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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jack Clarke who wrote (14398)	12/22/1997 10:29:00 AM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Good morning, Jack!! That figure on the cost of the drug war in America per year is obviously billions of dollars per year, but I could not find the exact figure when I did a web search. My own personal opinion is that for drug interdiction to be successful, we would have to live in a police state, with armed troops at the borders and flying constantly overhead, and searches without cause very common everywhere. I don't think the American public would stand for that, in a constitutional sense. I am one of those optimistic liberal people who believes that better parenting would cause the demand for drugs to fall in America, since the children who start taking drugs usually are dealing on some level with pain and escapism. As a society we demand a huge quantity of drugs, and to some degree the market is responding by providing them. I don't know what to say about the Rodney King case. The whole thing made me very sick. I think the police should be accountable for the way they treat people they pull over, and/or arrest. The case of the Haitian man in New York City, who was sodomized and nearly killed with the toilet plunger, is an example of how not much has changed. As long as America is tolerant of having an enormous, angry underclass confined in ghettos in large cities, they are going to break out once in awhile and express their rage. Unfortunately, dealing with this group of pretty unhealthy people on a daily basis can make savages of the the enforcers, and I think that is one of the reasons for police brutality. Most of the people at SI seem to be more conservative than I am. I think societies with large middle classes and less social pathology are healthier than America, but they cost more money to support and lead to that horrible concept of redistribution of wealth. Many people here believe that if you keep a lid on social upheaval with a strong police force, everything will be dandy and we can all concentrate on making more money. I believe that ultimately, the situation with our underclass damages all of us, and makes life here very scary. What do you think about the class structure in America, anyway? And why do you think rich Americans have less to fear regarding constitutional issues?