One thing every citizen of the US should do, at least once,
is attend a naturalization ceremony for new citizens. As part of that event, those seeking
citizenship need to take an oath of allegiance.
By taking the oath, the person makes a set of promises and those
promises have been part of the ceremony since the 1700s. The promises are duties that include:
·
Support
and defend the constitution of the United States and its laws; particularly
those laws formulated to protect the nation from its enemies;
·
Forego
any allegiance to other nations or sovereigns;
·
Renounce
any hereditary – such as those of nobility – titles;
·
And
submit to military and civilian service when the government calls for such service.
This oath is taken from a person’s volition – he/she chooses
to take it; no coercion involved.
This step in
becoming a citizen reflects a federal bias.
To remind the reader, previous postings have outlined the central
concept of that construct; a federal union is one in which a group of people
come together and inviolably promise to do something. At times, this might have called for a
promise to be witnessed by God and, if so, the promise is a covenant. Or it might not have, in which case the
promise is a compact. The word federal
is derived from the Latin word, foedus, which means covenant.[1]
Some might
argue that this oath should not be limited to immigrants who are seeking citizenship
but one in which natural born citizen be called upon to take. As it is, just being born within the borders
of the nation ascribes to a person the status of citizen. Of course, such a person, if he/she does not
want to be part of the union compact, can renounce his/her citizenry. That person can seek citizenship in another
country. The assumption here – both
culturally and legally – is that if a citizen resides here, he/she voluntarily
agrees to that promise or oath.
But beyond the
legality, one can, this writer believes, endow that oath with a spirit. The promise is a minimum. One can reasonably read into that promise a
commitment for a citizen to express allegiance in a pro-active fashion, not
because he/she is forced, but because he/she loves that union.
To describe this spirit, in an earlier
posting, this blog shared an extended quote by the political writer, Alexi de
Tocqueville. To remind the reader, here
is a short excerpt of that more extensive quote describing America in the 1830s:
…
[T]he political activity which pervades the United States must be seen in order to be understood … Everything is in motion around you; here, the people of one
quarter of a town are met to decide upon the building of a church; there, the
election of a representative is going on; a little further, the delegates of a
district are traveling in a hurry to the town in order to consult upon some
local improvements; or in another place the labourers of a village quit their
ploughs to deliberate upon the project of a road or a public school … Societies
are formed which regard drunkenness as the principal cause of the evils under
which the State labours, and which solemnly bind themselves to give a constant
example of temperance … [2]
This, according to Tocqueville, represented common scenes of
those years.
America has
changed. One would be hard pressed to
describe this nation in this fashion today.
This blog has offered ample evidence of the general reluctance Americans
have in becoming politically engaged.
Yet structurally, Americans are still a federalist union. This blog is dedicated toward informing and
encouraging a more general understanding and commitment to a federal
disposition among students and citizens, in general. Is there any evidence indicating a move
toward a more involved citizenry?
This blog has
also provided a general description – as a topic for students to investigate –
of the opioid crisis. To use a more
concrete issue to describe what is happening in terms of citizen involvement,
this crisis is helpful. In that light,
this posting will now describe a more current instance of how this issue of
non-involvement has played a role in this crisis.
One aspect of this crisis is the role
Mexican heroin dealers have played. This
blog has been reluctant to report on this aspect due to a generally perceived
prejudice some Americans have voiced against Mexican immigrants. But to be complete, this blog should report
on the role a small percentage of Mexicans have filled.
As it turns
out, this drug trade originates from a small town, Xalisco, Nayarit, in Mexico. The town’s name is pronounced as another
Mexican city, Jalisco, but is spelled with an “X.” Near that town, the opium poppy plant grew
extensively. The plant was harvested,
and its milky fluid was extracted and cooked into a substance resembling a
black tar. This, in turn, was molded
into small round shapes – marble type balls – and were smuggled into the
US. In the US, Xalisco dealers set up,
across the nation, effective and extensive distribution systems using non-descript
cars and an army of drivers with cell phones.
One aspect of
the distribution was its actual delivery service. All a user or addict had to do was make a
call and a driver showed up with the requested drug. These deliveries were cheap and convenient. They were particularly attractive to people –
many of them young – who were hooked on pain pills, such as OxyContin, that
were usually more expensive and harder to get.
This blog, in a previous posting, described this “medical” aspect of the
opioid crisis.[3] The point here is the victims were hooked on
pills and shifted to heroin via these Xalisco distributors.
While the
epidemic has affected most regions of the country, one state has been particularly
hit; that was/is Ohio. One town in Ohio,
Portsmouth, is highlighted by the journalist, Sam Quinones, in his book, Dreamland.[4] He begins the book by describing a
recreational area in Portsmouth that apparently was the center of the town back
in the sixties. It had a large pool and
adjacent recreation area, called Dreamland, where the town “hung out” during
the warmer days of the year.
In those years, the town was
relatively doing well with a strong manufacturing base. But as with many manufacturing towns since
those earlier days, Portsmouth lost those factories to mostly foreign
competitors. The results of such a
development was obviously devastating.
But that is only the backdrop to the tragedy. Then, as this blog has described, the selling
of opioid in the form of pain pills took hold.
As the earlier cited posting describes, many otherwise average Americans
became victims to the opioid epidemic:
They
– the Mexicans – devised effective, on-demand distribution arrangements in
numerous communities around the US.
Their customers are not inner-city junkies, as the heroin trade of old
was and found in major urban centers, but among, in many cases, middle class
whites who have gotten themselves hooked on opioids.
Oftentimes,
these middle-class customers became addicted after they were exposed to some
chronic pain management protocol under the supervision of legitimate
doctors. A lot of this, in turn, was
based on an underestimation of the addictive quality of the drugs prescribed
and aggressive drug company strategies in marketing opiates. Once hooked, these people became desperate to
find cheaper and unlimited supplies of a substitute drug – heroin, a type of
opioid – to satisfy their cravings.[5]
But times move on and many aspects of the story have changed
since the early years of this century.
One, the
cartels of Mexico, earlier not interested in cheap drug sells, eventually moved
in and has disrupted the Xalisco system.
Also, the general reaction to opioids in the US is taking a toll on the
trade and there seems to be some improvement on meeting the crisis. In this, Portsmouth has gone through some
positive changes. These changes remind
this writer of the above cited Tocqueville quote describing an involved
citizenry.
Here is
another quote offered by Quinones:
Angie
Thuma, the veteran Walmart shoplifter [to pay for her addiction] … told me the
last time we spoke, “when I think about all the things I went through and I’m
still alive, it gives you courage to keep bettering yourself.”
That
seemed to be Portsmouth’s attitude. The
town still looked as scarred and beaten as an addict’s arm. Wild-eyed hookers strolled the East End
railroad tracks, and too many jobs paid minimum wage and led nowhere. Portsmouth still had hundreds of drug addicts
and dealers. But it also now had a confident,
muscular culture of recovery that competed with the culture of getting high – a
community slowly pitching itself.
Proof
to that was that addicts from all over Ohio were now migrating south to get clean
in Portsmouth. No place in Ohio had the
town’s recovery infrastructure.
On
my last trip to Portsmouth, I met a young woman from Johnstown, a rural town
northeast of Columbus that from her description sounded a lot like the 740 that
RWR rapped about. She had been buying
heroin from the Xalisco Boys in Columbus for a couple years. When she tried to quit, a driver who spoke
English called her for a week straight.
“But,
senorita, we have really good stuff. It just came in.”
Finally,
she threw away her phone. There wasn’t
much on it but dope contacts anyway. She
was twenty-three, alone with a ten-month-old son, and – seeking to get clean with
nowhere else to turn – she found refuge in Portsmouth.
“I
love it here. I’m really afraid to go
back,” she told me in the lilting drawl of rural Ohio, when we met at a party
for a woman celebrating her first year clean.
So
the battered old town had hung on. It
was, somehow, a beacon embracing shivering and hollow-eyed junkies, letting
them know that all was not lost. That at
the bottom of the rubble was a place just like them, kicked and buried but
surviving. A place that had, like them,
shredded and lost so much that was precious but was nurturing it again. Though they were adrift, they, too, could
begin to find their way back.
Back
to that place called Dreamland.[6]
Is there a silver-lining? Perhaps.
Maybe the bottom of a nightmare offers enough motivation to rekindle the
communal base of a spirited federal union.
Sadly, if so, what a price to pay.
Perhaps a more proactive civics program can help avoid such a price. Of course, neither the nightmare nor a proactive
educational program can make the total difference, but they can be exploited
toward helping.
[1] Daniel J. Elazar, “Federal Models of (Civil) Authority,” Journal of Church and State, 33,
(Spring, 1991): 231-254.
[3] See Robert Gutierrez, “And Then There Is Law-Abiding
Behavior, Part II,” Gravitas: A Voice
for Civics, May 21, 2019, accessed July 1, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2019/05/and-then-there-is-law-abiding-behavior_21.html
.
[4] Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic
(New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing,
2015).
[6] Ibid., 344-345.
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