This is just a simple country diary. Not that you asked, but in my spare time during the next 60 hours I am supposed to be doing something else (writing an intelligent diary for this Sunday's Anti-Capitalist Meetup), and I will get to that, but in the meantime, I am babbling forth with a few thoughts about the Drug War.
First, I hate it. Second, it does not work. Third, it must stop. Yesterday, I happened to be in a courtroom in the Deep South of the U.S. when a young "white" woman was dragged away screaming after her bond had been revoked on several underlying drug charges for being late for her felony arraignment, cuffed but THANKfully untazed--wouldn't want to see THAT. It doesn't matter what the drug was, in my mind or hers. To see her drug off for her habit of being drugged and the way this affects her daily troubled life was troubling to me. This came after watching an hour's worth of mostly "white" people with a varying combination of bright green Mohawks, bright pink long hair, and multiple facial rings, where the tatted up seemed almost quaint in comparison to my aging middle class eyes. This is the dadgum South, don't they know not to abuse their outward appearances? I want to see brush cuts and linen dresses pressed by the colored ironin' lady, what is frickin' happening down heuh? What's next, desefrickin'cation of the Rebel flag?
Brings me back to on Tuesday when I met a 24-year-old mentally ill "white" man who is addicted to inhalants, anything from gasoline to spray paint--none of that high class model airplane glue for him. In his case, his arrest was a result of his parents' desperate cry for help.
But I want to tell them, "HELLLLLLLLLLLLP!" is the last thing that they can expect from the Drug War and the criminal justice system which has been unsuccessfully fighting it for most of my lifetime.
And my family has scars to prove it. (http://www.dailykos.com/...) By now, we Amurricans all should have figured out that most drug use is a coping strategy, and thought about dealing with the goddamned stress that was causing people of all ethnicities, races, and "classes" (even those who think they are middle class and better than those poor folk) to need a coping strategy.
These days the coping strategy often is literally the opiates, et al. of the masses, and no amount of fraudulent Drug Warring will ever, ever, ever change that.
Have a nice Drug War. Let's keep that bullshit up for another wasted generation or three. Next thing you know, all of you libraaaals are going to tell me that Jimmy Page was not the greatest drummer in the history of humankind. http://www.cnn.com/...
Maybe I'm confused. The late 70s and early 80s were very good to me.