find it horrifying that we have a president who can get away with treason, selling us out to the Soviets and openly calling for dirt on his opponents. Maybe the country NEEDS to be ripped apart if half of it believes that we should live in a dictatorship under an insane and evil demagogue, who has never met a dictator that he didn't like. If that's true, then I want to live in the other half of the country, that still believes in democratic institutions.
How dare America carry on its wretched Drug War, imprisoning an election-swaying million minorities a year for mere possession of substances that are our right under NATURAL LAW -- and yet the president gets to COMMIT CRIMES BRAZENLY ON NATIONAL TELEVISION CALLING FOR SOVIET AND UKRAINE INVESTIGATION OF HIS RIVALS?????
The Justice Department has lost all credibility and now can only do its job by brute force.
For shame!
What are Republicans going to do when this new IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY is occupied by a DEMOCRAT?
Editor's note, November 16, 2021: While Brian calms down a skosh, let me apologize on his behalf for the fact that this rant of his (as justified as it may be) has nothing whatsoever to do with Lamar Alexander, who it will be remembered was the Secretary of Education under one of the Drug Warrior Bushes. I think there's been some mix-up here, perhaps due to the overwriting of a file or two.
Brian: Thanks, Editor. My bad. There has indeed been some mix-up.
Editor: So what was the deal about Lamar Alexander?
Brian: Well, about a year ago, this Lamar chap started beefing about the fact that states were changing drug law policy when he thought it should be decided by the national government in conjunction with scientists. Am I like, "Lamar, baby, you had no right to outlaw plant medicine in the first place, homie! Second, you know as well as I do that plant medicine is only criminal these days because of the interests of racists, Big Pharma, intolerant Christians, and the Corrections industry -- whose interests are all championed by the wealthiest 3% who control the Senate via bribery (see "Billionaire Democracy" by George R. Tyler). Under such a corrupt system, it makes perfect sense for Americans to change the system from the ground up when it comes to so-called drug policy, especially since you politicians feel the need to bow and scrape before the evil DEA, which has knowingly lied for half a decade now about godsend plant medicine -- and which poisoned American pot smokers with paraquat in the 1980s, a weed killer that causes Parkinson's disease.
There you go, Ed, baby. That paragraph contains both the warp and weft of the factual yarn that I'm spinning -- the original of which, as you rightly suppose, was probably overwritten due to some boneheaded error on the part of some lowly clerk or other, who shall be sacked quite momently, I assure you, with malice-a-freakin' forethought, even. (I'll be like: YOU are zee veekest link!) No, seriously, Eddy: How do you like that Lamar person? Typical politician -- wants to tell me what plant medicine I can use. He's the kind of politician who would have been cheering the DEA on as they stormed onto the once-"hallowed" ground of Monticello in 1987 and confiscated Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants -- a coup against the whole concept of natural law upon which this nation was built.
Editor: Thanks, Brian, that was a delightful one and a half paragraphs. It did my heart good just to read them!
Brian: Aw, shucks!
Editor: Plus, it doesn't hurt that you're right as rain.
Brian: I think somebody should force Lamar to undergo a drug test -- 'cause I'm sure he's "used" alcohol in the last month or two. God help me, if we find so much as a trace of liquor in his blood, we're going to confiscate his house and remove him from the workforce! There's a Drug War for you, Lamar: one that isn't targeted against minorities either!
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. It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions, Nazifies the English language and militarizes police forces nationwide.
It bans the substances that inspired William James' ideas about human consciousness and the nature of ultimate reality. In short, it 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.
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
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
Miller, Richard Louis "Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca Kindle " 2017 Park Street Press
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
Rosenfeld, Harvey "Diary of a Dirty Little War: The Spanish-American War of 1898 " 2000 Praeger
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
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.
find it horrifying that we have a president who can get away with treason, selling us out to the Soviets and openly calling for dirt on his opponents. Maybe the country NEEDS to be ripped apart if half of it believes that we should live in a dictatorship under an insane and evil demagogue, who has never met a dictator that he didn't like. If that's true, then I want to live in the other half of the country, that still believes in democratic institutions.
