Guns and Dope: The Anti-Oppressant
“This is the reality of the War on Drugs; it is thinly veiled, and sometimes not, racism."
From Killer Mike’s music video “Reagan”
The Guns and Dope party: like most Discordian ideas and projects, it went nowhere fast. Also like most Discordian ideas and projects, it won't go away. A good joke wants to be told, even if it can only make you cringe with how cheesy it is. That's the punchline of the Guns and Dope party. It is a party that seemingly champions the interests of most Americans, and yet few have heard of it, and no one was interested it when it started. Since Wilson came up with the idea and then died (in what I'm sure are a series of acausal events, separated by like, at least a year or two, I'm sure...), new shit has come to light, man. It has no bearing on the Guns and Dope party I'm sure, since the party seems to be disinterested in asking a person to do anything so humiliating and debasing to human dignity as running for office. It might change your mind about the priority and centrality of some issues.
Maybe you'll say to yourself, “Now who can argue with that? I think we're all in debt to Patacelsus for stating what needed to be said. I am particularly glad that these lovely children are here today to read this article. Not only was it authentic frontier gibberish, it expressed a courage little seen in this day and age." But what do I know? You'd think you could share your love of a comedy without everyone you try to share that passion with taking it to a racist place somehow? But oh no. Every time I tell someone I like Blazing Saddles, suddenly I get put on blast with all the racist jokes. Like race was the only punchline to every joke in that movie. Gives me a fucking headache. I mean, I'm not saying that it didn't have jokes that relied on the crushing racism of both the “Wild West" and 1974 America for its humor, just that it didn't exclusively do that. Eh, never mind. I can be particular at times. Let's get to it then; excuse me while I whip this out!
Not too long ago a writer for Gods & Radicals who calls himself Dr. Bones threw in a pretty penny on the matter of gun control, titled: The Liberal Desire for Gun Control is Going to Get Us Killed. I got all reflective-like, as if I'd had a memory in my brain knocked loose. That memory was The Mulford Act of 1967. A full year and some change before the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Mulford act was signed into law by Ronald Reagan (the actor?), who claimed that the Mulford Act “would work no hardship on the honest citizen." You know, because having the police raid your home and murder you and your family for the crime of being black is naturally no hardship for a true patriot.
Now, most Federal gun laws legislate the manufacturing, transportation, and sales of firearms. This is not out of the ordinary because the power to regulate interstate commerce and all that crap is “constitutional", if you go in for caring about that kind of thing. The Mulford Act stands out, as you may know if you read Dr. Bones' articles and the links he attaches, was meant specifically to disarm the Black Panthers. Now, let's be clear, these are the guys wearing black leather jackets and berets, not the Wakandan King. You can tell they're serious too, because who else wears a beret with black sunglasses and a rifle but a serious mother fucker. I mean, without the beret, they would have just been weirdos with guns.
Why should one racist California law matter? Could you please stop referencing movies and get to the point? Where are you going with all of this? The answer is nowhere special. Well, the answer is stop and frisk laws; but also the answer is, no, I will not stop with the movie references, I get a big kick out of it and you're just going to have to put up with it until I get bored and move on to cryptography puzzles.
So the next year after the Mulford Act was passed, the 90th U.S. Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968, which was actually a response to the assassination of Kennedy, but it is the U.S. Congress, so a 5 year lag shouldn't surprise anyone. How the fuck does racism fit into the Federal effort though? I could do the lazy thing and point out a Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership opinion piece that claims the GCA of 1968 is copied wholesale from Nazi laws banning Jews from owning firearms, sans the Jew part and all the provisions for licensing firearms and not outright banning them. But such laziness would be wrong. Instead I'll just outright say that Politicians were afraid of an armed uprising in 1968 (the year Martin Luther King Jr. got killed, along with Bobby Ken), and that was the real thing that kept that 5 year lag from becoming an infinite lag. I wonder were the Congress got the idea to use gun laws to suppress minorities?
I mean, it was probably a bunch of Republicans in a Republican controlled Congress, right? Baeh! Wrong! In both House and Senate, Democrats had the seats. Not only that, but almost as many Republicans voted yea as Democrats in the House and Senate. Also, fewer Republicans said no than Democrats. Think about that a sec. Confused? Permit me to explain with much abbreviation and little detail. The Dems use to be the party of the Klan, and the Triangle fire flipped the bitch on the U.S. political spectrum. Want more detail? Read a fucking book!
Hey! Check this out!:
"( h ) I t shall be unlawful for any person—
"(1) who is under indictment for, or who has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;
"(2) who is a fugitive from justice;
"(3) who is an unlawful user of or addicted to marihuana or any depressant or stimulant drug (as defined in section 201 (v) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act) or narcotic drug as defined in section 4731 (a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954); (sic)
Now, if you didn't want to read this legalese gibberish, I can tell you that it is the bill that will convert a state hospital for the insane into the William J. Le Petomane memorial gambling casino for the insane. Ha! No, it is a portion of the 1968 GCA. That part in bold seems kinda weird right? Well, to most it wouldn't, if that most was America in 1968 (haha, like people in America read it, right?). It comes after the provision which states, “it is not the purpose of this title to place any undue or unnecessary Federal restrictions or burdens on law-abiding citizens with respect to the acquisition, possession, or use of firearms appropriate to the purpose of liunting, trapshooting, target shooting, personal protection, or any other lawful activity, and that this title is not intended to discourage or eliminate the private ownership or use of firearms by law-abiding citizens for" blah blah blah, you get the idea. The direct mention of Marihuana(sic) seems fishy to me though. So after looking up “liunting" (the best I could find was 'linting', which is 'to walk around smoking a pipe'), I looked to see if any of the authors of the Mulford act moved up from state assemblyman or senator to U.S. Congressperson. Ha! No such luck. Just a whole bunch of dudes in the U.S. Congress and the California political class who all knew or were in the same circles as Nixon. Nothing to see here, move on.
So, no, I have no grand conspiracy theory for you about how this was all designed from the start. Just a bunch of rich white dudes that thought it best to specifically mention marijuana in a Federal gun control act. To be honest, it doesn't matter if this was orchestrated conspiracy, the inertia of racist habit, or complete accident. The result is racism; and similar acts, enacted in the same era, were definitely meant to be racist. So it's time for a hard subject cut; remember when Richard Dix came in here and tried to take over this town?
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. That is not a claim I'm making, and it probably isn't news to anyone reading this. It is a quote from a Harper's magazine interview of John Ehrlichman from 1994. Ehrlichman was Nixon's domestic policy chief, so he'd know what he was talking about. Want to know the source of the War on Drugs? Nixon! Yes, all bad things eventually lead back to Nixon; in fact, I bet you could make a pretty good game of a variation of Six Degrees of Bacon, call it Six Degrees of Nixon, and see if you can connect a fucked U.S. law to Nixon in six associations.
Anyway, he goes on to say
“You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
Oh wow, the 1968 Nixon campaign ran on a promise of fighting drug fueled mad-men and might have had an influence on an Congressional Act being passed that year, and was signed into law by a Democrat in October? Do tell, I'm so surprised. I've never even considered that a Democratic congress might pass a law to counteract the political rhetoric of Richard Dix, I mean Nixon (allegedly...).
This is the reality of the War on Drugs; it is thinly veiled, and sometimes not, racism. As well, it is about quashing political dissent; but mostly it has been about racism. I've seen the Left shoot down people that tried to drum up support for drug decriminalization pretty savagely. Because I guess, the “hard core" Left is against the government telling people what to do, except when it is about drugs, then the oppression is less important somehow (hopefully, if you still have some gonads and human blood in you, you're saying to yourself that you don't need anyone's permission to get high, good!). But for many on the “Left”, Uncle Sam swiping your recreation options from you doesn't count as important. And some of you fuckers probably wonder why the Left have a reputation of being such a joyless and humorous lot too, I'll bet. Well, if you can't get off your asses, to tell Uncle Same to fuck off, for the sake of getting high: can you be bothered to give a damn for the civil rights of black people? Yeah, that's what I thought.
So here we are, Stop and Frisk laws. Terry Laws are actually older than all this crap, by several decades. They have their origin in the efforts of the LAPD in the 1930's to combat “crime". Essentially they would flood an area where a crime had occurred and search anyone and everything. Of course this became the norm for black neighborhoods in the 50's. New York made the words “Stop and Frisk" the unofficial name by passing a law of that name in 1964. Yup, Stop and Frisk, which definitely has targeted minorities in large proportion, was in place before the contraband laws were. It shouldn't be a surprise that the supposed guardians of law and order have been holding on to Stop and Frisk tightly as they can, and use their tongues prettier than a twenty dollar whore to defend it. So, not everything is coming up roses in California. We innovate a lot out here.
Unfortunately, that means this state comes up with a lot of grade A racism and the racists to legislate it. From Stop and Frisk, to Ronald Reagan, we have a problem with racism in California that most people pretend isn't here. Even the Right pretends we're a centrist liberal fuckhead bastion, all the while their Moses and Jesus, Nixon and Reagan respectively, both hail from California. These are the real problems in California, the ones no one really talks about on the grand public stage of approved public discourse, a.k.a. “news". But never mind that shit, here comes Mongo!
Or as most know him, Donald Jiggle Jowl Trump. Nah, I'm just kidding, I just wanted to see the words Jiggle Jowl published. Actually, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, who is so super into coming down on Marijuana (black people) that it gives his little weasel rigor mortis, is who I want to mention. I could say a mouthful about him, I guess, but instead I'll use this time to say, “Instead of a weasel, why not an Ostrich?"
Yes friends, the Guns and Dope party only nominates the finest Ostriches to Congressional office, specifically because their, “mysterious and awesome dignity will elevate the suidaen barbarity long established there." Yeah, I'm supposing Rhyd would like me to finish this with some insight on race, or law, or something. So here you go Rhyd, here's your insight. The attempts to suppress minorities through laws has instead led to the majority of Americans having their lives ruined, lives ended, their property stolen by the government. It has resulted in wasted money, and in inane bullshit being spread far and wide. Everyone has had a shittier life because some rich fucks wanted to oppress a minority their feeble psychology associated with the scary stuff. The oppression of a few only results in the oppression of all. We either take care of everyone, or we can take care of no one. This is not a philosophical proposition being offered you, it is truth based on fact. I doubt this article stated the case for this truth from fact clearly, eloquently, or convincingly. But that's ok, maybe someone better at this will read this and hopefully do better than me.
Of course, you'll have the good taste not to mention that I spoke to you.
Patacelsus
A Discordian for 20 years, Patacelsus finally got comfortable when the 21st century “started getting weird.” When not casting sigils, taking part in Tibetan Buddhist rituals, or studying the unfortunate but sometimes amusing stories of the dead, he’s been known to wander the hidden ways of the city, communing with all of the hidden spirits one can find in a city. As Patacelsus sees it, we’re all already free; after completing the arduous task of waking up to that we can then proceed, like a doctor treating a patient, to try to rouse others from the bitter and frightening nightmares of Archism. He laughs at Samsara’s shadow-play in lovely California, in the company of his wife, two cats, and two birds.