
Ken Bone — he’s no conformist. He’s the person a divided America needs right now. The man who brought some levity to the ludicrous, some vim to counter the vitriol. The only thing that was making America great again.As Ramzy Nasrallah put it, “Was so sad and ashamed throughout the entire spectacle but then KEN BONE rose like a Phoenix from America’s ashes and there’s laughter again.”
It’s over and done, folks. Donald Trump has finally been impeached. His wicked plot to attack Joe Biden through his innocent son Hunter, who he felt deserves to be investigated falsely because he was once on the Board of Directors of a Ukrainian power company, has been exposed to ruinous effect, for Trump and the country both.
A commensurate response was called for by our opposition forces, and we gave it to him with both barrels.
Two Articles of Impeachment, one for gross abuse of power and the other for obstructing the Congressional investigation the Democratic House was forced to undertake, have been levied against Donald Trump. He has been duly convicted, and now the trial is heading for the Senate- when the time is right.
Regardless of whether he is dragged out kicking and screaming, neither Trump nor his presidency will ever be the same. Thank the Lord, because America in the Trump Era has been growing tired and stale. We’re going to do him a favor, though, and muck out the stall he has made of the Oval Office. A stagnant swamp is soon to get a freshening, volunteer hours or no, for the day of national justice has finally come.
It’s important to remember that in many ways the fight is just beginning. Okay, great, I can hear somebody saying, joyfully. Trump was a piece of crap and now he’s gone. When can we start helping him pack?
That’s the real question, and it’s something else again. We impeached him, all right. It was a big step, and we did not shirk it when the time came; Democrats have done our best.
But now we’ve got to physically remove him from the White House. That will not prove so simple if we miss our chance at the ballot box.
To vanish an American president by force, we need an Aye vote from two-thirds of a Republican Senate, whose Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has already vowed to kill the process as soon as he lays hand on it.- at Trump’s “marching orders”. That’s why Nancy Pelosi can’t send this over to the Senate. It will instantly die and take with it the American dream.
Since the time of the Founding Fathers, we have governed according to the principle that no one is above the law, that kingship is a bad dream, that all men are created equal. Discarding that is to toss away America itself. Getting rid of the man himself is the smaller point compared to that.
The sheer damage Trump has already done to America’s sense of self-worth is unreasonably huge and absolutely endless.
Our children bully one another using the president’s language. Hate crimes have skyrocketed; in fact, twenty-seven of them took place the very day Trump was elected. Vladimir Putin’s Russia was given a free hand in the Middle East; he’s ruined us forever and completely over there. The military has been loaned to the Saudi Arabian Prince Mohammed bin Salman to use as a toy, even though he beheaded a Washington Post reporter named Jamal Khashoggi, who is remembered.
After Trump took office, we didn’t make two weeks without disaster. It was pandemonium on seven continents thanks to his moronic travel ban. Like the walls of Babylon, peace and order inside airports were judged apocalyptically and destroyed in a single blundering hour. Every port of air travel on the planet got as choked and clotted and clogged as Trump’s obese arteries. Enough is enough; America needs its self-respect back. We’ve had all we can stands, and we can’t stands no more.
In committing to this repugnant and crooked course of action, Trump threw every American value there is off the cliff and under the bus. He has shown no veneration whatsoever toward the most powerful office in the world, no less his own country’s. He used it as a normal man would dirty socks.
The crooked, lying Republicans, whose capacity to tell the truth has committed hara-kiri, are no better whatsoever. Long after they’ve left office, they will be reviled, and their legacy will be bitterly repudiated. Their names will become curses to be hurled at the failures of tomorrow. With a president like this one, who needs kings?
Going forward, a new chapter of battle begins. Our bullets and swords are our words and ideas, meaning we need Original Content! Fresh memes, fresh articles, fresh anything you can dream up. The act of beginning has magic in it, and the world needs that power now more than ever. #ImpeachAndRemove will all at once be hymn, marching tune, and clarion call for Democrats. We’ll be doing all we can to kick some sparks up; see you on the battlefield.
Don’t forget to bring your Original Content!
We are living in a political landscape that is currently dissolving, and as it does every day presents new questions, fundamental and human in their nature, some completely new. As they do, we need to separate, observe, and classify them. Dissolution in chemistry means the breaking down of complex compounds into their basic particles. Scientists use this technique as a way to collect feedback and data based on the contents of the issue, and that’s exactly what we have got to do. All of us, not just this or that candidate’s supporters. We have to sort out what kind of a position we are dealing with before we can chart a good strategy, and that is going to take us all.
The long-awaited Office of the Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III‘s thorough and explosive Report on the Russian interference into our 2016 presidential election, and the obstruction of justice issues that arose during the subsequent investigations has raised like never before the question of whether or not to impeach Donald Trump for what clearly are extremely serious offenses against our democracy.
It should be understood going in that all of us will be going into the dark together, in what may well prove to be the most consequential decision of our lifetimes. In deciding the question of the fate of our current illegitimate, babyish president Trump, the Mussolini of our times, any discussion of the topic must begin and end with that.
There will be trouble in every last street and bar and coffee shop in the nation; brother will turn on brother. There will be a rage on both sides like nothing we have seen since the Civil War, exceeding by far what we saw in the 70s with Richard Nixon and Watergate. There will be more than one event like Charlottesville, where our sister the martyr Heather Heyer was run down by a cursed soul and dragged to her death behind his van. We’re pleased to report he’s now rotting in prison. But that too is one more link in the chain.
Elsewhere down South, where many people like the men below would rather be Russians than Democrats, internationally known televangelist Franklin Graham is literally telling his followers to prepare for civil war if impeachment proceedings against Trump go through. People listen to that guy down there. If they start giving orders to open fire, it is our opinion that they will do so. Without a doubt.
Anecdotally, we had one sick man named Rene Hollan visit our Facebook Page and say,
“Understand this Democrats. If Trump gives the order I will kill as many of you as I can.”
We gave that to the FBI the following morning.
There were hopes, in the beginning, that the likes of John McCain and Susan Collins and once strident Trump critic Lindsey Graham would eventually realize just how crooked he is when the Mueller Report finally came out and proved he’d benefited willingly from Putin’s help. But neither the voluminous document itself nor the subsequent comments of Robert Mueller that essentially proved Trump a criminal has proved to be the game-changer we had hoped for. This is not the Republican Congress of the 1970s that acted with honor during Watergate.
Insofar as Trump’s sleazy role in it all is concerned, it seems that a lifetime’s worth of doing deals with a wink and a nod allowed him to maintain plausible deniability- barely. On the question of obstruction, the case is far more straightforward, everything from trying to fire the Special Counsel Mueller to trying to get former White House counsel Don McGahn to change his story on a number of particularly ham-handed attempts at co-opting a good civil servant. The web of lies, untruths, and viciousness Donald Trump has spun around himself is like a leper’s shroud, hard to see through.
The common strand of corruption is the only thing obvious and unquestionable.
We all live in the madhouse as a result of trying to come to terms with it all, but at least about one thing, there can be no doubt at all. The man is deeply corrupt, we say again, and he’s been a real disaster for America.
But that is not quite the question we face.
Trump is an unworthy leader in every possible way, yes. He cheated and bullied his way into the White House. But although it was a blatant theft, the unpleasant fact remains. In the end, he did win the election, and his tenure in office is already a fait accompli. Nobody’s talking about the 25th Amendment and removing him due to insanity, more’s the pity. Given that, and from what we know for sure as of this minute, can we really say we’re certain he should be impeached? In lieu of all the chaos and the cost?
All this is to say nothing of the fact that any measure of impeachment we do try would at this time merely be symbolic. It will never, ever, ever pass a Republican-controlled Senate. Impeachment may well be getting considered by our strategists as a nuclear option of sorts, a last-ditch attempt to prevent him from running wild completely between next year and 2024 if the great tragedy strikes a second time. With a Democratic Congress, we could remove him if we had to. But unless we are patient now, that will never happen.
We’ve got to think strategically here, with our heads as well as our guts. Trump wants us to try and impeach him, because he knows it is the one thing we could do to turn him into a pitied figure, one the public might actually view sympathetically. The stakes of this are too high for premature attacks made for the sake of showy idealism.
It may well be that national honor will force our hand in the end, but we ourselves do not have all the facts yet. A vast amount of research and contemplation must go into formulating a workable strategy here, for all of us Americans are now dancing on the razor’s edge together. There’s no need to bother asking me what I’d like to see happen to Trump for all of this as a private citizen; just look around. But in terms of the law, things are somewhat different.
Fortunately, we’ve got the best legal minds in the vast United States of America working on it around the clock as we speak, and under the most competent leader we could ever want: Nancy Pelosi, whose talent for organizing her caucus and keeping track of time is unparalleled, and gave us Obamacare among many other a legislative score.
Having Nancy Pelosi back in the Speaker’s chair was the single most immediately crucial factor in the Blue Wave of 2018.
She got more important bills passed in her first six months in office back in 2008 than the Trump administration has in nearly three years. In short, she’s good. Really good. And that is good for us. Because whoever has to take this on had better be the best. To impeach or not impeach is largely her decision.
In April 1970, while in session, Congressman Gerald Ford raised an old rhetorical question: “What is an impeachable offense?” Ford at this time was the House Minority Leader (Pelosi’s job pre-Blue Wave 2016-2018), and his answer to the question was stark and illustrative.
That majority in today’s House of Representatives belongs to the Democratic Party. We definitely do have the right to start these proceedings.
That is why we are being so careful!
Impeachment is an utterly drastic step, a divisive and frankly tragic one, regardless of the outcome. They do not make the country look good, to say the ludicrous least. Lurid Ken Starr the pornographer wiped slime on the courts that will never come off when he painted his lurid fantasy tales about the sexual exploits of Bill Clinton, the second president to be tried for impeachment in the Senate. The Republicans were annihilated in the next Congressional elections- just as we Democrats were after Nixon.
The reason why? Both Clinton and Nixon were very popular among their respective camps, who judged themselves abused, whether or not this was the case. Retributive backlash in the form of division and strife swept the country twice and left rankling wounds in the hearts of members of both parties. It set the stage for a third one to be totally apocalyptic.
In closing, we must keep in mind going forward that impeachment is nothing to speak of lightly. It rips countries apart. It may well prove necessary to give it a try in the end- but not without first considering every option with meticulous care.
While it is not easy to be patient about this-for surely, We the People have never before had such a surreally egregious cause- it is vastly important to understand how high the stakes are and how dangerous the strategy would be. It’s an incredibly tough call given the circumstances, which is why we at Millennial Democrats haven’t weighed in on it hard either way. It is our opinion that Hillary Clinton’s recent suggestions involving televised hearings and utmost caution provide an excellent roadmap for the future.
This observation leads us to the primary thesis of the article. We have got to stand behind our Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, who is one of the smartest and toughest people in America today.
We have always held Pelosi to be strongest by far for this position of high power in Congress. Back last fall, everyone mostly did, and nothing has changed. Even the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was back then the sworn enemy of every moderate everywhere, ultimately decided not to oppose her on practical grounds. If you want to get anything done at all, you’ve got to have good leadership. We have the best, and most of us have known this all along. She is our Speaker of the House, and make no mistake.
This decision is all but hers alone.
In closing, Nancy Pelosi has been our choice to be our leader from the Trump era’s Day One. She is by far the person in the best position to make the call, and whatever way it goes, it is our firm opinion that she’ll have made it. We need to support her fully in any case and circumstance.
The one thing we cannot afford right now is for our coalition to dissolve into more fractious squabbling. The world needs our power now more than ever, and to bring it to bear, we must centralize and fully focus it. There is only one person in all of these vast United States of ours who can do it as God knows it must be done, and that person is Nancy Pelosi.
Whichever way this goes, #Stand WithOurSpeaker.
The special counsel assigned to the investigation of Russia’s interference into our 2016 presidential election, Robert S. Mueller III, has written a letter of protest to the United States Department of Justice, due to the inappropriate handling of the summary of his report as handed to the American people by Attorney General William Barr.
He did it because Barr’s initial letter to Congress about the Russia investigation did not “fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” a Justice Department official said Tuesday. The objection was filed in a letter to Barr on March 27 and is indicative of dissonance between Barr’s prepared whitewashing and the truth. Mueller’s report was 448 pages long, and included handling of questions about potential obstruction of justice by Trump. Barr’s efforts seem like the latest, and most egregious, chapter. But it wasn’t unexpected. Barr’s son-in-law is working for Trump’s legal team directly! How’s that for a conflict of interest?
Barr is testifying tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary Committee and will be handled roughly by Democrats even though the agency is Republican-held. The hearing will revolve around his handling of Mueller’s report, as well as how exactly he reached the ridiculous conclusion that President Trump did not obstruct justice, refuted on every page of the document.
His April 18 news conference trying to paint Trump as a hero is sure to come up also.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. Mueller is not the kind of guy to stick his foot in the tornado that is this entire event without good reason. If he felt Barr had mischaracterized his findings severely enough to warrant such a letter, it is only common sense that we take this thing as seriously as he did.
Barr has blown any claim to credibility he ever had. He must immediately be pressured out of office, televised hearings must be held a la Hillary Clinton’s suggestion, and Mueller must be allowed to testify before the House of Representatives. Only then will the American people ever have the truth on this whole matter, and make no mistake. After all we have lived through, we have earned that. Trump is a crook, and we have always known it. We want the facts complete so that we can raise awareness about them. The path to regaining this country’s sanity lies only through this door.
On April 20th, I asked Barr, “Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?” His answer was, “I don’t know whether Mueller supported my conclusion.”
We now know Mueller stated his concerns on March 27th, and that Barr totally misled me, the Congress, and the public. He must resign. pic.twitter.com/rod404BbYo
— Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) May 1, 2019
Well said, Mr. Van Hollen.
Sometimes you run up against a situation that is very complicated, in this world of ours. There are many grey areas, many ambiguities, many matters that require clarification. By the time you get done explaining them all, you’ve practically written a book.
But there are also times when you run into something that is simple enough to explain with a single word, or perhaps two- like these words.
NEVER BERNIE.
That could be the end of the article. It genuinely could. I strongly considered publishing then and there, so that no one misses our meaning, but at least a few words of explanation might be helpful. So let’s try this one again.
NEVER BERNIE. Not ever. No matter what, it’s too obvious a setup to plug into. Did you see how Trump’s eyes twinkled the other day? I like Bernie, he said, smiling as big and genuinely as I’ve ever seen. He looked like a man who sees a foregone conclusion looming above him. He looked like Richard Nixon, facing George McGovern.
Later Wednesday, Trump made his own fund-raising pitch. He sent around a text message to all of his supporters, telling them about the $6 million that “Socialist Bernie” had raised.
“Now I’m calling on you to CRUSH that number,” the message said. For the average political strategist, this may all be rather confusing, but to a pro wrestling fan like Donald Trump, it’s simple as can be. A simple game of Heel vs. Hero.
In professional wrestling, a heel is a wrestler who portrays a villain or a “bad guy” and acts as an antagonist to the heroes- the protagonists, or “good guy” characters. They get in each other’s faces, scream and point and gesticulate wildly, and make a big production out of being each other’s enemies. The adoring audience loves the show, even as their hearts tell them the truth.
It’s all fake.
Hero, heel, and audience. On television, those people look like they’re having fun. It is our opinion that Trump and Bernie supporters are loving this. It’s all about the attention they’re getting. This is all a big game, to them.
You know who it’s not a game to?
Vladimir Putin.
Him, and real Democrats.
While this whole zoo spins a tale that grows more ridiculous by the very hour, the professionals in the locker room of the center are stubbornly holding on to the idea of eventually restoring sanity to our country and stopping the wrestling match short of a full-on civil war, which like a World Championship, you can’t lose by way of disqualification.
You’ve got to get pinned.
My personal trouble with Bernie, from the very start, has been the sheer unrealisticness surrounding him. His supporters were a shrieking mob; they rioted in the streets when they lost. No way was the zombie apocalypse the Bernie Or Bust crew paid out in Philadelphia that night in July 2016 what the majority of America looks like. His socialist policies were a disaster; Medicare for All alone, as he conceived it, would have had the country $32 trillion dollars. Margaret Thatcher asked this question long ago about socialism- How do you pay for it?
He himself wore that blue clown suit around, like a shambling disaster, and was nearly eighty years old besides. Jesus God.
These were the things I noticed when it all first began. I had no feelings about the guy other than that in the beginning, he was just some random name, like Martin O’ Malley, the other also-ran from that year’s terrible primary. I had serious concerns about his ability to win in a general election, and I didn’t think he had a prayer against Hillary Clinton. But I had no reason to form a particular about him one way or the other until I saw how ugly his supporters were going to get in attacking our candidate, and how little he would do to put that in check.
What I have found out since then has been enough to disgust me one hundred percent. On every level. His record on women, his total fear of even mentioning racial issues, the absolute infestation of Russians in his campaign- his campaign manager, Tad Devine, was the first witness called at Paul Manafort’s trial- and the Macedonians in his digital activist groups, his refusal to vote to sanction Russia on numerous occasions, and so many others. So many others.
Conservatives were overjoyed when Bernie entered the race. He gave them just what they’ve been wanting all this time- a just cause to say Democrats are socialists and cast all this as our brand. It was just like how overjoyed they were at this Green New Deal, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to allow a vote on!
He told Jeff Flake last year that he wouldn’t allow a vote on legislation being passed to protect Robert Mueller’s investigation last year on the grounds that it was a waste of time, even though it probably would have actually passed, because it wouldn’t pass the House. He knew for a fact there’s not going to be a Green New Deal getting out of a Republican Senate- and yet, the same guy who was so concerned about minutes on the clock last year allows a vote on it!
Why? Because he wants to see who might actually be dumb enough to sign on.
Whoever does has no political future, especially if Bernie does get his chance to pull a Walter Mondale. He might win Vermont. His movement resembles a bowel. People will never forget the beating he takes.
We at Millennial Democrats would like to say to all of you: Fear not, you guys. The worst that can happen to us politically short of Dachau USA already has. It happened when HRC was robbed. The worst thing now would only be for the neoprogs to get their chance to play McGovern. They’ll get whipped, Russiagate will either spare us part of Donald’s second term or it won’t, and we will go on doing the most good we can for the most people we can until the day when better times finally come.
Besides which, that will never happen anyway. Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, even Elizabeth Warren. Someone will beat him in the primary, even though we don’t know who yet. Our chance will come along, the right leader will arise, and we will have a candidate able to beat Donald Trump. The Blue Wave 2018 was only the prelude for 2020, especially in the Congress.
The most important thing in a good philosophy is the strength it gives you to hold fast to your principles regardless of the temporal situation. It’s like how clouds can’t cover stars for long. I believe we will find a way. We just have to remain determined and United. When it all goes to the dogs for them, they’ll be able to come to us, and we’ll take them back in without a single word of recrimination, save these two alone.
The process by which we look through the past records of our candidates is called vetting, and when it comes to Bernie Sanders the mainstream media has not been doing it. Please give us a hand! Write in to the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and anyone else you can think of, and tell them you want to see Bernie Sanders vetted. They will know what you mean. Just earlier today it came out that he has picked Nina Turner to run his campaign. She went with Stein after him and urged her supporters to do either that or vote for Trump outright. Picking Turner is as clear a sign as you could ever want or ask for that he’s going to run the same old ugly race as he always has. NEVER BERNIE. No matter what.
On the cusp of the twentieth day of what has now become immortalized as the #TrumpShutdown, Trump himself headed to the border to disgracefully lie to America and did so. Other than that, there is not a whole lot going on. How could there be? Everything is closed down, and as one walks around as an observer, there is a very real sense of being in the eye of the tornado.
Even West Virginian senator Lindsey Graham, a guy who has become progressively worthless as the Trump circus atmosphere corrupts him, came up with a plan to try and end the shutdown. Trump shot holes in it. He told Senate Republicans that he believes he is winning the fight”, leaving Graham shaking his head in despair, saying he has “Never been more depressed“.
On that point, at least, we are agreed.
On Friday millions of people will not get paychecks; things like food stamp benefits are only guaranteed through February. One man was on CNN the other night sobbing because he was so afraid he’s going to lose his house. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) asked the illegitimate president frankly why he doesn’t stop hurting people. His answer was right out of the spoiled child brat Trump playbook.
“Because then you won’t give me what I want.“
There’s no need really to point out how disgusted a sane human is bound to be at the sound of that, it speaks for itself loud and clear. Trump is calling it a humanitarian crisis, which it is. But the only one causing it is he himself, and he will not stop. That is something in between blackmail and terrorism.
Moving on the subject of terrorism, the Pentagon- who, earlier in the week, was actually reduced to having to go to Fox News and beg for their help in getting the moron in the Oval Office to listen to them regarding Afghanistan- has warned that it is concerned about the risk of a terrorist attack striking home in these conditions.
However, our guess is that they’re not going to feel like they need to do much at all. The worst thing they could do to hurt America right now is to simply leave us alone.
Another 9/11 would unify us. The way things are going we may collapse under our own weight, which is not completely a jab at Trump’s obesity. The most effective punch is the one you don’t have to throw, at the end of the day, but to an extent, this is wishful, hopeful thinking. We are exposed, of course. We have not been opened up like this to an attack since 9/11 happened.
It’s unreal how quickly we forget. Not even twenty years ago, terrorists smuggled boxcutters through airport security and took down the Twin Towers. Osama bin Laden believed that would be the end. Not all at once, of course, not that day. His belief was that once we had been hit that hard, we would not be able to take it. Our policies and justice would become undemocratic, and the idea of America freedom we espoused and intended to bring to the rest of the planet would be soiled irrevocably, a discarded relic like Soviet socialism.
From the eye of a tornado, you can see the sky, but you can’t see what’s going on around you. There’s no way of knowing how severe the devastation is, and the reality of the situation is that there’s not much use in worrying about it. You batten down the hatches, you keep yourself in the cellar, and you hope and pray for the best with all your heart.
Along with the neverending task of raising awareness, that is what we must do now.
From the day of its inception, the War on Cannabis has been a disaster for America. It has played a fundamental role in the architecture for the larger War on Drugs. Considered as a whole, this war can fairly be described as a generationally evolving series of wasteful and ineffective policies. In attempting to regulate the legislative needs and desires of mankind, the United States government has caused great harm to be done, in terms both of the law and of medical recourse to help for pain. It is a classic case of the old cliché, a treatment worse than its “disease”. Crimes have been committed in the name of fighting crime. Resources have been massively wasted. The futures of millions have been ruined in the eyes of the law. The question of why remains sobering in its implications. Anti-cannabis legislation was ostensibly created to safeguard the public and keep cannabis from menacing its health, but its effects have done more damage than the act their purpose was to prevent.
The question of whether the herb’s use constitutes a peril to public safety is a real concern. It is only logical for people to pay attention to alerts regarding something that might affect their health. As alerts on the matter have been so often raised, it is only natural for people to have health concerns about drugs, including cannabis. In a Health, Risk, and Safety article titled Cannabis, risk, and normalization: Evidence from a Canadian study of socially integrated, adult cannabis users, we are told that evidence pointing to the harmfulness of cannabis use has never been more abundant (213). Public concern is still highly prevalent, and many experts remain unconvinced that cannabis should be considered safe.
Whether that is true is not the issue here, however. We note only that widespread panic about cannabis was not scientifically based. The issue was never raised by the medical community of the United States. The Medical Science Monitor informs us that cannabis was routinely prescribed by American physicians. It enjoyed legal status in the United States until 1937. This is when U.S. legislature passed the first federal law against cannabis – the Marihuana Tax Act. Empirical approaches to solving the problem of cannabis addiction kept proving it was not a problem. The American Medical Association did not support the new law, and their advice was belittled and ignored. Science was not on the side of the anti-cannabis crusaders. Other rationales were needed and were manufactured where they could not be found.
The approach of the new Threat or Menace campaign was exemplified in Reefer Madness, the famous anti-cannabis public alert movie released in 1936. Self-described cannabis journalist Matthew Green paints a wild yet perfectly accurate picture of its contents in his article “Reefer Madness! The Twisted History of America’s Marijuana Laws.”. The movie exhibits an insane “reefer addict” portrayed in maniacal relief, smoking his way to murder as he enjoys the frenetic tunes of a piano-playing hostage. This law was based on artificially manufactured moral panic, as opposed to sound law or science. It was eventually discarded as being unconstitutional (Leary v. United States, 1969), but not before it set the foundation for the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which was far more comprehensive than the old law, although it continued to rely on selective or pseudoscience and public disinformation.
The tone of the new policy was set from the start by the prejudices of Anslinger, which was to prove disastrous for the cannabis community. Laura Smith, the managing editor at Timeline, paints an unforgiving picture of Anslinger in her piece “How A Racist Hatemonger Masterminded America’s War on Drugs”. He is shown there to be a xenophobic, culturally intolerant, and deeply racist man, one who used his power arbitrarily and in the worst ways. His power over his bureau, and over the anti-cannabis campaign, was completely unilateral. Historian John C. McWilliams stated in his book aboutAnslinger, The Protectors,“ Anslinger was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (2).” His ideas about the existing social order laid the foundation for the policies he would set. He had a simple goal, but one that was far-reaching in its implications; a one-man crusade to protect American values as he saw them. His worldview held that change was coming too fast, and the anti-cannabis crusade provided him with a high-powered excuse to slow it down. The next step was to use this bitter project to hamstring progressive causes and people by making crimes out of acts that were not criminal. In this way, Anslinger laid the groundwork in place for an endemic legal injustice.
Racism was inherent in the new legislature. The approach was displayed by the confusion caused by a new word for cannabis, “Marihuana” (The more common spelling now is Marijuana) The Tax Act was named after this incorrect term, used as an associative trick based on racism and phonetics. It worked because the word sounded Mexican. Mexicans were unpopular and mistrusted, so tying public perceptions of the plant to Mexican immigrants was an easy way to scare white America. The FBN also targeted jazz musicians and lied about them without remorse. They created images of insane, weed-stinking black men on an unending quest for mayhem and white women; these also did nothing to set Caucasian minds at ease. Racial fear has always been a historically effective way to goad America’s ethnic majority off the path of common sense and decency. The War on Cannabis stands out as a noteworthy example of this tendency.
Shortly before the MTA was passed, a new governmental organization, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was created to deal with the growing problem of drug addiction in America (Deitsch). Its first commissioner Harry J. Anslinger discarded science and medicine with glee. “Doctors,” he said, “cannot treat addicts, even if they want to.” He chose instead to call for “tough judges not afraid to take killer-pushers and throw away the key.” FBN techniques developed to disseminate the new way proved effective, allowing Anslinger’s perspective to set the tone for subsequent anti-cannabis legislation. Anslinger was a skillful administrator, and he had resources. His ideas caught on and manifested physically in the dehumanizing propaganda used by the FBN to scare anti-cannabis legislature past Congress. The aftershocks of FBN anti-cannabis disinformation are ubiquitous even today, living proof of the program’s success. Celebrating openly a pro-cannabis lifestyle is still enough to get you targeted. It’s easy to get busted, it’s hard to get a job. The way society perceives the users of cannabis today still comes largely from stereotypes based on exaggerated caricatures created during this era. These unfair and cartoonish notions have evolved and generalized over the years, becoming institutionalized as more people became invested in them. They have been used to degrade and delegitimize progressive causes and their advocates.
The propaganda employed by the FBN had been successful, so much so that it started a genuine public panic, and people were demanding that something be done. This gave Anslinger both the lawful right, and the means to pound his enemies into the ground. He was not long in finding his first sacrificial lamb. The first victim of the new policy was selected in 1937, just after the new law took effect. A draconian sentence of four years in prison for an ounce of weed was handed down to Samuel L. Caldwell of Boulder, Colorado. A precedent of insane harshness was set that endured in American courtrooms to this very day. It added greatly to the foundation of the original architecture of the greater War on Drugs, as conceived of and created by President Richard Nixon’s administration.
The Nixon era vigorously continued the judicial legacy of brutality applied to the cannabis community. Like Harry Anslinger had forty years prior, the administration targeted cannabis because its occupants knew liberals could be legally hamstrung as a consequence for using it. The concept was strategic, and its straightforward goal was the same as in the past-to keep conservatives in power at any cost. Neither fair play nor the health of democracy was considered, freedom was injured, and the resultant degradation of our system worked to the detriment of all Americans, whether they smoke pot or not. Chief Nixon White House adviser John Ehrlichman came to some of the same conclusions later in life. He spoke out frankly on the subject to Dan Baum of Harper’s Magazine years after the impeachment of Nixon. He laid out flatly their motives for taking aim at cannabis.
“Look, back in ’68, we had two enemies, you get me? The antiwar left, and the blacks. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be against the war, and we couldn’t make it illegal to be black. But by heavily penalizing the use of marijuana and heroin, we were able to disrupt
those communities. We were able to bust up their meetings, raid their offices, vilify them night after night on the evening news… Did we know we were lying about the drugs themselves? Of course we did.”.
Nixon’s work was built upon famously by the next Republican administration, that of Ronald Reagan. First Lady Nancy Reagan’s iconic “Just Say No” commercial typified the new approach, which was just like the old approach, but newly equipped with a spiffy slogan. In pursuing the anti-cannabis campaign, the Reagan administration was zealous in their willingness to apply suppression through the courts to the cannabis community. A TIME Magazine article from 1988 gives us a look at how it was. “The Reagan Administration calls its new drug policy ‘zero tolerance,’ meaning that planes, vehicles, and vessels may be confiscated for carrying even the tiniest amount of a controlled substance.” It goes on to tell the story of a captain whose boat was seized for a tenth of an ounce of cannabis. Things were so bad during that time for users of the herb that the case can hardly be overstated. Ardor for the arts of slander and libel grew in the government to an extent that left little room for conspiracy theories. Every possible medium was employed to spread Just Say No. Commercials, posters, the sides of buses. School programs like DARE, which stood for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, ensured that no young mind in America could miss the point. The net effects of all the anti-drug campaigning proved to be the same as in the past-untouched and rising rates of use, and black and poor people receiving disproportionately long sentences for small amounts of weed.
Subsequent presidents such as Bill Clinton were left with little choice but to compete with Reagan’s paternalistic style of law and order, and so the status quo remained intact. It was not until the election of Barack Obama that the prerequisite conditions for the monumental decision of 2012 legalizing recreational cannabis in the first two American states, Oregon and Washington, were met at long last. There is no doubt that it was a monumental decision. It represented the reversal of a hundred years worth of American legal policy and a tremendous amount of human struggling. The change, by that point, had been nearly a century in coming. Cannabis laws have been hamstringing the left for that entire time and they still are. Improvements have come, but they are highly incomplete. The threat of things reverting to their former miserable state overshadows all the progress that has been made in this area. Realization of the harm caused in the cannabis prohibition era has been highlighted in the nation’s modern consciousness. More and more people are coming to see how important it is to prevent the reassertion of the destructive and unfair status quo.
The history of the War on Cannabis is representative of a great many other social ills inside American life. The racist, reactionary, right-wing attitudes that created the original campaign are still alive and well in modern American jurisprudence. In the name of punishment and the spirit of human sacrifice, medical science has been stymied and suppressed, people have been ruined and jailed, and our prison system has been afflicted to the point where it has poisoned our political system. It is, simply stated, a historical and ongoing eyesore. Change has come but is far from secure, and a great deal of harm remains unaddressed.
Works Cited
ACLU ProCon.org, 2009. Leary v. United States https://aclu.procon.org/view.background-resource.php?resourceID=003427 Bonnie, Richard J., Whitebread, Charles H., 1974. “The Marijuana Conviction: A History of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States.” https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=185042 Dagen, Chelsea, 2017. The Distortion of Drugs: War, Discrimination, and Profit. https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi Deitsch, Robert, 2003. “Hemp: American History Revisited- The Plant With A Divided History.” Vdocuments.mx, vdocuments.mx/documents/hemp-american-history-revisited-the-plant-with-a-divided-history.html. Dickinson, Tim, 2016. “Why America Can't Quit The Drug War.” https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/why-america-cant-quit-the- drug-war- 47203/ Downs, David, 2016. “The Science behind the DEA's Long War on Marijuana.” www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-behind-the-dea-s-long-war-on- marijuana/. Duff, Cameron, Erickson, Patricia G., 2014. “Cannabis, risk, and normalization: Evidence from a Canadian study of socially integrated, adult cannabis users.” Glick, Daniel, 2016. “80 Years Ago This Week, Marijuana Prohibition Began With These Arrests.” https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/drug-war-prisoners-1-2-true-story-moses- sam-two- denver Green, Matthew, 2008. “Reefer Madness! The Twisted History of America’s Marijuana Laws.” https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/24153/reefer-madness-the-twisted-history-of- americas-weed- laws- King, Ryan, Mauer, Mark, 2006. "The war on marijuana: The transformation of the war on drugs in the 1990s." Komp, Ellen, 2011. “Mark Twain's Hasheesh Experience in San Francisco.” https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Mark-Twain-s-hasheesh-experience-in-S- F- 2328992.php Jennifer Robeson, 2002. “Who Smoked Pot? You May Be Surprised.” https://news.gallup.com/poll/6394/who-smoked-pot-may-surprised.aspx Smith, Laura, 2018. “How A Racist Hatemonger Masterminded America’s War on Drugs.”
The 2018 midterm elections were among the most anticipated races in history, and they did not fail to deliver dramatic results. Throughout the election cycle, word of a Democratic Blue Wave gained momentum, and a watershed voter turnout was the satisfying result. It was the highest for any election held in the United States since Watergate, which seemed suitable for such a high stakes contest. In many cases, the primary considerations of the voters seemed to counterbalance one another. These were the strong economy and the personal repugnance of Trump himself. The president has managed to snatch credit for the strength of the economy, but his low approval ratings pointed to Democratic gains (Washington Post). History has favored the minority party at the time of the president’s first midterm. This tendency, combined with American disgust for Trump himself as a man, to give Democrats control of the half of the Congress known as the House of Representatives by a wide margin.
The achievement of the Democrats can hardly be overstated. Reporter Dan Balz of the Washington Post gave us a few statistics with which to illustrate this point. Democrats flipped about two-thirds of the competitive districts won by both Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2012 or by Clinton in 2016 and Mitt Romney in 2012. They also picked up one-third of districts won by Trump in 2016 and Obama in 2012. In districts where both Trump and Romney had won in the previous two elections, Democrats gained about a quarter of the competitive seats (Washington Post). Democrats even managed to break even in net seats in the Senate, though they had faced crushing electoral odds in that chamber. Twenty-five Democratic senators were up for reelection as opposed to only eight Republicans, and many were in states that went solidly red in 2016. Managing to hold the line places Democrats in a fantastic position to retake the Senate in 2020, when the shoe will be on the other foot. While immediate domestic concerns are likely to be given precedence, the effects of the Blue Wave in 2018 are sure to reverberate worldwide.
This tremendous level of electoral enthusiasm was all the more remarkable in that midterm elections in general are not captivating to most voters. In a normal year, only the most ideologically driven and committed members of the electorate tend to turn out for them, and certainly overseas interest is not typically overwhelming. But in recent years, a radical polarization has gripped the global society’s political atmosphere. The specter of World War Two has risen and people are getting scared. A great acrimony and division has spread through America and the rest of the world. Some are calling it a civil cold war, and its battlefields can be found on many fronts. Trenches are being dug under national borders, in some cases, and along gerrymandered district lines in others. People in all corners of the globe had good reason to pay attention, as the struggles highlighted the dramatic and worldwide trouble the human race is having in getting along with itself.
The quality of the candidates selected by the two parties speaks in volumes to the quality of those who did the selecting. Democrats elected eight new scientists. Republicans elected three felons and a dead pimp (Post-Tribune). Something has got to give here. Somebody is going to hold power in America, the world’s sole superpower. We have to look closely at whom. The moderate wing of the Republican Party used to have some allies in it. There were men like John McCain, who in spite of their party affiliation was sound and unselfish Americans. Some of them could be counted on for bipartisan dialogue concerning issues of paramount importance. McCain is now gone, however, and with him the moderate wing of the Republican Party. This type of candidate took serious damage in the midterm primaries. They were discarded in favor of candidates more in line with the views of Donald Trump. Many of these came from the ranks of the alt-right, though the elections also played an important role in illustrating a trend of worsening extremity taking root in the far left. Only center Democrats have reliably proven they can put themselves to the side enough to do what is best for the country.
The 2018 election was in many ways a referendum on the 2016 election, and the events immediately surrounding it. The victory of Donald Trump combined with Brexit constituted significant blows to the American-led, liberal world order, and empowered the radical right. It also empowered Russian president Vladimir Putin, who had spent millions of dollars to defeat Hillary Clinton and get a guy in office he found more pliable. “Putin likes Trump because he supports this view of the world, that the big guys can carve it up,” explained former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in an interview for Gentlemen’s Quarterly. After Trump won, Kasparov, who is Putin’s former opponent in a Russian presidential election, wrote some predictions down in his new book on the future of the Western world order, Winter is Coming. He believed we had eighteen months in which to turn around the sequence of events that had been started, two years at the most. If we didn’t find a way by then, he felt, it would probably be too late. I thought of those words many times on the way to the voting booths this year. They perfectly summarized the reason it was so important for the Democrats to win the midterms in 2018. Only the full force of American conviction can activate its might enough to keep the world safe for democracy.
Today’s world, like today’s Republican Party, is busy coping with an uptick in reactionary far-right movements, movements that in many cases and nations border on fascism. Alt-right candidates were present in greater number than ever before in the 2018 midterms, and this too is part of a worldwide trend. From Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Norbert Hofer in Austria, adherents of racist nationalism have been growing increasingly violent and brazen. A man screams “Hail Trump!” in a movie theater; another during a performance of the Fiddler on the Roof. “Middle America is rallying to the flag of the alt-right,” said Kyle Bristow, a self-described member of the “alt-right” and the attorney of infamous white nationalist Richard Spencer. These candidates mostly lost, but their sheer proliferation is a terrible sign. It goes without saying that all of them were Republicans. The race was representative of the political atmosphere worldwide in that it was ideologically polarized. It saw its fair share of triumphs for liberals and progressives, but it also saw a rise of far-right, white nationalist candidates. Some of these were victorious. The low quality of the Republican candidates has negative consequences for every level of government.
A Democratic retaking of the House of Representatives was a critical first step in containing and reversing this virulent problem. It is why the Resistance showed up in such numbers at the polls. For two years, liberals and progressives have been helpless to do anything but sit idle, as one travesty after another has rocked the global community. We have not had the power to protect our people, or even to get many others to listen or to understand our plight. But with the power to form committees of Congressional inquiry, we can finally start to put the bad guys under a microscope. The power of the House is, in this case, the power of defense.
The elections were not completely without problems for the Democrats. It showed us that ideological faultline is still existent not only in the Republican Party but in the Democratic as well. The rift between the supporters of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton has healed to an extent, and there have been improvements made in this area. Our shared victory in the midterms demonstrated that the progressive wing of the party is beginning to learn from the tremendous mistakes they made in 2016, where undercurrents of far left hard feelings allowed the Russians an easy way to turn the 2016 Democratic primaries into a zoo. The radical left’s extreme love for the Bern reached the levels of a cult by the end of the primary. From the day the Bernie or Bust petition began circulating, it was obvious we were in for trouble. If they couldn’t have Bernie, they said, they would rather have Trump. This attitude was allowed to get highly pervasive, and it killed us in the end.
This time around, Democrats did a far better job of managing conflicts between the two wings of the party. They simmered at a low boil all the way through the midterm primaries but managed to keep from becoming a fight instead of a contest and ruining the Blue Wave. This is a positive sign, suggesting the far left might have learned from 2016, which is good. Most mainstream Democrats have been pushed to the left as far as we will go, and are starting to get ready to push back. Centrist groups like Third Way have been pushing candidates to read up on history and polling. “The party is not going to go in the direction of Sanders-style socialism, because it’s not winning on the issues and it doesn’t win politically except in a very, very limited number of places,” Third Way president Jonathan Cowan tells TIME. “It’s going to go in the direction that won it two presidencies” (Elliott). The last two two-term Democratic Presidents were mainstream Democrats. [That’s] what’s going to get the House back.” It’s important to emphasize here that mainstream Democrats do not seek reorientation of the party. We’ve been doing an excellent job under the worst possible conditions.
Progressive Democrats from the Sanders wing were not without a few reasons to cheer in November’s elections. The upset primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over twenty year veteran Joe Crowley for New York’s 14th District stood out on a number of levels. Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest Representative ever elected, and her zealot’s love for socialism has given the Sanders wing a new face and voice to cheer for. My thoughts are that this is not the worst thing in the world, because we need them, and it appears that some healing has taken place. Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters used to very nearly hate each other, and that no longer feels as acutely so. It appears that the left has achieved a degree of unity for now, but it remains to be seen whether this newly placid status quo can survive another presidential primary.
The immediate battles to be faced come January in the House of Representatives are only one part of a much larger problem. Democracy is under attack worldwide. It is being replaced one plank at a time like the proverbial Ship of Theseus. At what point in all this replacing does it become a different ship? Only one thing is certain, at least in the gut level instinct of this writer. Since Trump got elected, this country does not feel the same at all. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, America has been rated as being less than a full democracy for the last two years. The EIU produces an annual review ranking countries on their adherence to 60 distinct democratic values, including electoral processes and press freedom (“America Has Been Classified as a Flawed Democracy”). According to their standards, we’re not a free country anymore. America is now more like Viktor Orban’s Hungary, or Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The rich want to get into power and stay there, and quote the ideals of freedom as the reason they ought to be able to use any means to do so. The only way we can hope to turn this all around is to get the Democrats back into power and keep them there.
The biggest net effect of the midterms is the Democratic retaking of the House because it gives the sane center of the country back the power of defense. Democrats can now protect our country from anymore disastrous Trump ideas. This also sets back Putin’s plan of attaching more of his tendrils and creepers to the grand old castle walls that hold up our country. Proactive measures are more limited. Democrats can form investigative committees, and hold hearings for the purposes of questioning and gathering information. Resources are certain to focus on raising awareness about the Russiagate scandal and other serious challenges facing our democracy. The conduct of Trump and his allies can be highlighted and brought to the forefront of public consciousness everywhere. It should be understood that even with a legislative chamber in blue hands, Republicans still hold the White House and the Senate, and the cooperation of all three is needed to pass a law. Nothing in recent history suggests hope for bipartisan cooperation on any issue, regardless of the issue’s importance. People will see once again how obstructionist and unfair the opposition is, and afterward, it will be easier to help people understand the truth- everything we hold sacred is in danger. If things keep on as they are, the days of American supremacy will be numbered.
A close look at the playing field this election has left us with will prove useful as we step into the future. Blue Wave 2018 hit home for the midterms, and it gave us a great start. But the world remains beneath the dark shadow of a large-scale hatefulness and mayhem. The potential for danger and disorder is so great that it seems almost redundant to say so. As someone who has lived through all this, and read not just eight articles about it but hundreds, I feel that this narrative is being neglected and understated. This is due to responsible journalists not wanting to sound alarmist, in some cases, and it’s comforting to tell ourselves we’re in less trouble than we are. But the country’s divisions have been highlighted and exacerbated by hostile foreign powers such as Russia, who also targeted the 2018 midterms. This has added urgency to the issue and made them even more difficult to ignore. Going forward, it will be incumbent on the Democratic leadership, under the new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to use their regained power dexterously. To show the people of the country that there is a reasonable alternative to the bedlam created by the current administration, resources must be channeled wisely and well. Good thing we’ve got a professional headed for the Speaker’s Chair. We’re really going to need her.
In studying the political history of America, the scholar will note along with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who wrote in his Age of Roosevelt that foreign radicalism has never taken deep root here. From the visceral horror felt by the Founding Fathers toward the bloodbath going on in France to the resolute pursuance of seeing an end to the Nazis, America has always managed to resist being taken in by extremism from left or right. The source of our strength as a nation’s people has always lain in our ability to value compromise and moderation, which are necessary if we wish in times of crisis to be able to pull together with the full force of American conviction behind us, like when we fought World War Two. When these values are abandoned, democratic nations start to fall. If we lose our ability to communicate, we clearly can’t coordinate strategy. Only the full force of America’s people can activate its might enough to keep the world safe for democracy. Our ability to hold the center is why we have become and remained so strong.
After looking at all this, a simple question remains. Has America ever faced a midterm election like 2018? In considering its potential impact of it on the country and its global standing, many would argue that the answer lies in the negative. The Trump administration has been a disaster of colossal proportion. Every day that America is represented in its highest office by a man who many would argue is both corrupt and deeply incompetent is a day in which we are vulnerable in the eyes of the world. Resisting his demented policies has taken everything we have, but we managed it even though we held so little power. After two years of that, holding the House of Representatives feels like a tremendous luxury of strength. We can assure the Trump presidency will be a lame duck from this point on. We can’t start setting things to rights just yet, but we can stop the current Oval Office occupant when he tries to do further damage. We can block his cruel new policies, and removing his ability to hamstring our future with corrupt appointees like the Supreme Court’s Brett Kavanaugh. This is why it was so crucial for the Democratic “Blue Wave” to sweep America.
Works Cited
Agerholm, Harriet, 2018. “America falls short of being a full democracy for second year running, report finds.”
/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/america-democracy-rated-donald- trump-not-fully-democratic-us- president-report-the-economist- a8195121.html
Balz, Dan, and Scherer, Michael, 2018. Washington Post, Washington Post. “For Democrats, A Midterm Election That Keeps On Giving.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-democrats-a-midterm-election-that-keeps-on- giving/2018/11/09/b4075ef2-e456-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html? utm_term=.754bc43973ad
Beauchamp, Zack, 2018. “The midterm elections revealed that America is in a cold civil war.”
https://www.vox.com/midterm-elections/2018/11/7/18068486/midterm-election- 2018-results-race-surburb Campbell, Alaistair, 2018. “Garry Kasparov on Putin, Trump, and their deal to carve up Europe.” https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/garry-kasparov-alastair-campbell-interview
Elliott, Philip. Time, Time, 2018. “The Middle Road.”
time.com/5428157/democrats-centrist-midterms/.
Frier, Nancy, 2018. Time, Time, 2018. Facebook Discovers an Ongoing Effort to Influence the 2018 Midterm Elections.
Grand Magazine, 2018. “Urgent: The United States Has Been Classed As A Flawed Democracy.”