Mexico’s May 8th Marcha Nacional and America’s Stupid War on Drugs

If it wasn’t for the Patriotic circle-jerk dominating every news network in America, celebrating the extra-territorial, internationally illegal, execution of a marginalized enemy figure-head, you might have heard that America’s neighbors to the south are raising their voices against a travesty that is destroying both their society as well as your own.

May 8 has been deemed a national day of demonstration in Mexico to call for peace and protest against corrupt politicians that support the drug war that has been fueled by America’s 21st Century prohibition. Not only are they not being joined in equal measure from their neighbors to the north, but they are the victims of a veritable media black-out.

This war has been created by the combustible combination of America’s ridiculous anti-drug laws, and Americans insatiable appetite for drugs. The ill-advised, ideologically and theologically, driven policies fuel the violence, the American gun trade, the cartels, and the American private prison system, while proving only to raise the public debt and erode the social fabric of both nations. It is only the Mexican and American people that are being negatively impacted; not the budget, and not the real criminals. It’s completely backwards, and it’s the current laws and policies that have made it this way, and maintain the dysfunctional status quo.

The desire of the American big-brother-nanny-state constituency that calls for small government for corporations, banks, and financiers, but big government for citizens (its minorities, women, homosexuals, alternative lifestyle practitioners or advocates, and recreational drug using citizens in particular) is obviously driven by a socially conservative, fundamentalist, Christian bigotry that has haunted America’s quest for a more perfect union for far too long… and is perhaps best exemplified by this current manifestation of their stupidity-turned-policy.

Billions of dollars are spent to police, and incarcerate, citizens for exercising their personal freedoms when billions could be saved, and made, from removing government from the personal lives of the American people; all to appease a very vocal, very intolerant, very uncompromising, very authoritarian, and very politically active, socially conservative, minority.

With a privatized prison system that makes billions of dollars annually from the incarceration of American citizens for the non-violent ‘crime’ of drug use and/or possession, whose lobbyists on Capital Hill – that donate generously to political action committees and campaigns –  are provided a much greater platform for their self serving agenda than those that would end the violation of our individual freedoms and stop the hemorrhaging of the public coffers. They like that hemorrhaging; it bleeds directly into their pockets.

The American gun manufacturing industry also stands to make billions, annually, from the continuation of this charade. They provide guns to the cartels that run the drugs as well as the police that chase them down. It’s a very lucrative situation for them. Legalization of the drug trade may save hundreds of thousands of lives, but that can hardly be expected to be a reason to give up all that money.  Good thing they, like the prison industry, have plenty of lobbyists in Washington.

The common sense answer to this problem is obvious, unfortunately, the social and religious conservatism that permeates American politics, and sustains this fiasco, is sorely lacking in this area. The enticement of the billions of dollars generated by these policies of appeasement to this influential-beyond-its-numbers voting block makes it far too easy for profiteers to enable this idiocy for their own gain.

Throw the anti-immigration, nationalistic fervor of the American nativists – a community that shares much of its membership with the conservative, theocratic, big-brother-nanny-government, authoritarian, pro-gun, anti-personal freedom, religious-social conservatives – into the mix and you go a long way to explaining this fluster-muck.

Legalization of the drug market, immigration reform, and regulation of the American gun market, would render the drug cartels, with their human smuggling side-line, impotent. The violence and criminal activity is only sustained by our own ignorance, apathy, and tolerance of a very loud and misguided portion of the American population.

Until Americans take responsibility for being the cause, and potential solution, for this problem, their Mexican neighbors will be marching in vain. Mexican, as well as American, loved ones will continue to be murdered, and  victims of this system, from both sides of the border, will continue to be incarcerated; their lives ruined by a criminal record for a crime that shouldn’t be. The only ones winning from these policies that cater to the fanatical fringe are the private prison owners, the gun manufacturers and dealers, and the corrupt politicians that choose the personal benefit they gain from the status quo over doing what they’ve been entrusted to do… and at least try  to solve the problems that face the nation; not only the challenging ones like climate change, corporate influence over government, the ongoing destruction of our environment,  etc., but the relatively easy ones too, like drugs, immigration, and guns.