How Variety and its film critics support drug war fascism
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
November 10, 2019
Letter to Variety
When are Variety and its movie critics going to stop celebrating Drug War fascism? Dennis Harvey should be PANNING films like "Running with the Devil" that makes a case for torture and murder in prosecuting the Drug War, not writing as if the abhorrent movie premise were somehow unremarkable. Not only does Leslie Bibb' DEA character torture a suspect -- and threaten to cut him open -- but she shoots the unarmed "cook" at the end -- WHILE SHE'S SMOKING A CIGARETTE CONTAINING TOBACCO -- a drug far worse than the coca leaves that the agent is determined to suppress. Yet, from the director's point of view, the movie goer is clearly meant to sympathize with the DEA agent? That's the sort of cinematic message that Stalin and Mussolini could have gotten behind (or Leni Riefenstahl for that matter), but Thomas Jefferson would have been appalled.
The last thing that a democratic country needs is a movie that glorifies violating the constitution in the name of the Drug War. Nor does the DEA deserve to be glorified like this.
AUDIO5
It is a lying and self-serving institution that has blocked valuable drug research ever since its founding in 1973 (still saying to this day that there's no therapeutic value in psychedelics, a flat out lie ignoring both recent cutting-edge clinical trials and thousands of years of breathtaking evidence, including the Eleusinian mysteries and MesoAmerican ritual), forcing folks like myself onto addictive Big Pharma antidepressants by default, when just a few sessions with outlawed and inexpensive psychedelics like psilocybin or ayahuasca could have given me a new outlook on life and insight into my human condition. As for the violence that Natalie battles in the movie, wake up: It's all caused by the outlawing of plants in the first place! We outlawed Mother Nature and surprise, surprise: we created a huge black market. What did we expect?
Besides depriving folks of godsend medical therapies, the DEA is stealing elections in America by arresting a million Americans every year for drug possession and removing them from the voting rolls, Americans who would have otherwise thrown the Drug Warriors out of office. Russia is not stealing American elections, it's the production companies behind anti-democratic movies like this that are stealing elections - and they're being aided and abetted, sad to say, by publications like Variety that refuse to speak out against the increasingly anti-American message of Drug War movies like this one, movies that attempt to morally justify torture and extrajudicial murder -- all in the name of criminalizing the therapeutic plants that grow at our very feet.
PICTURE0019
{^DEA Job Opening: Hit Man apprentice
Must be willing to not simply flout the US Constitution, but to heap scorn upon it along with its so-called legal protections for American citizens. (Hah!) Ideal candidate will have documented experience as a schoolyard bully.}{
PS I'm writing you in this venue because your comment form does not show up when I click on "leave a comment" under Dennis Harvey's review - also because this is not just a comment about that one review but about all drug-war movie reviews published by Variety, in the hope that you will start denouncing movies whose message, like this one ("Running with the Devil"), is so thoroughly anti-American and pro-fascist
NOTE: Some will say that this is only a movie, to which we respond that Riefenstahl's 'Triumph of the Will' was a movie, too, but it was also a symptom of a sick fascist society. Besides, if "Running" is a libel on the DEA as it actually exists, we have yet to hear the DEA indignantly denounce it as such. To the contrary, they love these sorts of movies, because the popularity of their fascist messages suggests that the DEA has many long years ahead of it of treating Mother Nature like a pariah and American citizens like dirt -- at least those who dare to recognize the psychological benefits of Mother Nature's much slandered pharmacy. And so we continue treating plants as pariahs when the villains of the piece are the profit motive combined with superstitious Drug War lies according to which banned substances are evil incarnate, and not amoral substances that, like anything else, can be used for both good and evil.
Author's follow-up note: November 14, 2019
Surprise, surprise. Variety magazine didn't get back to me. Apparently they're quite satisfied with their policy of bigging-up fascist flicks. [sighs]
More Essays Here
Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs
Until we get rid of all these obstacles to safe and informed use, it's presumptuous to explain problematic drug use with theories about addiction. Drug warriors are rigging the deck in favor of problematic use. They refuse to even TEACH non-problematic use.
We won't know how hard it is to get off drugs until we legalize all drugs that could help with the change. With knowledge and safety, there will be less unwanted use. And unwanted use can be combatted creatively with a wide variety of drugs.
In "How to Change Your Mind," Michael Pollan says psychedelic legalization would endanger young people. What? Prohibition forces users to decide for themselves which mushrooms are toxic, or to risk buying contaminated product. And that's safe, Michael?
"Drugs" is imperialist terminology. In the smug self-righteousness of those who use it, I hear Columbus's disdain for the shroom use of the Taino people and the Spanish disdain for the coca use of the Peruvian Indians.
The most addictive drugs have a bunch of great uses, like treating pain and inspiring great literature. Prohibition causes addiction by making their use as problematic as possible and denying knowledge and choices. It's always wrong to blame drugs.
How else will they scare us enough to convince us to give up all our freedoms for the purpose of fighting horrible awful evil DRUGS? DRUGS is the sledgehammer with which they are destroying American democracy.
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.
It's always wrong to demonize drugs in the abstract. That's anti-scientific. It begs so many questions and leaves suffering pain patients (and others) high and dry. No substance is bad in and of itself.
Imagine someone starting their book about antibiotics by saying that he's not trying to suggest that we actually use them. We should not have to apologize for being honest about drugs. If prohibitionists think that honesty is wrong, that's their problem.
Prohibitionists are also responsible for the 100,000-plus killed in the US-inspired Mexican drug war
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You have been reading an article entitled, How Variety and its film critics support drug war fascism published on November 10, 2019 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)