When the British decided to use Opium as a stealth weapon to coerce China into making obscene trade concessions, their simple strategy was to distribute free Indian Opium and addict a vulnerable Chinese population that was ripe and ready. The British knew that by addicting the population with virtually free opium they could manipulate the entire society and dictate one-sided trade terms to the country’s leaders and merchant classes.

This strategy worked beautifully because it targeted tens of millions of Chinese people who had no hope, no work, no health, no energy, no future, no home, and no reason to live. Opium made all that misery go away, and even though the misery only went away inside the Opium smoker’s mind, and the world outside was still as mean and harsh as before, with a bit of Opium smoke that painful world could still be banished at least for a few blessed hours.

It didn’t matter to the Opium smoker that he had to lay his body down in filth, that he had no food, that he had no family or community, and that he was surely dying. It didn’t matter that there was no hope. Opium replaced all that emptiness with a dream world that was pleasant and desirable. It was as good as having hope, at least while it lasted.

That was the fate of tens of millions of people subjected to the first “Opioid Epidemic” in history, which was actually not a disease but a strategic weapon wielded by one of the most evil empires the world has known. Today this same hopelessness is the fate of millions of Americans, and the forces that degraded the lives of generations of Chinese are daily reality for millions of Americans.

If this hopelessness were not a fact of life for tens of millions of Americans we would not have an “Opioid Epidemic.” Talking heads want to place the blame for the Opioid Epidemic on doctors who over-prescribe, on predatory drug manufacturers, on criminal drug cartels – everywhere but where the real cause lies. Americans are addicted to Opioids by the tens of millions because life in America is hopeless for so many.

The “Opioid Epidemic” is tragically simple – it is millions of Americans expressing in their behavior what is rapidly becoming a very widespread, perhaps a majority conviction that life is simply not worth living in this country anymore.

The reasons why life is so horrible that people no longer care are not hard to find; what is hard to find is any discussion of how to address the Opioid Epidemic by somehow giving people a reason to want to live. The reason that is so hard is because it is impossible to “give” people a reason to want to live – they have to find it themselves, and if it is nowhere to be found, then it is game over.

We can all see why life is hopeless for so many people in America today.

Millions are “homeless”. The banks have tossed literally millions of families under the highway bridges. Many millions more who technically have a home are trapped in living conditions that can scarcely be called home. Then, at the end of our lives, the “homes” that we are condemned to would fit right into a Charles Dickens novel. Quite simply, there are very few people who have anything that could be called a home in the so-called “American Homeland”.

Tens of millions have only toxic “choices” for food, water, and living conditions. Much of what we eat does not nourish us, but makes us gradually, chronically sick instead. From the beginning of their lives to the end, people are never adequately nourished. This is a deliberate, industry-wide conspiracy fully abetted by government agencies and politicians. Healthy, energetic people with their full mental faculties are dangerous if you are running a vast conspiracy to exploit those same people. When they are chronically sick for unidentifiable reasons they are easy to manipulate.

Education is no longer a path to a better life. Schools are a sham – they don’t even do a good job of indoctrinating kids, much less teaching them to think. Many young people’s ability to spend a day in school learning anything of value, even if it were available, is compromised by widespread malnourishment, psychologically trauma, low self-esteem, mental deficiencies, sexual exploitation, and inability to form and hold even simple thoughts in their deliberately scrambled brains. Those young people who somehow grow up relatively unscathed and who buy into the idea of progress through education are, at the end, cruelly victimized. Many young people see the scam early, and realize that school is leading nowhere for them, and they drop out. The streets are waiting for them. So are the “movements”.

There is no “care” in health care, nor any health either. Tens of millions of Americans are so chronically sick that they can barely make it through the day, and when they do get to see a doctor they are “treated” in ways that make them sicker, increases their dependence on “medicines”, and makes their life even more unbearable. “Health Care” is run almost like a Nazi concentration camp – squeeze the victims for everything they have, experiment on them, prevent them from escaping until you have “done everything you can”, then simply replace them with another from the endless line of already prepped victims.

Wealth can be acquired only by cheating, stealing, betraying, lying and murdering – there are virtually no good honorable people with wealth. The idea of saving for the future is a complete con. Governments at all levels run the lottery scam knowing that people will spend their money on tickets because “winning” is the only way they will ever be anything but poor. Selling a poor person a lottery ticket is morally equivalent to addicting them to opioids.

Technology is only inventing new versions of old ways of separating people from what little they have. Technology is not making life better – it is sucking up what little money people have by giving them gadgets that distract them from the realization that they are living a hopeless life. How many people living in absolute squalor have a big-screen TV that is used exclusively to sell them stories and products that sustain the illusion that they too can partake in a world of glamour and comfort?

Almost all of us have lost any spiritual faith we once had, and millions have sink into delusional thinking about omnipotent beings that watch over them and offer them the comfort that faith once gave them. As millions seek these delusional saviors, human vampires in thousand dollar suits with testosterone voices and coiffed white hair appear promising that they have special access to the powers of the gods and that they will share in return for money (it is always money) and that will convey that power to their suffering “flocks”.

People are blind, steaming angry, and they are taking it out on those nearest to them – their spouses and children, people who look different, people who they are propagandized into hating, but never on the evil ones who profit from their misery. The rise of the neo-Nazi movement stems directly from this pool of anger. Everybody in these “movements” is hating and attacking anyone less vulnerable than themselves, and to justify their behavior they see themselves as being constantly attacked by those more powerful.

People go passively to their graves every day, cursing impotently. The survivors mutter about the dead now being in a “better place”. I have heard many say that they would welcome an earth-destroying asteroid, or global nuclear war, and I believe them.

Professions that were once honorable are eviscerated and corrupted. Doctors, police, teachers – people instinctively know that these professions are no longer worthy of respect.

America the Beautiful is poisoned and dying. People actually joke about the “Rust Belt”. In fact, there is no such single, definable place. Everything, everywhere is rusting and falling apart. America is a rust belt.

It’s conventional to end a diatribe like this with a “But……” statement of how things might be changed, get better, become more hopeful. I can’t do that. I just don’t see it. I think we are at the end of the dream. The “cause” of the opioid epidemic, the hateful racism, the rampant corruption, the pathetic sexual grasping, and the routine, legalized criminal exploitation is that millions of people now, finally, realize that there is no longer any reason to dream of better days.

For tens of millions of Americans, without hope, the Opium cloud is the only place of comfort.