Nobody had the cojones to come straight out and say so in direct language, but I have read between the lines and divined the true anger at the back of the conspiratorial mind over recent comments by Bill Bennett.
For those of you not blessed with this sort of precognition, I think I have picked it up virally by reading too many of the crystal ball interpretations of Bennett's comments. It's contagious. While I still have this dubious gift, I'll relate the vision it has implanted in my third eye.
Bill Bennett was the sinister architect, in his role as Republican Drug Czar, of the War on Black Men. He was responsible for that genocide that went under the guise of the 'War on Drugs'. Since black men are born and bred to do just the opposite of what Whitey says, when Nancy Reagan said 'just say no' we even ignored De La Soul's 'say no go' and all took crack and angel dust. So we were suckers and ate up all the crack that the CIA strategically dropped from their cargo planes into every black neighborhood in America. And because of this, under Bennett's master plan we were all carted off to jail. Millions upon millions of us. So successful was this genocide that there are now fewer blackfolks living in America than ever before, according to the US Census.
But wait! I'm being sarcastic.
Sooner or later, intelligent people are going to recognize that there is not going to be a reversal of the way things work in America. There are too many millions if not billions of people around the world who wish it might be so, and they have been powerless to change America. I'm sure every Soviet Premier has wanted to. I'm sure every leftist dictator in Central America wanted to. I'm sure that the most successful Communist in world history, Fidel Castro wants to. I'm sure every half-witted Imam on the wrong side of Islam wants to. But none of them have, none of them can and none of them will. So what makes anyone think that the kind of politics that makes illiegal drug users into representatives of some great African American political revolt is going to be successful in changing the ways and means by which blackfolks will attain power and success in America?
Write them off.
Everyone who has served jailtime for illegal drug use in America, whether or not their sentence was overly harsh or their arrest was done by the books or not has first and foremost has made a choice that put themselves and their family at risk. Anyone too ignorant to know that weed or crack is illegal has no business representing anything as important and precious as the fate of African America. If indeed anyone is going to use the argument that the individual choices of the individual drug user 'is not hurting anyone', then why should their incarceration be seen as a drag on African America? Either they are a part of the solution to black ills, or they are not. You can't have it both ways. If they are not (and I say hell no they ain't), then we can only feel for them as [poor, idiot] victims, but not as leaders, and not as part of a positive political base.
So I shed no tears for the man who gives up his vote for a toke. I shed no tears for the man who loses his family because he got arrested for possession. I have no political sympathy for them whatsoever. I recognize that if that's up to 20% of the black nation, then it most clearly has to be the 20% that does us no good, considering what good they've done themselves and their family thus far.
If. If only it happened to me, maybe I wouldn't feel the same way. But it didn't and I don't. Even if it had, eventually I would think the same way. A bad man knows he's bad. He doesn't get out of jail and then try to run for president. He tries to get his life back in order, and if he has truly learned anything he tries to keep others from making the same mistake. That is if he can help himself from making the same mistake.
I'm not here to defend the criminal justice system's sense of proportionality. I'm here to question the wisdom of making the fate of drug users the source of our political values. I'm here to suggest that any ammo spent on Bill Bennett because of his zeal in the War on Drugs (which I have yet to quantify) is ammo wasted. I'm here to remind everyone, who seems to have forgotten, that there are some people we cannot afford to deify and others who don't merit demonization. I don't know why some folks can't get it through their heads that the strong black family persists. Let the devil take the hindmost. We can afford it. What we cannot afford are voices in support of folks not worthy of our respect.
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