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Legalize It All

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Re: Legalize It All

#21

Post by ska »

fweespee_ch wrote: post #15
ska wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think focusing on Nixon on at this point is actively problematic. Literally every administration since then has been complicit in this, and made it worse.

Sure, future administrations are complicit, but people didn't really "believe" the way Nixon believed until he brought the full power of the Federal government and an extensive political organization to spread fear in the general populace. Up until that point, enough people didn't believe in his course of action that his own people wouldn't give him the answers he wanted.

By all means history should remember his failings here and elsewhere.

I just mean the responsibility for the state of things today, and for improving it, lies solidly on other shoulders today. And that is where the focus should be. There should be no support for a narrative of "oh, but those were the bad old days, things are better now". They are not.

Re: Legalize It All

#22

Post by narrator »

krylon wrote: post #3

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course…

The thing I find interesting (INTERESTING, not necessarily moral or otherwise) about China is that when they want to do something controversial they are open and straight forward about it. They openly attack and arrest groups that they find disruptive to the social order. In America, the leadership has to invent all sorts of crafty subterfuge to accomplish their goals of persecuting and imprisoning groups that they consider to be disruptive. It's getting to be that the crafty deceptions have become so deeply layered that the official ideology that's supposed to justify policy has become hopelessly confused and contradictory.

Re: Legalize It All

#23

Post by miguelrochefort »

Oh the hypocrisy.

Drugs legalization being trendy, you play the libertarian card. Yet, when it comes to guns or privacy, the same arguments don't hold true anymore.

Cherry picking at its best. Gotta love the HN crowd.

Re: Legalize It All

#26

Post by jessaustin »

After telling the BBC in December that “if you fight a war for forty years and don’t win, you have to sit down and think about other things to do that might be more effective,” Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos legalized medical marijuana by decree. In November, the Mexican Supreme Court elevated the debate to a new plane by ruling that the prohibition of marijuana consumption violated the Mexican Constitution by interfering with “the personal sphere,” the “right to dignity,” and the right to “personal autonomy.”

This is great news. Only the sort of political situation that existed in Latin America over these past decades could have permitted us in USA to export all this violence and suffering. The corruption in their state was a mirror of that in ours. We were happy to destroy their societies for profit, and unfortunately their rulers were too.

The Drug War is a big reason I'm an anarchist. People living their own lives, in their own communities, can get up to some awful shit, now and then. No way in hell can they come up with the durable, sustained, all-consuming all-perverting horror that is the Drug War, or any of the other travesties the State produces without breaking a sweat.

Re: Legalize It All

#27

Post by fweespee_ch »

ska wrote: post #21
fweespee_ch wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, future administrations are complicit, but people didn't really "believe" the way Nixon believed until he brought the full power of the Federal government and an extensive political organization to spread fear in the general populace. Up until that point, enough people didn't believe in his course of action that his own people wouldn't give him the answers he wanted.

By all means history should remember his failings here and elsewhere. I just mean the responsibility for the state of things today, and for improving it, lies solidly on other shoulders today. And that is where the focus should be. There should be no support for a narrative of "oh, but those were the bad old days, things are better now". They are not.

> By all means history should remember his failings here and elsewhere.

The original post was discussing the history:

> I think the disturbing part is people, even now, deny this is the reason Nixon pushed for it. I just can't understand it. :/

> Nixon basically shat on the results of his own commissions by members of his own party when he didn't like the results. History is littered with evidence this man had an agenda yet people act like the "Drug War" wasn't created as a political tool.

----

> I just mean the responsibility for the state of things today, and for improving it, lies solidly on other shoulders today. And that is where the focus should be. There should be no support for a narrative of "oh, but those were the bad old days, things are better now". They are not.

That has nothing to do with what I was saying. Literally the entire content of my post [beyond quotes] was discussing past history concerning a single president.

Stop tilting at windmills.

----

Edit since I'm rate limited and don't care that much:

Look, the historical context of stuff like this interests me.

If you find it boring...shrugs

Re: Legalize It All

#28

Post by Lawtonfogle »

krylon wrote: post #3

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course…

So... what are the modern day equivalents?

I do think drugs still apply, but not as much. But for things like encryption and private communications, there are others. And like with drugs, the thing they target aren't innocent. Many drugs are bad, some are downright horrendous. Part of the genius of their plan is that they do stick to things that aren't innocent and just make them even more guilty than they already are.

Re: Legalize It All

#29

Post by jessaustin »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #23

Oh the hypocrisy. Drugs legalization being trendy, you play the libertarian card. Yet, when it comes to guns or privacy, the same arguments don't hold true anymore. Cherry picking at its best. Gotta love the HN crowd.

HN is not a monolith. I'm sure someone here wants to take my guns but not my 'shrooms (and vice versa), but for the most part those issues are not intrinsically connected. You'll see more of a crossover at other sites, but that just reflects the two longstanding modes of acceptable USA political discourse.

Re: Legalize It All

#30

Post by hjhgjtyhgdfi »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #17
hjhgjtyhgdfi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest private for-profit prison (CCA) has $1.7 billion in revenue. Apple makes $233 billion in revenue. Exxon has $268 billion in revenue. Walmart makes $482 billion in revenue.

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00002194... https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000021754&c... Their revenue is less than 1% of Apple's, but their lobbying budget is 25%-75% of Apple's year to year.

CCA spent $1 million per year. Apple spent $1.24 million in lobbying in three months. Facebook spent $2.44 million in three months. Microsoft spent $11 million on lobbying per year. Google spent $19 million on lobbying per year.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/04/22/apples-lobbying-co...

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00000011...

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