My reservations toward metro cops comes from growing up with the RCMP as the local police force. The RCMP were cool – they knew the community, knew when to look the other way, but knew how to be tough when it was required. Metro cops see crazy shit every day and that would put anyone on edge. I tend to think they’re all borderline crazy because of that. There are also those among them that failed to pass the RCMP’s high standards.

In the overblown media coverage though, no one has pointed out how unique a country we are where 4 deaths is a ‘national tragedy’. And the grow ops thing – heck even my dad sees the similarities between this type of gunslinger madness and that of the dirty 30’s prohibition.

Which also reminds me of Darren O’Donnell’s concerns about the incarceration rates of the United States, which he brings up in his play, A Suicide Site Guide to the City. The United States today puts a greater percentage of its citizens in jails than any other country in the world. A majority of these are drug charges, and most of the people in jail are black. Forget everything you think you know about why that is and consider this –

Naomi Klein, speaking on the aftereffects of the Iraq War (broadcast on November 1st last year on Ideas, Real Player File) defined fundamentalism as an ardent desire to see the world work according to your rules. So Christians and Muslims and ideologues of all stripes are basically trying to convince us all to live by their definition of reality, and when that doesn’t work, they get all self-righteous and angry. Most of us aren’t ideologues, most of us know that life doesn’t work by rules. There are accidents, we stub our toes, we don’t always behave in ways we’d like to. That’s what makes life interesting. That type of variation is a good thing.

The U.S. though, has a government of fundamentalists and ideologues. Instead of recognizing that human beings have an appetite for mind-altering substances – harmless really – they prefer to think that the world is out of kilter because people want to have a mind-altering experience every once and awhile, one that is different than getting drunk. They tried to ban that in the 1930s and all we got out of it was the legend of Eliot Ness and some good movies.

At least the Ministers in our country and waking up this reality, albeit at a glacial pace. They should legalize it, regulate it, and tax it. They should treat all drugs like they do alcohol. In the case of some of the more powerful narcotics, like cocaine, heroin, crystal meth – I agree that those are dangerous but banning them is not an answer. I question why anyone would want to use addictive substances – and I see that as a medical problem. I guess for me, the best argument to regulate drugs is to bring it into the open, to not criminally penalize people who are in many ways self-medicating. People use coke to get more work done, to stay up. Well, I’m sure there are safer stimulants out there, and if not, than get it from a clinic. Heroin – I’d basically give that to clinics to distribute to those already addicted, giving them a non-judgmental and safe place to ingest it, but also, a place where they can always decide to give it up by perhaps walking into a hallway’s different door in a environment they already feel secure in. Anyone who wants to try it could do so in a safe environment, after being strongly encouraged not to do so. And that’s important – because as long as you create a condition of ‘no’, you’re opening up someone’s else’s opportunity to say ‘yes’. You have to in principle create the conditions for experimentation so that people go to the places where they can be educated, discouraged, but in the end, can go ahead with it if they’re so determined (who knows, they might be doing legitimate research) instead of finding some sketchy drug den full of unsanitary conditions and other dangers.

So, getting back to the fact that lots of black people are in American jails. I’ve made the point that the war on drugs is a delusional war against a problem that doesn’t need to be a problem. Now, the fact that the black minorities are poor creates the conditions for them to act violently. I don’t want to say that they sell drugs to get money or use drugs to forget about their problems – while that exists of course, there’s a lot of murderers in jail too. It’s a clich?? to say that a majority of black people are on death row, perhaps unfairly because they can’t hire good lawyers as could O.J. Simpson.

Which is too say what – that you deserve to go free if you can afford brilliant legal defence? No – that anyone deserves to go free if your court appointed attorney is compotent enough to prove a case of police incompotence. Again, poverty screws you over, because the best in the United States work for big bucks.

It would be too simple for me to say that it’s a matter of those in power, who want everyone to be like them, to see things their way, be assimilated to their lifestyle – it’s too simple to say that a lack of respect for a minority’s culture is what drives those of them and everyone else to be violent, or is what ‘criminalizes’ them in the minds of those in power.

I’ve made the argument that as long as you have narrow rules, you’ll always have people falling outside those rules. With regard to drugs – that’s why the U.S. incarceration rate is at the rate it is. But, eliminate that, and you’d still have the problem of violence in all its forms.

Violence is found everywhere in American society, in every ethnicity, and as Steven Pinker argued in The Blank Slate is much more connected to status struggles. That basically when you’re poor, and you don’t have much but your honor, than your honor is worth defending by killing others. Developing a reputation for being dangerous is advantageous, because it prevents others from abusing you. Maybe I’m too privileged to say that the inner-city problems that are common and clich?? are a result of a bunch of defensive offense. Break that cycle, and things could change. We’re tempted to think that incarceration rates would then be reasonable. Is incarcerating anyone ever reasonable?

I think we need to accept that nature’s capacity for variation gives us humans with different types of minds, some of them autistic, and some of them psychopaths without empathy. In the past, the psychopaths could always be relied on to kill the competition over the hill, you know, the type of tribal warfare that encouraged the whole raping and pillaging and the stealing of women thing that has been a part of our experience. No point getting all upset about it and saying all men are bad and all that. To do so would be to start subscribing to another fundamentalist definition of reality. It’s just a fact that we have a violent history, and that humans have had a tendency to war and to war crimes, and that the majority of those actors are male. (That’s got more to do with the whole upper body strength thing, and the status arguments I’ve outlined – because men are more susceptible to them genetically as primates. What I call the ‘gray-back thing’ – gray backs being alpha male gorillas). We find this disgusting, and we are privileged to do so, because nowadays, we are increasingly moving away from the glorification of violence, but we certainly aren’t there yet. We’re at the point where we appreciate fictional violence, but are horrified by it in reality.

We want to segregate the psychopaths by putting them in jail. We should recognize that as temporary solution. If we accept the fact that psychopaths are just part of the variation of humans, it is no more fair to segregate them as it would be to do so with dwarves, transsexuals, or those born with what are considered to be defects. The difference though, is that psychopaths pose a danger to the rest of us who were born with empathy engines. We should figure out a way to give them a place in our society that’s fair to but also protects us from their potential danger.

Of course, we’re also probably going to reach a point where the genetic markers for this type of variation will be recognized, and screened for during embryonic development. I’m not sure I have a moral objection to that, and perhaps it’s too mystical, too much an evidence of the 20th Century’s lack of understanding, to say that even if we did, nature would find a way to give us lions in our midst with the aim of culling us toward carrying capacity, leaving us with the same problem of integration.

This Roszko fellow was clearly a psychopath. He seems to be evidence that screening embryos might be a good thing. Heck, Paul Bernardo is why we should screen embryos if we ever have that capacity, nevermind Roszko. As much as it seems most Canadians appreciate that we don’t have the death penalty, I’m sure most of us would look the other way when it comes to Bernardo.

Let’s be clear about this – grow ops are part of this economy – they are supplying a demand that clearly exists. If they are as popular as the media is trying to scare us into believing, than they must represent a significant contribution to our economy. But we have no way of knowing that, because of the stupid laws. Christ, for all we know, if they taxed dope we could build a subway system for every city in Canada, or do this child-care thing, or build electric windmills. People in Toronto are complaining that it costs more to ride their transit system than it does to buy a coffee and a muffin at Tim Hortons … fucking legalize it already.

Grow ops aren’t the problem. The problem is making it contraband, so only those who don’t fit into society’s patterns – psychopaths and rebels etc – see it as a way to make a living without being part of the ‘legalized system’. I mean, who wants to hire someone with a record anyway? No wonder there’s a black market. Those grow opurteneurs are responding to the right-wing’s market forces, so they shouldn’t be penalized by the right-wing itself. Instead of not fitting their limited vision of the way things should work, they actually are matching their ideas – but only because they aren’t wearing ties the right-wing can’t see it. That’s how limited their vision of the world is, and why they will always be frustrated fundamentalists trying to make others fit – their view isn’t broad enough for anyone else anyway.

Four citizens of my generation were killed by one psychopath. That’s is the news story. Blaming grow-ops is nonsense. The real story here is why this nut was allowed to have all his guns, was allowed to be living on this farm when he had a criminal record which made it clear he was a menace. The media needs to direct the conversation there, instead of this grow-opaganda. They are beginning too – the coverage is now on the ‘hows’ of the whole thing. The funerals and all that. Again, let’s remind ourselves that it’s almost a parody of how great and mostly safe our country is that 4 deaths can be considered historic.