College drug problem,...... an allegory

[Parisle]

--- I went to undergraduate and graduate school during the early 70's. Intermediate-sized city,... urban environment,... I got an apartment in a run-down area close by the university,... shared it with three other guys. Getting to class just required a 25-block ride on a 10-speed bicycle,.. which I kept inside the apartment.

--- Within six weeks, the bicycle was gone,... along with our stereo's, TV's, wristwatches, cufflinks,... you name it. We had been burglarized. In discussing the matter with the many other students who lived in the same area, I discovered that this was a universal experience. EVERYONE had been hit. Turned out the neighborhood had a severe problem with heroin junkies stealing everything that wasn't nailed down,.. in order to support their habits. Talking to the police about it turned out to be pointless,.. a joke, even. In the South in 1971, the cops found it highly amusing that longhaired, potsmoking, antiwar college students were getting their stuff stolen by drug addicts.

--- I continued looking into it, however,.. talking to dozens and dozens of burglary victims,.. mapping out the worst blocks, etc. After a few weeks, I had a breakthrough; someone was actually able to point out for me where the actual "dealer" resided. Nice place, too,... a well-restored Victorian on a corner lot,.. only six blocks down the street from my own apartment. Son of a bitch. I watched the place for a couple of days, and the comings-and-goings there were sufficiently suspicious-looking, to say the least.

--- Then, another breakthrough. A nurse acquaintance of mine worked in a drug rehab facility, and she put me in touch with a couple of recovering addicts from that area. They gave the correct address for their scores,.. and without any prompting from me. So, this must be the place. But another visit to the police was even more discouraging than the first. (They no longer took it as a joke.) I should butt out and let the proper authorities handle shit like this,... lest I find myself guilty of some infraction.

--- Okay,... big deal. So you can't rely on your government officials. Not the first time, eh? That's when it's time to turn to the myriad democratic-style approaches still available. (Note: democratic-style isn't meant to be gratuitously negative, here,.. but merely connotes Olympian intellectualization and steadfast ineffectualness.) We could....

- Put extra locks on our doors.
- Organize a Neighborhood Watch Program.
- Obtain financial donations for a study group.
- Establish drug-awareness programs.
- Form a Neighborhood Liason with the city government.
- Become active in City Council elections (particularly fundraising).
- Etc, etc.

--- Okay, I just threw in that part for effect. None of those things ever went through my mind. But I did talk with my roomies about the situation from time to time,.. and the burglaries were still occurring with sickening regularity. And one night our conversation reached a critical mass; we decided to pay the "dealer" a visit. (One roomie was against it, but we had a buddy visiting that evening,.. a yankee who apparently felt he needed to prove his mettle to us rowdy southerners) Four of us set out to pay a social call at 2 am.

--- The next day, the heroin trade in our neighborhood ceased to exist. What did we do?

--- For that matter, is this even a true story? Or just an "allegory?" Doesn't matter. No more than it matters what the four of us may have done that night. The problem was solved. This is the great stumbling block for the democratic flock. "Form" is great, but "content" is often what matters the most. America needs results now more than ever. If the multiple variations of "Talking a Problem To Death" have not by now been exhausted, then I don't want to see the rest. And while comparing drug dealers to neocons in no way reflects well on drug dealers, the point remains the same: The problem has to be solved.

--- Which ever way the story plays out in that corner lot Victorian is completely unimportant, except in that the interests and safety of the great majority (99.9%) of people had been served. Today, it is the neocons who want to abandon the Constitution; therefore they have scant claim to its protections. The various debates may continue for years, but the philosophical truism is already available to us. It does not matter how we beat them,... it only matters that we beat them. I don't think there could be any such thing as a "fair fight" with the neocons. They have to be beaten and destroyed by any and all means, and the means do not matter. Only the results.

[GreenZoneLT]

1. Great. Lynch-mob violence is the answer.

That's the one good thing about the loss of "community" in modern America, because of dispersal of housing, TV, and automobile commuting that has led to cocooning. You never hear of any middle-class lynch mobs any more, do you? Used to be common as dirt; Leo Frank was hauled from jail and hanged by a mob led by the very tip-top of Marietta society in 1912.

It does matter how we beat them. A lot. Because if you "beat them" through mob violence or any other form of violent revolution, you inevitably become them or something worse. The Czar was a truly awful despot, and Russian society was horrific in 1900. But it was better than it was in 1950 under Stalin.

[Parisle]

2. But if you DON'T beat them,.....

--- ... it's the end of democracy, the American Republic,... and possibly the whole goddamned world. I'm glad you're willing to be such a good sport about all of that.

[GreenZoneLT]

3. Well, if I conceded your point.

But, no, I don't believe the sky is actually falling. Things have been worse than they are now. Perhaps not since the McKinley administration, but we survived that, too.

[Parisle]

5. McKinley?

--- Was McKinley trying to take over the Earth and destroy the Constitution? Sorry, but I just don't remember.

[silverlib]

4. An activist minister's allegory...

goes something like this.

He was working early in his adult life on being a pacifist, but had a dream one night.

He was working in a circus and his job was to hold the tight rope tight on the ground while the performer walked the rope. But when the performer was on the rope, he pulled out a machine gun and started shooting into the crowd.

A pacifist would hold the rope tight, but an activist would have to let go of the rope. He let go, and thus became an activist. The dream changed his life.

All we need to do is to control the rope.

[Parisle]

6. "The rope" is precisely what we need to control

--- And we need to control it about one hundred times.