PAST & FUTURE SHADES OF THE
“You spent $1 trillion on your campaign to eliminate illegal drugs – while simultaneously promoting legal drugs, which often turned out to be more dangerous. “And now you’re spending $100 billion per year. What do you get for it? The rate of drug use remains about the same... but you arrest 1.5 million people per year on drug charges. Good work, again. “And we didn’t need a trade war, either. We had the strongest economy on the planet, with trade that was in balance. Of course, we also had real money back then – a dollar that was backed by gold... so neither trade nor debt could get too far out of whack. “I’m not saying we were perfect. Of course we weren’t. But we weren’t any worse than you are. “So how can you be so sure we were wrong... that we were so awful? “Do you think we didn’t care about right and wrong... and didn’t try to separate good from bad... in our own way? Do you think you’re so smart... so pure... so sure you’re right about everything that anyone who ever had any different ideas must have been either evil or stupid? “Do you think that the thousand generations that came before you had learned nothing... and had nothing to teach you? So that you can ignore everything they told you? “You think that, don’t you? Well, I think you’re a fool.”
because they wanted to honor men who did their duty, as they saw it, and died for a cause they believed in. “And now you come along and tear down those statues. Who do you think you are? What do you know about their suffering? What do you know about their sense of honor... or right and wrong... and what is worth remembering? “And you think you’re making progress? You think you’ve made a better world? Well, it doesn’t seem better to me. Back in my day, we could laugh at each other... and ourselves. Now, you can’t laugh at all. You take everything deadly serious. You tell a joke and your career is over. “And there were a lot of things that were just better back in my day. We didn’t need no damned wall with Mexico. We got along with the Mexicans just fine without a wall. “We didn’t have any federal welfare program, so those who came across the border came to work and we were happy to have them. By the way, you spent $22 trillion on anti- poverty programs over the last 50 years. And guess what? The percentage of poor people when you started was about 15%. And it’s still 15%. Good work. “We didn’t have a drug war, either... So we didn’t have all the violence you have. Didn’t you learn anything from our Prohibition program? It was a disaster. And we could have told you that your prohibition on drugs would be a disaster, too.
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May 2019
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