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Comment by ska | Hacker News Reader

I think focusing on Nixon on at this point is actively problematic.

Literally every administration since then has been complicit in this, and made it worse.

I think it's rhetorically effective, in that shallow thinkers have been trained for years to reflexively revile Nixon. If we argued merely on the merits, they might worry about LEO jobs or housewives hooked on patent medicines (i.e., stupid arguments we've seen before). It's best to short-circuit all that detailed disputation with a simple "Drug War = Nixon = Bad". Very few thinking people without a personal economic interest support the drug war [EDIT, quite right Josh:] with respect to marijuana at this late hour, so we really do have to worry most about the shallow thinkers for whom this sort of argument is compelling.

Ouch, such a gross way of thinking. And people wonder why things are getting so divisive. No matter who you are, there are lots of people who disagree with you on public policy who aren't morons. Treating them like morons encourages them to hate you and not listen to anything you say.

With all due respect, I'm sure, "things are getting so divisive" because millions of people have had their lives destroyed, for decades, in USA and further south, for the enrichment of lobbyists and for the short-term political advantage of a worthless SOB who is now roasting deservedly in hell. Sure, lots of people haven't "noticed", because the whole farce was calculated to feed and placate their prejudice. Those who know anything about the Drug War, e.g. the dozens of big-city police commissioners who join LEAP the day after they retire, know how awful it is. Those who don't know anything can't be expected to learn overnight.

If that doesn't raise one's blood pressure, nothing on this Earth will.

Let the tone policing commence!

[EDIT/PS:] I never said "morons". I used a literally descriptive term. Those wilting violets (uh-oh, more characterization!) who are upset by such a bland description should just try thinking a bit deeper.

I don't know if "shallow thinkers" or "morons" are appropriate terms to define the people that jessaustin is referring to. But I think it is entirely possible that many people simply think differently than we do, and you need to communicate with them differently as well.

Basically, the audience you and I usually interact with, e.g. here on HN, and probably at work, assuming you're in tech also, is comprised largely of logical thinkers. We don't have a lot of experience dealing with people who have more emotional thinking characteristics, so we assume that using an entirely logical argument is the only correct way to change people's minds.

I can't find numbers, and I don't know how much, or if, this has been studied, but I think a large portion of the population thinks more emotionally than we would expect them to. I don't necessarily think that's a negative thing, as emotional thinking helps, e.g. bind us together in cohesive communities even though the individuals in that community might be very different from each other on a personal level, because even though they're different people, they feel an emotional attachment to the same community.

> Very few thinking people without a personal economic interest support the drug war at this late hour

Quite a lot of people still oppose legalization of other drugs. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/17/drug-legalization-p... for an example; I'm certain that more recent polls exist.

I think it's important to know that this was explicitly designed to target black people, not an accidental overreaction of well-meaning but not-modern, not-PC white people to a terrible problem. If you take Nixon out, you don't have that.

A terrible fact is that elites still love Nixon. They don't want him brought up because he undermines them morally: they supported him at the time, and they still share his political outlook. He left so many candid recordings behind that there's no denying that he was a vicious, stupid, paranoid, superstitious man, and that the views of his contemporary detractors were more than completely confirmed (even they couldn't imagine that he was literally screaming about the niggers and the jews during policy discussions.)

Nixon created the strategy that has culminated in this Republican primary. Ignoring Nixon is a problem.

Sure, future administrations are complicit, but people didn't really "believe" the way Nixon believed until he brought the full power of the Federal government and an extensive political organization to spread fear in the general populace.

Up until that point, enough people didn't believe in his course of action that his own people wouldn't give him the answers he wanted.

By all means history should remember his failings here and elsewhere.

I just mean the responsibility for the state of things today, and for improving it, lies solidly on other shoulders today. And that is where the focus should be. There should be no support for a narrative of "oh, but those were the bad old days, things are better now". They are not.

> By all means history should remember his failings here and elsewhere.

The original post was discussing the history:

> I think the disturbing part is people, even now, deny this is the reason Nixon pushed for it. I just can't understand it. :/

> Nixon basically shat on the results of his own commissions by members of his own party when he didn't like the results. History is littered with evidence this man had an agenda yet people act like the "Drug War" wasn't created as a political tool.

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> I just mean the responsibility for the state of things today, and for improving it, lies solidly on other shoulders today. And that is where the focus should be. There should be no support for a narrative of "oh, but those were the bad old days, things are better now". They are not.

That has nothing to do with what I was saying. Literally the entire content of my post [beyond quotes] was discussing past history concerning a single president.

Stop tilting at windmills.

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Edit since I'm rate limited and don't care that much:

Look, the historical context of stuff like this interests me.

If you find it boring...shrugs

   Literally the entire content of my post [beyond quotes] was discussing past history concerning a single president.

Which is what I was responding to. No windmills here.

I believe it's fine as a historical exercise, but useless with respect to the state of drug policy etc. today. And think the effort much better targeted elsewhere as focusing on this piece of the history is, in my view, actively distracting from anything useful. Vilifying Nixon is easy and boring.

And yes, I think to the degree that it has traction, it does support a fallacious narrative about the current state of things - or at least is trotted out in support of it, which I'll grant is not quite the same thing.

Just my two cents.

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