This Week's Dumbest Drug War Quote
Kurt Schlichter at Big Hollywood is overcome with fury at this DPA video, featuring Sting. His entire pro-drug-war rant is an impressive exhibit in mindless prohibitionist arrogance, but if anything stands out, it's this:
Listen dude, I don't think you understand how this works. Putting drug dealers in prison doesn't change the number of drug dealers on the street. It never has, and never will. If you want to put more of them in jail out of spite, that's one thing, but I hope you don't seriously still believe we can arrest our way out the drug problem. Even the drug czar is beginning to doubt that.
It's one thing to daydream in smug self-righteousness of that magical day when every single drug offender is locked away forever. But even the idiots who say these sorts of things would be miserable if it actually happened. Why? Because the cost of doing that comes out of all our pockets, including Kurt Schlichter's. Unless you'd like to spend half your earnings every year keeping some guy in a cage and paying for all his food and clothing, then do us a favor and keep your mass incarceration fantasies to yourself.
Pete Guither and Tony Newman have more.
Of course, there’s also the perennial "America imprisons more people than anywhere else in the world!" meme. In fact, the only drug incarceration problem in America is that too few drug dealers are incarcerated.
Listen dude, I don't think you understand how this works. Putting drug dealers in prison doesn't change the number of drug dealers on the street. It never has, and never will. If you want to put more of them in jail out of spite, that's one thing, but I hope you don't seriously still believe we can arrest our way out the drug problem. Even the drug czar is beginning to doubt that.
It's one thing to daydream in smug self-righteousness of that magical day when every single drug offender is locked away forever. But even the idiots who say these sorts of things would be miserable if it actually happened. Why? Because the cost of doing that comes out of all our pockets, including Kurt Schlichter's. Unless you'd like to spend half your earnings every year keeping some guy in a cage and paying for all his food and clothing, then do us a favor and keep your mass incarceration fantasies to yourself.
Pete Guither and Tony Newman have more.
Looking for the easiest way to join the anti-drug war movement? You've found it!
Kurt Schlicter Needs His Enemies
There are three basic kinds of rants found among right wingers.
The first type of rant makes some sort of justification for greed and selfishness.
The second targets individuals arbitrarily seen as members of some outgroup. In this example, the targeted outgroup refuses to favor greed and selfishness, thus Mr. Schlicter’s hatred of philanthropists like Sting and George Soros, and his utter disgust with drug law reformers in general.
The third form, exemplified by Schlicter’s anti-drug rant, is a primitive form of scapegoating. Because Kurt Schlicter believes drugs are evil, then anyone who ingests the demon drug must become equally wicked as if possessed. The famed anthropologist Sir James George Frazer put it eloquently when he wrote that “the transference of evil to a material object is only a step towards foisting it upon a living person.” It’s something the government acts out every single day through its war on drug users.
We perceive nothing rational in Schlicter’s spiel because that part of Kurt’s neocortex that produces reason is not working when he writes. The scorn and tribalism he projects stems from a more primitive, unreasoning, emotive center of his brain. Which is truly unfortunate for Kurt, and ultimately for civilization. He may despise heroin addicts, unlicensed drug merchants, and marijuana smokers, but he himself appears addicted to his own rabid ethnocentrism.
Giordano
'The threshold problem with
'The threshold problem with comments by Sting such as, “The war on drugs represents an extraordinary violation of human rights,” is that Sting presumably not only believes this piffle, but further believes that he can put down his bass and offer meaningful input into the discussion.'
The irony is killing me.
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