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This website is full of depressing stuff written in blog or essay form, so here's a little bit of something else: An excellent rap song and video about really depressing stuff! If you've never seen it, don't miss Killer Mike's 'Reagan', embedded above. The lyrics touch on the CIA/Contra cocaine scandal, the drug war's racist attacks on black communities, mass incarceration and mandatory minimums, the surveillance state, and endless war; check out a snippet below. Perhaps after listening to this song, look up Michael Glennon's book "National Security and Double Government". Different mediums, different delivery, different style—similar message.

[Ronald Reagan:]
Our government has a firm policy not to capitulate to terrorist demands. That no-concessions policy remains in force, despite the wildly speculative and false stories about arms for hostages and alleged ransom payments, we did not, repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we

[Killer Mike:]
The ballot or the bullet, some freedom or some bullshit
Will we ever do it big, or keep just settling for little shit
We brag on having bread, but none of us are bakers
We all talk having greens, but none of us own acres
If none of us on acres, and none of us grow wheat
Then who will feed our people when our people need to eat
So it seems our people starve from lack of understanding
Cause all we seem to give them is some balling and some dancing
And some talking about our car and imaginary mansions
We should be indicted for bullshit we inciting
Hella children deaf and pretending it's exciting
We are advertisements for agony and pain
We exploit the youth, we tell them to join a gang
We tell them dope stories, introduce them to the game
Just like Oliver North introduced us to cocaine
In the 80s when the bricks came on military planes

[Ronald Reagan:]
A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not

[Killer Mike:]
The end of the Reagan Era, I'm like number twelver
Old enough to understand the shit'll change forever
They declared the war on drugs like a war on terror
But it really did was let the police terrorize whoever
But mostly black boys, but they would call us "niggers"
And lay us on our belly, while they fingers on they triggers
They boots was on our head, they dogs was on our crotches
And they would beat us up if we had diamonds on our watches
And they would take our drugs and money, as they pick our pockets
I guess that that's the privilege of policing for some profit
But thanks to Reaganomics, prisons turned to profits
Cause free labor is the cornerstone of US economics
Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
You think I am bullshitting, then read the 13th Amendment
Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
That's why they giving drug offenders time in double digits…