How the Drug War gave the 2016 election to Donald Trump
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 21, 2021
n 2016, more than six million Americans were disenfranchised according to the Sentencing Project, most of them minorities and most of them for "drug offenses." That's six million Americans who were purged from the voting rolls. Six million. That's why Donald Trump won the presidency, not because of Russian interference, gerrymandering or vote buying, but because of a Drug War that was instituted for the very purpose of disenfranchising minorities. And yet our best and brightest minds don't get it.
Take George R. Tyler, author of "Billionaire Democracy." Tyler's 2018 book is all about the marginalizing of minority voting power in the age of the Roberts court, and yet he says not one single word about the Drug War! Not one! What could be more pertinent to his topic than the fact that six million Americans were removed from the voting rolls?
This is why the Drug War lingers, because authors like Tyler completely ignore its long list of negative effects on the body politic and on the world at large.
What negative effects?
The Drug War ideology of substance demonization has:
1) caused a civil war in Mexico
2) empowered a self-styled "Drug War Hitler" in the Philippines
3) created armed cartels overseas
4) created armed gangs in American ghettos
5) militarized police forces
6) popularized movies in which the good guys are DEA agents who torture and murder at will
7) stopped scientists from pursuing legitimate research that could treat or even cure Alzheimer's, Autism and cancer
and 8) led to the election of a racist populist as President of the United States.
Yes, Tyler is right: pay-to-play politics is a problem and so is outrageous republican gerrymandering and Russian interference in American elections. But it is the Drug War that has turned America into a prison camp for minorities and a breeding ground for racist populists.
And now Trump wants to leverage the Drug War to do even more damage to American democracy: he is proposing a "final solution" to the politician-created drug problem, namely executing those minorities whom the Drug Warrior used to be satisfied with merely locking up.
AFTERTHOUGHT (February 22, 22):
For more on this and related topics, please visit me on Deviant Art.
Many in the psychedelic renaissance fail to recognize that prohibition is the problem. They praise psychedelics but want to demonize others substances. That's ignorant however. No substance is bad in itself. All substances have some use at some dose for some reason.
"Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. For me the very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.
The best step we could take in harm reduction is re-legalizing everything and starting to teach safe use. Spend the DEA's billions on "go" teams that would descend on locations where drugs are being used stupidly -- not to arrest, but to educate.
In the board game "Sky Team," you collect "coffees" to improve your flying skills. Funny how the use of any other brain-focusing "drug" in real life is considered to be an obvious sign of impairment.
Properly speaking, MDMA has killed no one at all. Prohibitionists were delighted when Leah Betts died because they were sure it was BECAUSE of MDMA/Ecstasy. Whereas it was because of the fact that prohibitionists refuse to teach safe use.
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
That's why I created the satirical Partnership for a Death Free America. It demonstrates clearly that drug warriors aren't worried about our health, otherwise they'd outlaw shopping carts, etc. The question then becomes: what are they REALLY afraid of? Answer: Free thinkers.
The government causes problems for those who are habituated to certain drugs. Then they claim that these problems are symptoms of an illness. Then folks like Gabriel Mate come forth to find the "hidden pain" in "addicts." It's one big morality play created by drug laws.
The FDA will be accepting comments through September 20th on the subject of ways to fight PTSD.
PTSD@reaganudall.org
Ask them why they support brain-damaging shock therapy but won't approve drugs like MDMA that could make ECT unnecessary.
Science keeps telling us that godsends have not been "proven" to work. What? To say that psilocybin has not been proven to work is like saying that a hammer has not yet been proven to smash glass. Why not? Because the process has not yet been studied under a microscope.
Listen to the Drug War Philosopher as he tells you how you can support his work to end the hateful drug war -- and, ideally, put the DEA on trial for willfully lying about godsend medicines! (How? By advertising on this page right c'here!)
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, How the Drug War gave the 2016 election to Donald Trump published on October 21, 2021 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)
n 2016, more than six million Americans were disenfranchised according to the Sentencing Project, most of them minorities and most of them for "drug offenses." That's six million Americans who were purged from the voting rolls. Six million. That's why Donald Trump won the presidency, not because of Russian interference, gerrymandering or vote buying, but because of a Drug War that was instituted for the very purpose of disenfranchising minorities. And yet our best and brightest minds don't get it.
You have been reading an article entitled, How the Drug War gave the 2016 election to Donald Trump published on October 21, 2021 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)