United Liberty
The War on Drugs Is a “Holocaust in Slow Motion”
Fri, 09/14/2012 - 6:18am | posted by George Scoville
Expect to see that tagline more than once associated with a forthcoming documentary, The House I Live In, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2012 Sundance Flim Festival. Written and directed by Eugene Jarecki, whose credits also include, among others, Why We Fight and Freakonomics, the film will have a limited theatrical release beginning with New York on October 5, just three weeks from today. The release will expand into other major metropolitan areas in the ensuing weeks.
The film’s official website describes it thus:
Filmed in more than twenty states, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN tells the stories of individuals at all levels of America’s War on Drugs. From the dealer to the narcotics officer, the inmate to the federal judge, the film offers a penetrating look inside America’s criminal justice system, revealing the profound human rights implications of U.S. drug policy.
For a scholarly examination of the impacts of the War on Drugs on state and federal budgets, see the September 2010 Cato Institute study “The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition” by Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron and Katherine Waldock.
Hat tip: University of Michigan economist Mark J. Perry
What?
You mean to tell me that inmates at all levels of “America’s War on Drugs” are dying from mass extermination? You mean to tell me that they are being stuffed, hundreds at a time, into gas chambers and then their bodies are being burned to leave no trace of their existence?
Are you f*cking kidding me?
WHO THOUGHT OF THIS TAG LINE?
In defense of the producers and marketers, I don’t think it’s an official tagline of the film. It’s merely a quotation from someone who appears in it. When I wrote “Expect to see that tagline…” I was referring more to the blogosphere and film critics using it as a tagline, as Professor Perry did at CARPE DIEM (see the hat tip link).
It is definitely edgy, and designed to evoke an emotional response. That’s how successful communications pros build support around policy and political positions.
Thanks for reading!
George Scoville
Twitter: @stackiii
Secret police (DEA) go around rounding up Jewish people (cannabis users) imprisoning them for being themselves, steal their children, spread lies hate and propaganda, suppress evidence, confiscate property, and use their hate lies and bigotry for more share of the money to increase their police state. Peace Love and Cannabis.
We should continue to save our nation’s children from the deadly disease of marijuana!
I’m against legalizing marijuana, and not just to save our very precious children, but also because marijuana addiction is a terrible, and often deadly, disease. A panel of US health experts headed by “abort every black baby” Bill Bennet has declared as such, as have many credible-looking websites such as the ONDCP’s.
I live in a city that is at the center of the deadly marijuana trade, yet I have never been near this dangerous and disgusting stuff. Diseases possess some very evil and inherent form of agency—They can severely infect our dear beloved children.
Classifying hard marijuana addiction as a very deadly disease does at least acknowledge the horrors that it unleashes on our defenseless children. Unlike the far less-harmful and rightfully-legal-substances: alcohol and tobacco, marijuana totally destroys the pitiful lives of most of it’s disgusting abusers who surely all wish to injure and maim our defenseless and innocent children.
For our tiny, cuddly, defenseless, and totally innocent, babies, we must not fail to totally rid ourselves of this very evil, rather deadly, and very smelly, green-scourge!
Defenses and political affiliations aside, let’s take a step back and think about what we’re saying.
We, as Americans, have choices. Each decision we make is a liberty that we take for granted on a daily basis - most likely without a second thought. This documentary suggests that we have overlooked a number of our citizens because they have fallen victim to a predator of choice. While there is no excuse for turning our backs on our co-patriots who struggle, we cannot equate their hardships with those who didn’t have a choice to live or die. Invoking the Holocaust in a discussion about the war on drugs is inappropriate, insensitive, and grossly inaccurate.
It is my hope that anyone who sees this “tag-line” will think about what these words actually mean. A “Holocaust in slow motion” already happened. Just because many of us weren’t here to see it doesn’t mean we have to stand for inappropriate comparisons and sub-par historical references - if you want the truth, seek it. This documentary may speak a truth, but not the complete truth.
I don’t think that the person who uses the word in the film refers to the Holocaust. They could be, of course, but even in Merriam-Webster, the Holocaust doesn’t appear until the third possible definition for the word “holocaust.” I capitalized the word in the title of this blog post because I follow Chicago-style publishing guidelines in my writing.
I understand everyone’s concerns; give the person who refers to a holocaust/the Holocaust in the film the benefit of the doubt. In other words, in the event that the people in the film aren’t demagoguing the extermination of European Jews at the middle of the last century, your own demagoguery distracts from what’s really at issue here: that our War on Drugs has been one of the worst things in history to happen to American society.
George Scoville
Twitter: @stackiii
The War on Drugs failed $1 Trillion ago! This money could have been used for outreach programs to clean up the bad end of drug abuse by providing free HIV testing, free rehab, and clean needles. Harmless drugs like marijuana could be legalized to help boost our damaged economy. Cannabis can provide hemp for countless natural resources and the tax revenue from sales alone would pull every state in our country out of the red! Vote Teapot, PASS IT, and legalize it. Voice you opinion with the movement and read more on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/01/vote-teapot-2011.html
Post new comment