“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War
There is a certain freedom that comes with not caring one iota about a career in activism or politics. A liberty known only to those who do not value self proclaimed internet fame and do not fear stepping on the toes of egomaniacs. Words soar free as a bird when you have no portfolio to worry about, no party agenda to further, and you are not being paid by any of the acronyms. You get to point out harsh realities without pulling punches, hoping your messages will reach willing eyes and maybe spark something on the inside.
So let’s get to it.
The caregivers in Michigan are doomed. For many reasons, not the least of which has to do directly with this month’s quote. After all, is this not a war on caregivers? Is this not the fight for caregiver rights? The thing is, wars, especially when vastly outnumbered and outgunned, are won with strategy, cunning, and unpredictability. As the recently defamed General Jim Mattis once said, “The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.”
So just how outnumbered are the caregivers? Check out this pie chart:
According to data provided by the Executive Director of MINormal in the October 2021 Rolling Paper there are 30,000 caregivers in Michigan attached to 72,000 patients. This amounts to a total voting population of 102,000 Michiganders. Meanwhile, Secretary of State data reveals that in the 2018 general election (the very same election that birthed the MRA and started this war) there were 4,341,340 voters. Which means caregivers and patients make up only about 2.3% of the voting population here in this state, and that’s using 2018 data. As crazy as this may sound, politicians answer to votes and money, not chants and handmade signs.
So if you do not have the bodies, well then, you better have bigger guns. Unfortunately, words can barely describe the extent to which the caregivers are completely and totally outgunned. How many caregivers can bleed tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, over the course of months and years while keeping a smile on their face, let alone food on their plates? The enemy does it while wearing fancy clothes and driving nice cars to expensive dinners where they are interviewed about the future of the industry. They deal in millions, plan for billions, and dream of trillions. Cut-throat market domination at all financial costs seem to be their battle plans, a rather Amazonian tactic. A near neverending supply of currency via investment schemes with which to buy competition, politicians, policy, public relations and regulatory changes until the end of time.
If your side does not have the numbers or guns, your strategy better be unmatched. But of course aside from rigging the mechanism from within the enemy is also speaking directly to the 97.7% of voting Michiganders who consist largely of non-cannabis people. Their tear jerking old lady imagery and safety rhetoric will capture the hearts and minds of millions of voters, who at worst still think cannabis is a dangerous drug and at best have no real experience with it, and who trust the corporations and propagandists explicitly (as evidenced by Covid). What do you suppose appeals more to non-marijuana voters? A call for safety testing for cancer patients? Or accusing people of selling brown weed and threats? With fists full of money, a for sale mainstream news media painting them in a positive light and caregivers as an angry mob they must be escorted away from, a larger pool of cancer patients with which to tug at heartstrings, and the will of the people at their backs, the enemy is gathering all they need to win this war and employing a very effective multi-pronged strategy.
What are the caregivers doing? Rallying at the Capitol and smoking pot. Calling bought politicians and trying to sway them with words provided on branded cards. Watching podcasts and participating in a boycott that the 97.7% will more than likely never even hear about. Using the same methods that brought us to this point and gathering around the same faces that have been standing on stages and behind web-cams the entire time leading up to this point. Faces who angrily call the enemy expletives and talk of slaps to the head while encouraging us to give money to blatantly ridiculous party politicians. Mouths that speak of compassion while spitting hate. Voices who call for the caregivers to point their fingers at the ‘black market’ and shout “Get them, not us!”
In what can best be described as anti-strategy ‘advocates’ at the September 15th caregiver rally in Lansing, on more than one occasion, expressed the idea that the government and police should “go after” (as in harass, fine, arrest, incarcerate, and in general ruin the lives of) the “bad actors” and the “black market” rather than the caregivers. To this notion Michigan pot growers, sellers, and smokers who gave LARA anywhere from forty to a few hundred bucks cheered in approval. Their brothers and sisters, who they stood shoulder to shoulder with in the war against weed, instantly forgot at the first sign of combat.
More than forgotten, this amounts to caregivers selling out their greatest ally. Despite what Steve Linder and the MINormal representatives and ‘advocates’ say, the people in the pre-existing non-medical market are not bad actors and no one should be siccing the government on anyone. They are Michigan marijuana growers and sellers, free people, and only ‘bad actors’ in the same sense we all were not fifteen years ago, simply because propagandists and politicians like to falsely associate marijuana with violent crime. This, and they have not cut the corrupt government a slice of their action, and have not given the corrupt government control over their operations. They alone outnumber the caregivers, many of them living and doing business in the very underprivileged cities social equity advocates claim to care about, and claim to seek reversal for the effects of the war on drugs in. By deflecting attacks away from the caregivers toward the street dealers? Double agent spin jockeys have led caregivers into turning on their own comrades, and a tiny plastic card has tricked the caregivers into supporting the very oppression they fight against.
It’s a win-win for the opposing force, a harsh reality no one wants to hear. Whether they get the caregivers out of the way, or get the caregivers to help them get the pre-existing market out of the way, the enemy gains ground. Individual and property rights, as well as free market principles, will retreat into obscurity for as long as the people hide them beneath a caregiver banner. A false flag from the onset designed to open the door to ‘full legalization’ and big money, with a heaping side of massive brand new totalitarian for sale government.
At the very least, growers and sellers of cannabis in the state of Michigan might want to think twice about advocating for the hammer to drop on the pre-existing non-medical market. A market to which they may soon find themselves returning, not if, but when the enemy wins this war.
