Incomplete and only partially thought-through solution to 95%+ of the world's violence and terror that veers off track into E/N

[THIS is really frustrating to write because I feel (just a feeling) like I know roughly all the solutions but it touches upon far too many subjects. It's hard to blend things together properly to list all this crap in a readable and understandable way. The basic truth is this – law enforcement and organized crime are too often on the same side. They both maintain, without trying to, a status quo that is intolerable to an ethical person. Perversions of justice and oppression on one side, horrific violence and hopelessness on the other. This is not a very good post but I woke up at midnight feeling like I had to write this down, and then later decided to put it where ideas go to die; the internet]

The world of good people is assaulted by so many forces, things we hear about on the news and things that we do not, things out in the open and things that keep themselves hidden, and we believe that there is no solution to these problems. All we can do is help that charity, vote for that measure, raise our children to make the right decisions, all to make just a little bit of a difference.

There are no easy solutions, but there are ways to make these problems much smaller in magnitude than they are now.

No matter what assaults civilization, be it the mujahideen(sp?) or MS 13 (just one of many massive and violent gangs), or be it the code of silence in ghettos and rural areas (let alone everywhere else) that cloaks crime and corruption – no matter what name it gives itself, what cause it cloaks itself in, there is but one thing that funds the vast majority of illegal and unethical activities – drugs. Contraband. Controlled substances.

We hear how the remnants of the Taliban, still a force in Afghanistan, control and restrict the supply of Opium even now to keep prices sky high. The hypocrisy is rich, the hypocrisy is everywhere, and the solutions that are now in place become problems. How can anyone claim that the DEA and border control does not also restrict supply, and that a restricted supply will raise prices? Does anyone believe there is enough capital in South America and Afghanistan to fund the forces of corruption and destabilization? The United States is the market, and the war on drugs is an accomplice in every act of violence and anarchy that the drug trade finances.

Do the addicts cut back, do they trade in their big fat drug-guzzling veins in for a hybrid when the price of heroin goes up? No, they will pay whatever price the dealers want, they will do what they must to afford the drug, until they either die or get better. Drugs and those who deal them prey on the weak, the defenseless, they kick men and women and children when they are down. Oil companies and casinos cannot compare to the villainy that goes on in the shadows.

Those shadows are maintained by fear, fear of violence and fear of prosecution, two forces that want the same thing. Control. Both of them get what they want from the current status quo, authority figures are able to silence critics and those they just don't like by either discovering or fabricating drug possession charges. Criminals get to operate in secrecy because witnesses fear a drug test if they go in to testify, or don't know where they'll get their next high if they enter the witness protection program.

I'm not going to suggest we end the war on drugs, what I'm going to say is that we're making the wrong tactical and strategic decisions against the war on drugs. You must win hearts and minds to win a war, and those hearts and minds are the addicts, the users, the friends and families of the users, the schools, churches, any place where drug users could find the companionship and meaning that their lives lack. To make ground in the war on drugs, you must reduce the number of addicts and users. It isn't easy, but is the true way to win.

Those charged with enforcement don't want to do this, because saving addicts isn't something you do with assault rifles and private armies. Those who traffick in drugs want as many customers as they can get, they want weak people who have nowhere else to go, no support system, no clean and sober friends.

There is a part of the solution that each and every one of us can take part in. Get involved in outreach programs, support efforts to get addicts and even dealers to go straight and get out of drug trafficking. Stand up against fascism, stand up against attacks on our privacy and liberty, stand up against seeing more and more people going to jail – all of these things ultimately do nothing but help crime. Support prison reforms to fight corruption and gangs.

The prison system is the back-bone and nervous system of organized crime in the United States, it is where criminals meet and learn how to become better, more violent criminals. It is how they become organized to protect themselves from authority and citizen action. Prison is where those who don't want their ass owned by a criminal syndicate, learn that their ass is going to be owned by someone either way, and find that they have a decision to make.

We sequester prisoners away from society, thinking to remove their influence from society and vice versa, to allow the system to reform them and turn them into proper citizens. You don't need to be a genius to realize this isn't how it works anymore. Prisoners are sequestered away from normal society and are therefore inducted into a society that is 100% criminal. They learn how to live in that society, or they become failures and take the consequences, be that death, rape, or simply isolation and madness. Those who function well in prison society find they have a family that accepts them on the outside, a criminal family, and that becomes their new life whether they like it or not. There we have the foundation of a gang.

This way of running a prison is the worst possible way for everyone involved. We must find a way to create a place where criminals can truly be reformed, but we must understand that not every criminal is the same. We must split up different kinds of criminal minds even more than is being done now.

Firstly, lifers and regular prisoners should never be in the same place. We might think that placing a guy who's doing 20 for manslaughter next to a guy who's doing 300 years for slaughtering nuns has a purpose, that the lesser criminal will see where he could end up and get his life straight, but no-- he is living the same life as the crazed serial killer, he sees that if he'd carved a bloody swathe through a churchbus he'd be in the exact same circumstances he finds himself in now. As a moral lesson, there is nothing else to call this but retarded, insane, twisted and disfunctional. It obliterates moral relativity and absolutism in one blow.

Anyone that should be in prison for the rest of their life, is someone that society has given up on. There is only one reason that I, very fervently, advise against the death penalty, and that is the fact we cannot be 100-percent certain that every person who is found guilty of a crime is in fact guilty, or that the circumstances surrounding the crime are the same as that described in court. In some cases we do know, I don't know why Charles Manson was kept alive in jail instead of being summarily shot, maybe we were worried he'd become messiah of crazy-town if we ended his life. I don't know, all I know is that judges and juries are human and therefore faulty.

So the first iron-clad rule of punishment in a just society: it must be humane, because we can never be 100% certain that a person truly deserves to be punished. They could be 100% innocent, we don't know, only a higher power could know.

This must be tempered with realism. Letting criminals freely converse and socialize clearly isn't working, for the reasons cited above. Privacy is the first thing that has to go, there is no way around it. Privacy allows a kingpin to control a drug empire from the safety of a prison. Who watches the watchers? Anyone that wants to.

And herein I feel I've deviated horribly from my goal of crafting a roadmap to a better world, because some feel their privacy, their secrets, are infinitely precious. I feel that secrets are shackles that prevent us from living fully, where others believe that secrets allow them to do what they must. I think deceit is the worst thing that most people do, whereas others find lies harmless in and of themselves.

So, I must come to admit I don't know the solution, because even my mythical concept of the 'average' logical mind could find grave fault in my suggestion that we eliminate all semblance of privacy in prison. There's no such thing as common sense, and the schism on truth vs privacy is one example where even in my altered (self-important) state I have to admit I don't know what's best for everyone.