May 17 2008
Everywhere Is War
Pete Guither has a great Salon-affiliated blog which aggregates and comments on drug war news. Americans’ weird and deeply twisted propensity to treat each other as guilty until proven innocent has resulted in the highest incarceration rate among “developed” countries. Fact: the U.S. is home to about five percent of the world’s population, and 25 percent of the world’s prison population. (Fat America: those figures are about the same for U.S. consumption of oil.)
In “Deep Thoughts about the Drug War,” Guither writes:
In regulated markets, disputes are handled by lawyers. In the black market, disputes are handled by guns. I have no love for lawyers, but I’d rather get hit by a stray brief than a stray bullet.
As anyone who has tried to quit smoking knows, dependence is hardest to overcome during difficult or stressful times. That must be why, when the government helps drug abusers quit, they arrest them and take away their job, possessions, and children.
And the line-drive question:
When a government uses military personnel, equipment, and tactics against its own citizens, is it time to call it a Civil War rather than a Drug War?
