This posting isn’t about the Trump Transition, that’s on the TT-7 posting.
No, this one is about The Media. In particular, one specific aspect of the media. Plus the way the public response to a time worn tactic has changed thanks to the internet.
Sidebar on Title: For anyone wondering why ‘concern’ is hyphenated in the title, it is a play on the song lyric “Everybody was Kung Foo Fighting…” What went wandering through the mind when observing this “Concern Troll” food fight on the T.V., and an example of how the ‘echo’ of things works in The Flash…
So I’m sucking down my morning first coffee while cycling through the Talking Heads to find out if the world ended while I was asleep and nobody bothered to wake me…
The major “topic du jour” being one of Kelly Ann scoffing at a DNC/ Hillary Communications person and pointing out that Hillary lost simply because she is a bit of a Troll herself and couldn’t connect with all those folks she sees as “Deplorables”. Had no interest in the problems of us little people, and was using her offices to collect $Millions by breaking the law. And maybe, just maybe, folks actually didn’t like the idea of the Condescending Unstable Thief In Chief. (Kelly Ann, you rock! Take your victory lap. Hell, take one a week for the rest of the year, I love watching you Aikido your opposition, and I think you love it too! ;-) BTW, Aikido is the martial art based around NOT engaging emotionally in the battle, but returning your attackers energy to them, so that they defeat themselves…)
The secondary topic being that Trump actually was polite and took a phone call from the President of Taiwan. Oh, the horrors. It was this one that got me noticing something. Here were all these talking heads SOOoooo concerned that Trump had violated 40 years of Tradition by taking this phone call AND WORSE, calling the President of Taiwan by her title as President!
Well first, let me sate my bias: I’m for tossing out 100% of anything and everything Nixon did as President. He gave use the 55 MPH speed limit nationally that sucked person-centuries out of our collective lives and turned crossing Texas from a 1 day marathon into a 2 or 3 day ordeal (NOT hyperbole, I’ve done it under three different speed limits, and 55 sucks raw eggs compared to 80 that it is now.) Pretty much everything he did was wrong. One of his ‘great legacy’ items was the ‘opening of China’; like that’s worked out well for American workers and manufacturing…
Now I’m not looking for a trade war with China, just some realism. In this case, the realism about Structural Lying.
You see, the ‘deal’ with China is a structural lie. We, the USA, had asserted there was Only One China, even as Mao had divided it in two, and made three China’s (Mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) with the then legitimate government of China run out to the island. But we both agreed to just keep saying “Only One China” while they would assert that means the mainland owns Taiwan and we would assert that means Taiwan can claim sovereignty over the mainland ‘someday’. (Both of us ignoring that the people of what is rightly called Formosa didn’t think of themselves as Mainland Chinese anyway and were NOT happy with a flood of mainland Chinese Government types flooding in and taking over their island as ‘China’…) That is the fundamental lie at the core of US / China relations.
What Trump did was expose the lie.
Now the Chinese really love to lie, but really hate to have it exposed. I’ve spent years (decades?) occasionally partnering with Hong Kong Chinese on projects, and for a while reported to a Mainland Chinese V.P. of Engineering (she had gotten here through Hong Kong then Canada… back in the ’90s) so I’m pretty comfortable with working in that culture. This isn’t a pejorative statement by me, it is an observation. Be Very Polite, and never expose or even mention The Polite Lies. Observe them, bank them, and move on. What the Mainland Chinese Government is upset about is that Trump is exposing The Lie.
Now from my POV, what he did was simply to observe a weakness in the Chinese, observe The Lie, and see an opportunity. There are a LOT of things Don Donald wants out of China. The Chinese play the game of “I’ll give me mine if you give me yours”. Donald isn’t going there… So what he did is the emotional equivalent of showing your opposition a nice little photograph: “Say, you’ve got some nice kids there playing in the park. Here’s my Security Man giving them some chocolate… they seem to really like candy…” then asking if they would like to negotiate on those trade deals… China now is livid and “Wants Something” from Trump. They want him to continue The Lie. He’s got a big chip on the table now…
The Media
That’s the set up, but the point is about The Media. Oh the Concern! Oh, the agony. Oh, the potential damage from that clearly inattentive and unschooled Trump!
But we’ve seen this play before. We, collectively, have racked up millions of Internet Troll Hours. Where 20 years ago the act of “Unbiased Concern” was a good gimmick for a reporter, we now see it like a bright flashing beacon of Concern Troll Alert! Alert! Alert!… Our collective experience has heightened our awareness of Concern Trolls
concern troll
A person who posts on a blog thread, in the guise of “concern,” to disrupt dialogue or undermine morale by pointing out that posters and/or the site may be getting themselves in trouble, usually with an authority or power. They point out problems that don’t really exist. The intent is to derail, stifle, control, the dialogue. It is viewed as insincere and condescending.
A concern troll on a progressive blog might write, “I don’t think it’s wise to say things like that because you might get in trouble with the government.” Or, “This controversy is making your side look disorganized.”
In terms of The Nightly News:
A reporter who posts on a news show, in the guise of “concern,” to disrupt dialogue or undermine morale by pointing out that The Donald and/or his supporters may be getting themselves in trouble, usually with an authority or tradition. They point out problems that don’t really exist. The intent is to derail, stifle, control, the dialogue. It is viewed as insincere and condescending.
And that, IMHO, is the problem for The Nightly News Talking Heads. In large part, especially on CNN and MSNBC and even to some extent on Fox, they have adopted the role of Concern Troll In Chief, and frankly, my ‘concern’ is all worn out.
See, they have forgotten about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. When one is worried about losing the house, not having a job for a year, how to pay back a $1/4 Million School Loan while working at Starbucks as a Barista with your Advanced SJW Degree, watching your sons and daughters go off to Iraq again perhaps to die, or just struggling to speak Spanish at the store so you can buy necessities (NOT hyperbole – I’ve done it twice in the last two weeks as the staff were all native Spanish speakers…); under those circumstances it just doesn’t make a God Damn Difference who’s phone call The Donald takes.
Basically, Dear Professional Concern Trolls: “Frankly, my Dear Troll, I just don’t give a damn.”
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem facing our Nightly Concern Trolling. The audience has collectively “moved on”. Both due to Maslow putting our concerns firmly elsewhere, and due to our being experienced netizens these days who have had a daily belly full of Concern Trolls for the last decade. The Concern Troll role doesn’t play well anymore. We spot them fast and shut them down. That’s why The Donald can do whatever he damn well pleases. We already know what will be on the nightly news. It will be:
“Oh, I’m so concerned that Trump did {thing}, he is offending {SJW List Of Special Topic Folks} and damaging relationships with {Persons Du Jour}. I really hope he isn’t that {dumb | naive | uneducated | mean | incompetent | {insert other insult}}. How can we help him avoid offending {class list} again? Perhaps by {doing our agenda here}? He really doesn’t ‘get it’ about {tradition | OUR prior precedent | Progressive Norms} does he? Who can help him?”
And our Concern Troll Klaxon starts to klax… “Dive Dive Dive, we are under attack. Load all torpedo tubes and full speed ahead!”…
And a large Trump Train starts to form behind Dear Leader Donald and his staff. Folks more worried about their paycheck, their town, their neighbors, their America than any damn phone call from The President of Taiwan or preserving Nixon’s Lie Legacy.
Frankly, if Donald manages to Royally Piss Off the Chinese Government, I’m just fine with that. They have zero “concern” with how we feel, why ought we care about their sensitivities? Sure, they can sell off our Government Bond hoard of about $1 Trillion. In the process losing any leverage that represents, driving up interest rates (and bond prices down) which is what the economy needs right now (The Fed about to attempt it by fiat with a rate hike) and generally costing themselves a bundle on trading losses. Sure they can ignore North Korea and let them run a bit wild… and that would be different from the last 8 years how?… Heck, they could even try to claim ownership of the South China Sea and build illegal islands on sandbars (oh, wait…). Heck, they might even stop selling us air conditioners and (pre-hacked) computer equipment… and forcing US manufacturers to hire us to go back to work for a paycheck…
In short, President Elect Trump has recognized that this is a one-way relationship, he’s seen an easy 3 point pickup ball he can toss in the ring, and he’s got their attention that the players on the court are changing… What’s not to like?
So Dear Concern Troll Press: It isn’t working. Why don’t you try this instead: Just report what happened, who did it, when and where. Perhaps a bit of unbiased history on it. I’m really worried that you are going out of business if you keep up your present trolling behaviours. Is there any way I can help?…
Musings from the Chiefio 
“…I’m really worried that you are going out of business if you keep up your present trolling behaviours. Is there any way I can help?…”
Maybe by Cutting the Cable, Bombing the Boob tube, and Deleting the Daily newspaper.
The comment about the “drive 55” law had me looking up the date – 1974 – and what happened next. A lot of folks ignored it and enforcement of highway speeds became a bit lax. In 1984, Sammy Hagar released a song titled “I Can’t Drive 55” with a successful video. A long run on that.
A person would have had to have been at least 10 or 12 in 1974 to remember the beginning, and to have been in the country at the time. As a percentage of today’s population we have a grand total of “not very many.”
More Media hijinks.
This time the progressive switcher-roo on tax reduction vs stimulus “crony tax expenditures”
Sunday Talks – Kellyanne Conway Fox News
I have run into this with Progressives occasionally. Their point of view is the government owns ALL wealth and the government’s job is to decide how much you get ire respective of wether or not you created it. Therefore to them there is no difference between a tax cut — you get to keep more of your wealth, and a government handout — a ‘freebie’ paid for by someone else.
I do not know if they are so totally clueless when it comes to economics or if they are gaslighting us. I am really afraid, based on the utterances of the ‘sweet young things’ taking a small business class in Taxachusetts decades ago, that at least some of them are really that clueless. sighhhhh
I hope they keep up their fine effort.
“Is there any way I can help”?
Me too.
The error of their ways is providing fine entertainment, there ain’t much else on TV.
Fake news.
Who you gonna trust?
Us or your lying eyes.
The temper tantrums and blatant narrative shaping of these fools and bandits is highly entertaining as the buying public ignore their tired old pitch.
I love their “reasons and rationals” for their Supreme Leaders defeat by ignorant,biased racist voters…..
Yet they will not recognize their words only describe themselves.
Projecting ones own fear and self loathing upon reality has always been a boon to human nature.
I see no way out for the current media corporations, a master showman has beaten them and now rules the narrative.Nothing they can say, not even religiously and ruthlessly reporting truthfully and accurately can restore what they threw away.
Trump controls the message and bypasses the presstitutes with new technology , they are unable to process their loss of status.
So I expect ever more shrill shrieking and flinging of faeces.
The normal communication skill set of our “civilized” progressive comrades.
Back when our little nation of New Zealand had one TV channel and many newspapers, I did a couple of Sociology papers. The things of value I learnt from that was that a) the news media, even forty years ago, dealt very largely in conjecture and only rarely reported what had actually happened and b) that the news almost always had a leftward bias. I had discovered much earlier that most so-called journalists will lie in the interest of ‘bigging up’ a story and I have also learnt during my lifetime that recorded history is often politically-convenient bunkum.
@John F. Hultquist – yeah, I remember the 55 MPH useless speed limit, as well as going 120MPH in a Ford Country Sedan station wagon in Nevada (Montana? it’s been 50 years) – my Dad driving, of course, and my Mom having a bit of a tizzy, whilst my sis and I thought it was great.
I also remember the gas lines, which were the beginning of the green madness and the Arab world starting to shake its weight around. We used to drive all the way across country every year in the 1960s and early 1970s. The gas “shortage” put a stop to that.
Then there was the sugar “shortage”, the coffee “shortage”, and, and, and. The MSM and government lying have been around a lot longer than most folks (especially millenials and snowflakes) think.
Yes that was an economic warning shot across the bow of China’s ship of state. The “protocol” that Trump violated was started by our former Namby Pamby in Chief President Carter.
From Washington post article
In diplomatic language Trump said “go ahead and claim the South China Sea and attempt to block freedom of navigation in international waters, and see how long our current “agreement” about how to treat Taiwan lasts!”
That was his Tit for their Tat on the South China sea.
I would expect some more forceful freedom of navigation patrols to be undertaken in the South China Sea on Jan 21st or shortly after. Perhaps a port call to Taiwan by a US Navy ship for some reason.
@Larry:
Maybe a nice nuclear cruise missile capable destroyer… for “R&R” of course… and because they ran out of soy sauce, or tomatoes, or something… ;-)
@John F.:
That 55 didn’t LEAVE until long after the Sell By Date. Sometime in the 80s? Still around in ’86:
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1986/09/the-high-cost-of-the-55-mph-speed-limit
Looks like the slow phase out started in ’87 or so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
The NMSL was modified in 1987 and 1988 to allow up to 65 mph (105 km/h) limits on certain limited access, rural roads. Congress repealed the NMSL in 1995, fully returning speed limit setting authority to the states.
But not fully gone until 1995, or only 20 years ago. The long long reach of the Nixon “Legacy”. Frankly, a President could do a lot of good by just getting a list of the Presidential Legacies from about Wilson on forward and just erasing them.
A mirror image of what is happening in Australia Chiefio.. As to: ” And maybe, just maybe, folks actually didn’t like the idea of the Condescending Unstable Thief In Chief.”
Michael Smith continues to expose the “ins and outs” of the Clinton Foundation frauds. Currently exploring just how much Australian taxpayer money was “donated” under the stewardship of former Labor Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, particularly relating to ‘Climate Change’.
http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/
There’s a way out for media corporations, just like there’s one for government corporations. Just stop doing what you’re doing because it is not working. In my mind, the problem isn’t corporations. The problem is philosophical and religious in nature. The folk running these corporations believe their religion’s premises are true. They aren’t.
Funny that you mention the 1974 NMSL. I do remember that, for 1974 was the year I got my first driver’s license. I was going to blame that on Ford, but no, EM’s right. It was Nixon’s baby. I later wrote a paper on vehicular trauma deaths using National Safety Council data going back as far as I could, plus a control using all trauma related fatality data from Vital Statistics sources. What I found out was that speed has nothing to do with it as much as absorbed energy. A 40j thump to the chest, timed correctly, can stop a beating heart.
The standardized fatality rate is ‘U’ shaped (as are the standardized fatality rate is for lots of things when the standard is age based. Would it surprise you to learn that fatalities were better associated with ‘pilot experience’ and ‘pilot medical condition’?
I presented this at a grand rounds, where it was peer reviewed. No, I never did try to get it published in a journal.
@ Larry, now you’ve given me something to worry about. My youngest son is a Navy man currently stationed in the Pacific. That said, I’m way more comfortable with DJT than I’d have ever been with her rottenness, the Hildebeest.
The thing that allowed them to pull back on the national speed limit was that in western states where travel distances are long, fatalities actually went up with the slower speeds. Drivers would doze off after watching nothing happen for 5-6 hours. When Montana bumped up their speed limits in spite of predictions of an increase in fatalities they actually went down slightly.
It is another legacy of the peak oil myth. It was a legitimate effort to cut fuel usage following the Arab Oil embargo however it was based on several false premises, and should have been terminated as soon as oil shortages were no longer a problem, but the economic consequences of higher oil prices kept oil scarce even though it was a manufactured crisis by OPEC to price gouge on oil while the US had no alternative to buying from them. That was also the push for shale oil in western Colorado which finally collapsed when they realized it would never be financially viable.
@ Jeff above:
Take a look at Snopes’ take on the toilet paper shortage:
http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/carsontoiletpaper.asp
Carson TPs America :) Coming from Snopes, I’m not surprised they pin things on a Republican, but back in those days, there were “shortages” of everything, especially common sense, which remains maddeningly uncommon….. There was another Carson show where he said he ordered out for a Big Mac, via room service. He wasn’t in, so they slid it under the door…..
@E.M. I’ve now got that tune circling through my head, and it won’t go away. In honor of a hall-mate of mine (hey, Garrett) here’s that immortal (drat) tune :)
I think most people here will like this. Monckton vs Alex Jones. Up until about 15 mins Monckton allows him to interrupt. After that, he just talks right through him. Makes some very interesting points, the most important being to tie tax cuts with a massive reduction in bureaucracy costs. Also at that point Monckton talks right through the interruptions.
Video
Even better here
I saw that Johnny Carson show when it happened. Yes it was a joke, but not by much, there were lots of shortages and folks had learned to react first and check the details later when they heard about shortages of things that they depended on. Frosts killed citrus in Florida, in a few days the frozen orange juice case in the store was empty. Shortage of building insulation (caused by folks trying to cut heating costs as home heating oil prices spiraled up) left lots of people wanting to improve their insulation in a particularly cold winter and could not find insulation any where at any cost. This stalled construction projects which put builders out of work which had its own secondary effects. People used to living in an economy of abundance do not recognize how one key choke point can echo through the system and cause 2nd order and 3rd order problems. Try to buy a wood stove then – not happening they were all sold out. A friend of mine started building his own out of 1/4 inch steel plate and we were installing them as fast as he could finish them. (This was before the EPA decided wood stove smoke was a problem and required certifications for emissions and restrictions on asbestos everyone used to seal the doors in air tight stove designs.)
When the Arab Oil Embargo hit folks who did not react immediately ended up out of gas or waiting in long around the block lines to gas stations hoping they could top off their tank before the station ran out. We went from an economy where you could buy gasoline any time at any station to an economy where every time you left the house you looked at the gas gauge and calculated if you had enough gas to make the trip home if you could not find any station selling gasoline. That fueled (pun intended) popularity of CB radios as spontaneous help nets popped up on channel 9 CB to help drivers find gas. Like modern smart phones you could quickly find the one gas station in town that still was selling gas and how much it cost, and even get driving instructions for how to get there.
Many of the stations would run out of fuel as early as 2:00 in the afternoon of the day of a delivery.
Lots of folks realized it was a joke intellectually but also knew that others who heard about it second hand would no so they bought TP in self defense so the idiots did not leave them as the ones looking at empty shelves.
It is an important object lesson that the public learns very quickly how to react to shortages and other economic changes from the norm, and once they begin to expect that sort of thing they react defensively, and if you are not aware of the changing situation you get left out in the cold.
@Larry,
In another post you asked how to link to a video without it showing in the post. The way to do it is to wrap it in an a link. Just tested it above.
@Larry:
Oh, and that “odd even” license plate thing… we RAPIDLY bought some semi-junker 3rd? car for the plate, that way we could fill up SOME car every day… and ANY day that was available, we topped the tank. Never got much below 1/2 tank for the duration most of the time… Ever since I’ve had at least 2 cars, preferably with different plate series… As the Diesel goes about 450 miles on a tank, keeping it 1/2 full or more is good for a couple of weeks of my present driving needs. (Really close to 24 days for a full tank… then I need to swap to the second car ;-)
Someone at the time did a calculation that showed the typical person HAD been driving around about 1/4 full, but went to average 3/4 full during the “shortage”, and that the tankage of the cars for that extra 1/2 tank was roughly equal to the fuel shortage in the “system”… i.e. we drained the corporate tanks into our car / truck tanks… otherwise nothing much would have been noticed at the gas stations. No idea if that is right or not.
For a while I also had 10 gallons of fuel in ‘jerry cans’, but over the years they decayed. The iron ones rusted and the plastic ones solar hardened / cracked. Mostly intended for the generator(s) in a disaster. But after we canned Gov. Gray “out” Davis and the Dimocrat Messed Up Grid, the need kind of faded. The 2 KW alternator with jumper cables for the car batter basically made it unimportant to have cans of gas when the “self mobile fuel can” was kept topped up…
Ah, those were the days ;-)
Ah, so Nixon was that bastard, was he, who did the 55 mph thing? That thing drove me crazy on American roads.
E.M. Smith: That 55 didn’t LEAVE until long after the Sell By Date. Sometime in the 80s? Still around in ’86
It was still there in LA in 1989 through to 1998, when I was there.
E.M.
The one I like about crossing Texas is “Taking it from a journey to a career”
BOY, do I remember the 1974 — 55 MPH and gas lines. My 1976 Cutlass 5 spd was geared for 65 mph and lugged in 5th at 55 if I hit the slightest hill. The gas milage was actually better at 65mph.
………..
On the gas lines I have a very different take. According to some of the old truck divers I know, it was a completely put up job. The refinery workers were complaining to the truckers they did not know where to store the excess processed fuel.
Remember the Rockefellers and Saudis were in Aramco together. I have major doubts that the Saudis really tossed the Rockefellers out of the company. After all how in heck would we really know? I think that was a ruse and the Rockefellers were behind OPEC as a means of jacking up oil prices AND grabbing control of the US economy. See link (Author is off the wall but may have some nuggets of truth.) Don’t forget grandaddy Bush (Samuel Prescott Bush) worked for the Rockefellers and the Bushes are in the oil business just like the Rockefellers. Might explain why Bush flew the Saudis out of the country the day after 9/11, link and why the Saudis were never the subject of the War on Terror even though fifteen of the 19 hijackers had been from Saudi Arabia.
The increase in oil prices was the start of the US economy tanking. There was a major Progressive grab for control at around that time from busing kids from the inner city into middle class schools resulting in the MASSIVE spread of drugs. The trashing of the US education system where children were no longer pushed to the best of their ability but were instead held back to the standard of the lowest performer. The gutting of good well run debt free midsized companies via hostile takeovers and all the rest. The idiotic ‘Affirmative Action’ and far-left takeover of the universities did the rest.
the Federal government charts are from Mauldin Economics and the rest from Shadow stat.
And this which I do not believe one little bit.
The government does not adjust for the real inflation rate. For the last 20 years, since ratifying the WTO, they underestimated inflation by ~5%
YOur summation nailed it. But not only with China. Obama has mastered the art of bending over and asking for another. What the world is going to find out, is when you have a good negotiator who realizes we have nothing in the deal, their gravy train is over.
Actually Phil it was the whole idea of ‘interdependence’ floated by the Progressives to give them control that was the problem. They hoped to entangle other countries.
Economic interdependence and war: a theory of trade expectations. does a good job of explaining what was behind the sellout of the USA by both parties.
Trump has caused such concern around the world.
Some reports say a few diplomats were caught saying what they actually thought in direct language.
Unbelievable!
Yeah. I remember the higher speed limits my family drove on summer vacations in the big cars. Then when I got my driver’s license and went to college (the same year), I felt gypped because I enjoyed driving those big cars at 70-80 mph, but could no longer do it. In fact, I spent my first 3 years of college without a car at all. By the time I was making enough part-time money to buy a 5 year old import, the speed limits were insanely slow. I think the speedometer on my first car topped out at 80 or 85 mph.
As someone said, speed limits were so slow that it tended to have a hypnotic effect. You definitely feel a greater need to pay attention when you’re going faster.
One more thing I remember from the Old Days was that, not only was gas cheaper, but you didn’t have to pump it yourself. And they probably gave you a “premium” gift, or at least S&H Green Stamps, for buying at their station.
Then when I learned about abiotic oil, I guessed the whole shortage meme was a ploy to keep the price of oil high.
About 1960 regular gas sold for about 27¢/gal.; now our state plus federal tax is almost 68¢/gallon.
Hidden is the cost of ethanol, and that I don’t have a clue as to an estimate of cost.
Still, I could buy almost 4 gallons of gas with the $1 per hour I made pumping it. That gas went into a friend’s car because I did not have one.
EGAD! This statement has to be the stupidest I have ever heard:
“Leadership skills ARE NOT TRANSFERABLE.”
My best boss would certainly disagree. As he pointed out to me, he did not have to know how to run a Gas Chromatagraph or even what one was. All he need to do was to pick the best, most qualified, most knowledgeable and most motivated person to do the job. That is leadership.
Statement at around two minutes:
CNN Gleefully Mocks Dr. Ben Carson – Exhibit Stunning Level of Ridicule Against Black Cabinet Nominee…
Also Dr Carson brings something unique to the job. He lived in that environment and clawed his way out and that is a thousand times more important than know how to build a building.
Actually what Dr Carson is going to do is completely transform the Housing and Urban Development department. Instead of supplying housing for the democrat plantation slaves to destroy, he will concentrate on DEVELOPING productive members of society and that is why The Donald picked him.
Let’s wish him every success.
Starting HERE is an interesting discussion on Low income housing and drugs from people who know.
It also explains the significance of the Obummer phone give away though Rashamon and Your Tour Guide only discuss a “description of the “drug dependent” community”
People demonizing drugs should remember that the logic is the same kind as that demonizing guns. Simple drug use/sales/possession *never* should have been made illegal, and it was the ‘progressives’ that gave us that; even counting the ones who didn’t think of themselves as buying into a ‘progressive’ premise. As with guns, the issue is misuse, of which the misuse here is deliberate intoxication. Go after that, akin to going after public alcohol intoxication, but please decriminalize drugs. By the way, that camel’s nose resulted in the horribly off usage of the word addiction. At most 1% of the population are addicts (will overlap with other syndromes, too). The other ‘progressive’ camel nose was ‘trust-busting’. Giving the government that kind of power over business never should not have happened. When a government can tell a person/business what kind of business he/she can run, where he/she can run it, how successful it can be, and etc.; that government is a government that (indirectly) owns businesses.
cdquarles,
I am all for legalizing drug use EXCEPT FOR antibiotics.
The problem here is illegal drugs are a big money maker for our ‘government elite’ and they prey on the poor of the inner city. If you look at it correctly, ‘School Busing’ was all about moving young drug pushers into the middle class neighborhoods to increase the take and also help wipe out American ‘exceptionalism’ and American culture.
Once you realize the US government has been working very hard to destroy the USA as a country without giving themselves away, history makes a lot more sense.