DISGUST, POLITICS AND CRIME

Surprisingly for someone who's nearly impossible to offend, I've been
disgusted twice this month alone. My stomach turned the first time
when the Butte County Board of Politicians passed their
medical-marijuana ordinance. The board knew in advance what they were
gonna do. What patients, caregivers and growers thought didn't mean
squat, and the public meetings were for show. The members of the Butte
County board don't give a rat's ass about sick people and don't mind
that the entire campaign against marijuana is based on lies and
gullibility, thus the Tea Party connection. It doesn't matter that not
only has nobody ever died from marijuana, the plant is so good for a
lot of ailments that the California Legislature and governor made it
legal medicine.

Some people think that marijuana saps ambition, and they're right.
That's an industrial way to say that cannabis seems to decrease greed,
aggressiveness and intolerance, all components of business as usual
and good for the tax base. Marijuana and other entheogens can
apparently show us things we didn't know before, including that the
kingdom is indeed within. Where the hell are the Christians when we
need them?

There's crime associated with marijuana only because it's illegal and
therefore costly. The Butte County board chose to support the
punishment industry with lives and money rather than allow people to
determine what goes in their own bodies without authoritarian
interference. Representative democracy isn't democracy at all; it's a
scam.

My other source of disgust was a story in the Oroville
Mercury-Register by Greg Welter. Gregory Wright-who was suckered into
accepting a 22-year sentence for firing a pistol into a ceiling at his
high school-is, incredibly, in more trouble. It seems that Wright's
mother was caught smuggling marijuana into the prison for Wright to
sell. I'm glad he showed some initiative, and even ambition, to make
his life better where he is. I don't blame him, and I hope he learns
something useful from this latest fuck-up.

I also think that anybody whose mother allegedly leaves
methamphetamine and hydrocodone in her car while she smuggles
marijuana into prison in her vagina deserves all the breaks he can
get. Instead, in the article Welter describes Wright's case completely
wrong. People now think that Wright was convicted of attempted murder,
which will hurt his chances for a life with the rest of us. Shit. Now
I've got to find a way to love a sloppy reporter and the Butte County
Board of Ignoramuses. No more news.