Orwellian

This has been the most bizarre period of American history I think I've ever witnessed.

Both political parties should carry a sign.

"We deliver so much progress, we have to keep reminding you that things are getting better."

Up is down. Richard Simmons likes girls. And less freedom equals more progress.

Bizarre. In the extreme.

Wake me when things aren't so utterly fucked up.

The law, piling 'em high and deep

The Economist has a refreshingly honest discussion of the unequivocal failure of America's drug policies, especially on the American/Mexican border, and the cowardice of those unwilling to face it. No matter how many people have to die.

El Paso's small step

"In January the city council in El Paso, Texas, decided to pass a resolution expressing support for its neighbour on the Mexican side of the border. In recent years Ciudad Juárez has become one of the bloodiest cities in the world, wracked by turf wars between Mexico’s vicious drug cartels. Beto O’Rourke, a young city representative, thought the resolution could say a bit more about America’s role in the violence. He added an amendment: the city of El Paso was calling for an “honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition of narcotics.'

The city council approved, on an 8-0 vote. That was unusual, says Mr O’Rourke, because normally they bicker over where to put a speed bump. But the resolution hit a speed bump of its own. The mayor vetoed it, saying that El Paso would be a laughing-stock. Silvestre Reyes, the city’s powerful representative in Congress, warned that if the council tried to override the veto it might be hard for the city to get its fair share of federal funding.

The mayor’s veto was sustained. But if the goal was to stimulate debate, the effort has not been wasted. This week the University of Texas at El Paso held a conference on the costs and consequences of America’s drug policy. Speakers pointed to the carnage in Mexico and the corruption and graft funded by a huge black market. They mentioned the hundreds of thousands of Americans in jail on minor drug offences, and the millions of children with at least one parent somehow yoked to the criminal-justice system. They spoke of the cost of enforcement, and the courts gummed up with trivial possession cases.

'To just deny that and say it’s all working—it’s morally wrong, it’s politically wrong, and some day it’s going to come back to haunt us,' said Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the university. On the first day of the conference there were eight murders across the bridge in Juárez, including one beheading."

The situation on the Mexican border is unambiguous evidence for Milton Friedman's argument that the criminalization of drugs not only does not stem its demand and trade, but that it makes the trade far more violent, as those engaged in the industry enforce their own trade without the option of working with law enforcement.

There is simply no other way to interpret what has happened in northern Mexico in the last few years. And it is costing the lives of more Mexicans than Americans can ever claim to grieve dying in the World Trade Towers or any terrorist attack on our soil.

Americans have a strange and dishonest relationship with the law, is the truth. We violated it openly leading up to the American Revolution in our disgust with the British Government. And, today, Americans are pretending that they have respected it all along. Which just simply is not true. And American's drug use is but one of the multitude of examples of just how dishonest that posturing has been.

It just happens to be one example that is killing people regularly.

Why do bullies always lose?

Because they make everything go to shit. No matter how much they pretend otherwise.