War and Peace and Cannabis

Since it is almost always the poor who are sent to war, the political left has rightly used the metaphor of the pawn in a larger, murderous chess game. That tide began to turn under Obama. His 2008 campaign is a testament to how the left used to be anti-war. But when he became president, he not only continued the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but created new ones in Libya, Syria and Yemen while his supporters cheered him on.

Whether it’s Democrats and Republicans in America, or conservatives and liberals (and the NDP) in Canada, war is the health of the state. This situation in Ukraine is a direct result of a US-backed coup that overthrew an elected government in 2014. An elected government that was friendly to Russia. The US has a long history of doing such things, so this war comes as no surprise. Despite the propaganda, the Ukraine conflict is about money, oil, power and control. Like most modern wars.

The irony is that the left understood this sooner.

And some still do. Noam Chomsky does not buy the war propaganda. He has condemned both Putin and NATO for their war crimes. How is the patron saint of the anti-war left treated by today’s progressives? Avoided or ignored. When your views no longer align with the progressive establishment, you are either branded a Nazi (or, in this case, a senile old man) or ignored outright.

Take Jeremy Scahill. The editor and co-founder of The Intercept tweeted: “There is no contradiction between supporting the people of Ukraine and against the heinous invasion of Russia and being honest about the hypocrisy, war crimes and militarism of the US and NATO.”

The answer? Attacks of “whataboutism” and even a “You should go to Ukraine,” tweeted a so-called journalist at NPR. Of course, whataboutism, or an appeal to hypocrisy, is deliberately misused by the media to end the conversation. It is not “whataboutism” to point out the similarities between Putin’s war in Ukraine and the United States’ illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. The logical fallacy comes from justifying Putin’s war by comparing it to the Iraq war.

Is war ever justified?

The right justification for US intervention abroad is that, unlike Russia or China, the US is a beacon of freedom. You have freedom of speech, democratic elections, the rule of law. Ergo, they have a moral obligation to export their system abroad.

But what is the left version of this argument? America is a hyper-capitalist fascist state, isn’t it? One that treats minorities like dirt and rewards billionaires with offshore tax havens. If America is as bad as the rest of the world, what justification can there be for their intervention abroad?

At this point, you might be wondering what this has to do with cannabis. And no, I’m not going to switch to that Ukrainian stoner virus video. (Although it’s good.)

First, it is nothing new that leftists support war. When the old USSR went to war, it was interpreted as a defensive tactic to fight “Western imperialism”. Oddly enough, the old Soviet Union is today’s Russia. Putin is a former KGB. One wonders if Russia were still communist, would the left support their invasion of Ukraine?

Second, whether you consider yourself left, right, or neither, the hypocrisy of US foreign policy is evident. You cannot support the murderous regime in Saudi Arabia and then claim moral supremacy in Eastern Europe.

War and Peace and Cannabis

So what happened? How did the cannabis-smoking Woodstock-era hippies become the wartime establishment? I have a few theories and it won’t just be one thing. But swapping cannabis for pharmaceutical pills probably had something to do with it.

Consider the first wave of boomers to take the reins of power. Who did you choose? Ronald Regan who fueled the Cold War. He is credited with finishing it, but if the USSR wasn’t already bankrupt and dying, the hot war in Europe might have started in the 1980s rather than the 2020s.

Consider how long it took for cannabis to become legal. It’s clear that as Boomers have gotten older, they’ve traded their peace pipe for a corporate pill. They stopped consuming a natural plant that expands their mind. And they started taking pills to make them compliant.

Is peace a viable option?

Peace will never be a viable option as long as the corporate press controls the narrative. Peace will never be a viable option as long as Big Pharma keeps the masses docile and dependent. Peace will never be a viable option as long as cannabis is condemned, even if legalized (as is the case in Canada).

Simply put, cannabis is an instrument of peace. War is the health of the state.