Calvin

“In his campaign for the presidency, Reagan mastered the "excision of the language of race from conservative public discourse"… For example, when Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign at the annual Neshoba County fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi - the town were three civil rights activists were murdered in 1964 - he assured the crowd "I believe and states rights," and promised to restore to states and local government the power that properly belonged to them. His critics promptly alleged that he was signaling a racial message to his audience, suggesting allegiance with those who resisted desegregation, but Reagan firmly denied it, forcing liberals into a position that would soon become familiar, arguing that something is racist but finding it impossible to prove in the absence of explicitly racist language. (48)”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Practically overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies soared. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI antidrug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million.73 Department of Defense antidrug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that same period, DEA antidrug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million, and FBI antidrug allocations grew from $38 to $181 million.74 By contrast, funding for agencies responsible for drug treatment, prevention, and education was dramatically reduced. The budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for example, was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984, and antidrug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.75”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“[The writer] doesn't want a new world which might be established immediately, because he knows it would never suit him. He wants an impossible world in which he is the uncrowned puppet ruler dominated by forces utterly beyond his control.”
― Henry Miller, Henry Miller on Writing

“The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain.”
― Henry Miller, Henry Miller on Writing