how the drug war shattered my rose-colored glasses
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 25, 2022
used to be a good American citizen in the 20th century, one who dutifully ignored the campaign of terror that was being waged by Ronald Reagan in South America against Marxists. Don't bother me with the details, I thought, just keep the price of gas low while quietly taking care of those heretics to the south who do not believe in Capitalism. The idea of even reading a book by Noam Chomsky never occurred to me. Surely, he was just an anti-American radical making a reputation for himself out of nay-saying.
But drug-war research is like a kind of gateway drug*. The more one learns about America's dislike for free thought overseas, especially when it questions the eternal march forward of worldwide capitalism, the more one can understand why the powers-that-be would favor a Drug War, for it immediately limits the thoughts and feelings that one's enemy is allowed to entertain thanks to its seamless and worldwide persecution of naturally invigorating medicine -- while meanwhile giving America carte blanche to interfere at will in the politics of its southern neighbors, invading if necessary to install dictators who share America's dim view of true freedom of thought.
When one reads about the bloody real politik of the Reagan administration in South America, subcontracting murder from the White House, (see, for instance, "Noam Chomsky: Ronald Reagan's Secret, Genocidal Wars"), it's easy to understand the staying power of the Drug War: it's a state tool of terror. If a plausible case cannot be made against a recalcitrant former friend of the States, no problem: just call him a "narco-terrorist" and the American people will give you a free pass to intervene militarily to accomplish your goals. But the Drug War is also a spiteful expression of victory on the part of capitalists over workers. Under Reagan, workers would have to go through the humiliation of urinating for their employers -- as a symbolic act whereby these peons acknowledge their lowly position in the new world order and give their humble obeisance to the powers that be, those 1% for whom stealth despots like Reagan were trying to pave the way for new riches in South America, whatever the locals might think of that plan.
The concept of a "gateway drug" is, of course, bogus. Why are gateway drugs bad, after all? Because they might lead to the use of "hard" drugs? But what are these hard drugs? They are the same kinds of psychoactive substances that have inspired entire religions. Coca was considered to be an Incan god and the Vedic-Hindu religion was inspired by the use of psychoactive soma. Plato got his views of the afterliife from the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian mysteries. So why do folks like Biden want us to say no to drugs? Because, apparently, capitalism is the new religion and the world can have no other gods before it.
Therefore drugs that can inspire new religions must be harshly outlawed in a "free" capitalist country -- and not just in the US, either, of course, but worldwide. For the US is in such deep denial about the evils of its own Drug War that it eagerly encourages the world to look at Mother Nature's medicinal bounty with its own Christian Science disdain. And so drug-war America is like a hypochondriac who's not content to pester his own family about his imaginary aches and pains but who wants to teach the entire world that it too should, by rights, feel just as sick as he does. It's a fool's errand, yet the proselytizing works. For if a country founded on natural law does not protect the rights of its citizens to Mother Nature's bounty, less principled countries will be more than happy to run armed interference between their own people and the godsends that grow at their feet. When the US said it was fighting a Drug War, Singapore quickly joined the #metoo movement, thanks to which you can now be executed in Singapore for merely using naturally occurring medicines of which western politicians disapprove.
You'd think Singapore would have at least selected its own set of approved medicines before cracking down -- but they just trusted to the clueless medicinal prejudices of us Yanks. They clicked on all the default options of the Drug War, and then added their own twist by killing the users of medicines that in the past had inspired entire religions.
Finally, something that tyrants and democracies can agree upon: the Drug War is a useful tool for cracking down on free thought.
Author's Follow-up: July 25, 2022
By reading "Who Rules the World?" by Noam Chomsky, one learns of a default core American political belief that is never openly acknowledged: namely, that anti-capitalistic thought and behavior must be punished, if necessary by proxy murders committed on America's behalf.
Is this really the only way America thinks it can survive, is to be a tyrant? I don't believe it. But if politicians think it is, they should admit this and get on with the dirty work of squashing dissent, rather than shamefully pretending to value freedom of speech when what they really want is obedience -- obedience to all the relevant capitalist norms and regulations by which the American 1% are constantly enriching themselves at the expense of the underpaid and eternally drug-tested poor.
The Links Police
That's it, pull over to the side of the Web page. No, put your driver's license back in your wallet. I just stopped you to remind you that Brian is not a Chomsky head. Brian's only now rummaging through the octogenarian pundit's musings and he (Brian) will let you know when he finds something that doesn't comport with reason. That said, let's remember why Brian "went there" in the first place, why he started reading Chomsky after a lifetime of assuming that the guy was beyond the pale. He did so because the Drug War has convinced him that the entire world can be profoundly wrong on major issues -- and if the mainstream American view is so deeply flawed when it comes to "drugs," Brian had to ask himself, "what other seemingly common sense views in America do not actually stand up to rigorous philosophical analysis?"
Musk and co. want to make us more robot-like with AI, when they should be trying to make us more human-like with sacred medicine. Only humans can gain creativity from plant medicine. All AI can do is harvest the knowledge that eventually results from that creativity.
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
The FDA approves of shock therapy and the psychiatric pill mill, but they cannot see the benefits in MDMA, a drug that brought peace, love and understanding to the dance floor in 1990s Britain.
UNESCO celebrates the healing practices of the Kallawaya people of South America. What hypocrisy! UNESCO supports a drug war that makes some of those practices illegal!
Alexander Shulgin is a typical westerner when he speaks about cocaine. He moralizes about the drug, telling us that it does not give him "real" power. But so what? Does coffee give him "real" power? Coke helps some, others not. Stop holding it to this weird metaphysical standard.
The book "Plants of the Gods" is full of plants and fungi that could help addicts and alcoholics, sometimes in the plant's existing form, sometimes in combinations, sometimes via extracting alkaloids, etc. But drug warriors need addiction to sell their prohibition ideology.
It's just plain totalitarian nonsense to outlaw mother nature and to outlaw moods and mental states thru drug law. These truths can't be said enough by us "little people" because the people in power are simply not saying them.
Even fans of sacred medicine have been brainwashed to believe that we do not know if such drugs "really" work: they want microscopic proof. But that's a western bias, used strategically by drug warriors to make the psychotropic drug approval process as glacial as possible.
It is consciousness which, via perception, shapes the universe into palpable forms. Otherwise it's just a chaos of particles. The very fact that you can refer to "the sun" shows that your senses have parsed the raw data into a specific meaning. "We" make this universe.
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Chomsky is Right: how the drug war shattered my rose-colored glasses, published on July 25, 2022 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
used to be a good American citizen in the 20th century, one who dutifully ignored the campaign of terror that was being waged by Ronald Reagan in South America against Marxists. Don't bother me with the details, I thought, just keep the price of gas low while quietly taking care of those heretics to the south who do not believe in Capitalism. The idea of even reading a book by Noam Chomsky never occurred to me. Surely, he was just an anti-American radical making a reputation for himself out of nay-saying.
You have been reading an article entitled, Chomsky is Right: how the drug war shattered my rose-colored glasses, published on July 25, 2022 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)