The Individual Mind

“As far as people who have been harmed by police and still hate or hold a grudge, I have this apology: It was wrong for me to use violence against you for merely possessing or trading in drugs. My actions, though harmful, were without malice. I believed at the time that they were in the best interest of our community. I can only ask for more forgiveness than you’ve been shown.”

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/21/why-i-hated-being-a-cop?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share-tools&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=post-top#.z7szc5c37

Human decency, equality of access and opportunity, justice against the use of force and fraud against person and property – all have 100% of my support. The protection of emotions, feelings, perceptions, the guarantee of desired outcomes at others’ expense, the use of intimidation to acquire status and results – you lost me. What is it that is really being sought by students and perceived victims? Equality of opportunity? Special privilege? Free money or tuition or degrees? Easier course work? Guaranteed prestige and jobs and income? Is work “oppression?”

If the desire is to be respected, valued and rewarded, is that best achieved through intimidating demands for special treatment or through work and achievement? Have government mandates and programs brought people closer to disregarding race as an issue? Or exacerbated, fragmented, emotionalized, politicized and monetized every conceivable difference of race, religion, class, opinion, nationality, hair color, ancestry,…? Will more mandates and laws and elections and subsidies and programs achieve “social justice” and “equality” and “fairness” and “diversity?” Do government programs and systems (e.g. education) merely perpetuate these perceptions and grievances? Can these terms even be adequately defined? Does constant discussion of the above themes distract from personal achievement and goals in a quest for nebulous, collectivist one-ness? Is the smallest minority not the individual? Isn’t it the individual that should be valued above any of the superficial and biological markers used to define, classify, categorize, and imprison one in a box of external parameters?

I don’t want to be White with you. Or Protestant with you. Or American with you. Or hetero with you. I do not need you in order to be me, to achieve, to find my path, to enlighten myself, to earn a living, to provide a service to another on a voluntary basis in exchange for income with which I support myself. Seeking warmth, meaning, protection, or advantage with a group is a primitive approach, be it as a guild of workers, union, nationality, patriotic mob, race or religion. If an enlightened paradigm is sought, it will not be achieved with primitive mentalities, government programs, intimidations, force and subsidies provided at others’ expense.

Paris attacks. Indefensible and barbaric. Many call for retaliation and greater military force against extremists. What is lacking is historical perspective. Could these extremists have any significant power without the past 60 years of Western interventions into their cultures, societies and governments? What has happened as those governments have been toppled, couped, leaders assassinated by the West? How great a power vacuum has been left in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia, Syria, etc, from as early as the 1950s, as those countries have been occupied, rebels armed, social systems destroyed?

Saddam Hussein and Qaddafi were not good guys, but they did not allow international terrorists to use their countries as bases as they are used now. Your government toppled, then killed those leaders and in return…? Assad in Syria is not a good guy, but in return for supporting and arming the ISIS terrorists that would attempt to oust him (as Reagan supported bin Laden and the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan against the Soviets), your government achieved…? The refugee crisis? Terror bombings? 9/11? All terrible. And all have roots in international interventionism. Why would the Islamists even care about the U.S. if we hadn’t been over there since WWII, occupying, staking petroleum claims, mandating geo-politics, “spreading democracy?” Yes, they are crazy and violent. Can you kill all of them? At what cost – financial, military, societal? Is this not Vietnam on a global scale? Futility writ large?

I don’t know what you do now. You have created, funded and supported quite a mess. Perhaps, at a minimum, you stop doing all of the things that have been shown to fail. Perhaps you stop arming, weaponizing, inciting, intervening, bombing, occupying. Perhaps you stop destroying systems that might lend some stability to those regions, even if imperfect. Perhaps none of that region is any of your business. The costs of attempting to make it your business will be immeasurable. The wise are able to recognize failure, to change course and to move on. The blind nationalists and historically ignorant will double down on the failures out of pride and magical thinking. We have a country full of the latter.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/11/joachim-hagopian/trident-missile-la/

A nice introductory article on the topic by Toby Craig Jones. The Journal of American History. Oxford Journals. 2012. 99 (1): 208-218.

America, Oil, and War in the Middle East

“It might be tempting to argue that the escalating involvement of the United States and its history of militarism and military engagement in the Gulf region have provided a kind of security for the region. After all, oil has continued to flow, the network of oil producers has remained the same, and thus the primary interests of the United States in the region have been served. But three decades of war belie this argument. War is not tantamount to security, stability, or peace. Even in the periods between wars in the region the violence carried out by regimes against their own subjects makes clear that peace is not always peaceful. The cost has been high for the United States and especially for people who live in the Middle East. In thirty years of war, hundreds of thousands have died excruciating and violent deaths. Poverty, environmental disaster, torture, and wretched living conditions haunt the lives of many in Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere in the region. Of course, the burden of death and destruction does not fall entirely on the United States and its policy of militarization. The politics of war have primarily served the interests of regional leaders who have, often from a position of weakness, exported violence to deflect internal challenges to their authority. And international political rivalry, particularly during the Cold War, drew in the other global powers, most notably the Soviet Union, which also helped facilitate insecurity and disorder in the Middle East.”

An excellent article at Bionic Mosquito regarding US foreign policy misadventures and the show that is American Politics. An excerpt:

“It is virtually impossible to keep up with the mess that is US foreign policy. It was so much simpler when we only had to keep track of the lies told about the Soviet Union (ah, the good old days). But now?

“Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan, Ukraine. China and Russia. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel – supposedly US allies all – are they aiding or fighting ISIS? Where did ISIS come from, anyway? Are ISIS and al-Qaeda in cahoots or are they enemies? Iran (an enemy of the US) is supporting Iraq (a mess created by the US) against ISIS (supposedly an enemy of the US). The Kurds fight ISIS and are fought by Turkey. Syria fights ISIS and is attacked by…the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

“The enemy of my enemy is both my friend and my enemy all at the same time. Even with a scorecard, I can’t keep track of the players.

“Every ‘solution’ brings on three new problems. It is easy to conclude that new problems are the objective. Maybe. But what if no one is in charge? More precisely, what if the inmates are running the asylum – the bureaucracy is running on auto-pilot.

“Even more precisely: what if the bureaucracies are each running separately, in their own directions and on their own autopilots? Many different centers of capability – different warlords in charge of their own publicly-funded private war-making machines, each hiding behind the cover of a GS pay grade? Each supporting or fighting against entities of their own choosing for their own reasons.

“I guess it is possible that there is a strategy of ‘out of chaos, order.’ More often, out of chaos comes more chaos; so far, it has occurred this way. I suppose either outcome is satisfactory to some sub-set of the countless factions that have virtually sovereign string-pulling power.

“In the end, I don’t think the ‘what if’ matters. There is a real mess, and it is obvious to any thinking person – those capable of critical thinking in the general public (I met one once) as well as those capable of critical thinking in both the US government and (more importantly for where I am headed…I think) in various foreign governments of US allies (and others) – that the actions of the United States are directly contributory to the chaos.”

http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2015/08/send-in-clowns.html#more

Click here for an excellent and comprehensive review of government surveillance against the public, with an array of tools described to fortify personal privacy. Of course, Big Data collection from the private sector is ubiquitous, as well. This is especially problematic when government taps into or collaborates with corporate collection systems.

Failure Institutionalized: The Folly, Costs and Consequences of the War on Drugs

Please click on the hyperlink above to peruse my 20 page essay on the drug war as I look into its history, costs, harms, infractions on civil liberties, hypocrisy, racism, contribution to the U.S.’s deteriorating relationship with its domestic police forces, distorted economics and implications for the field of Medicine. I learned a great deal in writing it. I hope you’ll come away with a better understanding of the drug war’s impact on our nation and world, as well.