a social force, it ain't like 1968.

Now, let's get the the real victim of the backlash. EDUCATION. Carl Rove's comment about how too much education makes people liberal should be taken at face value. Education is the most important public good in the 21st century. Far more important than roads or lighthouses.

The fact that it is used as a tool of class enslavement in the creation of deeply endebted workers for the management level is another way the counter revolution of the 1960's and 70's. In the culture wars, everything depended on systems of social control. And for Nixon, Pot was the lynchpin.

I hope he is in Tartarus, in nausea and intractable pain, while his tormenters all smoke pot, listen to Jefferson Airplane, and have hot, gay sex.

And here we are, with a real need for the sorts of petroleum replacements, such as bio diesel and a ammonia replacement nitrogen fixer for agriculture. And Richard Nixon and Henry Anslinger's racism, and fear of someone else having fun instead of following orders is the root cause of all that you see horribly wrong around you.

Dick Nixon started a war on Americans, and it never stopped. The victims are legion.