Ecuador

 A fascinating piece in the Post about how the global demand for cocaine has destabilized a once peaceful country, in this case Ecuador. 

What struck me is the basic tension between certain liberal/left positions on decriminalization and - at the extremes - police abolition and damage wrought in places like Ecuador when you stop trying to interdict drugs. As in Nicaragua, the president has responded with something akin to martial law and this has made both men very popular. I'll say again, too many people forget Thomas Hobbes' basic insight that the first responsibility of a state is security. The cosplay revolutionaries think that bringing the system down will free people and led to some sort of "better world" when inevitably it leads to predation of the peaceful by the violent and then a form of repressive police response.

Reading the story, it's very easy to become sympathetic to the notion that Ecuador needs a US Ranger battalion to go down there and exert extreme violence on people who are waging war on their own government. That's an obvious non-starter, but the lack of capacity of Mexican armed forces, for instance, is a huge impediment to stabilizing that country. Hopefully, the Ecuadorian military can regain control. 

But I also get the concerns of human rights' groups who fear the impact of militarizing police functions. It's just so frustrating seeing ostensibly intelligent people look at what's going on in Ecuador (or Mexico or Venezuela or Central America) and think that America needs less police and more legalized drugs. 

A similar dynamic is how legalized gambling in the US has led to increasing problems for many Americans. The Shohei Ohtani spectacle is a good example of how debilitating a gambling problem can be. Similarly, addicts are real. Addiction is a powerful cause of homelessness and poverty. 

When Portugal legalized almost all drugs, things went great for a while. Recently, things have gotten worse. Again, "this time will be different" is one of the great lies we tell ourselves. 

Drugs are bad. Gambling is bad. Sure, in small doses I guess it's OK, but for many people there is no such thing as a small dose. And gangs are REALLY bad and an inevitable byproduct of this shit.

But right now there are people who simultaneously think that Biden building a port in Gaza to alleviate famine is "imperialism" but reducing drug enforcement which is destabilizing Ecuador is enlightened.