The Real Evil is War Profiteering, the Real Drug Money

The War on Drugs has been raging for more than thirty years. Mexico is being ripped apart on it, so the US put up a fence so it doesn’t spill back to its source. Like every other war, the Drug War costs a lot of money and destroys lives while solving nothing, particularly the source of the problem, and enriching a few, in this case the declared enemies. Cartels have the economies of nations now. Al Capone would be amazed.  

Prohibition created gangsters in the early 20^th century and gangstas in the late 20^th century. The heads of cartels have their own armies and the requisite atrocities are being committed. Who has benefited, beyond the cartels? The same ones who have always benefited, at least since the Industrial Age began - Arms manufacturers and their financial backers, banks.  The largest arms producer is the US. That’s why owning guns is in their constitution and so rabidly defended despite the yearly multiple tragedies. It’s no wonder that every criminal can get one, so can every psycho and anarchist. They even allow private armies within their borders, ones often with declared enmity for the government. “NRA” stands for “No Retired Armies” or perhaps, “No Reason Allowed”.

Even in a country like Libya, where they have just fought and won their freedom, they know enough to get the weaponry off the streets and out of the hands of the masses. It took the killing of a diplomat to convince them  that guns in the hands of the many means that a percentage will fall into the hands of those who are evil or nuts can use them in their goals and inflict far more damage on society as a result. It took a tragedy, but Libya seems to have learned a lesson that Bart Simpson is repeatedly shocked by.

Banks, as owners and financiers of arms companies, and holders of national debt, are the only winners who have arisen from all of the modern wars, including the Drug War. Remember that it was originally war debt that required the “temporary” institution of income tax.  They make the product, they sell the product, and they loan the money to buy the product - a tidy little circle that really got rolling when industrial warfare made its debut in WWI. It was so profitable they extended the war another year. The fact that the front line rarely changed an inch created an excellent meat grinder that spat out profit.

Now banks don’t need wars to create this circle and grinder. Now they gamble society’s wealth on investments in things that exist only in mathematics, with no basis in reality, nothing but complex schemes and accounting tricks. The government then bails them out and gets itself in debt to them, creating the circle. They charge interest on the debit but the government gives bailouts for free. Austerity is demanded by the banks so society can continue to sacrifice its wealth to them, which they gamble away, or hide in tax havens, and the meat gets ground.

As always the meat is us, particularly the poor and vulnerable.

War is no longer necessary to the process of profiting from misery and destruction, just Neoliberal economics. Neoliberalism set the world up over thirty years so that chaos and misery could be spread world-wide in one fell swoop. A single nuclear weapon couldn’t do as much damage, instant and lasting, as quickly as this one ideology. And the damage continues to be inflicted, because of our permission, participation, and apathy.

Meat doesn’t care that’s it’s going into the grinder. It’s already dead inside.