there was this one time...

it was my friend's 18th birthday. i'm born at the beginning of the year, so i was always a little older. and, there was a third party driving that was a little older than both of us. he was a weird character; he stayed with several of my friends for long periods, on couches, at the time, and was known for handing out large amounts of free mushrooms.

the older one picked us up somewhere near my place (near pius) after school and initially didn't tell either of us where we were going. but, it was obvious once we got over the bridge and on to the 50.

even then, i didn't feel comfortable about it. so, i pretended i forgot my id and smoked a joint by myself out in the car, instead.

apparently, it's all about what the meaning of if is.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2019/08/18/spare-me-the-hpony-apologies.html

and, this thing in canada about the ethics commissioner is boring.

sorry.

and, frankly, when they hear these white folks come down from new york, and they be all talkin' about bringing drugs into the community, they have reason to interpret that as a red flag.

because they do know that it's always been white folks from new york that are behind this. some with last names like delano, in fact.

what your average church-going black woman in southern georgia wants to hear is what it is that you're going to do to keep drugs out of her community. she wants to know how you're going to protect her and her family from the pushers and predators.

she might not want her kids or grandkids in jail, granted. but what she really wants is to keep the drugs away from them.

and, while the science is obviously paramount, any policy designed to win southern black voters has to be designed with this in mind.

i'm clearly going to miss the jazz show, which i kind of expected would happen, but i'm still planning on making it out to the prog show...

but, i will tell you this flat out, regardless of what these coastal libertarians are trying to say: you're not going to win in the southeast by appearing "soft on drugs".

i know there's an issue that comes up when it comes to the idea that trafficking crack is punished more harshly than trafficking cocaine.

i just want to point out that i think the proper answer is to make sure that cocaine traffickers are being sufficiently sentenced.

what is the war on drugs?

because if you're going to oppose it, defining it first is important.

where i come from, it's been generally understood that the war on drugs - much like the war on terrorism after it and the war against communism before it - was mostly just an excuse to advance american geostrategic interests, mostly in latin america. to the extent that much of anything associated with the war on drugs had anything to actually do with drugs, the focus appears to have mostly been to control the supply, in order to inflate the price. and, there seems to be good evidence that the drugs were introduced into specific communities by the government itself, in an attempt to control and in some cases enslave certain segments of the population. from that perspective, talking about ending the war on drugs in 2019 is somewhat of an anachronistic position - the war on drugs largely turned into the war on terrorism, in the sense that the propaganda shifted.

i would oppose the war on drugs in this sense, which basically means no longer propping up dictatorships in latin america. i bet bernie could have a long discussion about this, giving that he lived through it and i don't really remember it, first hand. but, if that's what he meant, he may have confused people.

if you're referring to abolishing actual domestic drug laws when you talk about the "war on drugs", which i think is what the term is likely to mean to a contemporary audience, then you're moving into the libertarian right in a way that is going to lose a lot of people. and, it's a strange thing to hear from a guy that's threatened to put pharmaceutical executives in jail as a corollary of the opiate crisis. there are certain drugs - opiates, methamphetamines, crack/cocaine -  that are just an absolute scourge on society and that a war truly needs to be fought against. while i may agree that we should take more intelligent tactics in our war against these drugs, which may require changing certain laws, the idea of ending that war is not something i'm in favour of at all.

i just think this is a language thing: that term, war on drugs, may not mean the same thing to you as it does to bernie sanders, or it does to me. and, some clarification is required on everybody's behalf.

it's the dealers and manufacturers of dangerous drugs that i want to put in jail, not the users of them, whom i would consider victims of an industry that should be shut down with extreme force.

in a single-payer healthcare system, supervised injection sites are useful because they reduce the deadweight costs associated with drug users. and, i consequently support them as a cost-cutting measure. that is the actual reason that liberal governments have allowed them in canada - as the actual reason that we have a single-payer system (as designed by and brought in by the liberals) is that it makes us more economically competitive.

further, the idea of capital punishment is anathema to most canadians. it's not even thought about. it's insane that america still does this.

but, he doesn't think this is going to win him black votes in the bible belt does he? they don't want less incarceration, there. they want a stronger police presence to keep their communities safe, more action to keep drugs off the street and more retribution in the system, to ensure that the evil doers get what's coming to them.

it's a policy that might be popular in chicago or detroit or new york, but it's political suicide in the southeast.

https://www.apnews.com/6d4cf74fef0b4b36a086682780ac8937

i think bernie is probably better off "quarterbacking" in the senate.

he'd be a better majority leader than president...

it my be true that whites are projected to be a minority in the total voting population some time in the middle of the century, but that observation, however relevant it actually is, doesn't help you win the election in 2020. the united states does not elect a president with the popular vote, and i'm not aware of any projections suggesting that whites are going to cede control of the electoral college, the thing that matters, any time soon. so, this democratic strategy of trying to win minority voters in red states is a tentative strategy in the distant future, not a realistic one in front of us today.

this is, in truth, not a controversial point, and the fact that it's being seen as one is just reflective of the delusions underlying the campaign. the entire discourse is stuck in 2008. but, why did clinton lose to trump? it's not because she didn't do well enough with minorities.

and, if you're making a serious run at the democratic nomination in 2020 - not 2070. 2020. - the calculation is crystal clear and obvious: winning minority votes is easy, while winning white votes is hard. and, it's the hard task you have to accomplish to actually win.

but, there's a more cynical problem underlying this strategy i'm talking about of relying on minority voters to overpower white voters. even if it were to work, is that what a responsible politician would want? that's a dangerous path, one that's going to lead to a lot of problems. again: one would expect a politician of the left to try and move past race, not try and exploit it as a wedge issue. this isn't a society i want to live in, and there's good reason that white voters aren't reacting very well to it: it's an algorithm for another civil war.

bernie remains a lesser evil in a field full of pretty evil candidates. his policies are far and away the best on the table and if, like me, you're mostly concerned about policy, then he has no serious competitor in the primary. but, i think i've been clear that i wish he did have one because his temperament and personality is a problem. he has this me v. the world attitude that liberals usually associate with the right, but that i know from experience is a pretty endemic problem on the pseudo-left. these people just don't accept criticism of any sort - you are with them or against them, like politics is some kind of sport rather than a process of consensus building. they've fundamentally lost the plot.

so, i can keep trolling bernie if you want, and i no doubt will, but i think the more important lesson is to realize how easy it is to set him off, and to ask yourself whether you want this guy with his finger on the button or not. a successful president is going to need to be less defensive, less authoritarian and more willing to listen to the views of people that disagree with him. these kneejerk reactions and strong arm tactics don't seem to be that different than the guy they've got now.

guess i'm awake.

it doesn't appear to have rained here tonight after all, in fact it's very nice out, but i'm doubling down on there not having been anything really worthwhile to actually do. i would have had a few beers at villain's, talked about nothing of substance, and then gone out to try and figure out if this place down the street is an after hours club or a strip club (i don't actually know, and it might even be both).

i've never entered a strip club in my life, and don't really want to enter one now.

it's too early to tell if the smell is really lifted or not. there's a faint background, but i don't know if it just means i need to clean or if it's indicative of a lingering problem. at the least, i think i've finally actually identified what the problem actually is.

so, i've got tonight left, but do i actually want to go anywhere or not? i don't want to force myself out if i don't want to actually go.

i've been out a lot this summer, but when the introversion hits, it hits hard and lasts a long time. i will go weeks or months without talking to anybody. i'm careening in that direction, but am i actually there yet?