There has been a lot of anger here over recent weeks concerning the actions, or lack of them, of our Representatives. A couple of years ago I posted here more regularly and I tried to explain this to people but I don't think most were ready for it at the time. Maybe they are now so I'll try to draw a few connections here.
If it wasn't for the compromises for drug war exceptions to the Constitution we might not be so comfortable with exceptions to the Constitution today, but we allowed exceptions for searches and all kinds of things in the name of going after some faceless "them". Them of course turned out to be our kids and neighbors in many cases. If it wasn't for our getting so used to exceptions then they might not have been so easy to get away with today, but we allowed compromise as long as it was "for a good cause". Also got us into that us vs them frame of mind some have found so useful in other respects today.
When we built a massive for profit prison and drug testing industry we started down the road into invasive procedures that violated both personal privacy and pushed the limits on self incrimination. That was ok though, it was for a good cause we thought. And so we took another step toward exceptions and an invasive society.
When we created the safe school zones with tough mandatory minimums it all sounded like a great idea, at least until we put it into practice. But we never looked at the results much, did we? In the suburbs a kid doesn't spend much time in one so unless they do or deal drugs at school it's no big deal, in the city they can overlap and in some places you might spend most of your life in one and not even realize it some of the time. Probation, treatment and other options are there in the suburbs for an identical crime to the one which triggers that mandatory in the city. Too often it's not the worse crime, but the wrong place to have been born and raised. It's there but we didn't look.
When we failed to look at those results we created
this racial balance. Everyone knows about Florida and the elections of 2000 but that isn't the only time disenfranchised voters mattered. In custody you don't get a vote, in many places you don't get a vote for years or even life after you've served your time which means that between current and past voters removed from the roles we've been losing close elections we could have otherwise won for years now, and nationwide. The decline of the party is at least in part related to their willingness to allow things like this to happen to others.
When we allowed that private prison industry to be built, when we learned to tolerate no knock warrants and a growing armed private security industry, when we cried tough on crime for enough years that everyone got used to the idea of force as an option we were building the environment for today. In the 60's could we have tolerated a Blackwater? I don't think so, not on the left or on much of the right. But with the background of force we've become so used to for many people they are just another security firm and it's hard to get them to understand what's wrong. At least until the abuses became apparent it was, not so hard these days.
The joke of it all? It was for nothing, absolutely nothing positive. And we've had the results to know that for years, it's some combination of pure cowardice or an unwillingness to even look at the results and nothing more that props it all up. The prices of
cocaine and
http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/fed-data/heroin-prices.htm">heroin have both fallen by quite a bit adjusted for inflation, contrary to popular opinion we never drove prices up. Death rates on both have climbed, from the 0.2-0.1 range in 1979-1980 to a death rate of 1.1 by 1998 for
opiates, heroin mostly, and from the 0.1-0.0 range in 1979-1980 to a death rate of 0.7 by 1998 with
cocaine.
Purity on heroin climbed from about 8% in the 1 gram street level range to roughly 40%, that likely contributes to the climb in death rates. We haven't saved any lives, we've lost them. We didn't drive prices up, they fell. We didn't hurt any enemy over the years in any way that mattered, for every cartel we removed another one or two was right there to replace it and at least as dangerous as the last.
Sound familiar? Kind of like the war on terror? They've always been related as we see in Afghanistan today and are based on most of the same principles and tactics.
Today isn't an accident people. We've been walked into this step by step and over the years, the drug war being my area is where I see it but it's been happening on a lot of fronts such as the Buckley v. Valeo Supreme Court decision in 1976, better known as money equals speech. That's the wall we run into for everything from controlling corporate expansion to campaign finance reform to whatever else, I'm sure many of you have examples of your own for that example or others. Step by step and on multiple fronts we've been walked into it over the years and in too many cases such as with the drug war and with NAFTA with more than a little help from the Democratic leadership.
I don't want this to degenerate into blame or who is responsible for what, I do want us to take a look at the damned results for a change and decide it's time NOW to do something different and we can't do that while attacking each other. But we're going to bleed to death as a nation in the name of party or personal loyalty if we don't find a way to either convince our leaders to stand for something and check the results for a change or if we don't replace them. We're running out of time for the niceties of politics and compromise as usual. That's the way I see it at least.
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