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August 28, 2010

How Quickly we (Pretend) to Forget

Back in January, I wrote: “Not only has the past been prologue, its cognitive errors and false assumptions have shaped the present in ways that were not- and probably could not could not have been- anticipated by our ancestors.” Even then, I didn’t realize how quickly Mexico would descend into chaos, how steep the descent would be, or how aptly it would make my point. Still unknown is the degree to which the critical implications of present reality would/will be lost on the American polity and its government.

Simply put, how long can we pretend that the chaos in Mexico is not a consequence of drug war folly? Do we really believe that our government’s rigorous preference for the ridiculous euphemism of “drug control” over the more accurate term of “drug prohibition” will hide the fact that the creation of violent criminal markets is an inevitable consequence of prohibition policies, no matter how they are named?

How quickly we seem to have forgotten it was Operation Intercept, Nixon’s unilateral imposition of drug prohibition on Mexico and the US, that initiated the folly that's blossomed into today’s carnage.

Doctor Tom

Posted by tjeffo at August 28, 2010 04:34 PM

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