Like many Americans I was unenthusiastic about having to pick between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It isn't that I don't see Trump as a menace to everything decent about America--he is a menace.
But, I can't be enthusiastic about Clinton. In particular, I find her hawkish foreign policy problematic--I don't think her foreign interventionism leads to the results we want, but exacerbates existing problems.
There is no alternative in "bomb the shit out of them" Trump. I know Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a disorder, not a mental illness, but he's so extreme when it comes to the symptoms I have no confidence he wouldn't be a malignant narcissist, if he isn't already one. Trump is the worst presidential candidate in modern history, perhaps all of history.
But, I can't stomach voting for a military hawk either and then there's that other war--the war on drugs. Hillary is drug warrior as well. When a Black Lives Matter activist noted the drug war's racist tendencies Clinton defended the war on drugs and insisted it is what African-Americans wanted. As New Republic reported:
"Hillary Clinton's response to the activists was telling. She attributed the policies of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs to "the very real concerns" of communities of color and poor people, who faced a crime wave in the 1980s and 1990s. Echoing an argument that is gaining greater purchase in certain elite circles as the movement against racialized state violence and incarceration sweeps across the US, Clinton deflected the charge of anti-black animus back onto African Americans themselves. It is hard to interpret her explanation as anything more than self-serving revisionism. As I demonstrate in this essay, the rush to incarcerate was fueled by much less generous motives than the ones Clinton presents. With the Clintons at the helm of the 'New Democrats,' their strident anti-crime policies, like their assault on welfare, reflected a cynical attempt to win back centrist white voters, especially those from Dixie and the South Central United States."
At his Saturday Chicago rally Gov. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate said, "We have to end the war on drugs." Clinton WILL NOT say that. Yet, you can't say you support the African-American community if you support the war on drugs. The war on drugs is a blatantly racist war.
Sixty-two percent of drug offenders sent to state prison are black. An African-American is 13 times more likely to get a prison sentence for drugs than will a white man facing the same charges. Police target the drug trade in the Black community while often turning a blind eye to the trade in the white suburbs.
When it comes to federal drug offenses African-Americans are 57 times more likely to be sent to federal prison than whites.
Well over 8 million Black Americans have been arrested on drug charges, that's one third of all arrests, yet they comprise 12% of the population. A large number of African-Americans victims of police killings were targeted over the drug war.
Millions of Blacks have been disenfranchised because they were charged with drug offenses. Yet Clinton is worried about Republican disenfranchise measures, but won't talk about the millions disenfranchised a policy she supports--drug prohibition!
Nixon adviser John Ehrlichman said the Nixon administration started the war on drugs to target the anti-war left and Blacks.
"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."
The results for American Blacks are NO accident. It was intentional.
Clinton wants to keep that policy in place.
NO candidate can say they support civil liberties, equality of rights before the law, and a better world for African-Americans if they continue to support the war on drugs. Tuesday, I'll vote. It sure as hell won't be for Trump, but it won't be for Clinton either. I'm voting for Gary Johnson. It's time to declare an armistice in the war on drugs.