Barry McCaffrey Govlish Speech

Govlish Drug War Speech By Barry McCaffrey

by Elias Alias, editor * originally published at The Mental Militia forums in 2003 * Updated in April 2016.

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Govlish: (McCaffrey) From my perspective, the struggle against illegal drugs is not a “war.” Misplaced battle imagery leads people to expect a conclusive victory. Wars have an end, but drug education–like all schooling–is a continuous process. To reduce the demand for drugs, prevention must be ongoing. Addicted individuals are to be helped, not defeated. They must be held accountable for their actions and offered drug treatment to help change destructive behavior.

English translation: (Elias Alias) We think that you the people will have no trouble at all understanding that the War On Drugs was never an actual war, despite the fact that for half a century the government itself has been calling it a war, and also despite the fact that it has created more than three-quarters of a million political prisoners each year. Americans arrested for violation of anti-marijuana laws alone total more than five million nation-wide just since President Clinton took office. And it is true that our goon-thugs have managed to shoot dead and/or burn to death a goodly number of citizens. It is also true that we have taken at gunpoint countless properties from such people as would defy our Law. But we categorically deny that we have been running a “War”.

 

We are aware that due to a slight oversight at some of our think-tanks, the media was long ago unwisely asked to bill our aggression out to the public as a “War On Drugs”. The pure, the morally present, the conscientious American, and that American’s elected public officials have all been struggling legally, morally, objectively, but vainly, to turn this tide of popular piddling with illegal drugs. As we have stormed houses, sank boats, shot down aircraft, shot suspects to death, burned homes and property, beat and interrogated countless “enemy” operatives, conducted “Sting” operations on citizens everywhere, flirted with snitches as if they were counter-spies and heroes of our War effort, we really expect you to understand all that for what it is, which is simple federal-level policing in an attempt to enforce The Law. Our only goal has been the peace of drug offenders.

But despite the Army’s involvement at Waco, despite all the armaments and defensive equipage of goon-squads, despite the militarization of civil police forces everywhere, it’s really not been a “War On Drugs”, but merely a social-improvement exercise benevolently bestowed upon the American public as a graceful and tangible benefit returned to the tax-payers. Surely everyone can see this.

The DEA has absolutely nothing to do with the Pentagon or the US Military community. (That the DEA wrongfully helped the ATF falsely accuse that strange little church in Texas of drug manufacturing while requesting over a million dollars’ worth of military equipment, armed helicopters and tanks, communications facilities, and Delta Force “advisors” from the Pentagon, was an isolated quirk of miscommunication, a mere aberration of procedure for which no one should rightfully be punished.)

What we used to call the War On Drugs is most certainly not to be seen as the concerted efforts of divisions and regiments of militarily-armed goon squads sent out across the land by competing agencies of intrusive aggression policies against the average tax-paying citizen.

We know and understand that for half a century we have called the situation a “War On Drugs”. But. That is beside the point now.

We simply cannot admit that we lost that “War”. We fear that if we admit defeat we will lose countless government thug-jobs, maybe even entire agencies, as well as a trillion dollars’ worth of covert governmental creative financing. Of course all this could negatively effect the national economy, and thus lead to a state of national emergency, from which only FEMA and the National Security Agency, in lock-step with the Pentagon and the Oval Office, could save us.

We now, in failure’s denial, realize that we cannot possibly win that “War”, so we naturally need to update you on our shifts in perspective here at the top. The War On Drugs will continue as it has since it’s earliest beginnings, expanding in strength and scope daily, but we are going to call it something different. But please do not be concerned. We’re still going to spend billions each year on having our troops stake out, lay siege to, invade and conquer the homes of the omni-present drug offenders, but we’re adding a subtle twist which we hope you understand will be a dandy refinement that can help us spend even more billions of dollars in state-sponsored behavior-modification “treatment centers” for our captured, er, ‘arrested’ POWs, er, ‘criminals’.

There is no reason to fear that the national prison industry will have to suffer a downturn in prison population and a resultant dip in profitability. We realize how costly to business such a problem would be. So our game-plan calls for stepping up the tactical-area-of-responsibility (TAOR) for all Drug War agencies.

However, we will bill this out to the press as “recruitment efforts” (conducted with the persuasive force of gun-bearing troops, naturally, if only to keep up appearances) for the benefit of miserable workers and students who may have succumbed to the temptations of the illegal drug world, the nefarious underground, or the undisciplined counter-culture.

We will have the press stress that the re-education centers project is a free service provided to drug offenders, who qualify for the program by simply being a convicted ex-con. We are preparing already a massive fleet of permanently-moving mobile prison units for some of these “guests of the State”, in addition to “live-in” dorms with the militaristic quaintness and outdoors scenery as available on a number of closed, un-used military bases.

Though it will cost us, we will spare no expense in seeing that prisoners get de-briefed correctly by government guidelines and then get re-implanted psychologically with a value system which would be in greater harmony with the needs and desires of the Corporate Dynasty. We shall not “defeat” those arrogant violators of our sacred law, but instead we shall merely brainwash them in prisons of various types which we shall call “re-education and treatment centers”.

This of course is for society’s own good. The government is a good guy after all. Of course, our prisoners have to be taught a little respect for their loving government, so we will have to confiscate their real worth when we induct them into our program, and we will have to bleed them dry financially as we fatten the coffers of the lawyer population, but we will call that: “teaching responsibility”.

We the State will show you the people that you can always rely upon us to be more powerful than you are. Bow, and know the State’s greatness; submit your error-prone ‘free-will’ to the wisdom of the State. Uncle Sam cares. And yes, please do be willing to go the extra mile when your legislators beseech you to accept a slight increase in taxes to fund our new Drug War POW Re-Education Programs. We must all shoulder the responsibility together. If you find this to be uncomfortable for some reason, just remember, it’s the fault of all those potheads, and NOT your government.
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Govlish: Cancer, rather than war, is the more appropriate metaphor for the nation’s drug problem. The key to reducing both is prevention coupled with treatment and research. Slashing drug-use rates will require a sustained effort to change individual and social attitudes. It also will demand fundamental shifts in the way our public health and criminal justice systems deal with chronic addicts. We cannot arrest our way out of the problem. Neither can we make unrealistic promises to solve the drug problem in just a few years or rid the world of drugs entirely. We must be serious and get organized with long-term prevention and treatment programs that work.

 

Translation: Drug use has spread more inclusively into all levels of American society than we ever anticipated, and as each person has discovered that the government has been lying about marijuana during all these years, it is as if that person were to become by virtue of knowledge a single, mis-shaped “cell” which has gone awry in its behavior in the body of America .

 

From the clinical, technically-correct view of mass disrespect for the mystique and power-facade of the State, we today prefer to educate the public toward believing that this War On Drugs shall be terminal for the patient, which is you the people. Drug-users’ presence in our society is as malignant and unacceptable as a cancer in your mother’s breast. Under the “Prevention” phase of our program, we can continue to fund huge anti-drug advertising campaigns and reinforce that message by stepping up our Narco Squad militations, our lucrative informant programs, and our DEA invasion tactics. As our arrest numbers have assured you that we’re tirelessly and relentlessly packing the jails and prisons of the nation with fresh Prisoners of War, we acknowledge that we can do even more.

 

Instead of allowing the offenders to merely pay their debt to society by doing their time, we now can involve them, once released from prison, in re-education programs which can feed untold millions of dollars directly into the private-sector economy. It will, in keeping with the State’s tradition, create an abundance of new jobs for unwitting citizens who see “government jobs” as a sure bet for security, thusly cementing the wreckage brought down upon the lives of the would-be “individual” rebels who would defy our laws.

You may have confidence that your government will not stop until there is a supervisor/counselor/healer assigned to every citizen to help that citizen make of his life a success, (by US Government-recommended standards of course), as an auto-modified person of compliance and subserviency. As you can readily see, this approach will insure that fedgov can continue to vent the economy while redistributing created wealth back into the deserving hands of State employees. We’re sure that even the unions will support this approach.

Of course, while your tax dollars are being wasted by the billions in all this, remember the economic lessons of George Orwell’s little bombshell book, 1984, and know that we are tirelessly committed to keeping the money-pumps running smoothly. And of course, we do not want to guarantee you anything besides the fact that we can stretch this undeclared War On Drugs into eternity. We’ve got a lot of arresting and re-educating to do!

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Govlish: The government’s response is only a small part of the national effort to counter illegal drugs. The drug problem is in essence a collection of local epidemics that can best be addressed at the  community level by coalitions of parents, coaches, health professionals and teachers. Our children are most influenced by people they love and admire, rather than by rock stars, celebrities and other remote figures. An adult involved with mentoring can change a child’s life.

Translation: Of course, as we need to fan the flames of ignorance within the ember-beds of American society, we the state shall continue to furnish more ways in which everyone can participate. We fully intend to empower all students to snitch on their parents, who otherwise might escape capture by our excellent covert operatives. We will continue to establish national and local hot lines for snitches, and we can offer added budgetary blessings to athletic departments in schools for random drug testing, to socialist clinicians who are keen on altering people’s mentality in favor of Statist values, and to teachers unions.

The State’s aim is to achieve universal allegiance from each member of every American generation, and our quest begins in the school systems. We also will continue to insure that plot-lines on popular television programs are salted heavily with anti-drug messages. We are asking for adult assistance in the training of a generation’s minds against any predisposition toward experimentation with any substance which might alert a young person to the reality behind the facade of socialized government. We want you to do our job for us, but we want you to keep paying us since we were the ones who wised you up to how this works. You can feel important in helping us keep people off marijuana. Let’s all get that “feel-good-together” feeling in our hearts, and take pride in being involved in the destruction of half of this nation’s lives.
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Govlish: Much of the work that needs to be done against drug dependence will take place within the criminal justice system. Drug courts are able to offer treatment in lieu of prison for nonviolent offenders. Drug treatment must be married to legal coercion if America’s 5 million hard-core users are to be stopped from ruining their lives at great cost to our country in terms of overcrowded courts and prisons, spiraling health-care costs and violent criminal behavior. Strict law enforcement, combined with humane and intelligent policy, is the answer to the enormous public safety problem posed by drug dependence.

Translation: The government is leading the way for all of us. The criminal justice system is still a growing industry, so we will continue to hire more cops and oath-breaking thugs and further develop our powers over the average citizen, as you would want us to do. But we can create a side-industry called loosely, “drug treatment centers”, and that industry will also be doubly important as it generates new jobs and also provides another area wherein many citizens can blindly promote the State’s power. The neo-con Christian Right should love this. People like working for the government, as we offer a good bennies package. Such people also like to play their self-righteous games of one-up-man-ship over their neighbors, which helps them feel that they are contributing to the greatness of America. These workers will justly feel in some way as if they were extensions of the real govgoon squads, and will enjoy their dedicated efforts in forcing loyalty to the State upon all resistors, while impeccably caring for their fates as individuals.

We shall continue to feed the prison industry in this country and others, as it benefits the economy of the Corporate Dynasty. However, just when we thought we were out of ideas, it now occurs to us that we can pick up on drug-law convicts as they are released from prison following the serving of their “time”, and can, at great public cost, enroll them in a new system of “re-education” camps, er, *centers*. This program will doubtless create many new jobs in the private sector, as each *center* will need State-made doctors and psychologists, nurses, clinicians, admin personnel, clerks and communications specialists as well as additional guards and a host of related jobs.

In the absence of War, we can vent this economy domestically by simply continuing to pour more billions into the expansion and diversification of all sectors in the War on Drugs. The fact that such approach strengthens the centralization of fedgov powers is merely a benign coincidence. The enrolled ex-convict drug-law offenders will be treated with as much respect as the Geneva Convention suggests would befit any Prisoner Of War. Our mental programming will treat each “after-prison prisoner” in an officially humane and intelligent manner.

As the Justice Department has already ruined their lives by incarceration and confiscation and withdrawal of “rights”, our excuse to further detain these hapless citizens lies embodied in the greater good they can do society by their participation in a multi-billion dollar re-education experiment, which will be completely government-funded and destined for future privatization, and which will be created in liaison with the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and FEMA. The object is to make them subject and keep them subject, and if that takes a part of every earned dollar in America, so be it. It is a small price to pay for influencing affluency.

[Elias Alias note: The paragraph by McCaffrey, above contains a Govlish “boo-boo”. It is a violation of the Govlish ethic that McCaffrey let slip the two-word phrase, “legal coercion”. Govlish almost never says what it truly means. This sort of error is very rare.]

 

Govlish: The indirect campaign to legalize drugs has tried to manipulate the issues of “medical marijuana” and “harm reduction.” This approach should offend America’s sense of integrity. The welfare of children must come first. Reducing drug abuse is in our country’s most fundamental interest.

Translation: Any system of leverage which might appear friendly to libertarian and “individualist” or “sovereign” ideology must be denied the citizenry, no matter how ridiculous it appears to be. What is the suffering of a few terminal cancer and aids patients compared to an entire generation of American children? Hey, so you got cancer and you say it hurts and you mistakenly believe that smoking a joint helps you gain some temporary relief from the symptomatic pains of cancer. Listen, life is hard, you know?

Surely you must understand why the State cannot possibly be reasonable about medical marijuana. It has nothing to do with the fact that nobody dies from smoking marijuana, or that marijuana has been smoked with no ill effects around this planet for countless centuries by a huge percentage of the earth’s population, or that the plant itself might have a Natural right to inclusion in this Universal garden, if some God did indeed create this earth and everything therein, or even if it’s genetic struggle through carbonated stardust and eons of quantum warp space simply mathematically configured its existence on this planet as a grace of time itself. This can only demonstrate the fact that the national government is asserting ownership of each citizen’s mind and body and intrusion-rights into both, in seeking to control drug-related choices among the biological citizenry.

The point is that the very concept of “medical marijuana” flies in the face of everything Govlish has been preaching to the public for over a half a century, and it is not profitable for this government to subscribe to any truth which would cost our economy the countless jobs and governmental power-structures we stand to lose should Uncle Sam cease and desist with the War on Drugs. Just think of yourselves as making a noble sacrifice for your government, and take the pain.

We’ve by God been swearing for over half a century that marijuana is bad for people, and no matter what the doctor-patient relationship reveals in reality, that’s our story and we’re stickin’ to it. To the lily-livered overly-sensitized and misled crusaders who suggest that the criminal damage wrought upon the lives of all students busted for marijuana, or upon the working folk so busted, is actually a greater harm to those individuals’ lives than a few tokes on a joint, I would simply say that you need to learn how to restore your faith in your elected leadership and the great American way. Your government cares about the slightest threats to your health and happiness. Your government forbids to you the use of certain drugs because your government loves you.

Reducing drug abuse will automatically save the children. As you know children rank a close “second” just below the economy in governmental priority.

We also know that it is an impediment toward the successful indoctrination of Statist principles to permit our students to presume any far-fetched “right” to alter their minds. Those minds belong to the State, as they constitute the State’s “citizenry”. It is absurd to imagine a State without its citizenry, and marijuana is known to undo years’ worth of dedicated conditioning and programming of young minds in the State’s educational systems. Marijuana advocates are trying to make the American national government look like a big, unjust bully. America is really the best friend any citizen has. Even though I’ve said we cannot arrest our way out of the drug problem, I swear to you that we will spare no expense to make the best dent in popular cultural mores that money can buy.
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End translation of Drug Czar McCaffrey’s Govlish speech.