“We double down on dumb" in America.

I wish I could take credit for this quote but unfortunately somebody beat me to it. I heard it from journalist Jeremy Skahill while watching Bill Maher’s Friday night HBO series. The above comment was made during a discussion about the war currently going on in Mexico.


What??, there is a war going on in Mexico??


The Mexican war was the topic of discussion when Jeremy made the above title remark. Bill Maher is of the opinion the media has overlooked what should be a daily front-page story. He contends that the media has given scant attention to Mexico's war on drugs. This war has accounted for the deaths of over 50,000 people since the Felipe Calderon declared his war on drugs. Mexico's war on drugs and cartels is the equivalent of our war in Iraq in terms of deaths.


We know daily every move that Britney Spears makes, and usually the color of her underwear if she's wearing any, and yet we get no news about this giant war going on across the border? I can't blame Mexico. Why would they advertise that they are attempting to duplicate our failed war on drugs? As everybody knows by now, our war on drugs has cost us hundreds of billions and has been a dismal failure. Mexican lives are being lost at the rate we were losing our people in Vietnam and the war is having about as much success, which is to say no success at all.


The reason is simple. Big business supports this war. Guns are flowing across our border to supply the drug cartels via the black market, which is good for American business. Money is flowing across the border from our government to help support the Mexican government’s fight against the cartels. The Mexican government spends that money buying guns and munitions from American manufacturers. Man oh man are we slick! American businessmen make billions by keeping both sides in a fruitless war! In the meantime people die.

But enough about people and their futile lives when there are billions of dollars to be made. Everybody wins but the American taxpayers and the people who lose their lives and/or neighborhoods, and they don't count. So no worries, right? The military gives the slaughter of soldiers in battle or civilians on streets the user-friendly name "collateral damage". This term is not quite as insensitive as "cannon fodder” but it means much the same; and makes the same difference to the military musclehead's.


So where does "doubling down on dumb" fit into this blog? Simple. We are wasting tons of our money (government money, not business cash) to help the Mexican government wage a war our own fifty-year “drug war” proves cannot be won. That has to be stupid beyond belief unless throwing good money after wasted money makes sense to you. It is doubly stupid because anybody that has been paying any attention for the last decade is now aware the only way to win the war on drugs is to follow the European example and decriminalize them, not militarize them. Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, during the same Bill Maher show, was the journalist to make this point.

We here in America either militarize or criminalize everything. If we legalize drugs like intelligent countries everywhere have done already or are now doing, and if we demilitarize the war on drugs, we will begin to make rapid progress in correcting this socially spreading disease in a civilized manner. If we begin to regulate and tax drugs we will win the war on drugs, just like we won the war against alcohol. If promoted correctly drugs would have about as much appeal as a case of VD, or at least no more than a bottle of beer.


Well, okay, maybe we can only claim a Pyrrhic victory where alcohol is concerned, but any victory we can claim is better than another loss of face or outright smack down and would be a whole lot better than we have managed so far… and so so much smarter. But don't count on any kind of victory anytime soon. As Jeremy's Skahill noted, "we double down on dumb all the time in this country."

PS: Bill presented one amazing, will blow you away kind of statistic which relates to our attempt to militarize and criminalize everything. During the entire year of 2011 -- across the entire country of Germany -- the entire police force fired a total of 85 bullets. During just a few minutes of one day last week LA cops used 90 bullets on just one guy.

Serious people always baffled me. These are the people who walk around with a frown, acting as if the entire world rested unsteadily on their shoulders. Dour is a word I always used to describe serious people; cynical with a serious bias to the negative side would be another, and grave is one of my personal favorites. (Grave as in half way to the grave.)

Serious people have always had a way of making me feel guilty for some reason. Perhaps it is because I never had a reason to feel very "serious" about anything. I don't mean I am frivolous or ditzy, or that I can't be hurt or feel fear. I just mean that as an eternal optimist I always look at the bright side of life, which automatically squeezes a great deal of the "serious" out. Here is my question. What good is serious or how much good does it do? Does being "serious" about a problem mean you care more about the income of or outcome from a situation than someone with a more casual attitude would? Does taking your job seriously mean you are automatically better at it than someone with a nonchalant attitude? (Bosses sure seem to think so.) Is being "serious" about someone a good thing? Can you be happy without being serious? Can you be successful or trusted without having a "serious bone" in your body?

Serious is associated with a sign of maturity. Nobody expects kids to be serious. Most people around the world seem to think that a person’s chronological age makes all the difference and as soon as we become adults by law we should become serious about life. It didn't work that way for me. I refused to “grow” up or develop a serious side. I could never see very far into the future and therefore never saw any reason not to have fun and enjoy whatever I was doing in the present. Some people say "grow a frown", get some worry lines going on and begin to act your age. Having fun and playing are inconsistent with getting serious about life and being responsible. Wipe that smile off your face! I never felt like I was shouldering more than I could carry and therefore I never felt the weight of the world pressing down on me. I don't mean to suggest I never carried any weight; I ran businesses and had many employees. I just carried the weight with a good attitude so the weight was never hard to bear. I never ran into a problem which couldn’t be better solved with a smile than a frown. I never ran into a situation where a more serious attitude would have improved or affected the outcome one way or another. So I traded in the worry lines I earned in life for laugh lines and learned to fake being serious, as befitted my station in life. But inside I never grew a serious bone. As I grew older I accumulated some serious baggage but I kept it in the trunk. Sh*t happens but I never saw any reason to allow the bitter ugly in life to ruin my upbeat disposition. Serious has a place in life, no doubt. It reinforces lessons we need to learn. We should take learning seriously. We should take love and family seriously. But to become a serious person would be entirely too serious a thing for me to do.

Author's note: I wrote this blog in part to encourage people to lighten up a little. I also wrote this blog because many people who have read my blogs have asked how to attract more traffic to their sites. This blog is an example of SEO, otherwise known as search engine optimization. As you can clearly see, I sprinkled the word serious all over this blog. In no time at all this blog will show up on the front page, if not in the number one position, for the search word “serious”. (At least I think it will. :) To increase your page rank pick a word that relates to what you are trying to sell or say and paste it all over your blog or website. Do this in an intelligent manner, not in nonsense sentences, and the search engines will love you. At least, that is the theory. Keep an eye on "serious" over the next few weeks to see my results. PS: And please spread this blog around! :):)