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March 29, 2009

A Different Perspective on Mexican Cartels

Even though “Marijuana” had been demonized for its (falsely) alleged effects on youth by W. R.Hearst’s invidious “reefer madness” campaign and was finally banned in 1937, it actually failed to attract youthful interest for three decades. It wasn’t until the “baby boom” generation, born in the immediate aftermath of World War Two, began coming of age in the mid-Sixties that twenty-something young Americans (and, very quickly, their even younger siblings and cousins) discovered its appeal that a market began to develop. Thus the same plant once known by such quaint names as “muggles’ and “tea,” soon became more familiar as “pot and “weed.” But generational and demographic differences between boomers and their elders would eventually prove even more significant than mere names.

In sheer numbers, boomers were the largest generation in history, a basic fact obscured by a host of post war problems, until schools built in thriving post war suburbs became so crowded they had to hold double sessions. It was then that many began predicting boomers would continue to exert influences on society. We are still learning what they are; and that some were much less predictable than others.

The tumultuous late Sixties counterculture was one such influence while it lasted; it has also proved a demographic watershed that had a major ripple effect on the nation’s politics which, although still powerful, is much less apparent; not only to to boomers themselves, but to their children and grandchildren.

Ironically (there’s that word again), that’s because the much smaller “silent majority” that sired and bore the boomers had become so distressed by their rebellious behavior during the Viet Nam War that they elected Richard Nixon in 1968, a tragedy which, in turn, soon produced the drug war that’s now destabilizing both the US and Mexico in ways being tragically misunderstood by our most influential pundits and our newly elected President.

Listening to the speech RMN gave just a month after unilaterally shutting down the Mexican border to search for pot should put it into perspective and also explain why many still cherish the same delusional thinking.

Doctor Tom

Posted by tjeffo at March 29, 2009 09:48 PM

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