Yesterday, I watched a fantastic documentary on PBS called “The House I Live In” by Eugene Jarecki.  The film reveals the 40-year failure of America’s precious War On Drugs.  In the USA, we’ve spent over $1 trillion on arresting over 45 million people and we still have a major drug problem.  The War On Drugs is a failure when it comes to getting people straight, but wildly successful when you consider the increase in long-term incarceration, guaranteeing profits for private jails and communities that rely solely on prisoners to faith their economies.

The movie is heavily influenced by Holocaust author Raul Hilberg, but the history of the White Power Majority punishing the immigrant poor with harsh drug laws and mandatory incarceration is another damning fascination.

When the Chinese came to build our railroads in the 1860’s and they smoked opium as part of their culture, we outlawed smoking opium and put the workers in jails and ghettos to keep them from rising to power.

When immigrant Mexicans arrived to work our agricultural land in the 1950’s, and brought hemp and cannabis with them as part of their culture, we gave cannabis a new, scary, foreign-sounding name — “marijuana” — and outlawed it and we put the Mexicans in jail to keep them down and out from seeking political power.

When the Southern Blacks migrated — immigrated! — from the South into Eastern Urban centers to fill factory jobs nobody else wanted from 1915-1960, the White Power Elite marginalized them in ghettos, and later made Crack possession 100 times more punishable than powder cocaine when the only difference between the two was adding baking soda, water and heat to make Crack.

Since we’ve run out of immigrants to punish with new drug laws, the White Power are now focusing on the most hated Americans — the Trailer Trash Poor — and those marginalized “White Folk” are being imprisoned with life sentences for owning a gram or too much Meth.

One point the documentary makes quite solidly is that people take drugs because they are unhappy.  We do not reach out and lift them up from their depression.  We only seek to keep them down by ravaging their addiction with imprisonment.  As one expert in the documentary commented, “Punishing the corner drug dealer is like punishing the drive-thru worker at McDonald’s.  Neither have any power, they’re both bad for your health, and they’re only distributing product for the real moneymakers.”

When people have no legitimate way to survive, they will turn to illegal means to stay alive.  That is a natural, and expected, progression of the human condition and being able to predict that want to live more easily helps to enable the functional annihilation of the unwanted.

The documentary also clearly explained the process for how we kill people in America, and it all happens in five, simple, steps.  This process has been used the world over in the Warsaw Ghetto, and against Native Americans in the USA and now against the Black Community in America.  The process is so easy and invisible that it naturally resolves its own ultimate solution.  These steps carry a momentum that nobody has to force:

1. Identification: A group of people are identified as the causes of problems in society.  We show how they are bad, evil and worthless and we label them so they cannot hide.

2. Ostracism: We learn how to hate those we have identified and we take away their jobs. They can’t survive on their own. They have no money and no place to live and no access to the justice system. They are forced to live apart from the majority in ghettos. They are isolated and separated from the rest of society.

3. Confiscation: Next, the identified and ostracized lose their rights and civil liberties. We change laws and those people are more easily stopped on the street and searched so their property can be forfeited and confiscated. Take the property, then take the people.

4. Concentration: We huddle them together for their safekeeping and ours.  We use prisons and camps and other facilities.  Those people have now lost all their civil rights and even if they get out of our incarceration, they cannot get a good job and they are not allowed to vote.  While concentrated in prisons, they cannot see their children or procreate.  Their labor is systematically exploited.

5. Annihilation:  We remove them from society by killing them.  We can kill them indirectly by not giving them food or medical care or by inhibiting new births.  Or, we can directly kill them by inflicting force or other necessary means.

Now you know the five easy steps to permanently removing unwanted minority voices in the world.  Start with a label.  End with a bang.

30 Comments

  1. excellent but chilling as you can see the process evolving around you in society both in the USA and elsewhere.

    1. Yes, when the links in the chain are identified and named in the annihilation process, it becomes quick and easy to see it in action today and throughout history — and nobody is able stop it because the Power Majority does the forging of the chain and the minority has no choice but to go along, or go straight to step five.

  2. well I think the UK is up to stage three ……………………….. needless to say this has been shared on FB and in action groups on FB .

    It is pretty horrific and startlingly obvious when set out like that.

    1. Which minority is at stage 3 in the UK?

      I thank you for sharing — the documentary is 2 hours — and I kept saying, “Ten more minutes, and then I’ll get some stuff done and come back.” I never came back because I never left. Couldn’t stop watching.

      I undertand the drug trade in the USA now. I don’t just see the hopelessness of the ghettos, I understand why the people who live there behave as they do — and it’s hard to realize there’s really no solution to the problem.

      No politician is going to stand up and say we need fewer prisons and more lenient drug laws. Politicians want “those people” GONE and PUNISHED and REMOVED! It’s scary stuff to see the hatred and vitriol of presidents Clinton and Daddy Bush. They’re so full of rage!

      1. sick and disabled ……………………….. they have been labelled scroungers and shirkers, They are now vilified and physical attacks on visibly disabled people have risen – cutting the housing benefits – bedroom tax means thousands will either be forced to move or will be taken to court for non payment

        it is not even drug takers or criminals ……………….

        1. Thanks for that reminder, Nicola:

          http://bolesblogs.com/2013/03/29/david-cameron-has-blood-on-his-hands/

          It’s scary how, when they run out of “foreigners” the politicians begin to turn on their own, poorer, and less powerful kind. You must have a ladder of success, and those on the lower rungs form an important part of society: The Stepped Upon. Without them, the middle and the top begin to get squished.

          It’s best to always have a labeled “bad element” to persecute and propagate. Since there will always be the elderly and the poor and the disabled, they’re the perfect foil for now until the next immigrant wave hits and attention gets turned again.

  3. I’m glad an increasing number of states are easing up on minor marijuana offenses — carrying under a certain amount is okay. Otherwise you spend thousands on someone carrying $20 of pot and will that person quit because of the arrest? Not at all!

    1. Gordon —

      Yes, the States are relaxing a bit — they’re running out of money and space to build more prisons — but the Feds are not. The Feds are dug in and going great guns to punish marijuana as if it’s a pox on America:

      Federal authorities were determined to keep up the fight against pot legalization in any form, medical or recreational. Fighting that political battle often meant carrying out high-profile raids in the midst of legislative debates. In March 2011, agents swept through Montana, seizing property and arresting owners as part of a nationwide crackdown on medical marijuana. They timed the Montana raids to coincide with a legislative debate and votes in the state legislature over the future of medical marijuana, using law enforcement to shift the debate in their favor.

      The raids led to images on the evening news of guns, drugs, and men in handcuffs. It imbued medical marijuana with a sense of criminality — even though it was legal under state law — and soured the political climate against it. Before the raids, state lawmakers had been debating two approaches: Repeal the voter-passed medical marijuana law altogether, or create a system of state-regulated and controlled dispensaries. The raids disabused Montanans of the notion that the federal government would allow states to regulate marijuana policy as they saw fit. The bill to sanction dispensaries was a casualty of the crackdown.

      http://goo.gl/X2tPw

  4. I just checked my Facebook this morning and someone posted one of those “like if” things – like if you think welfare recipients should be drug tested… It really made me angry. I wonder, if there was a way to also test individuals for alcoholism how the public would react to that. It is true that drugs destroy lives, but extreme punishment is not the way to fix the problem. This problem just seems so big – even if a logical, humane solution is found I am certain it will take YEARS to solve the problem and see any real positive change. There are no quick fixes. Until the government sees the value and potential of ALL human life things will continue as they are.

    1. It is alarming how society always seems to require an underclass — slaves, religious minorities, immigrants, people of the non-majority color — in order for the majority to feel good about their place in the pecking order.

      The majority power can get prescribed drugs for their depression and sadness — but if you self-medicate outside the mainstream agreement to make yourself feel better about life — then you are punished for ruining society.

      Facebook is one of the most vile social networks for that sort of “LIKE” me bigotry. I guess people don’t realize what is public and what is not — and that oftentimes their hatres and prejudices leak out and spill out on everybody beyond their limited niche of local like-minded.

      I don’t know how we’ll ever break the cycle of poverty. That phrase is considered quaint and out-of-date today — but that’s precisely what’s going on here. There’s no clear way out of the chain. As one of the doctors in the documentary said, “You shouldn’t be able to go into a newborn hospital nursery in a ghetto and say with 100% accuracy what sort of life each child will have based solely on their skin color.” That doctor was Black and he sadly spoke the truth. Even the babies are doomed before their first breath and this is the ultimate end result of “The War On Drugs” in America.

  5. Terrible that our attempts at subduing drug use are often so ill-motivated, not to mention ineffective. I always found the stigma surrounding marijuana particularly interesting as I once did a research project about the circumstances behind its initial ban. Racism, propaganda, the grab for political expediency…

    1. It seems the only way out of the cycle of economic depression, rage and drugs is to be kinder to those addicted and get them real help and real jobs and real hope. That would take a generation or two to take hold and it will cost a lot of money. How would we pay for a program like that? What politician is brave enough to fund it?

      1. I can’t name any current politician, but I wonder if there have been more attempts than I know… I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out that a couple of brave souls already tried and lost due to ridicule and subjugation from the majority of their party.

  6. @David ……………. they have a new crop of immigrants from the EU due any time now – Romainians and Bulgarians I think …………… the Bulgarians are already in Portugal – they do a lot of jobs that the Portuguese cannot do . There is a mismatch of skills in Portugal at the moment . There re older agricultural workers who know the fields know the land know their tools but cannot read and write ……… then there are the younger generation who have the bits of paper but not the experience . The Bulgarians tend to sit in between they tend to service vehicles , mend machinery lead the work crews in the fields. Goodness knows what they will do in the UK.

    1. There you go! You have identified the next persecuted class in the UK: The Bulgarians. I feel for them, but the poor and elderly should fall off the radar for a few years and be left alone. The moment the Bulgarians are there, in force, with jobs, the steps will begin against them.

      How did the Muslims do in the UK? Were they left alone out of fear or were they persecuted? I remember after 9/11 there was a lot of anger in France against the “Muslim invasion” — but I don’t know if the steps were ever started against them.

      1. they have quitee a foot hold in the UK it is a recognised religion – you cannot use hate sppech against them and they cannot against you – it also depends on how rich they are – I will not use the term class – because some of the richest hold onto some of the most barbaric customs . Thet also have Sharia courts in some areas. Think they will take the country by wealth/stealth .

        1. I think the sheer number of Muslims in the world helps protect them when they are found to be a tiny, but vocal, minority. I agree their power will slowly grow until there is no way for the Majority Power to repress them through traditional means.

          One religious Conservative here said, he’d rather have “his people” heading every school board in the country than have one USA Presidency because, he rightly argued, policy is made locally, not nationally, and controlling a thousand cores in perpetuity is always better than temporarily only owning one.

  7. The only way to break the cycle of poverty is to break the cycle of greed and fear. Those who fear their wealth or power is being threatened will continue to grip tightly to procedures, policies and protocols that “protect” their way of life. Further, anyone with just a little bit of knowledge knows addiction is not confined to certain “classes”. Lucky for the rich though, they can afford top notch rehab and have better access to institutions that can help them redirect their lives… or they can just afford to support their addiction and aren’t seen as a problem – we even idolize them and make endearing jokes about them…
    Yes we need to handle addicts with compassion and understanding and give them the right tools – but addiction is a very powerful thing. Even those in most ideal situations struggle to fight their addictions on a daily basis. I think we need more help from the scientific community – to find a cure for addiction. But then, a cure will only lead to someones wealth and power being threatened.

    1. You speak a brutal truth! There really is no way out of the cycle of persecution of someone somewhere for whatever reason is convenient. Drugs are the easiest meme for punishment — because who supports illegal drug use?

      The rich never feel safe enough or rich enough. They always want more and they don’t generally want to share with others because then there is parity and not a precipice. The inherited wealthy are the worst because they did not earn it, they don’t know how to keep it, and they don’t know what they’d do without it. The pay other people to make sure their place in line is kept in line.

      It would be great if science could find a way to solve addiction — but then the steps would just turn to some other indicator like eye color or height or where you were born — and the persecution would begin anew.

    1. It’s supposed to be that way in the USA, too, via the Department of Education — but local school boards always find a way to outrun the national mandates — and they are hurting the overall educational value we are supposed to be providing to our students.

  9. The UK minions ……. er school inspectors that spend their time making sure schools meet the standards they set

    1. I actually like that sort of enforcement. If you’re going to have a national standard, people should be held accountable to that standard.

      1. Hee-hee! As long as the coppers don’t ask for my (mari)Juanita Hancock after a secondhand contact high — if so, they’re in for rather LARGE LETTERS.

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