Hacker News Reader

Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Sounds great, but my bet is that it ain't happening as long as the cult of Reagan persists in the GOP.

The cult of Reagan is less powerful than the cult of private companies that exist due to government money funneled through DEA programs.

Yes, but ALEC-affiliated legislators tend to trot out the Gipper when they're on the stump rather than talking about how many lobbyists they're friends with. Money talks but ultimately it's the votes that count.

I wouldn't blame just Republicans for drugs not being legal and the DEA being intact. Democrats get campaign contributions from police unions, private prisons, alcohol companies, pharmaceutical companies, and prison guard unions too.

The fact of the matter is that our politicians don't work for us they work for corporate interests. Also, before someone says we should elect politicians, please realize that the problem isn't the politicians. It's the American people. Americans are dumber than a box of rocks. They love their low prices they get at Walmart and don't realize how much we subsidize the company's employees via welfare programs because they refuse to pay them a living wage.

The baby boomers (and possibly my generation) will have to die off before cannabis and other drugs are legalized.

I quite agree, but the 'morality police' stance is something I associate with the right (though not exclusively).

The problem is not the American people. If a system requires nearly the entire populace to be as active (intellectually and financially) as every individual vested interest just to be successful, then it is a bad system. Its easy to call people dumb as rocks when they aren't rich and need to spend their time working really difficult jobs, and then choose low prices and tv for the leisure they have left as opposed to researching the complex web of interests that define the political actions of this country. The reality is that even the people that are "well informed" have wildly different beliefs about what is going on.

The government represents an entity capable of on the one hand restricting just about anything, and on the other hand propping up other things. It is thus a completely natural and logical result that thousands of vested interests will start vying for its favor. Now all of a sudden the entire population needs to go on defense for each of these issues. Its madness and completely unsustainable. You happen to care about and understand drug legalization, but I guarantee you that there are hundreds of other issues you aren't even aware of that are equally bad. Does that make you a bad person or dumb? Of course not.

"If a system requires nearly the entire populace to be as active (intellectually and financially) as every individual vested interest just to be successful, then it is a bad system."

We can't even get half of the country to make informed decisions. Americans are definitely the problem. They vote every couple of years to elect rich politicians that don't give a fuck about them. And they vote based off of arbitrary reasons. They find out we are being constantly spied on and they just don't care. Just like they didn't care when Japanese Americans were thrown into camps during WW2. Just like they didn't care when we were lied into Vietnam and then again into Iraq to make a few people richer. Americans are complacent.

With drugs it's even worse than that: otherwise intelligent and well meaning people have been brainwashed into thinking that we have to be protected from these dangerous drugs.

Lot's of people will say legalize pot but not the "hard stuff" (only because they want legal pot for themselves).

I'm not sure "brainwashed" or anything like it is right, or at least the one's I've discussed this with who were beyond thinking were terrified about their children. I pointed out the choices of liberty or a drug war, which they did not deny, and they preferred the latter.

Brainwashed is the right word. Have you seen any of thr old drug propaganda videos? Check them out on YouTue. Also look up and watch Referrer Madness. In D.A.R.E my brothers kid learned that LSD stays in your system forever and drips acid down your brainstem, among a whole slew of other non-factual information.

These were people around my age or a bit younger, pre-D.A.R.E (which was started in 1983), and Reefer Madness was considered camp at best by my time.

Never heard any outrageous things like that LSD stuff (can't say for sure about the people I talked to), but it was very well established by then, without any lies needed, that hard drugs are very bad news (by that time psychedelics weren't a big concern, they were long out of fashion).

Americans are the worst citizens, except when compared to the people of other countries, who are around as apathetic as we are, if not worse. You see this even in Switzerland's mostly direct democracy. It might even be human nature to not care about big pictures and only worry about immediate needs/comfort.

Blame evolution I guess. Thankfully, a few people look forward...they just aren't in the majority.

> We can't even get half of the country to make informed decisions. Americans are definitely the problem. They vote every couple of years to elect rich politicians that don't give a fuck about them. And they vote based off of arbitrary reasons.

Why would it be any different? The chance of their vote changing anything is one in several million. It would be irrational for them to spend much time, if any, learning about the consequences of their vote, because most likely there will be none.

Colorado and Washington prove that wrong. I suspect many states will follow over the next 10 years for at least cannabis.

The federal government is going to step in and start confiscating grow-ops in Colorado and Washington State. They will bust people doors down and most likely injure or kill a few. It's going to happen. The powers at the federal level are just too great.

It will be interesting to see what happens; the federal agencies are between a rock and a hard place. While the initiatives passed at around 55%, the polls for the feds to respect state law are over 70%. If they go after the industry as a whole, they would end up losing a lot of political capital among the "law and order" voters who otherwise support the drug war.

Note that the medical operations have dealt with a handful of nasty busts under Holder/Obama, but don't seem to be closing up shop or going underground. Drive down the right streets in Denver, and you'll pass literally a dozen legal pot shops operating in the open, neon signs and all.

I don't think the federal government is interested in getting into what would essentially be a pissing contest. They will just ignore the problem and let things be, because that is their prerogative (state jurisdiction!) and they have nothing to gain, only resentment, for getting involved.

Why aren't federal drug laws don't change because many of the other states won't let them. A lot of southern states are not so open about drugs. This isn't the federal government vs. a few states, its more like many states against many states; there is just a general disagreement in our culture like there was/is about gay marriage.

If I were to think of enthusiastic drug warriors who've managed to get their preferred policies implemented I'd probably put Joe Biden at the top of the list and I don't tend to think of him as being a Reaganite, though of course YMMV.

It's actually the cult of law enforcement that we have to worry about.

Also- consider whether or not your mainlining of the 2 team ideological spectrum is a result of efforts to keep you the citizen from really pursuing meaningful change. You're right to blame the s/republicans/democrats.

This is news.ycombinator.com, right? Can someone please explain to me how this comment is not [dead], as it ought to be, within 10 seconds of its posting?

I'd also have to question how it's even possible that any thinking human being, aware of even the barest modicum of facts, can continue to maintain that the police state is exclusively the domain of the GOP.

Jesus Christ, what has HN become?

Edit: Disregard this, I just checked the parent's karma score. Popularity goes a very long way in relegating petty things like posting guidelines and reason into the dustbin of irrelevance.

Not to disagree with the general sentiment, but if Obama declared that cannabis should be legal the GOP would have a field day with that. Big time.

Several commentators have argued persuasively that the democrats and the GOP act as a ratchet mechanism.

The republicans push the envelope with new programs considered extreme. The democrats solidify and systematize these programs.

Not literally true in every instance, but it happens often enough that it appears to be a quality of the system.

That is to say, Obama WON'T push to legalize cannabis, and it's far more than the cult of Reagan in the GOP that keeps the DEA alive and radical.

Here's a blog from which I got the idea:

http://whoisioz.blogspot.ca/2010/05/ratchet-effect-part-infi...

Note: This looks like some obscure blogspot blog. Not so. Who Is Ioz was actively read by all major political bloggers circa 2006-2011. Glenn Greenwald (of recent Edward Snowden fame) commented there a few times.

The blog was not much discussed, as it was considered too radical (or too lucid), but Ioz correctly predicted that Obama would entrench Bush's policies, rather than reverse them.

I have no idea who Ioz is, or what he's doing now.

Writing this dredged up some memories. I found the posts where Greenwald commented at Ioz's. They were shortly before the election.

Five years on, they're an interesting read. Obama's current policies were very predictable, even then.

http://whoisioz.blogspot.ca/2008/06/bottom-line.html http://whoisioz.blogspot.ca/2008/07/from-i-would-use-ring-fr...

You may not like the reference, but: Nixon (a Republican) started the "drug war". Nancy Reagan with her "just say no" campaign was totally anti-drug. But in general: most of the Republicans are opposed to MJ legalization; but you will find a non-trivial number of Democrats who support it. So the sentiment is correct, to a certain degree.

Nixon was the first to whom which the phrase "War on Drugs" was used, but it had been going on for many decades previously and had ... heated up quite a bit, certainly in terms of consumption and press about that, in the period of the cultural '60s prior to his assuming office in 1969. You might say "LSD Madness" was a major meme back then, and heroin was the big evil hard drug that caused the most fear.

This is largely from direct observation back then, e.g. in 3rd grade a bit before "War on Drugs" was coined I had to write a thorough workbook detailing all the major drugs being abused then, why they were bad for you, etc.

And, errr, here you posit "total - non-trivial number < most" (if I'm not too tired to express that); on its face it's just an impression you have. Very possibly a correct one, but then again you admit there are anti-War on Drugs Republicans. And in theory one of them could do a Nixon in China ... but we all know how a lot of Democrats would reply, no matter what their personal preferences were.

> And, errr, here you posit "total - non-trivial number < most"

I would posit that you have a significantly higher percentage of pro-legalization Democrats than Republicans. Most opposition to legalization comes from Republicans.

Consider H.R. 499, the bill to legalize marijuana. It had 16 co-sponsors; 15 of them Democrats and only 1 Republican. http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th/house-bill/499/cosponsor...

The Hegelian Dialectic in full affect.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_sutton.html

Reagan would be ashamed of what has been done and said in his name. I also suspect he would admit that the war on drugs has been a costly failure and express regrets that he escalated it.

(And I'd love to see the faces of many members of his cult when he showed up and set then straight.)

Reagan was a stubborn guy when he was active in politics, what makes you think he would have mellowed out in old/dead age? Might as well claim George Washington was really anti slavery and regretted owning slaves.

Well it's kind of silly to speculate, but I think if he could see all the abuses that have resulted from the drug war he might have some regrets. He certainly changed his mind/policy on other issues, so I'd like to think a woken from the grave (pre-dementia) Reagan would be shocked into such an admission.

Given that in 1978 he wrote an editorial opposing the anti-gay Briggs Initiative (California) and arguably hosted the first gay couple to sleep in the White House, I think modern social conservatives would be in for a few surprises from a mellowed out/dead Reagan.

Reagan was a divorced California playboy actor!

Seriously; can't find the classic picture of him with a surfboard, but as I recall he was the first President to have been divorced, and that was an issue in the 1980 election. When James Watt did his Beach Boys kerfuffle one thing that reversed it was Reagan and Nancy being fans of the band.

I remember the Beach Boys kerfuffle. It resulted in the best letter to the editor (you know, printed in an actual newspaper) that I ever read. It was one sentence:

As a sex-crazed, commie drug-fiend I resent Secretary Watt's implication that I listen to the Beach Boys.

Heh; no comment on the "sex-crazed" ^_^, which I think is orthogonal anyway, but I'm the opposite of a "commie drug-fiend", so that must explain why I too like them.

I don't believe Reagan was ever anti-gay, being an actor in Hollywood and all, and so this doesn't represent much of a change in position.

We could imagine Wallace having regrets for being a racist, because he expressed them in his lifetime. But actually, Wallace was a populist, and overt racism was out of vogue even in Alabama by the late 70s.

Even if stubborn, Reagan was similarly a conservative populist: what do the people say they want, and give it to them. So his war on drugs was geared toward public opinion at the time, and he was right: a lot of Americans hate drugs. But unlike racism going out of vogue, drugs are still considered evil by most (conservative) Americans; what pressure would there be for Reagan to change his opinion now?

I brought up gay rights to support my other point that today's conservatives have read a lot in to Reagan that was never there.

I suppose his, or any President's expressed views on the drug war would be much more influenced by public opinion while holding office than as an ex-President. It was after leaving office that George Shultz became the first prominent Republican to call for drug legalization. People's opinions are slowly changing and there is overwhelming evidence that the drug war is failing and inimical to so many other values that conservatives (especially libertarian-leaning conservatives, which Reagan arguably was) There's certainly a big contradiction between where we have gotten to now and a man who promised to "get government off our backs" -- isn't there?

But, as I said, it's a little silly to speculate and thinking about his positions over the years I can't come up with any major changes, so you have a point. I know what I would like to see, though.

Medical opinion (at least as presented in the popular media) is changing: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/08/health/gupta-changed-mind-mari...

I'm not feeling very optimistic about anything these days, but this is a good sign.

...and if all else failed, maybe George Shultz would talk some sense in to him: http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/bios/george-shultz/

I think it's unfair to blame Reagan for this. Remember, the US was formed when a bunch of people left England because the laws weren't strict enough. Things like the DEA and PRISM is why our country exists!

"First settled by Europeans" and "formed" are not the same thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com