I
have one additional thought around drugs and this country’s draconian approach
to drug use. There is a puritanical, Calvinist heritage that runs strong and
deep through America’s roots. This strain of Christianity equates pleasure with
sin, fun with frivolity and the questioning of dogma as heresy. Even in more
moderate branches of Christianity, pleasure for pleasure’s sake has always been
frowned upon. Although there may not be many people who consciously identify
with these more fundamentalist teachings, they have nonetheless influenced
America’s elites, who support this harsh ideology as a way to control the
rabble. Think about it. As late as 1984 we had a hit movie (Footloose) about a
big city boy who moves to a small town where they don’t allow dancing in high
school.
Mind-altering drugs are a direct threat to an orderly,
controlled, obedient society. Just as in prior centuries where the clergy
attacked anything (including science) that challenged approved church dogma, elites
today are terrified that if people start experiencing different realities, opening
their minds to different ways of living and thinking, the one-percent’s grasp
on the levers of power will be threatened. What happened in the 1960s scared
the shit out of the ruling class and they’ve been working hard over the last 50
years to try and stop it from happening again.
Fortunately, they won’t succeed. Spineless politicians and
FOX pundits may still cling to their drug war mentality, but the people are
moving forward without them. South American and European countries are telling
the hypocritical, drug-consuming U.S. enough is enough, your drug war is a sham
and it’s time to try a new approach. The dominos are falling fast. There will
come a time when prisons house those who truly belong there, not a bunch of
schmucks who got busted for nothing more than smoking a blunt.
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