Politics: Right-Wingers, The War on Drugs

Two articles, put together the other day. We, that is ordinary Americans, need to be anti-fascist. They mean us no good.

The crack epidemic I have seen first-hand here in Muncie and in prison. We always have politicians and bureaucrats exaggerate these kind of dangers. They scare us into giving them more power and fewer rights for ourselves.

I recommend following the links back to the original articles, you will find more and not rely only on my choices.

 Undercover With the New Alt-Right by Amanda Moore

Some of the neo-Nazis and fascists I met undercover in 2020 are working as congressional campaign staffers and helping to form congressional caucuses. They are meeting with leaders of far-right political parties in Italy and Hungary. They are leaders in their local Young Republican organizations. They have access to elected GOP officials at the national and local level.

Despite this growing influence, few of them or their true beliefs are known to the public. Some have worked hard to scrub themselves from the Internet or to curate their online personas; others operate in the shadows, so that people do not even know to look for them. But they network with each other, calling in favors and introductions. They’ve created a social maze that’s almost impossible to trace—unless you are invited to become one of them.

Pete Riehl 's What Was the Crack Epidemic? 

PR: You write about pessimism in the macro sense, and how it’s hard not to be pessimistic with so many of the same things that were prevalent in 1982 still happening in 2023. But you also write about the individual stories of former addicts who are now thriving, helping others to get out of addiction. Do any of those stories that populate the book—and they don’t all have beautiful, neat endings—give you some lift, some hope? 

DXR: They do. In terms of what we do about society and our systems, those are really complex questions. What’s clear to me is that we survived the crack epidemic through the power of community care and individual action. We kept each other alive through those small gestures long enough for the storm to pass. So I am deeply invested in mentorship and in the mentality of, If there’s one thing that you care about, if there’s one group that you care about or an issue, do something, small things even, and especially if there’s a young person that you can prevent from going down some of the wrong roads that you went down. That is as important as the big policy—that is, if enough of us do that, we can really save ourselves.

sch 8/26