Reality Checks

For many years in the U.S., we've fought a war on drugs. The war has been fought on the streets with guns, wielded by police forces trying to do their duty. The war has been waged in the courts at immense expense by tax payers. The war is struggled with daily in the overcrowded prisons, where people languish for years, often in the cell next to a child rapist whose release will be more imminent than the drug user's, in far too many cases.

In spite of all of these frantic actions and day-in-day-out duties, drug usage continues to rise in the U.S.--and this constant demand causes wars in other countries, where drugs are illegaly manufactured, transported and sold. Countries like Mexico, where too many people have died in the crossfire.

Some stastics from the U.S. Government's Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Bureau of Mortality Statistics state that guns in the states kill just under 31,000 citizens, and that illegal drugs cause an annual 15,000 deaths.

Tobacco causes a whopping 400,000 deaths and that all-time favorite drug of choice, alcohol, causes 100,000 people to die. Enormous numbers of people die every year from just smoking and drinking alcohol, and yet the advertising account executives from each of those industries are not among those hurting in the present economy.

Legal drugs, those we can get across the counter or with a doctor's expensive prescription, destroy 20,000 lives. Mercy, those legal drugs are even more dangerous than the illegal ones, the drugs we fight so hard to overcome and kill and maim and wipe off the face of the earth! The Oxycontin and Percoset, et al, cause 5,000 MORE deaths than do the illegal drugs.

What, I ask you, is wrong with this picture? Are people afraid that by voting to legalize all drugs, they will be counted as sinners themselves? By associating themselves with a country which legalizes all drugs, they might be tainted as running with the wrong crowd? Will we all go to hell if we keep the guns which cause 31,000 deaths per year, but we deny and criminalize the illegal drugs which cause less than half that number?

According to this research, more people die from simple caffeine than they do from marijuana. More die from aspirin than from grass! Really, do we understand what the story is behind this "war?"

Reality can be checked and categorized and cleaned up and printed in black and white beside ads for diet pills and vodka, but reality cannot be relied upon to be accepted. The fact is, Prohibition caused more crime and more deaths than the alcohol did....facts on record support this and other horrifying information on the subject.

The fact is, fighting drugs is big business. Selling arms to drug cartels, even bigger business. And it's about the business, folks, and we all know that deep-down; it's never been about the dangers or numbers of deaths or morality. Now, the next time a vote comes up to legalize illegal drugs, think about this: we spend more money as a nation fighting drugs like marijuana, which causes NO deaths per year, than we do in taking care of people who DO have real drug problems.

Reality? I don't think we know what it means any more.

ANNUAL AMERICAN DEATHS CAUSED BY DRUGS
TOBACCO ...........................400, 000
ALCOHOL ...........................100, 000
ALL LEGAL DRUGS ....................20, 000
ALL ILLEGAL DRUGS...................15, 000
CAFFEINE ............................2, 000
ASPIRIN ................................500
MARIJUANA ............................... 0
Source: United States government.
National Institute on Drug Abuse,
Bureau of Mortality Statistics

ANNUAL AMERICAN DEATHS CAUSED BY GUNS: FROM CDC: 30,896 (FROM 2006) ANNUALLY

But What is Mexico Really Like?

Subsequent to the FOX and other media coverage of the ongoing war on drugs in Mexico, or rather war on the cartels and the cartels' war on anyone in their way, I'm often asked by North Americans who have not recently ventured into Mexico, "What is it like to live in such a terrible, dangerous place?" I've lived here for nearly 15 years, and have driven from here to Texas and back many many times, so people tend to worry about this.

To this query, I can only reply, "It's just awful." We just live from minute to minute, worried to death. And we don't get the "stuff" we did in the states.The one thing I miss the most about the States is telemarketing. We don't get it in Mexico unless the phone company calls to offer us some new gadget, maybe once a year.

I miss the voices of bored, underpaid, overworked telephone sales people trying desperately to sign me up for anything and everything under the sun. I miss doing the Jerry Seinfeld thing, when he asked the telemarketer for her home phone number, and she said she didn't give it out, and he replied, "Exactly." Then he hung up. Good times, good times.

Another thing I really miss in Mexico is road rage. How boring it is, just toodling along with all the other cars being nice? It's so benign. People tip their hats or wave "gracias" if you let them go in front of you, stuff like that.

Yeah, we get some pretty aggressive drivers here, but generally if your car breaks down, you're going to get people lined up to help you out, offer you a ride to the nearest gas station or tow truck office, and then when you offer these nice people a monetary reward for their generosity and genuine lovingkindness, they flatly refuse it, saying something akin to, "What for? You'll pass on the favor to someone else."

We go to the movies for first-runs and pay about $4.oo--with our senior discount card it's about $3.50. The movies are in English--where is the challenge there? Sub-titles (or substitutos as one friend calls them) are in Spanish often, so you can at least get a nice language lesson. Watch out for the popcorn prices though: a huge box of it will run you about the price of your admission ticket. Gosh. Times are changing. Last time we saw a movie in the states, we paid enough to get our house re-financed, and something deep down just tells me, "you get what you pay for."

Property taxes are about 1/10th to 1/100th of those in the states...it's pretty suspect, considering we get water service, electricity, garbage service daily and people bringing bottled water to your door.

When we go shopping, there are locally owned stores and restaurants run by friendly people who give us the time of day, where we can buy organic foods and hand made items, for about 1/5 the cost we'd pay in the U.S. Or we can go to Wal-Mart, Costco, Sam's, Sears, Penney's, Sally Beauty Supply, Radio Shack, Office Depot, Office Max, Home Depot, Starbuck's, Domino Pizza, Blockbuster, Chili's, Carl's Jr., IHOP, McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Subway, Church's Chicken, and on and on and on with the international companies--all of which just make us homesick for What-A-Burger and Taco Bell.

Watching satellite TV also just makes us homesick for our local channels--how do we know who's run into a ditch or held up a convenience store? We get way too many PBS and BBC channels, too. (*Sigh.)

It's hell in the semi-desert tropics mountains. The average year-round temperature is 70-something, and infrequent are weather incidents such as tornadoes. Sometimes there's a flood or two, which gives us something to watch on CNN. Now, in June, the daily rains have come and the temperature today must be in the 60s. Nothing to complain about, and we never get triple-digit heat--the Texans just have all the luck. Same ol', same ol'--perfect weather all the time, year-round wildly blooming vines, things like that.

Danger: well, sure, there is violence and danger in some parts of Mexico. From here, you have to drive a long time to get into the danger zones, however. To see any real action, you'd have to call up the national police to ask when they think something's about to "go down," and then drive all night to get there, hoping to show up in time to see the action. Or you have to watch tv.

Because guns are illegal in Mexico (gee, what a drag), there are very very few shootings in general. Per-capita, they hardly exist. The poor cartels must turn to illegal arms dealers such as the Academy Corporation (according to the New Yorker) in the U.S. in order to buy their weapons. It's really hard to throw a knife and do nearly as much damage as you can with an automatic weapon or even a simple hand gun, as most of us N. Americans know. Sure is a dearth of action-packed fun here. Only time I've heard gun fire is in the states, one block from my white-as-white neighborhood, in fact, or in downtown San Antonio. In Chicago I was never so lucky, although I've heard-tell of some pretty exciting incidents there--again, you'd have to watch tv news.

Anyway, we make do here...driving through our area outside of San Miguel de Allende, sometimes we have to make room for people riding to and from their work on horseback, which is picturesque but kind of a pain. People come to our door selling nopales and tortillas, for just pennies. . . they have to make a living, so we buy what they have. Home-made tortillas melt in your mouth, but they don't have that chewy tang of the ones made by huge factories.

Then, there is the culture--one of dignity, pride and tradition. Kind of like Texas used to be before the GOP turned into the mafia. Just my opinion, you know, but it's not the same as it once was there. Here we put up with costume-festooned festivals with fireworks, parades, processions and miles and miles of head-feathered Indian groups, dancing and singing and beating out the joy of life with ankle-belled steps and moves a thousand years old, incense burning and flower petals patterned onto the cobblestones, the sound alone enough to raise the hair on the arms of even the most stone-cold hearted souls.

Colors we have never imagined are everywhere. In the houses, in the hills, in the sky, in children's eyes. It's rather distracting. Sometimes I have to tear myself from this machine just to go out and watch the wide-sombreroed charros practicing their rodeo with huge indignant steeds so magnificent they tear at the heart.

People dance in the streets. People celebrate and rejoice over the changing of the seasons or for the sheer joy of remembering who they really are. People smile and bow to one another and touch shoulders and hug and walk down the street holding hands, old and young, male, female, whoever they are. Families are stronger than the mountains, and they don't let one another go through difficulties alone. They pick one another up even if they don't have enough to eat themselves. They go en masse to the hospital, even if grandmother only has to have a thyroid test. Here, people relate to one another. People talk and talk and talk. People work. People love. People live.

Dull, in other words. A year here is never as exciting as one day in the life of the NYPD. But that's just my Mexico. You might find it refreshing.

Further Rants, Freedom of Religion

‎"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case

gotten at secondhand, and without examination, from authorities who have not yet

themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them secondhand from

other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing." ~

Mark Twain

Some thoughts on freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and people who give

religion a bad name...Hitler was a Christian. Our beloved Abraham Lincoln was an atheist. Ayn

Rand happened also to be an atheist, one who hated nearly everyone, but who thought enough

of big government to cash her welfare checks--it's a free country even for right-wing

goddesses, godless or not.If you want to persecute groups for their sins, you're ineligible to

call yourself Christian, Buddhist or most other religions. Jesus provides tons of problems for

the right-wing Christians and others who would kill abortion doctors and such: he said we

ought to love our neighbors as ourselves and to forgive and to even LOVE our enemies.

Inconvenient facts for the rah-rah religious crowd, but there you are. Life is not a football game. Life is real life. One of my pet peeves is this attitude that one must "show unity" by agreeing with the Christian right. It's as if we're wearing the wrong school colors--cheering for the other team (whatever that is in this case, as there is a plethora of religions (35 different religions) and Christian demoninations (217 + different Christian sects in America today....145,800,000 + various Christians--that's tons). Mega churches and small groups of meditators and even smaller groups who simply come together to pray, Wiccans and Native Americans and Hindus like Julia Roberts and Russell Brand and many others.Muslims and Catholics and Seventh-Day Adventists and Mormons. It is a very big world, even in the states. There is room for all beliefs here.

The sweet-hearted Quakers meet not in churches but in meeting halls; they follow tenets formed over two-hundred years, at least--I'm just guessing here. They are Christians and they believe in honest relationships and in group prayer. . . but I don't believe they have a strong lobby associated with the Koch Brothers or with Rupert Murdoch. . . I believe that would go against the grain of their sincere, simple and quiet tendencies. Something about the FOX news church people is so ugly and dark, it might as well be a national movement of money changers whose temples are rooted firmly in Wall Street's criminal activities. I'm tired of other people's beliefs, especially when they

At a wedding reception, an overly earnest, frowning man asked a minister: "Do you believe in infant baptism?"

"Believe in it? I've SEEN it!" the minister cried. He was also a seminary professor who had just come out of a long semester's work, and who, that day, did not have patience to talk religion with someone who was obviously gunning for an argument over tenets, whose beliefs were held perhaps in higher regard than his own behavior. One on one or in huge mobs, religion is being flaunted in militaristic ways today.

Giving religion a bad name is not Kosher. Marching with signs against others due to religious differences is dangerous, it's a terrible and scurrilous practice which separates all concerned from any semblance of love. It is also in very bad taste--it's downright tacky, a term which describes a lot of activities carried out these days by Christian groups.

To the Tea Party members, with a huge sigh of impatience and very little tolerance, I wish you'd all cut it out, but this is not a perfect world. Just don't try to legislate the rest of us to fall in line according to YOUR religious beliefs and practices ...that's just being a bully, and it's unconstitutional. So worship as you please, but get out of my face with your hate mongering control-freak ways. It's supposed to be a free country, even for sleaze-buckets like Ayn Rand. She had her say, but she didn't try to legislate it for the whole country, did she? I don't THINK so.

The founding fathers of our country were mostly Deists. Their usage of terms like "God" had to do not with Christianity, but rather due to the present tradition that kings ruled under the authority of God--the Divine Right of Kings. But the constitution was wrought to avoid that. In fact, "the 1796 treaty with Tripoli states that the United States was "in no sense founded on the Christian religion"--not an idle statement meant to satisfy Muslims-- they believed it and meant it. This treaty was written under the presidency of George Washington and signed under the presidency of John Adams."

So we are not a Christian nation--to say so defiles the terms United States of America, as well as the term "Christian." It suggests that Christians are entitled to telling the rest of the nation what to do because "God told me so." Bull. Utter nonsense. Doing harm in the name of religion--I'd like to see people stop it.

But before they did, very likely their towns would have to be leveled by tornadoes or hail storms or floods. . . and those tragic acts of nature would probably have to be connected directly to polluting conditions, directly caused by corporations. Even then. Do you suppose most of the zealots would awaken?

My concerns are shared by many today. But I don't think we will have to worry for much longer about the right's taking over the government. . . the pawns they represent, their puppet masters, are not ideologically or theologically motivated. It's all about the money and most of us know that. The rah-rah crowds are falling into line,in keeping with those who really are the gods of America: those who already own us all. And that does not ring true according to any religious tenet I have ever read or been taught. That sounds more like pure evil. The evil Empire. At what cost will we awaken?

See http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html for a closer look at the religious connections--or rather disconnections--with the authors of our constitution.