So-called media watchdog scorns dirty words only, not dirty wars
Message sent to Common Sense Media in response to their review of the 2019 drug-war movie Running with the Devil, starring Leslie Bibb, Laurence Fishburne and Nicolas Cage
Your review of Running with the Devil misses the point. The movie sends a HORRIBLE message to kids, not because of four-letter words but because the government agent in the film willfully tortures a suspect and then shoots and kills another suspect in cold blood. A government agent does this! The film is thus educating children to embrace fascism!!! Why? To stop the bad guy from dealing in plants that should never have been criminalized in the first place. In other words, the Drug War creates all the violence that the DEA is fighting in the movie!
And the hypocritical DEA agent is smoking a cigarette when she cold-bloodedly kills an unarmed man!!! Tobacco is one of the worst drugs on the planet in terms of addiction and health costs! And yet this hypocritical DEA agent is smoking the stuff while she self-righteously kills a man who's marketing plants -- a plant that is used to this day for spiritual purposes in South America. Please, tell your reviewers to wake up and start considering the true message of these movies. Stop focusing just on curse words and think what these movies are saying about American democracy.
This movie is saying: "to hell with democracy: we need fascism to fight the war on drugs!" In other words, the war on plants, the war on minorities, the war on patients - as the DEA "heroes" are the ones who lie about psychoactive plants in their scheduling system and thus leave millions of Americans - including my 92-year-old mother - without much needed medicine that could ease their minds and even help them make their peace with death.
If you really want to help kids, help them to steer clear of movies like this that glorify fascist police tactics and the Draconian enforcement of immoral laws.
{^The Common Sense website reviews movies for crude language and violence, but it fails to warn parents when a movie promotes murder and torture in the name of the Drug War. Reviews on Variety are just the same. They may warn viewers about the scene in which the DEA agent tortures a suspect, but only because the torture victim was wearing only Speedos, not because his torture represents a flagrant violation of American law and a repudiation of everything that the US supposedly stands for.}{
LINKSMOVIES
May 11, 2022
Common Sense should not even be flagging movies for "drugs," since drugs is a political term: namely, "psychoactive medicine of which politicians disapprove." Do we flag movies in which a character takes a drug for a physical condition? No? Then why are we flagging movies in which characters take a drug for a mental condition (such as anxiety or foggy thinking)? When Common Sense flags such drug use, they are simply warning readers that the movie runs afoul of the religion of Christian Science as it pertains to medicines: for it is not a scientific fact that mind medicine is bad -- but rather an article of faith among westerners that such substances are bad, just as Mary Baker Eddy basically said that ALL drugs were bad, since perfection of spirit and body was to be achieved, or so she believed, not through medicine but by praying to Jesus Christ.
If they insist on flagging "drug" use, they should flag drug use without hypocritical exceptions: they should flag "drug" use when a movie character takes anti-depressants (on which 1 in 4 women are chemically dependent) and alcohol (which causes 95,000 death a year in the US alone), and tobacco (which kills 450,000 in the states yearly), and coffee, and Monster Energy Drinks, etc. Instead, Common Sense is aiding and abetting the brain-dead Drug War ideology which tells us we should fear certain demonized substances rather than understand them, and that it is therefore wrong to even talk about the safe use of those substances of which politicians disapprove.
If they were honest, Common Sense would replace the flag titled "MOVIE CONTAINS DRUG USE" with a flag titled "MOVIE RUNS AFOUL OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ORTHODOXY."
Author's Follow-up: April 11, 2023
There should be a "flag" for the countless movies that promote the anti-scientific ideology of substance demonization. "Warning: this movie promotes the false idea that some substances are bad in and of themselves, without regard for how they are used." Or, "Warning: this movie promotes prohibition policies that have killed millions in the last 50 years and militarized police forces around the globe." Or, "Warning: this movie promotes an ideology that has forced the depressed and anxious to go without godsend medicines for the last 50+ years."
UNCOMMON SENSE MOVIE WARNINGS
"RUNNING WITH THE DEVIL" -- WARNING: CONTAINS DRUG WAR AGITPROP: SUSPECTS ARE HUNG FROM MEAT HOOKS AND TORTURED, ALL IN THE NAME OF PROSCUTING A WAR ON TIME-HONORED MEDICINE.
"TRADER" -- WARNING: CONTAINS DRUG WAR AGITPROP: SCRIPT TOES THE DRUG WAR PARTY LINE THAT OUTLAWED SUBSTANCES ARE IMMORAL WITHOUT REGARD TO FACTS OR LOGIC.
"THE RUNNER" -- WARNING: CONTAINS RACIST DRUG WAR FANATICISM: DETECTIVE IN FILM CALLS A BLACK TEENAGER A 'WASTE OF SPACE' AND BLACKMAILS ANOTHER TEEANGER TO NARC ON HIM. SPOILER ALERT: UNARMBED BLACK TEENAGER ENDS GETTING KILLED IN RIDICULOUSLY IRRESPONSIBLE RAID ON HIGH-SCHOOL DANCE, FOR WHICH THE DETECTIVE ACTUALLY EARNS A MEDAL!
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
THE MEDIA AND THE DRUG WAR
I guess the motto for their owner, Hubbard Broadcasting, is PANEM ET CIRCENSES, i.e., bread and circuses.
Breaking news : "McDonald's will stay open after petition gathered enough signatures!" If only WTOP would give such front-page coverage to petitions to end the drug war.
Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
Sana Collective Group committed to making psychedelic therapy available to all regardless of income.
You have been reading essays by the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass, at abolishthedea.com. Brian is the founder of The Drug War Gift Shop, where artists can feature and sell their protest artwork online. He has also written for Sociodelic and is the author of The Drug War Comic Book, which contains 150 political cartoons illustrating some of the seemingly endless problems with the war on drugs -- many of which only Brian seems to have noticed, by the way, judging by the recycled pieties that pass for analysis these days when it comes to "drugs." That's not surprising, considering the fact that the category of "drugs" is a political category, not a medical or scientific one.
A "drug," as the world defines the term today, is "a substance that has no good uses for anyone, ever, at any time, under any circumstances" -- and, of course, there are no substances of that kind: even cyanide and the deadly botox toxin have positive uses: a war on drugs is therefore unscientific at heart, to the point that it truly qualifies as a superstition, one in which we turn inanimate substances into boogie-men and scapegoats for all our social problems.
The Drug War is, in fact, the philosophical problem par excellence of our time, premised as it is on a raft of faulty assumptions (notwithstanding the fact that most philosophers today pretend as if the drug war does not exist). It is a war against the poor, against minorities, against religion, against science, against the elderly, against the depressed, against those in pain, against children in hospice care, and against philosophy itself. (For proof of that latter charge, check out how the US and UK have criminalized the substances that William James himself told us to study in order to understand reality.) It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions (like the Vedic), Nazifies the English language (referring to folks who emulate drug-loving Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin as "scumbags") and militarizes police forces nationwide (resulting in gestapo SWAT teams breaking into houses of peaceable Americans and shouting "GO GO GO!").
(Speaking of Nazification, L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates thought that drug users should be shot. What a softie! The real hardliners are the William Bennetts of the world who want drug users to be beheaded instead. That will teach them to use time-honored plant medicine of which politicians disapprove! Mary Baker Eddy must be ecstatic in her drug-free heaven, as she looks down and sees this modern inquisition on behalf of the drug-hating principles that she herself maintained. I bet she never dared hope that her religion would become the viciously enforced religion of America, let alone of the entire freakin' world!)
In short, the drug war causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, meanwhile violating the Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. (Surely, Jefferson was rolling over in his grave when Ronald Reagan's DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants.)
If you believe in freedom and democracy, in America and around the world, please stay tuned for more philosophically oriented broadsides against the outrageous war on godsend medicines, AKA the war on drugs.
PS The drug war has not failed: to the contrary, it has succeeded, insofar as its ultimate goal was to militarize police forces around the world and help authorities to ruthlessly eliminate those who stand in the way of global capitalism. For more, see Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley. Oh, and did I mention that most Drug Warriors these days would never get elected were it not for the Drug War itself, which threw hundreds of thousands of their political opposition in jail? Trump was right for the wrong reasons: elections are being stolen in America, but the number-one example of that fact is his own narrow victory in 2016, which could never have happened without the existence of laws that were specifically written to keep Blacks and minorities from voting. The Drug War, in short, is a cancer on the body politic.
PPS Drugs like opium and psychedelics should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."
Rather than apologetically decriminalizing selected plants, we should be demanding the immediate restoration of Natural Law, according to which "The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." (John Locke)
Selected Bibliography
Andrew, Christopher "The Secret World: A History of Intelligence" 2019 Yale University Press
Aurelius, Marcus "Meditations" 2021 East India Publishing Company
Bache, Christopher "LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven" 2019 Park Street Press
Mate, Gabriel "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction" 2009 Vintage Canada
Maupassant, Guy de "Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques - Guy de Maupassant: Les classiques du fantastique " 2019
McKenna, Terence "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution " 1992 Bantam
Pinchbeck, Daniel "When Plants Dream" 2019 Watkins Publishing
Poe, Edgar Allan "The Essential Poe" 2020 Warbler Classics
Pollan, Michael "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence " 2018 Penguin Books
Reynolds, David S. "Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville " 1988 Oxford University Press
Richards, William "Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences Hardcover" 2015 Columbia University Press
Straussman, Rick "DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences " 2001 Park Street Press
Streatfield, Dominic "Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography" 2003 Picador USA
Swartzwelder, Scott "Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy" 1998 W.W. Norton
Szasz, Thomas "Ceremonial Chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers" 1974 Anchor Press/Doubleday
Whitaker, Robert "Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America " 2010 Crown
Whitaker, Robert "Mad in America"2002 Perseus Publishing
Zinn, Howard "A People's History of the United States: 1492 - present" 2009
Zuboff , Shoshana "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" 2019 Public Affairs
Site and its contents copyright 2023, by Brian B. Quass, the drug war philosopher at abolishthedea.com. For more information, contact Brian at quass@quass.com.
