Joe,
Please answer a few questions for me.
1. Your article regarding your father was powerful and disturbing. Of course, you like to shake things up, even if the lotus eaters end up with indigestion. In this article you mentioned speed, greenies, black-beauties, etc. etc. Do you think the DEA caused the present speed epidemic by essentially banning these substances and making things even worse?
Joe: No. I think misery, oppression and ignorance and hopelessness imposed upon poor working class whites caused the epidemic. I don't see any millionaires cooking meth in their mansions. The farther down the social and economic scale you go, the more meth pipes you find tucked down in the couch cushions.
2. What do you think of the junior senator from Virginia, Jim Webb? He's certainly an interesting fellow. Considered to be one of the best junior officers in Vietnam. A former Reaganaut who turned at least centrist, if not progressive.
Joe: Webb is pretty good as it goes in America, but he's starting to make trade-offs which are very disheartening. Like chicken shitting out on the right of unions to organize (at the moment anyway).
3. You recently wrote that one of Obama's salient problems was that he has brought in the "same damn folks who fucked it up to fix it." Recently, Webb accompanied Bernie Sanders (of all people) to the White House to confront Obama on this very issue.
Joe: Yea, that's what I mean about Jim Webb. Part good, part not-so-good. Of course it didn't take a genius to see that the same old foxes were appointed to guard the hen house door. But it took some cojones to call Obama on it that early. I still trust Webb more than most politicians, (which is about as far as I can throw them) and especially the bloodless slime ball he beat.
4. Could Webb be the reincarnation of, well, Andy Jackson, the original (and first) Scotch-Irish populist?
Joe: To me, that's not a bad comparison. Andy Jackson was a walking bundle of contradictions. Injun killer, genuine man of the people (who tended to favor injun killing). I try to remember that Webb is an extremely ambitious man, who is not going to let consistency get in the way of his political advancement. But hell, what do I know?
Your Broken Down Ex-Lawyer Friend,
John
