I don't know if it's the sleep deprivation or the shock, but I've had a flash of cognizance I must share. For want of a readerless blog to post in on, I'm inflicting it on all of you. I will be tying this essay to a pop cultural reference, because I think it's amusing and impressive. Don't get distracted. Also, I'll say we, us, and our a lot, because I'm an American and I'm mostly speaking to my fellow Americans with this. Everybody else, don't take offense, because this is not your matter.
Most people remember Robocop as a lovably bad action movie about a cyborg do-gooder who kicks the bad-guys' asses in a future that looks like the 1980s on meth. This is accurate.
But behind that was a stark tale in truest sense of sci-fi the trends of the day taken to their logical conclusion. Namely, a corporation rich enough and far enough above the law that it could afford to simultaneously run a private security firm and fund organized criminal elements. Idea being that criminals can largely fund themselves and be hit up for cash when need be, whilst supplying a justification for a private security system to suck up tax money and look good.
It was an indictment of the criminal culture, the paramilitary-industrial complex, and Gordon Gecko slash-and-burn capitalism rolled into one.
As we sit here, there is a war raging on the North American continent. It is a war of full military armament, but it is not between nations. It is a war born from ideology, but it is not a war of ideals. It is a front in the War on Drugs, but it is not a war on concepts instead of real people.
For most of the past decade, there has been a growing battle between Mexican and American border patrol, and international drug cartels. This has escalated far beyond ordinary gang violence. These forces have honest
military grade weaponry, can field
thousands of operatives, and can legitimately
threaten public officials and personnel.
This is Narco-Rebellion at it's latent finest, the same kind of thing Colombia, Thailand, and Afghanistan have hosted for decades. This is not revolution, because these organizations do not seek legitimate responsibility, just the elimination of any other organization that can stop their business. Essentially, this is what happens when a mob realizes that it's more powerful than the legitimate government, and abandons even the pretense of hiding beneath the system in favor of just operating as they please.
At the moment, there's not a lot to be done about it. Mexico has devoted it's extensive paramilitary forces to combat the cartels, but has already been doing so for years, and debt and attrition has neutered most of it's capability. Both the previous and current American Presidents have refused to order National Guard forces to the area. The task has been left to a coalition of local, state, and federal forces, toping out with the ATF. But these are all law enforcement agencies, not warriors, and they are completely outmatched. Indeed, lack of law enforcement ability is exactly why this war is being fought at all. Some forces are reluctant or derelict, after a
wave of gruesome violence, not wanting to give their lives in a battle they know they can't win. But of course, corruption is utterly rampant as well, with many agents either fearing for their lives and turning aside in quiet shame, or just owned lock, stock, and barrel.
And the grand Shakespearian tragedy, is that it's all America's fault.
First, and most obvious we're the market. For fifty years, the American public has been inundated by admonitions and public service announcements about all the ways drugs will instantly kill you and everyone you love. 500 billion dollars have been spent on military force alone since the declaration of the War of Drugs. Year by year, new laws are passed for every wink-and-nod repeal, under the logic of We can't allow drugs to become legal, because then people would do them. And what has that earned us? Even per capita, America is the biggest consumer of drugs in the world, competitive with all of continental Europe combined. Ironically, market forces have actually led to an overproduction of cocaine (which shows how successful we've been at stopping that), which has produced a significant new addiction problem in Mexico. Nonetheless, America is the Promised Land for drug cartels. Our Pollyannish drug policies and the arbitrary enforcement thereof have become a national joke, and all our wishing-away of the obvious and practical reality of the problem has done absolutely nothing to diminish it.
Second, is that America made the people now running this war. Wft? I hear you say. America has long had a policy of hiring local thugs and strongmen to either fight people in the area we really don't like, or to travel abroad and do our plausibly deniable work for us. Bin Laden and the Taliban are a famous example of this. Some time back, we recruited Zapatistas and other ner'do'wells as vocational mercenaries, trained by the CIA to assist in hunting down other cartels or terrorists in South America or Central Asia. When they went home, they brought their new skills with them.
History: In the 1980's, American law enforcement cracked down on the Mafia once and for all. The Gambino crime family was scattered, and the Mafia has been a curiosity ever since. But for a brief period, these organizations existed without heads to fill the vacuum rose the ruthless lieutenants who clawed their way to the middle. Raised on Goodfellas and Scarface, with none of the dignity and restraint of the ousted Old Boys network, they plunged the Mob world into unprecedented violence, until they burned themselves out with the FBI's help.
About ten years ago, Mexico beheaded the cartels. But they don't have the luxury of historical oddities and a strong national police force. Those super-agents we trained had become big players in the industry, and seized the reigns and took a long, cold look at where their power lay. These guys know everything about the industry, from their side and ours, and know exactly how and where to hit. They're the best people who could be running these private armies, because we built them that way.
Third and most blatantly stupidly they're killing our guys with our guns. There are hundreds of gun shops within fifty miles of the Mexican/American border, now fully stocked with assault rifles thanks to the automatic weapons ban repeal. There are whole arsenals of military-grade weapons being
legally or semi-legally bought in America and carried across into Mexico. Put simply, our insistence on an automatic rifle for any customer is getting Americans killed with American guns by foreign criminals. There's not a lot else to say about it.
Fourth, and biggest of all America's criminal justice system built half of the geography of this narco nation. Bear with me a moment. For the past thirty years, America has been enthralled with a charming mantra: no matter the problem, no matter the industry, private for-profit companies can always handle it better and cheaper than the government. Just as movie writers predicted, this now extends as far as prisons and law enforcement. Across America, prisons are big business, and most importantly, are paid state funding based on the number of prisoners they have to handle. Efficient? Observant? Tightly-managed?
Just like makers of automobiles, cigarettes, mortgage loans, and every other business that's gone unwatched and unchecked, private prison managers figured out that the most profitable way of running a by-the-customer business is to sell a shitty product to the consumer's detriment and
pocket the difference. And many have taken the logical next step of taking some of that profit, and
paying judges and law-makers to funnel more convicts their way. These private security companies have figured out that they're payed for incarcerating people, not stopping crimes, and have devoted their cash and effort to doing what makes them money.
So what's the natural result of prisons run for profit, with enforcement and legislators firmly in the pockets of CEO-Wardens? America is the Prison Nation. We incarcerate more people than any other country we're home to 5% of the world's people, but 25% of it's inmates. The prisons these people are packed into are run at the absolute cost-cutting edge and beyond it. The California prison system is estimated to be at 200% it's designed capacity there's some mandatory release legislation in the works to reduce that to a lofty 120%. Prisons in every state tell similar stories, and all are masterpieces of unmaintained lowest-bidder non-engineering.
The effect these closed-roof prison colonies have on their inmates is completely predicable. Every year, millions of young men are thrown into a meatgrinder and must adapt to survive. Often unskilled, uneducated, and now with no hope of honest employment for the rest of their lives, they turn to their fellow convicts for guidance. They learn to socialize as criminals, incorporate into their structure, learn new skills from the more advanced rogues, and pick up contacts and connections. Upon release, they have a new society ready to welcome them, and know what to do if caught again. To the gangland nation underneath America, prison walls are non-existent, and millions of thugs make a new career of sliding through the revolving door forever. Instead of doing anything to lessen criminality, poor management and poor policy have turned the prison system into a battery-farm.
Oh yeah, where do the cartel wars fit into all this? Well, drug related offenses and skipping bail/parole on them is the number one cause of incarceration in America. The number of those who were tried on non-violent possession charges is between
30% and 90% depending on who gives the numbers and how you calculate them together. So, in summation: Private, for-profit justice industry is massively inflating the prisoner population while doing little to stop real crime, and by the disinterest in the public good over profit are ensnaring scores of people on the most minor of crimes, coincidentally a direct result of the drug industry, and turning those people into the ideal consumers and foot-soldiers of the same industry that made them criminals in the first place.
In Neumeier, Miner, and Verhoeven's vision of the future, public government is practically nonexistent, serving only to funnel dwindling tax dollars to massive conglomerates that provide all social services. This includes security and policing, which naturally declines as a cop paid by contract is better off looking necessary than actually stopping crime, least he put himself out of business. The criminal element operates relatively unchecked, fleecing who they can as ever, and selling their wares. Organized crime in turn is partly funded by the conglomerate, to justify the existence of it's security apparatus, to keep the paying populace worried about something other than what they're paying, and as a source of manpower for really sensitive work. So the company, the government, the criminals, and everyone all go home wealthy and happy. Except the ordinary bastards, who get treated like self-tending cattle made of money.
What we have now in our real world is a vicious spiral: Some Americans hate drugs. Some Americans believe companies function better than the government. Some Americans believe a firearm is an inalienable right. These views are reflected in government policy, who criminalize drugs, and turn law enforcement and incarceration over to private firms. These firms are paid by the head, so local and private cops grab as many easy arrests as possible, to be shoved into prisons run on the bare minimum of resources. The remaining payment that isn't pocketed, goes to law-makers and law-enforcers to keep the prisoners flowing. And thanks to draconian anti-drug policy, drugs are the easiest thing to arrest on. These prisons turn people into ready-made workers for the very organizations supplying those drugs, because America is a land of silent contradiction and demands drugs as loud as it denounces them. That much demand, combined with a massive, well trained and equipped, militarized criminal world, creates a drug industry powerful enough to rival governments. Which generates more business for every step of the process.
There are major differences between my strained reference and the real world. For one, there's no cyborg vigilantes. More's the pity.
Two, the prime motivator in fiction is greed, pure and simple all around. Here in the complicated world, yes there is greed, but lays everywhere. There is also puritanical irrationality, boneheaded disproven policy judgment, occasionally willful absolute apathy and ignorance, and apart from ordinary greed, there is slavish unalterable worship of profit at all cost marketeering.
And the third, and most important part (because I prove I'm not crazy), there is no conspiracy. The Mexican government (the non-corrupt part) is in all-out war with these cartels, America is trying to ignore the problem rather than excaberate it and arrived at this point by inattentiveness more than malicious direction, and there's no suggestion that security companies are paying anyone but judges and legislators. So, there is no collusion between criminals and corporatized governments.
At least, not at the high managerial level.
At least, none that is yet known.
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Topic: Impromptu Rambling About Robocop and Mexico (hueg) (Read 4104 times)