I'm not sure what your point is... that we shouldn't respect someones preferences because of why they hold them? I think I get where you're going, the progressive sacred-cow that any difference between men and women is exclusively due to male oppression. Whole can of worms there. Don't suppose you're going to advocate for more female trash collectors and mine workers? After all, no real reason men should prefer one type of job right? Progressives would have a whole hell of a lot more credibility if not for that blatant hypocrisy where the only problem is lack of females in certain white-collar, high-paying jobs, and not lack of females in all male-dominated jobs, or lack of men in female-dominated jobs (we certainly wouldn't want more males teaching young kids or working in daycare, they're all presumptive child molesters right). Because, as I explained, progressives are not actually seeking equality.
Well yeah, you can't exactly say a bunch of scientific papers are wrong by supplying flawed ones yourself.
The second link is an opinion piece with no scientific debate simply asserting how wrong all mischaracterizations were like everyone else, the first was more interesting, but of the portion that wasn't just explaining how horrible the author thought his opinions were without challenging the facts, and consisted of actual scientific references, the author has a few valid points here and there, but the bias is so incredibly thick and it's full of so much "no you're wrong and you're a racist sexist because I say so" it doesn't even seem worth pursuing the nitpicks; and there's lots of attacking straw men (by erroneously claiming Damore is asserting biology *alone* accounts for something, then linking to evidence for nature and nurture). I mean seriously, the author explicitly states we shouldn't judge people on their individual merits.. how can you really take that as a serious rebuttal? It's clear someone on the far left was extremely personally offended and tried to take it apart, but the extreme bias and desperation produced nothing but opinion, straw men, and minor nitpicks, among the small percentage of the article that actually directly addressed the actual content.
But that's not a comment I would mod down, since you did at least try to back up the opinion with a non-troll source. Might not mod it up since it's wrong and contradicted by lots of other scientists, but not down.
Perhaps the issue is your baseless assertion that you've determined his conclusions are invalid because his citations are [all the negative characterizations], when neither you nor any of his other critics have actually presented evidence to support that argument. That's what makes it a troll argument. I've already commented so couldn't mod either way, but had you backed up your criticisms of his citations with research invalidating those papers, which weren't riddled with flaws, biases, etc, themselves, I would have been very interested in reading it and would have upmodded. But repeating the same old "Well I think the science he cited is wrong" is just a troll at this point without counter-cites.
Please stop confusing liberals with progressives. Progressives are the ones who have gone off the deep end with that shit, and consider liberals to also be alt-right nazis wherever liberals stand up against their insanity.
Liberal: "I favor strong LGBTQIA+ rights, an end to systemic racism and sexism,..."
Progressive: "Oh cool hey friend..."
Liberal: "...but I believe it should be rooted in true equality rather than giving special treatment to some people over others,..."
Progressive: "Omg that's so offensive, you're a racist!"
Liberal: "...and we should acknowledge and operate under the reality that men and women may have different preferences..."
Progressive: "SHUT UP SEXIST NAZI SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT CIS-SCUM YOU DON'T DESERVE THE RIGHT TO SPEAK"
Discussion can't continue after that point, evidence, logic, etc don't matter. It's really sad that it's destroying the left;, but progressives just can't get past forcing identity politics and value-by-victim-points down everyones throat, denying reality (see: wage gap, college sex assault stats), gutting free speech, discriminating against anyone without victim points, gutting due process in all sex crimes, etc. The most extreme ends of the progressive insanity basically just want to reverse racism and sexism, to punish for the oppression by flipping which groups exercise the power to oppress. And in doing all that, they've grouped everyone else on the left in with the right and have absolutely no tolerance for anyone not supporting their methods, even when the same outcome is desired. Hope that clears up the difference.
Libertarian is a big tent with a lot of different groups just like any other party. Disagreeing with portions of the "genuine" platform doesn't exclude one from the party. Gary Johnson is far more L than R, and it's silly to suggest otherwise. He was also the only ticket with actual high level elected office experience, which does matter. I hope to become a part of the Free State Project myself one day; I consider myself a libertarian; but a social libertarian- you want to exclude me from the party for favoring a social safety net and necessary limits on corporate power to abuse people and the environment (no, the free market will never incentivize this without government regs, no matter how much you scream otherwise), even though I support full drug legalization, broad 2nd amendment rights farther than even most other libertarians (why does anyone think you can strip 2A rights from non-violent people but not 1A, 4A, 5A, etc), an end to all foreign military engagements we're in and limiting the military to defense, an end to public foreign aid while Americans still starve and live on the streets, oppose gutting free speech to stop hate speech, and other large swathes of what "genuine" libertarians believe?
Republicans are not anti government. Not now, not ever in modern times. Just another fake talking point with no connection to actual outcomes. "Small government" is simply code for massive foreign war apparatus, massive militarized police and prison complex with as much intrusion as possible to arrest undesirables, and the pork you mentioned, and all the other things. They don't favor reducing the size and cost, just moving money from social programs, science, etc to the parts of government they like, along with gutting anything standing in the way of helping the rich get richer.
Some individuals may want smaller government, but a vote for the Republicans is not a vote for it unless one is deeply ignorant of actual positions, although that seems like a majority. And it's sad that I have to explain this, but no I'm not saying the Dems are small government. Both parties are equally bad on many things.
If your computer isn't working, and you just can't figure out how to fix it, and someone comes along and says 'maybe you should set it on fire and then urinate on it', do you just go 'oh well nothing else is working' and do it? That's what we did when we elected Trump.
Trump would have to be much more than 'mildly clever' to maintain the appearance of a moron every day, 24/7/365, without ever letting a single word slip out that indicates he might actually be mildly clever, let alone intelligent. And are you going to claim he's maintained this act his whole life in preparation for now?
You seem to think there isn't plenty of hate and frustration for the actual policies he's implementing; that's also a mistake. Every one of them has provoked rage.
The Democrats are self-destructing, largely because a) the social justice side has completely abandoned liberal ideals- ditching equality for "progressive stacking" (where the more victim points you have the more value/priority you have), throwing out free speech for authority-controlled feelings protection, shredding due process to ensure any man accused of any sexual misconduct is punished without need of proof, blaming every problem in the world on white men, all while failing to actually support ending deeply embedded drivers of racial inequality like the drug war-- and gets furious at and turns on any ally that isn't 100% on board with this (99% on board but have a small reservation? You're an alt-right nazi). And god forbid one has the nerve to point out blatant lies like the wage gap or that men and women might actually have different preferences due to biology and not the patriarchy,
and b) The group that absolutely loved Clinton alienated the part of the left that by far preferred her to Trump, but resented the blatant collusion and dirty play to achieve victory over Sanders to ensure a coronation centered around denying the reality that no she wasn't perfect and did break the law with a free pass. But Trump's got nothing to do with that. In fact, that we hate him and everything he and his party do is one of the last things remaining we all agree on.
Voter alienation is the direct cause of Clinton's loss. Trump got fewer Republican votes than 2012 in the swing states, but Clinton got *so many fewer* Democrat votes from people staying home (NOT from switching to R) that it swung to Darth Cheeto.
And here we all are, still in denial of that, with people like you thinking Trump and the Republicans are executing some brilliant strategy because you can't come to terms with the fact we're in such bad shape we *are* losing to incompetent morons who are just shitting up the place without any grand agenda beyond fucking the middle and lower classes as hard as possible to make things better for the rich.
Nobody who starts with the fire in a crowded theater trope has anything intelligent to say about free speech. It's dicta from a case with a terrible ruling (it comes from a case where it was ruled illegal to distribute fliers criticizing a war) and subsequent rulings have overturned that case and made the idea behind it exceedingly narrow in scope and likely unenforceable today.
Well said. Sadly this seems to be entirely lost on people today, particularly the far left, as they clamor for speech restrictions. What's worse, they don't even seem to realize that if they got their wish today, it's not them who would be defining what hate speech was, it would be Trump and the Republicans, who would attack *their* speech. That alone should demonstrate to someone why allowing censorship under the guise of hate speech is a terrible idea.
And you base that on what? A deep abiding belief that one day our prohibitionist policies will magically start working when they haven't for the past 40 years? Other countries do things like heroin maintenance- giving addicts pharmaceutical heroin- it's been a huge success in every country that's tried it. There's every reason to believe these programs would help the situation in the US and no reason to believe they wouldn't. And given the unmitigated disaster that is our current policy, and the complete lack of evidence to suggest doubling down on it would change anything, there's even less of a reason not to pursue it.
You disagree with opinions, not with facts. Under Taliban control, opium was steadily produced year after year (fact). Then, they issued a decree banning it (fact). Immediately after, production went from 3000t to 200t (fact). The next year, the Taliban lost power (fact) and production immediately went back up to 3000t (fact). Food crops could always be grown, even for a profit; but they'll never be as profitable. Not only that, the US tried paying farmers to grow legal crops at the same profit level as poppies, but local warlords discouraged that with violence.
Obviously I'm not suggesting there was anything good about the Taliban, but the fact remains they were able to stop opium production in Afghanistan and the US cannot.
But it does not seem to be an "approach that would eradicate the drug epidemic". It's not "eradicated" the problem for alcohol or tobacco, it's merely helped contain it.
I'm not sure who you think is saying that. Not me or anyone else in this thread. I'm saying that among the 3 possible policies, prohibition, decrim, and legalization, the latter minimizes the harm drugs cause. Minimize is not eradicate, which is impossible. If it were possible, prohibition would be a sound policy. But it's not. There will always be substantial problems, but they will be at their lowest levels in a system of regulated legal access and aggressive education, prevention, and (non-coercive) treatment.
And Portugal also has far less drug addiction than the US and the UK, despite personal use possession of *all* drugs (including cocaine and heroin) being legal.
Iran executes hundreds and hundreds of drug traffickers every year. Even their own authorities admit it hasn't done anything to reduce the drug problem in the country. Malaysia will execute you for as little as 200g of pot; the death penalty is the only permissible sentence for many drug crimes. Drug abuse is rampant.
Are you going to seriously suggest that changing the penalty from a life sentence (current penalty for top traffickers), or 20-25 to life (major traffickers), to the death penalty, would have *any* effect on drug abuse in the US? Especially given the existing evidence that there's no additional deterrent effect beyond 25 years to begin with? The penalties for drugs are already grossly disproportionate to their harm at all levels, and you'd have to increase the penalties on the lowest levels by a *huge* amount to really have an effect. Unfortunately for you we've kinda got this thing here about excessively sadistic punishments. Not to mention the collateral consequences to everybody from laying waste to the rest of the constitution as police power explodes.
What drug is, by a wide margin, the most likely to cause violent behavior in the user?
Alcohol.
sadly it isn't possible to just let people be as many of the drugs being taken affect MANY others when those people take them, sometimes in life threatening ways.
But that's what's happening now. They *are* taking those drugs, they *are* hurting other people. Prohibition isn't stopping them. And the evidence is clear, taking the money spent on prohibition and instead spending it on education, prevention, and treatment, and not saddling abusers with a criminal record and unemployment, giving them little to lose, and forcing them to spend all their time in a violent black market, will result in *fewer* instances of them 'beat, stab, assault anyone they see with incredible rage'. Prohibition creates the most instances of that happening.
You're still talking about defending against random searches. If they think you have specific evidence related to a specific crime, they're not just going to shrug it off and drop the issue.
Are there rational approaches that would almost eradicate it? I must disagree: It has roots in human physiology, in human weakness, in crime, and in politics that make it extremely difficult to eradicate.
No doubt. None of the policies, prohibition, decriminalizing, or legalization, would almost eradicate it. But which one of those results in the *least* harm to both addicts and society? The answer is legalization (tightly regulated legalization, not talking about over-the-counter).
I'm afraid it's not one problem, so it can't be defeated by a single logical analysis.
The details vary, but the policies fall under one of the 3 umbrellas just mentioned. Right now, every single policy in every single state boils down to trying to eradicate drug abuse at the end of a gun, locking people up.
This occurs for _any_ nation that invades Afghanistan.
Ironically the Taliban are the only ones to ever stop opium production there. During their rule from 1996-1999, Afghanistan produced around 3,000 metric tons annually. But in 2000, the Taliban banned the growing of poppies. Production plummeted to a mere couple hundred tons the very next year. Then in 2001 the US came along and kicked them out, and despite spending billions on counter-narcotics operations, production shot back up. First back to where it was until 2005, then after 2005 it basically doubled to an unprecedented 8000 tons making them the world leader, all despite the DEA and the military having carte blanche to eradicate it.
So anyway, when our soldiers return home, what awaits them? They can't openly seek help if they're addicted. The social stigma and risk of prison is too high. If they tell a doctor at the VA, it's put down in their file and obtaining pain relief down the road goes from difficult to outright impossible. The most effective treatment programs are banned anyway; and methadone turns one into a slave, having to show up at a clinic every day, no matter what, or get violently ill. Our soldiers deserve better. They deserve a world where their medical problem isn't a criminal justice problem. Everyone deserves that.
That's absolutely why the ruling class wants the War On Drugs. Alcohol and tobacco got a pass because they were the preferred substances of the rich, white, and powerful... while, as you describe, other drugs were preferred by undesirable minorities. Just look at how they justified it... running commercials about how marijuana or cocaine caused nice white girls to lose their minds and start sleeping with black people (something largely viewed as morally repugnant at the time, kind of like how we regard bestiality today).
In the 1980s, you had the same principle play out again. While they couldn't use propaganda as overtly racist, crack was preferred by poor black people, while powder cocaine was preferred by rich white people. So thinly veiled racist propaganda led to requiring 100x as much powder cocaine to trigger the same mandatory prison terms as crack.
But outside of the ruling class, that's not why prohibition is still favored by 80-90%+ of both Republicans and Democrats. Even when you exclude those who benefit financially from the massive police/prison complex, prohibition is still favored by overwhelming majorities.
That's coming from an inability or unwillingness to understand reality. People see the damage these drugs do, and desperately want it to never happen. Hard drugs are *bad*, therefore they must be banned; they're just too dangerous to be legal. That's the end of the story for most people; a fundamental axiom with a strong emotional component. It doesn't matter that everyone can still get them despite civil-rights crushing harsh laws; if it's not working, the only option is to try harder.
From there, people split into two subgroups. It takes an open mind and a significant amount of analysis to realize that prohibition will never work, and trying to enforce it creates a massive amount of harm, including destroying civil rights for *everyone*.
The first subgroup realizes the damage, but doesn't care, because drugs are evil; so punishing addicts instead of helping them is desired, and whatever damage to society arises out of that is just the price that has to be paid to fight evil. These are the sadomoralists... people like Jeff Sessions; a very popular position on the right.
Those people aren't amenable to reason, but fortunately only make up a small percent. The rest of the prohibition supporters mean well, but aren't well informed enough or open minded enough to accept that if they truly want to minimize the harm drugs cause, regulated legal access is required (not decriminalizing; that's a step in the right direction but leaves a whole host of problems as the black market is still in control and money is still spent on police and prisons instead of education, prevention, and treatment).
If that second subgroup woke up, they'd have a loud enough voice to push through changes in the law. It's happening, but very slowly. Marijuana is a promising first step, and more and more there's pushback in other areas. We'll see where the next few decades take us, but it's a near certainty that far future history text books will speak of drug prohibition as a massive human rights abuse, and its supporters no better than those who fought to preserve slavery, deny women the vote, and enforce Jim Crow era segregation- people who masqueraded as championing traditional values or preventing society from falling apart, but were either just sadists or people who didn't comprehend how much damage they were really causing instead of preventing.
It wasn't a random border search, he was already arrested, then searched, so it's an issue for court. Here's how your clever little loophole would play out there:
DA: 'Your Honor, our "evidence" indicates he has files x,y related to crime z. However, the password provided did not reveal those files, and his software is capable of creating a secondary password that reveals more files."
Judge: 'Very well, Mr. Plugh is hereby held in contempt until such time as he provides the files requested.'
Defense: 'But Your Honor, my client has already provided his decrypted volume and there's no evidence he created another, so I request that motion be denied.'
Judge: 'Well that's not what the DA says. Request denied, defendant shall be remanded into custody. Adjourned.'
A few courts aren't quite ready to shred the 5th Amendment so law enforcement doesn't have to be bothered with civil rights in their pursuit of $todaysbogeyman, but most are, and I'm not holding out much hope SCOTUS will do the right thing, they almost always rule that law enforcement's desires outweigh civil rights.
I know it's a long rant, but it's a complex issue. People have a strong emotional response to the idea of legalizing hard drugs, and overcoming that and the "it's bad so it must be stopped" reaction is an uphill climb, chipping away one by one at the reasons people can't bring themselves to accept reality.
There are a number of countries where trafficking *is* a capital offense, and dozens to hundreds of traffickers are executed every year. It doesn't work; drugs remain readily available and usage rates are no lower than similar countries with lesser penalties. There's a principle in criminal justice, not just limited to drug sentences... any sentence above 20-25 years has no additional deterrent effect, because someones life is effectively over at that point anyway.
Surely the War On Drugs has been won now right??? Or we're at least really close??
What, no?? But how can that be! All other drug dealers must have seen the life sentence and were immediately deterred, no?
Look, drugs like oxycodone/heroin/opiates and cocaine are extremely dangerous and can have devastating consequences when they're abused. Nobody is denying that. But they can't be forcibly eradicated. Given that, drug policy should seek to *minimize* the harm these drugs cause; but prohibition instead *maximizes* it.
To repeat what I said last time this came up,
The real problem is our inability accept facts and logic. Eliminating drug abuse by forcefully stopping it wasn't an entirely unreasonable thing to try, especially back then when the issue wasn't well studied. But it's 100 years now since the first drug prohibition, and >40 of the modern War on Drugs. It has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that no matter how harsh the penalties, even the death penalty for drugs some countries have, prohibition does not work. Anybody can get any drug they want, even in maximum security prisons. Our 4th Amendment rights are nearly dead largely because of this. Loads of other rights are seriously damaged. Police becoming heavily armed soldiers with us as the enemy are a consequence of this. You might be able to justify all that, and the millions upon millions of lives ruined, and the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, if it was eliminating or seriously reducing the harm drugs cause to society... but it unequivocally is not.
Drugs like cocaine, heroin, and meth have horrific consequences when they're abused; to the user, to their family, and to society. Since eliminating them is absolutely never gonna happen, we should instead pick the policy that minimizes the harm caused. Most people are simply incapable of accepting that criminal prohibition instead takes these very harmful substances, and increases their harm by orders of magnitude, and strips everyone of their civil rights.
If you want to:
-Minimize the number of addicts,
-Minimize the number of ODs,
-Minimize acquisitive crime (property crime to raise money),
-Minimize violent crimes,
-Maximize opportunities for people with abuse issues to get help,
Then you have to provide tightly regulated, but legal, access, to all drugs. There's been extensive studies on this, it's not some random idea, it's a thoroughly studied and validated fact. Use does not increase. Portugal decriminalized all drugs for personal use; use went down. Turns out there's not loads of people saying 'gee, I sure wish heroin wasn't illegal, I'd try it otherwise'; something compounded by the fact the people most likely to develop an abuse issue are the least likely to be deterred by legality. All of the money currently spent on prohibition would instead go to education, prevention, and treatment- every dollar spent on that reduces drug abuse more than a dollar spent on prohibition. The money taken away from violent criminal organizations would completely cripple them. There'd be more cooperation with police who weren't constantly breaking down doors and shooting dogs, or sexually assaulting people on the side of the road with cavity searches (seriously, google roadside cavity search). There'd be less harassment when police couldn't bump their numbers with petty drug crimes.
It's a hard fact to swallow, because you see the damage drugs can do, and desperately want that to never happen. But since that's impossible, you have to instead mitigate. However bad you think a given drug is, prohibition makes it worse. Whenever you say "Well, $x shouldn't be illegal because $y", $y is made worse, not better, by keeping it illegal.
Additionally, Portugal has gone farther down this route than any other country, decriminalizing even cocaine and heroin for personal use. The result? The number of addicts plummeted, and remains far below the rest of Europe. Violent crime went down. Drug usage didn't go up. The NYTimes just covered this.
Politifact isn't exactly a right-wing source either. Both sides like to ignore or forget facts that don't fit the agenda.
And perhaps there would have been more, had she not instructed people to *remove* those markings:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/state-department-releases-more-clinton-emails-several-marked-classified/
CBS isn't a right-wing source either.
Look, she was still a better choice than Trump by lightyears, but it does no one any good to continually pretend the e-mail issue wasn't illegal conduct she got a pass for. Comey's conclusion was that it was ok because she "lacked intent", but the law had no intent requirement, and other people have been prosecuted despite similarly lacking intent (the submarine selfie guy comes to mind). Come on.
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I'm not sure what your point is... that we shouldn't respect someones preferences because of why they hold them? I think I get where you're going, the progressive sacred-cow that any difference between men and women is exclusively due to male oppression. Whole can of worms there. Don't suppose you're going to advocate for more female trash collectors and mine workers? After all, no real reason men should prefer one type of job right? Progressives would have a whole hell of a lot more credibility if not for that blatant hypocrisy where the only problem is lack of females in certain white-collar, high-paying jobs, and not lack of females in all male-dominated jobs, or lack of men in female-dominated jobs (we certainly wouldn't want more males teaching young kids or working in daycare, they're all presumptive child molesters right). Because, as I explained, progressives are not actually seeking equality.
Well yeah, you can't exactly say a bunch of scientific papers are wrong by supplying flawed ones yourself.
The second link is an opinion piece with no scientific debate simply asserting how wrong all mischaracterizations were like everyone else, the first was more interesting, but of the portion that wasn't just explaining how horrible the author thought his opinions were without challenging the facts, and consisted of actual scientific references, the author has a few valid points here and there, but the bias is so incredibly thick and it's full of so much "no you're wrong and you're a racist sexist because I say so" it doesn't even seem worth pursuing the nitpicks; and there's lots of attacking straw men (by erroneously claiming Damore is asserting biology *alone* accounts for something, then linking to evidence for nature and nurture). I mean seriously, the author explicitly states we shouldn't judge people on their individual merits.. how can you really take that as a serious rebuttal? It's clear someone on the far left was extremely personally offended and tried to take it apart, but the extreme bias and desperation produced nothing but opinion, straw men, and minor nitpicks, among the small percentage of the article that actually directly addressed the actual content.
But that's not a comment I would mod down, since you did at least try to back up the opinion with a non-troll source. Might not mod it up since it's wrong and contradicted by lots of other scientists, but not down.
Perhaps the issue is your baseless assertion that you've determined his conclusions are invalid because his citations are [all the negative characterizations], when neither you nor any of his other critics have actually presented evidence to support that argument. That's what makes it a troll argument. I've already commented so couldn't mod either way, but had you backed up your criticisms of his citations with research invalidating those papers, which weren't riddled with flaws, biases, etc, themselves, I would have been very interested in reading it and would have upmodded. But repeating the same old "Well I think the science he cited is wrong" is just a troll at this point without counter-cites.
Please stop confusing liberals with progressives. Progressives are the ones who have gone off the deep end with that shit, and consider liberals to also be alt-right nazis wherever liberals stand up against their insanity. ..." ..."
Liberal: "I favor strong LGBTQIA+ rights, an end to systemic racism and sexism,
Progressive: "Oh cool hey friend..."
Liberal: "...but I believe it should be rooted in true equality rather than giving special treatment to some people over others,
Progressive: "Omg that's so offensive, you're a racist!"
Liberal: "...and we should acknowledge and operate under the reality that men and women may have different preferences..."
Progressive: "SHUT UP SEXIST NAZI SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT CIS-SCUM YOU DON'T DESERVE THE RIGHT TO SPEAK"
Discussion can't continue after that point, evidence, logic, etc don't matter. It's really sad that it's destroying the left;, but progressives just can't get past forcing identity politics and value-by-victim-points down everyones throat, denying reality (see: wage gap, college sex assault stats), gutting free speech, discriminating against anyone without victim points, gutting due process in all sex crimes, etc. The most extreme ends of the progressive insanity basically just want to reverse racism and sexism, to punish for the oppression by flipping which groups exercise the power to oppress. And in doing all that, they've grouped everyone else on the left in with the right and have absolutely no tolerance for anyone not supporting their methods, even when the same outcome is desired. Hope that clears up the difference.
Libertarian is a big tent with a lot of different groups just like any other party. Disagreeing with portions of the "genuine" platform doesn't exclude one from the party. Gary Johnson is far more L than R, and it's silly to suggest otherwise. He was also the only ticket with actual high level elected office experience, which does matter. I hope to become a part of the Free State Project myself one day; I consider myself a libertarian; but a social libertarian- you want to exclude me from the party for favoring a social safety net and necessary limits on corporate power to abuse people and the environment (no, the free market will never incentivize this without government regs, no matter how much you scream otherwise), even though I support full drug legalization, broad 2nd amendment rights farther than even most other libertarians (why does anyone think you can strip 2A rights from non-violent people but not 1A, 4A, 5A, etc), an end to all foreign military engagements we're in and limiting the military to defense, an end to public foreign aid while Americans still starve and live on the streets, oppose gutting free speech to stop hate speech, and other large swathes of what "genuine" libertarians believe?
Republicans are not anti government. Not now, not ever in modern times. Just another fake talking point with no connection to actual outcomes. "Small government" is simply code for massive foreign war apparatus, massive militarized police and prison complex with as much intrusion as possible to arrest undesirables, and the pork you mentioned, and all the other things. They don't favor reducing the size and cost, just moving money from social programs, science, etc to the parts of government they like, along with gutting anything standing in the way of helping the rich get richer.
Some individuals may want smaller government, but a vote for the Republicans is not a vote for it unless one is deeply ignorant of actual positions, although that seems like a majority. And it's sad that I have to explain this, but no I'm not saying the Dems are small government. Both parties are equally bad on many things.
If your computer isn't working, and you just can't figure out how to fix it, and someone comes along and says 'maybe you should set it on fire and then urinate on it', do you just go 'oh well nothing else is working' and do it? That's what we did when we elected Trump.
Trump would have to be much more than 'mildly clever' to maintain the appearance of a moron every day, 24/7/365, without ever letting a single word slip out that indicates he might actually be mildly clever, let alone intelligent. And are you going to claim he's maintained this act his whole life in preparation for now?
You seem to think there isn't plenty of hate and frustration for the actual policies he's implementing; that's also a mistake. Every one of them has provoked rage.
The Democrats are self-destructing, largely because a) the social justice side has completely abandoned liberal ideals- ditching equality for "progressive stacking" (where the more victim points you have the more value/priority you have), throwing out free speech for authority-controlled feelings protection, shredding due process to ensure any man accused of any sexual misconduct is punished without need of proof, blaming every problem in the world on white men, all while failing to actually support ending deeply embedded drivers of racial inequality like the drug war-- and gets furious at and turns on any ally that isn't 100% on board with this (99% on board but have a small reservation? You're an alt-right nazi). And god forbid one has the nerve to point out blatant lies like the wage gap or that men and women might actually have different preferences due to biology and not the patriarchy,
and b) The group that absolutely loved Clinton alienated the part of the left that by far preferred her to Trump, but resented the blatant collusion and dirty play to achieve victory over Sanders to ensure a coronation centered around denying the reality that no she wasn't perfect and did break the law with a free pass. But Trump's got nothing to do with that. In fact, that we hate him and everything he and his party do is one of the last things remaining we all agree on.
Voter alienation is the direct cause of Clinton's loss. Trump got fewer Republican votes than 2012 in the swing states, but Clinton got *so many fewer* Democrat votes from people staying home (NOT from switching to R) that it swung to Darth Cheeto.
And here we all are, still in denial of that, with people like you thinking Trump and the Republicans are executing some brilliant strategy because you can't come to terms with the fact we're in such bad shape we *are* losing to incompetent morons who are just shitting up the place without any grand agenda beyond fucking the middle and lower classes as hard as possible to make things better for the rich.
Nobody who starts with the fire in a crowded theater trope has anything intelligent to say about free speech. It's dicta from a case with a terrible ruling (it comes from a case where it was ruled illegal to distribute fliers criticizing a war) and subsequent rulings have overturned that case and made the idea behind it exceedingly narrow in scope and likely unenforceable today.
Well said. Sadly this seems to be entirely lost on people today, particularly the far left, as they clamor for speech restrictions. What's worse, they don't even seem to realize that if they got their wish today, it's not them who would be defining what hate speech was, it would be Trump and the Republicans, who would attack *their* speech. That alone should demonstrate to someone why allowing censorship under the guise of hate speech is a terrible idea.
Fraud is an exception to free speech, and that's what these products are doing.
On the other hand neither will copying Portugal.
And you base that on what? A deep abiding belief that one day our prohibitionist policies will magically start working when they haven't for the past 40 years? Other countries do things like heroin maintenance- giving addicts pharmaceutical heroin- it's been a huge success in every country that's tried it. There's every reason to believe these programs would help the situation in the US and no reason to believe they wouldn't. And given the unmitigated disaster that is our current policy, and the complete lack of evidence to suggest doubling down on it would change anything, there's even less of a reason not to pursue it.
Obviously I'm not suggesting there was anything good about the Taliban, but the fact remains they were able to stop opium production in Afghanistan and the US cannot.
But it does not seem to be an "approach that would eradicate the drug epidemic". It's not "eradicated" the problem for alcohol or tobacco, it's merely helped contain it.
I'm not sure who you think is saying that. Not me or anyone else in this thread. I'm saying that among the 3 possible policies, prohibition, decrim, and legalization, the latter minimizes the harm drugs cause. Minimize is not eradicate, which is impossible. If it were possible, prohibition would be a sound policy. But it's not. There will always be substantial problems, but they will be at their lowest levels in a system of regulated legal access and aggressive education, prevention, and (non-coercive) treatment.
And Portugal also has far less drug addiction than the US and the UK, despite personal use possession of *all* drugs (including cocaine and heroin) being legal.
Iran executes hundreds and hundreds of drug traffickers every year. Even their own authorities admit it hasn't done anything to reduce the drug problem in the country. Malaysia will execute you for as little as 200g of pot; the death penalty is the only permissible sentence for many drug crimes. Drug abuse is rampant.
Are you going to seriously suggest that changing the penalty from a life sentence (current penalty for top traffickers), or 20-25 to life (major traffickers), to the death penalty, would have *any* effect on drug abuse in the US? Especially given the existing evidence that there's no additional deterrent effect beyond 25 years to begin with? The penalties for drugs are already grossly disproportionate to their harm at all levels, and you'd have to increase the penalties on the lowest levels by a *huge* amount to really have an effect. Unfortunately for you we've kinda got this thing here about excessively sadistic punishments. Not to mention the collateral consequences to everybody from laying waste to the rest of the constitution as police power explodes.
Alcohol.
sadly it isn't possible to just let people be as many of the drugs being taken affect MANY others when those people take them, sometimes in life threatening ways.
But that's what's happening now. They *are* taking those drugs, they *are* hurting other people. Prohibition isn't stopping them. And the evidence is clear, taking the money spent on prohibition and instead spending it on education, prevention, and treatment, and not saddling abusers with a criminal record and unemployment, giving them little to lose, and forcing them to spend all their time in a violent black market, will result in *fewer* instances of them 'beat, stab, assault anyone they see with incredible rage'. Prohibition creates the most instances of that happening.
You're still talking about defending against random searches. If they think you have specific evidence related to a specific crime, they're not just going to shrug it off and drop the issue.
Are there rational approaches that would almost eradicate it? I must disagree: It has roots in human physiology, in human weakness, in crime, and in politics that make it extremely difficult to eradicate.
No doubt. None of the policies, prohibition, decriminalizing, or legalization, would almost eradicate it. But which one of those results in the *least* harm to both addicts and society? The answer is legalization (tightly regulated legalization, not talking about over-the-counter).
I'm afraid it's not one problem, so it can't be defeated by a single logical analysis.
The details vary, but the policies fall under one of the 3 umbrellas just mentioned. Right now, every single policy in every single state boils down to trying to eradicate drug abuse at the end of a gun, locking people up.
This occurs for _any_ nation that invades Afghanistan.
Ironically the Taliban are the only ones to ever stop opium production there. During their rule from 1996-1999, Afghanistan produced around 3,000 metric tons annually. But in 2000, the Taliban banned the growing of poppies. Production plummeted to a mere couple hundred tons the very next year. Then in 2001 the US came along and kicked them out, and despite spending billions on counter-narcotics operations, production shot back up. First back to where it was until 2005, then after 2005 it basically doubled to an unprecedented 8000 tons making them the world leader, all despite the DEA and the military having carte blanche to eradicate it.
So anyway, when our soldiers return home, what awaits them? They can't openly seek help if they're addicted. The social stigma and risk of prison is too high. If they tell a doctor at the VA, it's put down in their file and obtaining pain relief down the road goes from difficult to outright impossible. The most effective treatment programs are banned anyway; and methadone turns one into a slave, having to show up at a clinic every day, no matter what, or get violently ill. Our soldiers deserve better. They deserve a world where their medical problem isn't a criminal justice problem. Everyone deserves that.
The US arrests known malware authors when they step foot in the country as well. Quite a few such cases have been covered here.
That's absolutely why the ruling class wants the War On Drugs. Alcohol and tobacco got a pass because they were the preferred substances of the rich, white, and powerful... while, as you describe, other drugs were preferred by undesirable minorities. Just look at how they justified it... running commercials about how marijuana or cocaine caused nice white girls to lose their minds and start sleeping with black people (something largely viewed as morally repugnant at the time, kind of like how we regard bestiality today).
In the 1980s, you had the same principle play out again. While they couldn't use propaganda as overtly racist, crack was preferred by poor black people, while powder cocaine was preferred by rich white people. So thinly veiled racist propaganda led to requiring 100x as much powder cocaine to trigger the same mandatory prison terms as crack.
But outside of the ruling class, that's not why prohibition is still favored by 80-90%+ of both Republicans and Democrats. Even when you exclude those who benefit financially from the massive police/prison complex, prohibition is still favored by overwhelming majorities.
That's coming from an inability or unwillingness to understand reality. People see the damage these drugs do, and desperately want it to never happen. Hard drugs are *bad*, therefore they must be banned; they're just too dangerous to be legal. That's the end of the story for most people; a fundamental axiom with a strong emotional component. It doesn't matter that everyone can still get them despite civil-rights crushing harsh laws; if it's not working, the only option is to try harder.
From there, people split into two subgroups. It takes an open mind and a significant amount of analysis to realize that prohibition will never work, and trying to enforce it creates a massive amount of harm, including destroying civil rights for *everyone*.
The first subgroup realizes the damage, but doesn't care, because drugs are evil; so punishing addicts instead of helping them is desired, and whatever damage to society arises out of that is just the price that has to be paid to fight evil. These are the sadomoralists... people like Jeff Sessions; a very popular position on the right.
Those people aren't amenable to reason, but fortunately only make up a small percent. The rest of the prohibition supporters mean well, but aren't well informed enough or open minded enough to accept that if they truly want to minimize the harm drugs cause, regulated legal access is required (not decriminalizing; that's a step in the right direction but leaves a whole host of problems as the black market is still in control and money is still spent on police and prisons instead of education, prevention, and treatment).
If that second subgroup woke up, they'd have a loud enough voice to push through changes in the law. It's happening, but very slowly. Marijuana is a promising first step, and more and more there's pushback in other areas. We'll see where the next few decades take us, but it's a near certainty that far future history text books will speak of drug prohibition as a massive human rights abuse, and its supporters no better than those who fought to preserve slavery, deny women the vote, and enforce Jim Crow era segregation- people who masqueraded as championing traditional values or preventing society from falling apart, but were either just sadists or people who didn't comprehend how much damage they were really causing instead of preventing.
It wasn't a random border search, he was already arrested, then searched, so it's an issue for court. Here's how your clever little loophole would play out there:
DA: 'Your Honor, our "evidence" indicates he has files x,y related to crime z. However, the password provided did not reveal those files, and his software is capable of creating a secondary password that reveals more files."
Judge: 'Very well, Mr. Plugh is hereby held in contempt until such time as he provides the files requested.'
Defense: 'But Your Honor, my client has already provided his decrypted volume and there's no evidence he created another, so I request that motion be denied.'
Judge: 'Well that's not what the DA says. Request denied, defendant shall be remanded into custody. Adjourned.'
A few courts aren't quite ready to shred the 5th Amendment so law enforcement doesn't have to be bothered with civil rights in their pursuit of $todaysbogeyman, but most are, and I'm not holding out much hope SCOTUS will do the right thing, they almost always rule that law enforcement's desires outweigh civil rights.
I know it's a long rant, but it's a complex issue. People have a strong emotional response to the idea of legalizing hard drugs, and overcoming that and the "it's bad so it must be stopped" reaction is an uphill climb, chipping away one by one at the reasons people can't bring themselves to accept reality.
There are a number of countries where trafficking *is* a capital offense, and dozens to hundreds of traffickers are executed every year. It doesn't work; drugs remain readily available and usage rates are no lower than similar countries with lesser penalties. There's a principle in criminal justice, not just limited to drug sentences... any sentence above 20-25 years has no additional deterrent effect, because someones life is effectively over at that point anyway.
Surely the War On Drugs has been won now right??? Or we're at least really close??
What, no?? But how can that be! All other drug dealers must have seen the life sentence and were immediately deterred, no?
Look, drugs like oxycodone/heroin/opiates and cocaine are extremely dangerous and can have devastating consequences when they're abused. Nobody is denying that. But they can't be forcibly eradicated. Given that, drug policy should seek to *minimize* the harm these drugs cause; but prohibition instead *maximizes* it.
To repeat what I said last time this came up,
The real problem is our inability accept facts and logic. Eliminating drug abuse by forcefully stopping it wasn't an entirely unreasonable thing to try, especially back then when the issue wasn't well studied. But it's 100 years now since the first drug prohibition, and >40 of the modern War on Drugs. It has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that no matter how harsh the penalties, even the death penalty for drugs some countries have, prohibition does not work. Anybody can get any drug they want, even in maximum security prisons. Our 4th Amendment rights are nearly dead largely because of this. Loads of other rights are seriously damaged. Police becoming heavily armed soldiers with us as the enemy are a consequence of this. You might be able to justify all that, and the millions upon millions of lives ruined, and the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, if it was eliminating or seriously reducing the harm drugs cause to society... but it unequivocally is not.
Drugs like cocaine, heroin, and meth have horrific consequences when they're abused; to the user, to their family, and to society. Since eliminating them is absolutely never gonna happen, we should instead pick the policy that minimizes the harm caused. Most people are simply incapable of accepting that criminal prohibition instead takes these very harmful substances, and increases their harm by orders of magnitude, and strips everyone of their civil rights.
If you want to:
-Minimize the number of addicts,
-Minimize the number of ODs,
-Minimize acquisitive crime (property crime to raise money),
-Minimize violent crimes,
-Maximize opportunities for people with abuse issues to get help,
Then you have to provide tightly regulated, but legal, access, to all drugs. There's been extensive studies on this, it's not some random idea, it's a thoroughly studied and validated fact. Use does not increase. Portugal decriminalized all drugs for personal use; use went down. Turns out there's not loads of people saying 'gee, I sure wish heroin wasn't illegal, I'd try it otherwise'; something compounded by the fact the people most likely to develop an abuse issue are the least likely to be deterred by legality. All of the money currently spent on prohibition would instead go to education, prevention, and treatment- every dollar spent on that reduces drug abuse more than a dollar spent on prohibition. The money taken away from violent criminal organizations would completely cripple them. There'd be more cooperation with police who weren't constantly breaking down doors and shooting dogs, or sexually assaulting people on the side of the road with cavity searches (seriously, google roadside cavity search). There'd be less harassment when police couldn't bump their numbers with petty drug crimes.
It's a hard fact to swallow, because you see the damage drugs can do, and desperately want that to never happen. But since that's impossible, you have to instead mitigate. However bad you think a given drug is, prohibition makes it worse. Whenever you say "Well, $x shouldn't be illegal because $y", $y is made worse, not better, by keeping it illegal.
Additionally, Portugal has gone farther down this route than any other country, decriminalizing even cocaine and heroin for personal use. The result? The number of addicts plummeted, and remains far below the rest of Europe. Violent crime went down. Drug usage didn't go up. The NYTimes just covered this.
http://www.politifact.com/trut...
Politifact isn't exactly a right-wing source either. Both sides like to ignore or forget facts that don't fit the agenda.
And perhaps there would have been more, had she not instructed people to *remove* those markings:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/state-department-releases-more-clinton-emails-several-marked-classified/
CBS isn't a right-wing source either.
Look, she was still a better choice than Trump by lightyears, but it does no one any good to continually pretend the e-mail issue wasn't illegal conduct she got a pass for. Comey's conclusion was that it was ok because she "lacked intent", but the law had no intent requirement, and other people have been prosecuted despite similarly lacking intent (the submarine selfie guy comes to mind). Come on.
So car manufacturers are held liable when someone mows down a bunch of pedestrians?