The Dead, Alleged, Ex-Cracked Leader of the Semi-Free World

The late President George Herbert Walker Bush has received adoration and adulation upon the event of his demise. But the man stood for pragmatism, a dogged and nasty racist streak, and an ugly view of mankind. For all the bombast that bloviating, talking heads have spewed over the last few days, little is critical or, especially, objective. It’s as if a time capsule full of all of Bush Sr.’s misdeeds had been sealed up and cast out into the Earth’s exosphere. But what must be remembered remains the inconsistencies and outright lies concerning Bush Sr.’s Presidency.

Before his four years of service in the oval office, Bush Sr. sought to take down drug smuggler Barry Seal for his “crimes.” The American Drug War which has cost a trillion dollars, hundreds of thousands dead and millions locked behind bars has only worsened since his days in the White House. While it is certainly not the most moral profession in the world, the drug trade ought to be left to the free market with no regulations. There ought to be laws governing what minors must not ingest and driving limitations amongst other legal issues, but for drug runners and everyone in the hierarchy of the enterprise, there ought to be legalization for their activities. Bush Sr. didn’t see it this way. He viewed aviator Barry Seal as a menace and there exist allegations swirling about that tie Bush Sr. to Seal’s murder. In order for this confirmation to be fully addressed, we would have to converse with ghosts. Since there is none, we must rely on the history and the facts to rectify the death of a man who committed no real crime.

Now, his associates, Pablo Escobar and the affiliates of the Medellín Drug Cartel perpetrated atrocities, rapes, murders, and other heinous acts. But that is only because there continues to exist a Prohibition on narcotics and other mind-altering substances. If the drugs flowed through the streets without any attachment to criminal activity, then there wouldn’t be kingpins and queenpins to promote ugly activity. But Bush Sr. didn’t see it this way. In a staged arrangement where he headed a special news statement with bags of crack cocaine on his desk in the White House, he never told the American people that the whole thing stood as deception. With prop in hand, he issued the musty the idea that more prisons, jail times, and incarceration rates should be in order to “combat” the “menace” (my words) of drug addiction. With more and more black and brown people, especially, receiving sentences that rapists and murderers don’t always get, Bush Sr. pushed for these actions.

Instead of looking to legalize the drug trade from medicines at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the street level substances, Bush Sr. only looked at the problem from the viewpoint of a malicious drug warmonger who never fully understood history. In the wake of the Prohibition of alcohol in the early twentieth century, the height of police deaths reached its peak as gangsters like Meyer Lansky, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, and Alphonse “Al” Capone appeared. During the Crack Battles of the 1980s and ’90s, traffickers like “Freeway” Rick Ross, Rayful Edmonds, Kenneth “Boobie” Williams and Hispanic woman Griselda "La Madrina" Blanco all sprang up due to the availability of the government’s alleged clandestine operations and deals with Central American and South America. The 41st President continued to advocate for the construction of correctional facilities all the while neglecting the fact that private schools, private substance abuse clinics, and the private spread of information about the dangers of drugs continue to be necessities that see dismissal.

George Herbert Walker Bush never cared for the millions of people who were adversely affected by the drug trade. He just wanted to score political points and keep his hat in the ring along with other associates who wished to project a “toughness” on crime. His inability to inculcate in this nation a sense of individual rights of the citizens of America forevers leaves a pall over his one term as President.