It’s Time for Silicon Valley To Finish Its Task of Interrupting the Racist Drug War

Mark Zuckerberg, the Icarus of the Internet, is discussing his own staff members about whether Facebook ought to be responsible for remedying the lies of particular high ranking politicians. The answer seems obvious, but are they truly prepared to pick which lies need their individual attention?

Icarus was undone by attempting to fly expensive and to be above everything, however there is another Greek myth that is more ¨ down to Earth ¨ actually.

As I see the seemingly inexhaustible gush of prohibitionist propaganda, I am advised of the Greek myth about Hercules and the stables of King Augeas.

The term “Augean stables” indicates a huge mess, since King Augeas had a large variety of cattle, which were herded into the stables every night, but no one tidied up after them. (Governments always expect other individuals to do their grunt work.)

As an effect, the stables overflowed with what the Greeks called “drug education.”

As in Hercules’ time, the federal government provides the fodder at one end, and the other end– the Greeks called it the “media”– produced the inescapable item. It stank to high paradise, but it appeared difficult to do anything about it.

Most people said it was underneath their self-respect even to consider it, although not thinking did not stop them from discussing it. They said that the only factor that it stank was since some individuals grumbled about the odor. You couldn’t smell it from the much better communities, and besides, if everybody who lived near the stables would simply stop breathing, it wouldn’t be a problem. Possibly the king might send out in troops to put their knees on individuals’s throats, but that was rejected as bad PR.

Nevertheless, as the story goes, Hercules was provided the job of cleaning up the stables, but he needed to do it all in just one day. Clearly not even he might shovel that quick, and I know just how he should have felt.

Being a superhero, Hercules managed the accomplishment, and the way he did it offers me hope. He diverted a number of rivers to stream through the stables and flushed them out.

Meanwhile back in the real world, what does this have to do with the war on us? What are the “rivers” that we can divert?

One clue in fact originates from the myth. When King Augeas declined to pay Hercules, as he had actually promised he would, the king’s kid informed the truth, and was banished for doing so.
( He was sent out to a location the Greeks called “rehab”, which he said reminded him of his dad’s stables.)

Meanwhile back in the real world, the American individuals are getting fed up with the smell of the lies that are being informed to them– supposedly to safeguard them.

For obvious reasons, the present crisis in the ” criminal justice system ¨is focused on race, but it needs to also be obvious that these issues are inextricably connected to what we call the Drug War. Second, the Drug War is a “legacy” of the world that Silicon Valley, aka the Web, has partly interfered with and now it needs to complete the job.

The Drug War, and Marijuana Restriction, (it’s a ¨ feature, not a bug ¨ )are still supported by a massive propaganda project mislabeled as Drug Education. Just the Drug Czar ´ s office (Office of National Drug Control Policy) has a spending plan of $3791 million.

And how would we account for the $3.4 billion to pay for real estate federal drug war prisoners?

But the greatest financial expense of the Drug War would need to be counted in the damage done to the lives of its targets.

In the 2002 study ” The Effect of Imprisonment on Wage Mobility and Inequality,” scientist Bruce Western “discovered that incarceration can completely alter a person’s life course, interrupt crucial life transitions, and damage access to stable employment. Incarceration can likewise extremely impact future economic stability and wage earning. The research study took a look at young men who were incarcerated in jail or jail between 1979 and 1998.

According to Western’s study, the loss of earnings takes place partially due to the fact that incomes increase at a slower rate following imprisonment. Not only are earnings basically frozen when somebody is put in jail, imprisonment triggers a reduction in the rate of wage development over the course of a lifetime by about 30%. Western likewise found that a criminal record– regardless of the crime associated to the record– reduces callbacks from prospective companies by around 50%.”

And guess what … Blacks are practically 4 times as most likely to be jailed for marijuana as whites, although marijuana usage rates are extremely similar. And the history of marijuana prohibition is ridiculously racist.

Anyone who wishes to discuss racism in America, and particularly bigotry and the cops, must challenge the Drug War and marijuana prohibition or they are just poseurs.

Anyone who talks about defunding the authorities and protecting minority communities without resolving the Drug War, beginning with cannabis prohibition, is just preventing the tough decisions that have to be made.

There is no group worldwide that has higher real power over the general public discourse than the tech neighborhood. It interrupted the old journalism and the old political order. Now it can not pretend to be against racism and yet disregard the way the world in fact works. If Zuckerberg and Dorsey remain in the headings, then everybody else needs to be on the frontlines, or they are AWOL.

Speak, scream, shriek, text, Tweet and email but make yourself heard. It is actually within your reaches.

What have you done for liberty today?

– Richard Cowan is a former NORML National Director and co-founder of Genuine Checked CBD. Discover more stories from Richard Cowan