Trump, Sessions and the imminent war on drugs – The Vermilion

Photo of Jeff Sessions via powerlineblog.com.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has sparked major controversy since recent statements involving both ending an attempt at decreasing private prisons and cracking down on marijuana. This, coupled with Trumps Law and Order campaign promises, is nothing new in U.S. politics. These sentiments reminisce Nixon and Reagans war on drugs almost to a T. I believe well be seeing a third wave of war on drugs in the near future granted Sessions and Trump have their way.

The origins of the war on drugs are rooted in the dawn of post-Civil War America, as characterized by the mass criminalization of black people. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, but on one condition: The legal enslavement of criminals as a form of punishment. This placated the Southern states dire economic situation by replacing slavery with slavery of a new type. This legal base led to an economy relying on the free labor of black criminals (one can imagine the vicious bias of a wounded Confederate ideology), and this economy, in turn, led to ideas to justify it.

The branding of the black man as criminal was driven with ease into the already vehemently racist atmosphere of Reconstruction-Era U.S., with such cultural phenomena as the Ku Klux Klan, the film Birth of a Nation (U.S.s first blockbuster), the Lost Cause movement of the South (pushing ideas of generous plantation owners and content slaves), and so on. The transference of black identity from slave to criminal is paramount in the understanding of 20th Century U.S.

The Civil Rights Movement turned the idea of fear of criminalization on its head. Martin Luther King Jr. and others championed the idea of civil disobedience, calling for breaking the law as a goal of black people rather than something to be feared. Regardless of how effective this was, it further branded black people as inherently criminal to those who simply watched the movement on the surface without giving a second thought to its purpose.

As with all schemes created by the elite, a profit had to be involved to upkeep such a massive plague on U.S. society.

This rising tide of dissent, coupled with a massive anti-war movement, led Nixon and the rest of the United States imperialist regime to fear a shift in power. In reaction, Nixon repeatedly called for Law and Order, promising to crack down on the merchants of crime and corruption in American society. Nixon and his cabinet decided drugs were the sole culprit of this crime and corruption.

To put it bluntly, it was incredibly obvious this was a ploy to demonize dissent in the United States. John Ehrlichman, an adviser to Nixon, recently revealed these motives: The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the anti-war left and black people. You understand what Im saying? We knew we couldnt 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. 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.

Eleven years later, Ronald Reagan revamped the war on drugs by dramatically increasing spending on anti-drug law enforcement, pushing an anti-drug agenda headed by his wife Nancy and the massive cutting of government programs such as welfare, housing, etc. I add the latter point because an increase in poverty leads to an increase in drug use, therefore leading to an increase in incarceration.

Throughout these wars, the incarceration rate in the United States blew up, with a prison population that grew from 218,466 in 1974 to 1,508,636 in 2014.

As with all schemes created by the elite, a profit had to be involved to upkeep such a massive plague on U.S. society.

Private prisons didnt spring up until the 80s, with a dramatic increase through the 90s with George Bush and Bill Clintons further carrying of the War on Drugs. Private prisons house 6 percent of the nations incarcerated (in atrocious living conditions), and the revenue generated reaches in the billions.

The largest injustice incarceration serves, however, is the exploitation of practically free inmate labor. Many corporations invest in prison labor which pays as low as 17 cents an hour. Scenes of prison labor in many cases eerily resemble antebellum plantations.

Therefore, the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, in general, are pursued, continued and utilized for profit motives. Mass incarceration and the conditions in which prisoners live help no one except those who profit from it.

Sessions and Trump want to continue this tradition. Private prison stock from the two largest companies has doubled since Trumps win. These companies have also donated large sums of money to the Trump campaign, obviously for the payoff to come. Jeff Sessions has called for the end of former Attorney General Sally Yates proposal to decrease private prisons. Trumps Law and Order campaign is nearly identical to Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Clintons, all of whom directly increased the criminalization of poverty and its effects via mass incarceration. Sessions crackdown on marijuana (a soft drug) foretells a sharp rise in narcotics arrests, and, therefore, imprisonments. A sheriff has even offered free prison labor to help build The Wall.

All the signs point to the obvious: Trump and Sessions, if allowed to, will revamp the war on drugs once again, and continue the deadly trend of mass incarceration in the land of the free.

college projects Donald Trump Jeff Sessions Ronald Reagan War on Drugs

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Trump, Sessions and the imminent war on drugs - The Vermilion