The Drug War and Police Brutality, Part Two: Mister Nixon's War

President Richard M. Nixon was a man with enemies. So many enemies, in fact, that he had to make several lists to keep track of them all...

President Richard M. Nixon was also a man with a plan, a man willing and able to use any means necessary to defeat those he saw as opponents, to "use the available federal machinery to screw [his] political enemies," in the words of former White House Counsel John Dean (one of the key figures in the Watergate cover-up). In the instance of the individuals on the so-called "Enemies List," Nixon sought to wield the tax audit as a weapon, making the IRS his personal Praetorian Guard. (This effort was foiled when the IRS Director refused to comply.)

On June 18, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, the man with enemies everywhere, addressed the assembled media and declared drug abuse to be "public enemy number one."

The Drug War and Police Brutality, Part One: Prohibition

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JULY 2016, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

Police are being killed by citizens. Citizens are being killed by police. The killings have become a weekly occurrence. Social media and cable news are inundated with daily tales of violence in the streets. Politicians and pundits pontificate on the causes and where the blame lies. Fingers are pointed in all directions. The people struggle to make sense of what seems like a descending cloud of chaos. Billionaire businessmen promise Law and Order and swift retribution for lawbreakers. Career politicians promise understanding and increased social justice. No one seems sure what the answers are, but all are sure that things are not as they ought to be. The words of William Butler Yeats ring in my ears like the decaying sound of a distant warning bell:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...

How did we get here? Is there some rational explanation for all of this? Is it just random chaos and entropy, or is there a definable set of historical circumstances and decisions that led us inexorably to our current predicament?

I would answer in the affirmative: There is an historical explanation for the state of our nation today, a series of events which brought us to where we are now. In my new four-part series The War on Drugs and Police Brutality, I will endeavor to unfold this tale and examine its ramifications for today. The story begins in 1919, the very year that Yeats penned his famous apocalyptic words...