Essay date: April 29, 2022

Moonfall

a drug-war movie review




Humanoids will tell you that they want peace, but if they're anything like us purebred human beings, peace comes in a distance second to demonizing the very substances that could make that peace possible.

watched Moonfall last night. Or rather I watched most of it. I cut the film off in disgust when the know-it-all clone of astronaut Brian Harper's six-year-old kid Sonny started a pedantic and self-congratulatory discourse about how his own society had transcended war. Yeah, it seems that the alien's "peeps" were living together in perfect harmony, thank you very much, unlike certain other societies that the little ET could mention. (Hint: the hate-filled creatures in question live on a planet that starts with the letter E!)

"Not bloody likely," I said to myself, as I indignantly closed the PC window upon which I was watching the film on Vudu. If the humanoids of which the tweenager speaks are anything like we Homo sapiens from planet Earth, they would destroy themselves 20 times over rather than condescend to use psychoactive medicine to bring about world harmony, and let's face it, that's the only way such a utopia is ever going to come about for any species even remotely resembling spite-filled and self-interested Homo sapiens and their penchant for blind nationalism and the eternal demonization of "the other."

Now, if the self-satisfied clone had told me how his alien world had abolished the Drug War and learned how to use substances wisely to promote world peace, then I would have gladly watched the film to the end. I could easily believe that a society could transcend violence in that way. We have proof that it works. Look at the Ecstasy-fueled British rave scene of the 1990s, where there was multiethnic peace on the dance floor, an El Dorado of lovey-dovey diversity completely unprecedented in human history -- until Drug Warriors in Parliament cracked down on MDMA, that is, based on one single raver death, which was itself the fault of the Drug War for suppressing the research and education that would have resulted in safe-use guidelines for the drug. Turns out ravers have to remain hydrated while using the substance! Who knew? (Answer: no one, thanks to the Drug Warriors, who ask us to fear and demonize psychoactive medicines rather than to understand them.)

So Earth to the alien know-it-all: Don't tell me that a species resembling drug-hating humans has transcended war -- unless maybe you've got the population so doped up on highly addictive Big Pharma meds that no one has the gumption to fight anymore.

Oh sure, humanoids will tell you that they want peace, but if they're anything like us purebred human beings, peace comes in a distance second to their real priority, a priority before which every other goal must give way (including everything from curing Alzheimer's to saving humanity from extinction): namely, the goal of demonizing godsend psychoactive medicines in a racist and unscientific war on the politically created boogieman called "drugs."




May 28, 2022




"Moonfall" was not one of those Drug War movies in which Drug Warriors give medicine users the Nazi treatment. Nevertheless, like so many movies today (and books, and TV shows) its plot reads problematically when considered in the light of America's unscientific war on mind medicine. In this case, it begs the question, how did a human-like species learn to live with itself without the aid of empathogenic psychoactive medicine, given the fact that we "purebred" human beings are busy shooting up schoolyards and preparing for Armageddon thanks to our criminalization of the same? The only plausible answer is that the humanoids "did drugs" (as the demonizing Drug Warrior would put it). But if that's the case, then that self-righteous six-year-old clone should have said so, rather than observing the usual politically correct silence on the topic of mood medicine.

Incidentally, look at that favorite Drug Warrior phrase: "did drugs." Anyone who uses that trope without irony has been brainwashed by drug-war propaganda. For "did drugs" is to "used mind medicine" as "did the nasty" is to "made love." The purpose of the phrase is to disparage the activity that it describes. It is a political way to talk, as well. When John F. Kennedy and his wife used doctor-prescribed methamphetamine, we feel like they used mind medicine. When a bum on the street uses the same stuff, we say they "did drugs."

Author's Follow-up: August 28, 2022



It's worth reminding the reader here that there are no such things as "drugs," as that word is defined by the Drug Warrior. To them, the word "drugs" means, "substances that have no valid use: not here, not there, not anywhere; not now, not ever."

In fact, there are no such substances on planet earth. No substance is bad in and of itself. Even the highly toxic Botox can be used safely if we put our minds to it.

But so-called scientific America starts with the premise that certain substances are evil incarnate and makes it illegal to actually study them, thereby blocking possible cures for Alzheimer's and autism, not to mention society's one and only realistic hope for world peace: namely, the widespread use of entheogenic substances that literally teach the user how to feel compassion for their fellow human beings.

Next essay: Cradle to Grave with Drug War Propaganda
Previous essay: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide

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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.

Brian Quass
The Drug War Philosopher
abolishthedea.com

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

  • Bandow, Doug "From Fighting The Drug War To Protecting The Right To Use Drugs"2018
  • Barrett, Damon "Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Polices on Young People"2011 IDEBATE Press
  • Bilton, Anton "DMT Entity Encounters: Dialogues on the Spirit Molecule"2021 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
  • Boullosa , Carmen "A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the 'Mexican Drug War'"2016 OR Books
  • Brereton, William "The Truth about Opium / Being a Refutation of the Fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade"2017 Anna Ruggieri
  • Burns, Eric "1920: The year that made the decade roar"2015 Pegasus Books
  • Carpenter, Ted Galen "The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America"2012 Cato Institute
  • Chesterton, GK "Saint Thomas Acquinas"2014 BookBaby
  • Filan, Kenaz "The Power of the Poppy: Harnessing Nature's Most Dangerous Plant Ally"2011 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
  • Griffiths, William "Psilocybin: A Trip into the World of Magic Mushrooms"2021 William Griffiths
  • Hofmann, Albert "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications"2005 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
  • Irwin-Rogers, Keir "Illicit Drug Markets, Consumer Capitalism and the Rise of Social Media: A Toxic Trap for Young People"2019
  • James, William "The Varieties of Religious Experience"1902 Philosophical Library
  • Mariani, Angelo "Coca and its Therapeutic Application, Third Edition"1896 Gutenberg.org
  • Mortimer MD, W. Golden "Coca: Divine Plant of the Incas"2017 Ronin Publishing
  • Partridge, Chiristopher "Alistair Crowley on Drugs"2021 uploaded by Misael Hernandez
  • Rudgley, Richard "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances"2014 Macmillan Publishers
  • Shulgin, Alexander "PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story"1991 Transform Press
  • Shulgin, Alexander "The Nature of Drugs Vol. 1: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact"2021 Transform Press
  • Smith, Wolfgang "Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief"0
  • Smith, Wolfgang "Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology"2022
  • St John, Graham "Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT"2021
  • Szasz, Thomas "Interview With Thomas Szasz: by Randall C. Wyatt"0
  • Wedel, Janine "Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom and Politics and Created an Outsider Class"2014 Pegasus Books
  • Weil, Andrew "From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs"2004 Open Road Integrated Media
  • 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.