The HIV/AIDS Crisis in the gay community in the 1980’s: trauma and resilience.

The HIV/AIDS Crisis in the gay community in the 1980’s: trauma and resilience.   

Overview:

      

     This approach to societal crisis and the process of resilience is holistic and, as such, in line with the sociological imagination as described by C. Wright Mills. The previous normative approach to social problems focused almost exclusively on the individual, what Mills called “troubles” as opposed to a focus on society, what Mills called “problems.” The holistic analysis of social problems, the ability of society to recover from trauma, involves a view of the problem both in terms of it’s historical origins, its institutional and, I might add, its philosophical and spiritual components, and how these various factors intersect and come together in a society recovering from trauma.

     Such an analysis requires an examination of the overall capital of the select society in crisis including human, social, natural, physical and financial capital. This is a focus on physical and social capital while noting that these two factors are no more or less important than the other factors. Michael Ungar, author of Community resilience for youth and families: Facilitative physical and social capital in context of adversity

 notes that: most individuals, and he emphasizes the word most, are only as successful as their communities as a whole and that this success depends on the resources a community has. Once this thesis is accepted, it is the job of the social scientist to examine the nature of those institutions in the unique setting of the society to be examined and a means of developing uniquely tailored solutions.

    In his book The Power Elite, published 1956, C. Wright Mills examined the history and the nature of an intertwining political, economic, and cultural elite in America and its influence on the thinking and, as such, on the activities of the rest of us. He noted that power, and the exclusivity and insularity of those who hold power, can often contribute to a corrupt and deviant outcome, one that might not be in the best interest of a select society and, as such, in the best interest of the individuals in that society. The influence, pro as well as con, that is held by the power elite often becomes more visible during a situation of trauma and may become manifest in the approach toward recovery.

Problem:

     To illustrate this thesis, and to examine the insidious influence, in this case, of the power elite, I will examine the HIV/AIDS crisis and its effect on the male homosexual community in the United States in the 1980’s. When the disease of HIV/AIDS first entered public awareness in the early 1980’s, it was revealed to be a terrible contagion that led to extreme suffering and certain rapid and painful death for those who were unfortunate enough to contracted it. Its victims were mostly gay men but also included drug addicts and hemophiliacs. The causes of HIV/AIDS were well known and well publicized by federal health authorities at the time and they included certain sexual practices and the exchange of needles. Yet the disease continued to spread, and it continued to impose a terrible death toll on the gay community in particular. The health crisis continued into the early 1990’s when it was abated by a combination of medicines and health remedies that allowed those who were infected with HIV/AIDS the chance to live a relatively healthy life.

     Yet, in those critical years, the power elite in the gay community did little or nothing to alleviate the problem. Instead, they focused on hurling accusations of homophobia at the Reagan Administration while raising huge sums of money for themselves and their special interest groups. If they had treated HIV/AIDS like any other infectious disease, instead of turning the problem into a political football, they might have saved thousands of lives. If they had actually cared about reducing HIV/AIDS they would have advocated restraint from certain sexual practices common to gay men at the time, practices known to spread the disease, and other similar measures such as shutting down gay bath houses that were known incubators, better screening and reporting, advovating monogamy, and other modalities, at least until a cure was found.

     Instead, the gay establishment circled the wagons around the sexual revolution which they pushed, full steam ahead, without consideration to the human cost. This issue came up for me when I was campaigning for Congress in 2004 against Rep. Barney Frank, a prominent gay leader during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980’s. A reporter contacted me to respond to his false accusation against me, that I had something against gay men and women. In this regard, Frank was depending on the fallacy of stereotyping which operated under the assumption that any conservative, de-facto, must therefore, simply by being a conservative and, as such, not on the left, must have something against gay people. I responded to this lie by noting that Frank was in no position to hurl such an ugly accusation since, as a self-described gay leader himself, he could have cholsen to excercize leadership in terms of saving the lives of his fellow gay men in the 1980’s. He could have utilized that leadership position to advocate proper policies for the community and practices for gay men in the face of a health epidemic. Yet he said nothing. Instead he placed the interests of the sexual revolution over the lives of his fellow group members.

     Frank responded to my criticism by telling the reporter not to pay attention since I was “crazy.”

Conclusion:

     The gay community was in a position to “bounce back” from this terrible crisis, they had the social capital, the infrastructure, the resources, the institutions to do so but their leadership chose another path and this cost a lot of suffering and lives. HIV/AIDS is a disease and, as such, it deserved to be treated like any other disease. This meant education, efforts at containment and isolation, identification and proper communication, and other measures that might have been disruptive to the usual lifestyle of the community but which were essential toward rescue, recovery, and a view toward possible and eventual return to the status quo ante.

Narco-Terrorism: the threat to Mexico and the United States. What should be done?

An Overview

          On November 4, 2019, nine members of the LeBaron family, women and children, American citizens living in Mexico, were gunned down by Narco-Terrorists in northern Mexico. The Mexican government suggested that the family was slaughtered due to a case in minstaken identity but surviving family members and residents of their American Mormon community, a community that began to  settle in northern Mexico starting in the late 19^th century, claim that the family members were cought in the crossfire of an increasingly violent turf war between rival gangs. The family contends that one of the gangs wrongfully believed that the family members who were murdered were working for the rival gang. (1.)

              Drug cartels have reached a tipping point in terms of their influence in Mexico where their ill-gotten wealth buys politicians, law enforcement, and other people of influence in Mexican society. The drug trade in Mexico is now so lucrative that the gangs who monopolize it, operating as de-facto militias, are now building networks that reach deep into the United States where they derive immense profits by creating drug-addicts and by ruining lives, particularly in minority communities. (2.) The underground economy that has developed as a result, operating in the vicinity of an estimated $1OO billion range, money that is generated by drug deals and often existing in the form of small denominational cash that is often laced with minuscule traces of cocaine, is rapidly becoming a world-wide problem. The majority of this trade, and the brunt of its ill social effects, is experienced on the streets of America's major cities. (3.)

          The unprecedented growth in an underground economy that operates outside the law has infiltrated law enforcement in Mexico which serves as its base of operation. With such sums of money involved, it is reasonable to assume that the corruption that has become rampant in Mexico could and probably already has seeped into the United States as our politicians, law enforcement institutions, and other spheres of influence could be compromised, bought and paid for in the same way. The scissor effect is at play as the illicit and off the books drug money corrupts the corridors of power, the boardrooms, the gang rivalries on the street, and the negative social byproducts of the drug trade is leading to an increase in violence and lawlessness to the degree that it threatens American cities.

          The Mexican cartels, emanating out of Mexico, and with a growing interconnected constellation of alliances and sub-groups in Latin America and other continents, are more lethal, and are a more immediate danger to the American political and social system that were more conventional organized crime families of previous decades. This is due to the amount of money involved and the use of modern means of communication and technologies. The major Mexican cartels operating in the United States include the Sinaloa cartel, the Jalisco New Generation cartel, the Juarez cartel, the Gulf cartel, Los Zetas cartel, and the Beltran Leyva Organization. (4.) The drug gangs, as part of standard operating procedure, partner with American gangs, particularly the MS-13, to sell drugs to consumers. These interactions help the cartels expand their influence, the DEA reports, and "insulates Mexican TCOs from direct ties to street-level drug seizures and arrests made by US law enforcement." (5.)

          It is reasonable to assume, under the circumstances, that the type of violence that was visited on the innocent LeBaron family in Mexico, a level of violence that was more ruthless and merciless than that which was generally visited upon innocent bystanders in the past by previous organized crime syndicates, will make its way into the United States if the situation is left unchecked and is therefore allowed to metastasize. The LeBaron slaughter was the tip of the iceberg, the most publicized in a growing trend that is victimizing American citizens. This attack should be understood as an international incident of terrorism against American citizens in a foreign land. This is a violation of international norms of law and custom and, as such, the victim nation, the United States, has a legal if not a moral right to take direct and assertive action in defense of the lives and safety of its own citizens.

Recomendations

          The Mexican drug gangs, which serve as the tip of the spear for the Mexican drug cartels and which serve as the main point of distribution for the illegal drugs in the United States, and the cartels themselves, should be declared enemy combatants and, as such, they should be legally placed in the same category as al-Queada and ISIS. (6.) Once this is done, the Justice Department, working with local law enforcement and the National Guard, should begin the painful and difficult process of carefully and methodically conducting the dangerous mission of rounding up the gang members and sending them to a prearranged high security prison camp similar to that which exists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The detainees should then be afforded military justice and due process in a manner that is similar to that of the detainees of Gitmo. In other words, they should be detained as, essentially, prisoners of war.

          The United States military must offer assistance to the Mexican government in the arrest and detention of the Mexican cartel members inside Mexico and this could involve direct military intervention by American special forces. Mexico has reached the point where it is in need of outside intervention as the cartels have already compromised the Mexican government and society to such a high degree that Mexico has moved too far in the direction of becoming a failed lawless state. Such an extreme measure, which is entirely legal for the United States as the murder of American citizens on Mexican soil is an act of war according to international law and custom, and in accord with the Bush Doctrine which was passed by Congress after the terrorist assault on 9/11, is probably the only way, in the final analysis, that law and order could be restored in Mexico.

          The United States must secure the US/Mexico border. This might involve building the wall advocated by President Trump or it might involve a partial wall or no wall at all. Either way, the border must be secured, the US/Canadian border should be improved, and all points of entry should be enhanced. By this means, law and order will be protected and preserved, the drug trade would be substantially reduced, crime rates would stabilize, and the needless future suffering and the deaths of untold numbers of Americans would be avoided.

          Once the border is secured, once the Mexican government has assumed  control of its own land, and once the narco-terrorists have been defeated and detained both in Mexico and in the United States, the United States government should find itself in a position to take upon itself two bold measures toward normalization and justice. Those two measures should be a blanket amnesty for all qualified DACA members who undergo a naturalization process and a blanket presidential pardon for any American citizen who is incarcerated for a minor drug offence and who is otherwise qualified for such a pardon.

1. How Mexico’s cartel wars shattered American Mormon’s wary peace, The Washington Post, Kevin Sieff, Nov. 7, 2019

2. The Drug Money Maze, Andelman, David A. Foreign Affairs. Jul/Aug 94, Vol. 73 Issue 4, p94-108. 15p.

3. Ibid.

4. These Maps show how Mexican cartels dominate the US drug market, Woody, Christopher, Business Insider, Dec. 16, 2016.

5. Ibid

6. Trump Says U.S. Will Designate Drug Cartels in Mexico as Terrorist Groups, New York Times, Liam Stack, Kit Semple, Nov. 26, 2019