William Finnegan has a chilling piece in the July 2nd New Yorker about the drug-related violence eroding civil society in Mexico. This is the kind of climate that defies straightforward attempts at explanation, driving even journalists into the arms of a sort of magical realism: "In Mexico, it is often impossible to know who is behind something -- a massacre, a candidacy, an assassination, the capture of a crime boss, a 'discovery' of high-level corruption. Either the truth is too fluid and complex to define or it remains opaque to anyone not directly involved in manipulating events."

We are no strangers here, in the US, to the endless cycle of scandal and cover up, to political theater, sounds bites, and spin, and to the way that concentrated capital can hobble democratic institutions. But rarely do we find that the truth of a particular political event is "too fluid and complex to define." Either he is sleeping with her or he isn't. Either he took the money or he didn't. Either she leaked the story or she didn't. At bottom, something happened and that something can be found out and narrated, front to back.

What is happening in Mexico is different. What is happening in Mexico is not really for me to explain, since I barely understand it myself. People are disappearing, headless bodies are being dumped in public squares, some or most or maybe all government officials are on the cartel payrolls.

But this is our story, too, isn't it? What's happening in Mexico is not just happening in or to Mexico, and it is not just happening. It is not a storm rolling in but an effect being produced like night falling in a small town on a Hollywood soundstage.

Is there any way to understand this except as the direct consequence of the US drug policy that has radically increased the value of controlled substances without so much as denting demand? If drugs were legal then the cartels would be multi-national corporations and Mexico would have a new business class and the violence would finally subside. Meanwhile, all those bodies are piling up on the altar of our next fix.

Happy Independence Day.