You let David Brooks off too lightly. The War on Drugs is the most racist, evil policy the US has engaged in since at least Jim Crow.
Millions of lives destroyed. Tens or hundreds of thousands dead. This should shock the conscience. What Brooks is saying is outrageous, and he and others like him should be called on it.
This should be obvious, but letâs shout it from the rooftops again:
Not every thing that you disapprove of needs to be made illegal!
Legalizing something does not mean that you endorse it!
There are a lot of gentler ways to discourage pot use than the law. The law is an extremely blunt instrument. If you feel the need to discourage pot use, go with social pressure, or tax the hell out of it. Weâve managed to live with legalized alcohol - it has its problems, but prohibition was demonstrably worse
Arguably, Brooksâ ghastly little performance provides an object lesson in the thesis that the writer of the âOn Smarmâ piece linked to here a while back was aiming at.
Is what you say correct? Almost certainly. Would a âSeriousâ commentator simply bat them away with an oh-so-pious demand that you be more Civil and Moderate and We Are Trying To Talk About Ideas Here? So thoroughly that they were gone before he started writing, and he didnât even have to be so impolite as to mention them. In his little smarmverse, the issues on the table really are âdoes pot inhibit the aesthetic development of todayâs youth?â and âOught the Noble Republic to cultivate virtue in its citizens?â because it simply wouldnât be Polite to mention all the ways that we put the âwarâ in âdrug warâ every day.
Greenberg really tears Brooks a new one in that post. He points out what really SHOULD be Brooksâ âshameful 4 a.m. memoriesâ.
Thank you for thinking of the children.
My first thought was that heâs just a fucking hypocrite (and he is that), but heâs also much worse than that. A hypocrite says, âDo as I say, not as I do.â A hypocrite may be applying a double standard, but not in terms of the consequences of those actions - what Brooks is asking for is the perpetuation of basic inequality. Heâs happy to have been able to have used his privilege to escape any consequences for his actions, and heâs equally happy that others canât avoid potentially life-destroying consequences for those same actions - and in fact, that others have paid for his actions. Thatâs not just being a âjerkâ - thatâs monstrous, frankly.
âThis column really gets to the heart of whatâs wrong with David Brooks.â
Heâs good at that. Letting the world know what a dickweed he is. I swear Brooks and Friedman have combined into the same column-writing entity.
Oh man, so Brooks got a black kid kicked out of school and sent to juvenile hall for his own pot-smoking antics. What a piece of shit. I really disliked him before. Now I hope he dies from the most painful, lingering form of cancer. Brooks is such an incredibly over-privileged, under-performing gobshite.
Why does the NY Times feel it needs to run a welfare program for stupid rich white guys a la Brooks, Douthat and Friedman? The Three Stooges. No. I take it back, The Three Stooges were actually funny. These guys are the three black holes of stupid.
The sad thing is that David Brooks could have easily made his position pretty reasonable by saying something like âI think pot should still be illegal to discourage people from continued use, but the penalty for possession should be a fine, not prison time (with an exception for medical marijuana)â. But he seems to be completely oblivious to the way people have their lives ruined by getting thrown in prison for possession, and of the high level of racial bias in how prison sentences for possession are handed out.
As more media-entities, who are beholden to the politics of their chosen partyâs ancient and inviolate policies, become aware that they are vulnerable to the same kind of surveillance apparatus which spies on the little people; I think we will see more of these inane admissions of prior âwrong-doingâ.
Coupled of course with this kind of hand-waving and pathetic counter-reasoning.
I mean, you can almost fucking smell the cognitive dissonance wafting off the misguided and meaningless drivel heâs trying to pass off as thought.
Iâd say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship.
Amazing that he sees a prison sentence as subtle and how he thinks prohibition is key to a self-governing citizenship.
Yeah, he definitely seems to have mixed up his alcohol and cannabis statistics. After trying it once and being bored by it, Iâve never been a cannabis imbiber myself, so I can only speak from what the studies have said, not personal experience. But the agreement is that alcohol is more âaddictiveâ than cannabis. Studies Iâve seen indicate that alcohol consumption is also more dangerous for driving than cannabis - they can both impair you to similar degrees, but alcohol apparently makes drivers overconfident as to their abilities, making the driver more dangerous, and cannabis makes them cautious. (In fact one study indicated that smoking cannabis after getting drunk would make you a slightly better driver. Still dangerously terrible, but not as bad as when simply drunk.)
As for the creativity claim - Iâve not seen the studies on it, but Iâm skeptical, as I have seen studies indicating that imbibing alcohol makes people more creative. Since cannabis has the sort of dissociative effects tied with increased creativity, Iâd assume itâs at least as effective in that regard.
speaking as a middle aged white guy who had his life kicked in by the prohibition on pot i wanted to just point out EVERYBODY suffers from this war on a plant.
Lost my job
wife lost her job
spent 6 months in jail
both of us had our driver licences suspended
ex spouse took legal custody of our kids so he did not have to pay child support - but left them with us because they wanted to stay.
all because I did what is legal in Colorodo.
this shit has got to end
Iâm curious as to why? Is it one of those things where you have some moral objection based on iron age superstition or is there something more substantial to your dislike of free adults making a choice?
See what tlwest said.
If you are rich, white, and powerful, the criminal system only rarely even discourages anything. If you arenât, it can jail, rape, torture, mutilate, or kill you, and thatâs just before trial.
De gustibus? Adults wearing sweatpants (or pyjamas) in public is also an adultâs free choice, but not something Iâd care to see become more common around me.
Gotcha. You have no articulable reasons, itâs simply that you donât approve of such behavior but canât say why. Thanks.
Urinal [or perhaps the more alliterative Bidet] Brooks supports that governments use techniques such as like global surveillance, torture by water-boarding, gulags such as Guantanamo, drone murders such as Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, lawless wars [like the wars on the Iraqis] incarceration for harmless pleasures, [like the pot laws in the US]; endless boycotts that result in human misery such as those against Iran and Cuba; and supporting theft of resources and land [like the Zionists in Israel]. Thatâs what Bidet Brooks supports.
âThe deeper sources of happiness usually involve a state of going somewhere, becoming better at something, learning more about something, overcoming difficulty and experiencing a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.â
Well, doesnât that just say it all about this perspective? What about the people who have no state of going anywhere, becoming better, etc?
Aside from the pleasurable effects, drug use provides many with a sense of routine in a day full ofâŚnothing. For a lot of people, thatâs the happiest theyâre going to be, given the circumstances that theyâre in. That the drug use puts them at risk for addiction and reduced access to supportive services, just helps to seal the deal.
And for teenagers, many are using with their parentsâ consent, if not just with their parents outright. A family such as that has every psychological reason to isolate themselves, and it shouldnât be surprising if that kind of isolation is correlated with an abusive environment, which the parent wouldnât want known, and the child would be motivated to âprotectâ, for fear that they and/or their parents would be jailed.
So, for those who are really interested in lowering drug use rates, maybe, instead of constructing this as a moral, criminal, or maturity issue, they should work to address resource and educational deficits in our culture so that most people can grow up with perceivable and accessible choices.
âLaws profoundly mold cultureâ
Incorrect, says the anthropologist, culture molds law. And a culture unable to mold its laws experiences severe cognitive dissonance.
