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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive.
Editorial: 5/12/2000 The cocaine distributor laughed, his gold bicuspid glinting in the Andean light.
"You gringos, you are weak and stupid and selfish, so you want to blame me for selling
this cocaina? It's you who can't wait to use it."
He's probably dead by now, but a little more than a decade ago, he was
responsible for the refining of coca paste into raw cocaine and then distributing it
from his corner of Bolivia, through Colonmia and the West Indies, up the noses and into
the lungs of millions of customers in the Land of the Free.
He told me he'd once read a book by a Japanese who had guarded POW's during World
War Two. He told me to ignore the bodyguards holding AK-47's and bummed another
Marlboro, the tooth gleaming again as he exhaled. "Bueno," he said, "the Japanese said
the Americans were the only ones of his prisoners who would turn on each other and
turn each other in, even steal each other's food. None of his other prisoners would
do that, not the English or the Australians or the Dutch, just the Americans. You're
selfish. That's why you're my best customers. Just look out for number one and
screw the rest, eh, gringo?"
I'm always suspicious of sociology at the point of a gun, but his words stuck with
me through the drug war, through the slaughter in America's streets, through the
schoolyard shootings. We're still the same. We swim in a culture of isolation and
instant gratification, and I'd like to thank Democrats, Republicans, and each and
every one of us for this fine mess we're in.
The problem isn't drugs. It isn't guns. It's selfishness, loneliness, and
isolation. It's all about me, isn't it? My right to carry a gun, my right to murder
someone if I've been dissed, my right to my stock options, my way of life, my
pathologies.
The Democrats for decades have pandered to every hyphenated group's grievances.
You're not an American, they squawk, you're an African or Cuban or Polish or Irish
or Mexican American with your own special history and your own special set of
complaints that have nothing in common with anyone else's. You have the right to
express them freely and loudly and screw the other guy.
The Republicans, meanwhile, blathered about individualism. Screw the little
guy, you have the right to make your pile, scurry to the suburbs and look down your
noses at other people, other parents, other races because they aren't like you.
The civic glue that used to hold us together as a society--the churches and civic
clubs--are losing members at warp speed. Fewer of us than ever before take the time
to engage in that most basic of communal civic activities--voting. The suburbs are
full of smug and fearful white people who roll up the sidewalks, close the garage door,
put up a six foot stockade fence, and watch 500 channels. The inner cities are full
of angry black and Hispanic people who are convinced everything is someone else's
fault, and they have the perfect right to blow someone else away for their sneakers
or for a wrong look.
The problem isn't the drugs. Marijuana and cocaine and heroin have been around
this Republic since James Madison. It isn't the guns. We have traditionally been
one of the most heavily armed nations on earth. The problem is us. The suburban
dittohead who says execute 'em all, even the innocent; the ghetto teen who does a
drive-by and pops a nine year old just because she was there; the executive who
pillages a company and rakes in the stocks and bonuses; the Chardonnay liberal
who says it's all someone else's fault; the angry small town white teen with a gun
and an itchy trigger finger prowling his school's hallways. They're isolated,
lonely, angry, afraid, every one of them.
None of them worry or care about anyone except themselves. There's no common
purpose except to get mine, is there? The hollowness inside is so deep and echoing
that anything--money, guns, drugs--that makes it feel better is worth trying. That's
why the war on drugs is a colossal failure, why passing new gun laws is probably
futile, and why our current strategy on just about everything from the stock
market to crime is so erratic.
We've only looked at effects, from crime to greed to shootings. We haven't looked
at the causes. Which is odd, considering that we see them in the mirror every
morning.
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