How Every Part of American Life Became a Police Matter

[Scotteq]

This craps been going on for years. Started big time with St. Ronnies War On Drugs.


But you know who is in charge so it's automatically worse now, like everything else.

The War on Drugs started with President Nixon.

Granted, some regimes were more aggressive than others. But *know* that - without exception - every set of elected officials since has expanded the government's scope, power, and funding while eroding (what used to be) our common rights.

 

[Spungo]

Good old Reagan. He didn't want the government in your medicine cabinet unless the cabinet contained plants that are native to this country. Then you deserve to be in jail for 20 years.

 

[DominionSeraph]

In my opinion things have gotten much worse since Obama was elected.

 

[Oldgamer]

Yep, McCarthyism at it's finest, it never really went away, and neither did Jim Crowe.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Well here's some small movement in the right direction:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/liberals-tea-party-sentencing-reform

 

[Jhhnn]

In my opinion things have gotten much worse since Obama was elected.

Why does this have to be about Obama? Why do you pin it on him when this began 30 years ago, & has progressed from there?

Sheesh.

You ignore efforts from the Obama admin to turn it around, like their going along with cannabis legalization in WA & CO & their attempts to move away from sentencing at all & mandatory minimums wrt drug crimes.

The shameful incarceration rate? Think of it as an authoritarian right wing jobs program. Really. If you fuck up, you get a really shitty job, being a prisoner. Lots of other jobs depend on your job, so there's a lot of effort placing you in that job, keeping you there, & getting you to come back should you be temporarily separated.

Think of it as one of the natural results of the increasing bind between job necessity & job scarcity. One of the ways that the guys at the top put a lid on that is make-work govt jobs, and some of them are just really shitty, like being locked up for decades. They'll make money off your junkie ass every day you're in there.

Hey, they're the best jobs that some of the finest conservative thinkers can come up with.

Depending on your POV, you could say it's a brilliant adaptation of Capitalism to change or you could say it's symptomatic of Capitalism's failure to deliver on its promises. You might even describe it as predatory top down class warfare.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Yep, McCarthyism at it's finest, it never really went away, and neither did Jim Crowe.

I'd say we've come pretty far in addressing the mindless presumptions of white Christians given how butthurt they are that it happened.