President Trump said, "We are at war."
Not long ago, when US President Donald Trump made that remark the mainstream media uncharacteristically ignored it. Overlooking an opportunity to rewrite, repurpose and convert to slander each and any White House remark is not like the USA-based press at all. As for me, it set me to wonder if Mr. Trump might not be referring to one of the longest, if not the longest-running war in America. I don't mean Iraq, or any other foreign conflict. No, I wonder if the war Mr. Trump might not have referred to is an Opium War waged against America by enemies foreign and domestic, the drug war against the American people.
Anyone interested in looking into it will find that drug addiction has been a problem in America for many years. The Chinese Exclusionary Act of 1880 was, in part, prompted by an explosion of the Chinese-run narcotics trade during the gold rush years of America's western frontier. Then, as now, it was a mostly forbidden subject in America's newspapers and classrooms, although some mention was made of the Opium Wars between China and the British Empire. Addiction raged following America's Civil War, during the "Gilded Age" of the 1880s, again during the "Roaring '20s," and once again in the years of "The Real Great Society," which followed massive immigration, a surge in welfare, and a prolonged and unpopular foreign conflict.
The JFK/LBJ connection of 1960 is the one that has most attracted and kept my attention. Those were the days of my youth when the national motto might as well have been, "Drugs, Sex, and Rock N Roll." As years have gone by, sex and music have come into perspective. For those who continue to wage and profit from The Opium War on America, the addictive and corrosive effects of narcotics are the gifts that keep on giving.
As we try to sort this all out, in an attempt to get to the bottom of it all, the pit appears, indeed, bottomless. The nature of the beast is that once a subject becomes enamored with drugs and associated occult properties, that same subject turns to serve a master previously unknown to him or her. Drug use and addiction strike all levels of society. There is, as they say, "A Price for Every Pocketbook." Even when the subject does not use, but only profits from the trade, the effect of big and easy money becomes, in itself, an addiction. I can't help but wonder if President Trump's firing a couple of shots over the bow of "America's Opioid Epidemic" might not have had something to do with the psychotic derailment of the administration and its policies. Did the President venture a little too close to the root of America's corruption?