The slams at the US are idiotic. “Hell, the government in the US doesn’t want to give its people basic access to doctors.” You have the audacity to say this when the emergency rooms at our hospitals are awash with Spanish speakers (and others) who are always treated whether they can pay or not? I took a neice (having a miscarriage) to a Social Security hospital there in Mexico one night to find the waiting room jammed and in bedlam — because someone had taken the irate admitting nurse’s ink pen. Her (OLD manual) typewriter ribbon had worn completely out, so she had started writing admissions — until her pen disappeared, so she was adamantly refusing to admit ANY of the frantic people in the emergency room. My wife was livid (and she is not a shy violet), but her attacks were going nowhere. Then a well-dressed man in a leather jacket carrying an obviously ill child elbowed his way to the counter beside us to demand what the hold-up was. The nurse heatedly told him tha NO ONE was going to be admitted until her ink pen was returned. At this he became even more upset and he pointedly brushed the front of his jacket to one side to reveal a huge pistol, saying his son would be admitted NOW! Amazingly, an ink pen suddenly appeared and admissions began. (His son was first; my neice second.) I have no idea if the man was “law enforcement”, narco, or “other”. I only know he was seen as a saviour by the people trying to get into the emergency room. (My wife then refused to allow my neice to be placed on the blood-stained sheets on the bed in the examining room. She demanded clean sheets, finally to be taken to the linen closet where she dug through several stacks of sheets until she finally found one that appeared halfway clean.) This was in a major capital city in Mexico, not in some pueblo. (One the other hand, the private hospital Angeles del Carmen in Guadalajara is one of the very best hospitals I have seen anywhere in the world.)

You make a total jerk of yourself when you write “‘Payments’ are called ‘pensiones’ in Spanish, and that is exactly what these records for ‘caidos’ were: pensions paid out to relatives of fallen narco soldiers, just like what your government does for its young heroes suckered into serving in the military.)” At this point you lose all legitimacy.

Enrique Camarena Salazar was one of those heroes “suckered” into serving in our military — where his older brother died. However, Kiki had seen the devastation on his barrios caused by drugs, so he joined DEA to combat that evil — only to be betrayed by “law enforcement” in Mexico, kidnapped, tortured, and killed.

Your article was otherwise excellent but for such juvenile inanities. I hurt for the good people of Mexico, especially for the clean cops, military men, judges, and politicians who don’t know whom they can trust even among their superiors and colleagues. Even worse, they are well aware that their families are at as much risk as they are. They truly are heroes. And I know how traumatizing life is for ordinary Mexicans. Several of my wife’s relatives (legitimate business people) have been kidnapped for ransom, they have had to defend property from narcos who wanted it, they have been brutalized and victimized by corrupt cops, and they live lives of fearful uncertainty. I have been shushed for comments I have made, being warned that I never know who might overhear, and NO ONE ever drives alone. Anywhere. I have had my family held at gunpoint at an apparently legitimate military roadblock on a “libre” because my wife was taking a picture of an old campesino approaching that same roadblock leading a burro loaded down with wood. Apparently, the soldiers thought she was taking pictures of them, so they confiscated the film. I have been threatened by a corrupt customs agent (who wanted to charge us import tarrifs several time the retail value of our goods); I appealed to his superior who told him we were fine and to let us go — which he did, but only after whispering to me that he should “put a bullet in your head” and promising me that he wouldn’t forget me.

You don’t even touch on Mexico’s ban on the death penalty. Drug dealers, gun runners, money launderers, and corrupt officials should be executed. Whoever and whereever they are. Period.

As an orthopedic sidenote: sleeping with your head propped-up with a high powered rifle CAN and WILL cause SERIOUS neckpain.

oh indeed I am aware of Godwin’s law.

but then again i’m not exactly arguing or using it to counter a prevailing point.

I just wanted to explain (badly) however that the universe in abstract, physical from the micro and to the macro seems to be made of never ending change. that nothing, even the universe itself, seems consigned to stay the same for ever. That it, before it all ends, seems destined for never ending change. Transformation of one system into another.

Therefore built into this are the mechanisms to which instigate change. Perhaps change is the only consistency to inconsistent universe

In that lead pic, izzat a Remington 870 … Benelli SuperNova 12Ga with an 18″ barrel … a Mossberg 590 with the Front tritium nightsight, SpeedFeed 4-s buttstock,
Ergo 3 rail forend, Surefire G3 w/ z49 tail and z32 head, VikingTactics offset flashlight mount, Magpul covers, and KAC vertical grip … or just a goddam Daisy Red Ryder? Call me. We’ll do lunch.

who could deny that fanatical islam if possible would result in the sort of a perfect society (in their context of war, death, and enslavement).

The same for democracy, communism, and many other systems.

Yet all of those systems begin to fail when the purity of their concept is corrupted, usually by those who purport to be their biggest proponents. Yet it vulnerability that all systems that have that is absolutely required.

Unless the system can be overwhelm by force of arms there must be a mechanism that will lead ot their downfall. Otherwise these systems would operate in perpetuity and what an awful thought, an incorruptible system.

Imagine if Nazism had been able to maintain their forces and was incorruptible?

Corruption is as critical as the air we breath. The thing about these mexican drug gangs is that weakest point is their purity of essence (whatever that maybe). The moment its players start corrupt that purity (whilst saying otherwise) is the day their system will collapse.

In the book, you write that pirates had set up their own early versions of constitutional democracy, complete with separation of powers, decades before the American Revolution. Was that only possible because they were outlaws, operating entirely outside the control of any government?
Answer

That’s right. The pirates of the 18th century set up quite a thoroughgoing system of democracy. The reason that the criminality is driving these structures is because they can’t rely on the state to provide those structures for them. So pirates, more than anyone else, needed to figure out some system of law and order to make it possible for them to remain together long enough to be successful at stealing.
Question

So did these participatory, democratic systems give merchant sailors an incentive to join pirate crews, because it meant they were freer among pirates than on their own ships?
Answer

The sailors had more freedom and better pay as pirates than as merchantmen. But perhaps the most important thing was freedom from the arbitrariness of captains and the malicious abuses of power that merchant captains were known to inflict on their crews. In a pirate democracy, a crew could, and routinely did, depose their captain if he was abusing his power or was incompetent.
Question

You write that pirates weren’t necessarily the bloodthirsty fiends we imagine them to have been. How does the invisible hook explain their behavior?
Answer

The basic idea is, once we recognize pirates as economic actors, businessmen really, it becomes clear as to why they wouldn’t want to brutalize everyone they overtook. In order to encourage merchantmen to surrender, they needed to communicate the idea that, if you surrender to us, you’ll be treated well. That’s the incentive pirates give for sailors to surrender peacefully. If they wantonly abused their prisoners, as they’re often portrayed as having done, that would have actually undermined the incentive of merchant crews to surrender, which would have caused pirates to incur greater costs. They would have had to battle it out more often, because the merchants would have expected to be tortured indiscriminately if they were captured.

Pirate economics 101