11 ms·

Which of the first 12 did not have a noble goal?

kstenerud 6y ago
Only prohibition, the war on drugs, #metoo, and BLM had noble goals. The rest were "the enemy is among us" fear based. I suspect that the fallout from virtue signaling and bad actors taking advantage of #metoo and BLM probably won't be too bad; certainly not on the same level as the rest.
- rurban 6y ago
  A war on drugs is never noble. It wasn't the Opium war (England wanting to keep cheap Opium supply from China), and it wasn't Nixon. Criminalization of drugs and declaring war on the cartels, whilst secretly supporting the cartels for their help in their fascist putsches. Civilized countries can fight the drug problem fine without declaring war, even if state actors are involved. (Eg Kosovo, ...)
  - kstenerud 6y ago
    Eliminating the scourge of drugs in America was Nancy Reagan's brainchild, and it was a very laudable goal. The fact that it was so ham-fistedly and wrongly implemented, and co-opted for repressive purposes doesn't diminish the nobility of the original goal that gave birth to such a monster.
    - fuzzfactor 6y ago
      Back in the 1970's it was plain to see that a Nixon initiative such as a drug war was not congruous with a free country in the same way that an absolute prohibition on alcohol was not. The first Nixon election was actually the birth of the monster which enabled such a multi-generation debacle. Regardless of how toxic and harmful alcohol and drugs have been for millennia. Turns out Nixon was not only misinformed, he also had a crooked streak. History shows that the Reagan mishandling of a free country occurred afterward. I not only witnessed all of this first hand, it has been a painful experience. You should have seen what a free country was like beforehand.
- thundergolfer 6y ago
  The war on drugs certainly did not have noble goals. It’s a matter of public record that the government used the drug war to target “free love” political radicals, and far worse happened than that.
  - zajio1am 6y ago
    What public record? AFAIK, the association between war on drugs and targeting radicals and black is mostly based on hearsay.
    - knightofmars 6y ago
      https://www.jazziz.com/the-hunting-of-billie-holiday/ https://www.jazziz.com/the-hunting-of-billie-holiday/
    - thundergolfer 6y ago
      "At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. "You want to know what this was really all about?" he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." - Dan Baum, talking about John Ehrlichman, who served as domestic policy chief for President Richard Nixon
      - zajio1am 6y ago
        Yes, this is exactly that hearsay. Not public record, but unauthorized quote published years after Ehrlichman's death. The authenticity of the quote is often disputed.
- commander_k33n 6y ago
  >Only prohibition, the war on drugs, #metoo, and BLM had noble goals. That distinction is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Some say McCarthy was vindicated with the release of the Venona papers and the declassification of documents from the Soviet Archives. Many of the accused were in fact spies for the Soviet. Also the stolen secrets for making the Atomic bomb almost brought the world to an end. >I suspect that the fallout from virtue signaling and bad actors taking advantage of #metoo and BLM probably won't be too bad; certainly not on the same level as the rest. It's sad to see how you have to walk on egg-shells to placate the BLM zealots and still get downvoted and somebody is probably already combing through your post-history.
  - alexilliamson 6y ago
    You don't have to placate the BLM zealots. You can say whatever you want. If people disagree, your comment gets a gray tinge. I don't understand the downvote animosity here.

Only prohibition, the war on drugs, #metoo, and BLM had noble goals. The rest were "the enemy is among us" fear based. I suspect that the fallout from virtue signaling and bad actors taking advantage of #metoo and BLM probably won't be too bad; certainly not on the same level as the rest.

rurban 6y ago
A war on drugs is never noble. It wasn't the Opium war (England wanting to keep cheap Opium supply from China), and it wasn't Nixon. Criminalization of drugs and declaring war on the cartels, whilst secretly supporting the cartels for their help in their fascist putsches. Civilized countries can fight the drug problem fine without declaring war, even if state actors are involved. (Eg Kosovo, ...)
- kstenerud 6y ago
  Eliminating the scourge of drugs in America was Nancy Reagan's brainchild, and it was a very laudable goal. The fact that it was so ham-fistedly and wrongly implemented, and co-opted for repressive purposes doesn't diminish the nobility of the original goal that gave birth to such a monster.
  - fuzzfactor 6y ago
    Back in the 1970's it was plain to see that a Nixon initiative such as a drug war was not congruous with a free country in the same way that an absolute prohibition on alcohol was not. The first Nixon election was actually the birth of the monster which enabled such a multi-generation debacle. Regardless of how toxic and harmful alcohol and drugs have been for millennia. Turns out Nixon was not only misinformed, he also had a crooked streak. History shows that the Reagan mishandling of a free country occurred afterward. I not only witnessed all of this first hand, it has been a painful experience. You should have seen what a free country was like beforehand.
thundergolfer 6y ago
The war on drugs certainly did not have noble goals. It’s a matter of public record that the government used the drug war to target “free love” political radicals, and far worse happened than that.
- zajio1am 6y ago
  What public record? AFAIK, the association between war on drugs and targeting radicals and black is mostly based on hearsay.
  - knightofmars 6y ago
    https://www.jazziz.com/the-hunting-of-billie-holiday/ https://www.jazziz.com/the-hunting-of-billie-holiday/
  - thundergolfer 6y ago
    "At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. "You want to know what this was really all about?" he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." - Dan Baum, talking about John Ehrlichman, who served as domestic policy chief for President Richard Nixon
    - zajio1am 6y ago
      Yes, this is exactly that hearsay. Not public record, but unauthorized quote published years after Ehrlichman's death. The authenticity of the quote is often disputed.
commander_k33n 6y ago
>Only prohibition, the war on drugs, #metoo, and BLM had noble goals. That distinction is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Some say McCarthy was vindicated with the release of the Venona papers and the declassification of documents from the Soviet Archives. Many of the accused were in fact spies for the Soviet. Also the stolen secrets for making the Atomic bomb almost brought the world to an end. >I suspect that the fallout from virtue signaling and bad actors taking advantage of #metoo and BLM probably won't be too bad; certainly not on the same level as the rest. It's sad to see how you have to walk on egg-shells to placate the BLM zealots and still get downvoted and somebody is probably already combing through your post-history.
- alexilliamson 6y ago
  You don't have to placate the BLM zealots. You can say whatever you want. If people disagree, your comment gets a gray tinge. I don't understand the downvote animosity here.