I have recently written about the defeat of Prop 19 in California. I left plenty of room within my statements to beg the question: Ok J.J., what the hell do you think we should do then? It is and always was my intent to answer that question. I simply felt it would help the situation to get a few backs arched in anger in order that I might motivate further action on the subject.
The attempt to pass a voter-sponsored initiative for the legalization of marijuana failed. I thought this might be the case. Even if it hadn’t the federal government refused to acknowledge its validity in advance and so the fight was always far from over. There’s something people didn’t account for when believing that it was a given Prop 19 would fly through the ballot process unhindered by dissent. While it is easy to think about the primarily liberal population of the sunny tourist trap that is Southern California, it is also very easy to forget about the rural, hillbillyish wasteland of Northern California. California is not really one state in any way but for the purposes of gerrymandering federal voting districts. That is a complex subject that is worth discussion on another day, all we need to know here is that the right-wing hicks in the north managed to outvote the pot-smoking hippies in the south and be done with it. Prop 19 is dead in its tracks and now we have to assess what we do next.
I do not consider myself a “marijuana activist”. The pen name I am using would seem to suggest such, but it began as a stage name I used when I would wow people by smoking a joint with my right hand while playing a wild guitar solo with my left. I consider myself a dissident. To me, marijuana prohibition is but one part of a vast tapestry of subtle oppression being leveraged against the global proletariat class. Most people fight for one particular cause or another. Focus is a good thing; I appreciate their specialized efforts greatly because together they cull the information I need to weave together my more global vision. From my perspective, all of these issues are intertwined and I see the direct failure of Proposition 19 as an indication it is time for marijuana activists to take better control of the debate by intertwining their issues with other issues which appeal to much larger population groups.
Cannabis legalization is going to have to be piggybacked with other issues of liberty that threaten the teeming masses in the 21st Century. We are not facing one threat to our freedoms; they are being squeezed from all sides in all ways. While the prohibition of marijuana might seem frightening, people somehow forgot about the Patriot Act and its complete prohibition on privacy and human rights in general. We are having all of our rights in the west taken away piece by piece and we are far too divided to provide a unified front of defense against the incursions we face. I think it is time to invite other groups of activists into the fold and try to form a new perspective on the subject of liberty.
It’s my right to smoke pot and speak freely. It’s your right to not have your phones tapped and your email read. It’s somebody else’s right to marry their same-sex partner and adopt a child like any two loving people who want to spare some poor human being the lifetime torment of orphanage. It’s everybody’s right to get on a damn plane without being digitally strip-searched every fucking time, regardless of the alleged assumption of innocence. It’s that Northern California hillbilly’s right to run his pickup truck on moonshine and have a dozen guns in the house. We all have some form of liberty we wish to attain or maintain and it is in all our best interests to fight for those rights together.
I don’t like the dozen or so guns in that hillbilly’s house. It makes me a little uneasy that anybody really feels the need to possess enough firepower to take down a small infantry unit. By the same token it’s my right to smoke up until it somehow causes me to hurt someone; that hillbilly gets to have all the damn guns he wants until he shoots someone. We are innocent until proven guilty. We have the right to take care of ourselves until we fail to do so in a way that appreciates the rights and safety of those around us.
To put it more simply: We all have the right to swing our arms up until the point where somebody else’s nose begins.
My pot isn’t hitting you on the end of the nose. That crazy mountain man with all of his rifles and his 8-inch howitzer hasn’t shot me yet. I think we can both agree that while we don’t particularly care for each others lifestyle choice, so long as we just leave each other alone we can both continue to have the things that give us comfort.
Every American is Constitutionally guaranteed the right to “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This doesn’t have to be about pot or guns or bibles or strippers. Each of us has the liberty to pursue happiness in whatever form we choose, again so long as that pursuit is not a direct infringement upon somebody else’s pursuit of the same. When I say “direct infringement” I mean that your alleged moral offense at somebody somewhere you can’t see who is theoretically smoking pot and throwing dollar bills at strippers is not sufficient cause to say you were harmed. When they force their way into your house to do lines of cocaine off said strippers ass while you and your puritanical family stare on in traumatized horror, I will wholeheartedly agree that the drugs and the peeler girls simply have to go. That isn’t happening. Nobody is interrupting your bible study to throw a wild party – so just keep your mind on your own business and we will also do our best to leave you wallowing in your false piety unimpeded.
There are no windows on strip clubs or hippy pot dens anyway: Just keep driving.
The tool every American needs, and if you want marijuana to be legal we all understand the global dynamic of prohibition starts and ends there, is the U.S. Constitution. Those crazy, drunken rebels in the bad old days of Revolutionary times accidentally wrote in the most obscure and easily manipulated phrase in the history of Constitutional government. This is one of the tools that all fronts in the War for Freedom could use with equal efficacy. If we can all use it separately, couldn’t we all use it together as well?
It’s time to stop fighting a divided battle. We are separated, we are scattered, and frankly we’re losing the fight to Fox News, and Speaker of the House Rep. Pumpkinhead. The whole world sits upon the precipice of what could become a world of freedom or a world of slavery. It isn’t looking good for freedom. If we could get all the guns of activism pointed in the same direction, right at the heads of industry and institution alike, we could all get what we want and never have to fire a shot in anger. We don’t need to fight. Gandhi was right. Apathy is incredibly frustrating. I have a plan, it’s crazy, but we don’t even need that many people to do it.
We boycott just about everything. I mean it. No more brand name shoes. No more expensive cars. No more McDonalds. No more Fox News. No more of anything that we don’t absolutely need for awhile. If even ten percent of the population effectively went on a consumerist starvation diet the global economy would completely collapse inside of three months. It’s barely hanging on now. They need us to buy their shit. They need us to watch their drivel. More and more people are pissed off and we could use it to our advantage.
It is absolutely assured to hit the fuckers we want to hit. They own all the stores. They ship all the goods. When Wal Mart starts to hurt its owners are going to take notice. Business has taken control of government through the deregulation of campaign finance. It is time for us the consumer, those twenty to thirty something’s who buy all the stupid crap that empowers the rich, to just say “go fuck yourself”. We’re taking a page from Dick Cheney: It would be kind of ironic that the attitude espoused by the dark lord of Neo-Conservatism could very well be their undoing. Once we have the attention of industry, they will listen a little. They are the ones fighting hemp. They are the ones fighting marijuana. Governments can be stubborn. When it has a detrimental effect on their bottom line, the rich tend to get with the winning team rather than go down fighting. They can tax and regulate and grow and sell hemp and cannabis products and continue to get rich, or they can go completely fucking broke and watch their spoiled children struggle to survive in the ruthless world they left for them.
We don’t just demand cannabis though. We take it all. We take our freedom. I’ll pay my taxes. I agree with welfare programs for the helpless and schools for the children and roads for the cars. I don’t mind being a good citizen. I agree that violent criminals and psychopaths should rot in little concrete boxes for lack of something better to do with them. I won’t have my phone tapped. I won’t strip at the airport because one little group of nutcases blew up some stuff ten years ago. I will not capitulate to right-wing corporate interests because they think having lots of money makes up for their age and their impotence.
We hold the keys. We have the consumer dollars. We, the youth, that buy brand name socks and expensive video game systems and blue lights for underneath our cars: We are the buying dollars that make or break corporations in the new millennium. We can take that power back with self-discipline. We can take the power from them simply by doing without a few things that are nice, but we ultimately just don’t need. You would be surprised what you learn about yourself living a simplified life anyway; it will be a good experience for everyone and it doesn’t have to last forever anyway.
How many days do you think those fat, greedy bastards can watch all the numbers on the Dow/Jones go red before they cry for mercy? Once corporate interests stop funding anti-marijuana campaigns and blackmailing public representatives to vote against that same public’s interest it will be relatively easy to get prohibition repealed. Let’s face it, the US government is about ten minutes away from declaring bankruptcy and having a fire sale of all its nuclear stockpiles. The revenue has to come from somewhere. Even the decidedly corporate hosts of CNBC are now starting to talk about the “business” of marijuana sales because it represents a marketplace whose net worth makes guys like Jim Cramer and Larry Kudlow get an uncontrollable erection. Its probably enough money to give Larry’s gigantic, ostentatious Rolex a hard-on of its own. It’s really kind of hard to say “no” to a trillion dollars a year or so in North America alone. When they have no choice but to capitulate, you can bet your local fake-tanned rep is going to break his fucking neck doing a 180 on the subject because the pictures of him with 3 Thai hookers are now being leveraged by lobbyists to get him to vote for weed.
I don’t know exactly how you get everyone to do it. I can’t imagine there are too many people left out there who don’t see we’re all getting sold for slaughter like cattle. If ever there was a time in history for people who love freedom of all kinds to pull together and stand up to the bullies we let push us around for so long – it’s now. We don’t have long before it’s too late. Soon we might not be able to speak truth to power anymore. We may not be able to exchange free ideas like I am now. Once we lose that, we’ve lost it all – and there will be nobody left who can say anything about it.
There’s No Crying In Baseball!
There’s No Crying In Baseball 3: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Hempiness
Check out J.J’s music and blog at Myspace
