I hate the phrase, “Just Say No”. It makes no distinction between one who uses and one who abuses. It feeds the notion that if you use drugs you are bad. This is a terrible thing to tell people. Everybody uses drugs. Christians use drugs. Parents use drugs.
“Just Say No” makes it us against them. Good christians don’t use drugs at all, non-christians and atheists use drugs. Satanists use drugs. It tells you that, if you use drugs, you are a bad person.
Why would Nancy Reagan wish to do this? Why would she wish to make people feel terrible when her messiah went around making people feel good?
A hint of the reason is Ayn Rand’s conclusion that you cannot rule a guilt free man. With Nancy and her little catch phrase, it is not ‘rule’ that is meant; control works better. The republican party is about control. Control of the media, control of the market, control of the governments of other countries. Thought control.
I would have had no problem with the “Just Say No” campaign were she to have added three words. This might have diminished the effectiveness of her phrase, considering the font would have to be smaller to put it all on a bumper sticker, but it would have been a more humane, christ-like thing to say. The three words? ‘ . . . to drug abuse’.
Say it with me, friends; the new phrase would be “Just Say No To Drug Abuse”.
I know my idea would have fallen on deaf ears. No one would have used it because it significantly reduces the number of people one can feel superior to, therefore, judgmental of. The right-wing, christian conservative republican is all about exclusion. And, like children, they love big simple reasons that give them their feeling of superiority.
*******************************
What really pisses me off about that bumper-sticker campaign of Nancy Reagan’s is that it was never meant to get people to quit using drugs. It was a throw together to make it look like Nancy gave a damn about doing something for the country and not just redecorating the White House. It was engineered to make it look like she cared about people and not just things.
Why is Nancy Reagan’s bumper-sticker campaign a big deal? As a consequence of her simple-minded actions, my children judge me to be a bad person based solely on the fact that I drink beer and smoke cigarettes. I don’t hit my kids, using time-outs and grounding; I encourage my kids to be individuals, I pay attention to them, and look them in the eye when they are talking, and I take their concerns seriously. Being a good, attentive father means everything to me. Yet, because they had a ‘Just Say No’ class at school, they came home with all these cellophane-wrapped things to say about my nasty little habits. And you cannot fight righteousness in a child. They want something to bang you over the head with; something that will diminish you, the disciplinarian, in their eyes.
It occurred to me that that is the reason we have what republicans call a lost generation of predatory consumerist children whose heads are messed up. They go to school and read bumper stickers all day, and come home to find their parents lacking. The same people who say that taking prayer out of public schools is the source of all the bad things happening in America, teach your children that you are bad if you have a beer after work, or take a Prozac when you’re stressed, or smoke a cigarette.
Even if you are abusing these things I have no problem with you until you cross the line from hurting yourself to hurting others.
Understand something, “Just Say No” was not meant to prevent you from using drugs, it was meant to pit you against those around you. It is a tool of division. There is no forgiveness or excuses within the “Just Say No” zealotry; you are either with us or against us.
A wrench can be used to great benefit, yet the power it provides you can be used in negative ways. Instead of using it to repair your automobile you can use it to kill someone by whacking them on their head. That would be abuse.
Use is a good thing. Abuse is too much of a good thing.
Just say ‘no’ to “Just Say No”.
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Even When We Agree, We Don't Agree
December 11, 2004 Saturday 12:48pm
Dad came over with fudge that my mother made. Of course, we went to the basement to smoke and chat.
My father voted for Kerry for president. I had assumed that, though I knew his stances on gay-marraige and abortion, we’d find some common ground. I plumbed the depths to no avail.
To find something that we might agree on, I showed him my blog-site; he’d heard of blogs but had never seen one.
He didn’t agree with anything I had to say, yet he voted for Kerry. At one point, while discussing the fact that I am against abortion, but do not wish them to be banned, he went off on how horrendous partial-birth abortion is, and how he heard that the new agenda of pro-abortionists is to give new mothers ten days after a child is born, to decide whether or not they wish to keep the child or abort it.
What?
I’m going to have to look this up and see if there is some reference to it outside the right wing christian media that he watches on t.v. and hears on the radio.
************
I plugged in to Google the phrase, ‘abortion ten days after birth’ and came up with nothing. Then subtracted various words still coming up with nothing.
What my father must’ve heard was someone’s speculation that the abortion agenda might be looking to such things in the future. So, the truth of the matter is that such a statement is hokum.
Yet he voted for Kerry.
I am not for abortions. I would talk anyone out of it, unless they had damn good reasons for doing it, such as rape or incest or some horrendous birth defect, as long as it was in the first trimester of the pregnancy. I couldn’t bring myself to agree with anyone getting an abortion after the first trimester.
My father even agreed with my view of talking people out of abortions unless they had damn good reasons. Yet, he still thinks they should be banned. He went so far as to describe to me the procedure of partial-birth abortion, which I already knew.
The issue of abortion freaks him out on such a deep level that a rational conversation with him on this issue was impossible.
So why did he vote for Kerry? Taxes. He thinks Bush Jr. is giving big corporations too many tax breaks.
I asked him about the war in Iraq, and he said he agreed with our being there, that muslims were insane, and that they should be shown who’s the boss.
What?
I am amazed at how Americans think. We here in America, frequently referring to our country as “The Land Of The Free” talk about how we should be controlling the destiny of other countries, just because they don’t believe the way we do. Americans believe it OK for our children to fight and die just to bring them around to our way of thinking.
***********
Before our conversation devolved on the issue of abortion, and the war in Iraq, we discussed the issue of Americans immigrating to Canada. He had heard that ‘some web-site’ was getting 65,000 hits a day, with people looking to emigrate. Of course, from his point of view, it was all people who were tired of Bush Jr. passing out tax cuts to big corporations.
I told him, if a draft was ever brought back, I might be one of those who looks into immigrating to another country.
Being patriotic to this flawed nation of ours, he told me about his experience in other countries while in the Navy, and his conclusion was that we live in the freest nation on earth.
He might be right, but for how much longer?
***********
I had heard on the news that Dick Cheney is talking about not paying dues to the U.N. again. remember the last time that happened, back in 2001? Then came the disaster on 9-11-01, and within the week our U.N. dues were paid in full.
We cannot keep going down this road and expect the rest of the world to react kindly to us. We are forging ahead in an hostile environment, one in which our only strong ally, Tony Blair, (prime minister of England) is beginning to turn against us, saying that America should give the Kyoto protocols another look.
What worries me more than what we look like to the world is what we look like to ourselves. We are so fractured on these issues which shouldn’t even be issues, that we can’t unite on anything. My father, who voted for Kerry, as did I, doesn’t agree with me on anything, except that Bush Jr. and his minions are killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
The next tactic of the terrorists should be to propogate the divide between the “two Americas” because a nation divided would be easy to conquer. If Americans began a bloody civil war, we would be easy pickings for a nation of any size who wanted to walk in and mop things up.
But please, if you are one of those Americans that believes in banning things, or forcing others to do things ‘our way’, do me the favor of never again using the term, “The Land Of The Free” because it makes you a goddam liar.
Dad came over with fudge that my mother made. Of course, we went to the basement to smoke and chat.
My father voted for Kerry for president. I had assumed that, though I knew his stances on gay-marraige and abortion, we’d find some common ground. I plumbed the depths to no avail.
To find something that we might agree on, I showed him my blog-site; he’d heard of blogs but had never seen one.
He didn’t agree with anything I had to say, yet he voted for Kerry. At one point, while discussing the fact that I am against abortion, but do not wish them to be banned, he went off on how horrendous partial-birth abortion is, and how he heard that the new agenda of pro-abortionists is to give new mothers ten days after a child is born, to decide whether or not they wish to keep the child or abort it.
What?
I’m going to have to look this up and see if there is some reference to it outside the right wing christian media that he watches on t.v. and hears on the radio.
************
I plugged in to Google the phrase, ‘abortion ten days after birth’ and came up with nothing. Then subtracted various words still coming up with nothing.
What my father must’ve heard was someone’s speculation that the abortion agenda might be looking to such things in the future. So, the truth of the matter is that such a statement is hokum.
Yet he voted for Kerry.
I am not for abortions. I would talk anyone out of it, unless they had damn good reasons for doing it, such as rape or incest or some horrendous birth defect, as long as it was in the first trimester of the pregnancy. I couldn’t bring myself to agree with anyone getting an abortion after the first trimester.
My father even agreed with my view of talking people out of abortions unless they had damn good reasons. Yet, he still thinks they should be banned. He went so far as to describe to me the procedure of partial-birth abortion, which I already knew.
The issue of abortion freaks him out on such a deep level that a rational conversation with him on this issue was impossible.
So why did he vote for Kerry? Taxes. He thinks Bush Jr. is giving big corporations too many tax breaks.
I asked him about the war in Iraq, and he said he agreed with our being there, that muslims were insane, and that they should be shown who’s the boss.
What?
I am amazed at how Americans think. We here in America, frequently referring to our country as “The Land Of The Free” talk about how we should be controlling the destiny of other countries, just because they don’t believe the way we do. Americans believe it OK for our children to fight and die just to bring them around to our way of thinking.
***********
Before our conversation devolved on the issue of abortion, and the war in Iraq, we discussed the issue of Americans immigrating to Canada. He had heard that ‘some web-site’ was getting 65,000 hits a day, with people looking to emigrate. Of course, from his point of view, it was all people who were tired of Bush Jr. passing out tax cuts to big corporations.
I told him, if a draft was ever brought back, I might be one of those who looks into immigrating to another country.
Being patriotic to this flawed nation of ours, he told me about his experience in other countries while in the Navy, and his conclusion was that we live in the freest nation on earth.
He might be right, but for how much longer?
***********
I had heard on the news that Dick Cheney is talking about not paying dues to the U.N. again. remember the last time that happened, back in 2001? Then came the disaster on 9-11-01, and within the week our U.N. dues were paid in full.
We cannot keep going down this road and expect the rest of the world to react kindly to us. We are forging ahead in an hostile environment, one in which our only strong ally, Tony Blair, (prime minister of England) is beginning to turn against us, saying that America should give the Kyoto protocols another look.
What worries me more than what we look like to the world is what we look like to ourselves. We are so fractured on these issues which shouldn’t even be issues, that we can’t unite on anything. My father, who voted for Kerry, as did I, doesn’t agree with me on anything, except that Bush Jr. and his minions are killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
The next tactic of the terrorists should be to propogate the divide between the “two Americas” because a nation divided would be easy to conquer. If Americans began a bloody civil war, we would be easy pickings for a nation of any size who wanted to walk in and mop things up.
But please, if you are one of those Americans that believes in banning things, or forcing others to do things ‘our way’, do me the favor of never again using the term, “The Land Of The Free” because it makes you a goddam liar.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
On the cover of AdBusters
December 8, 2004 Wendesday 8:43pm
Nothing is precious in America, because there is too much of everything. Mega-mass production has caused us to lose site of the planet earth beneath our feet.
I took my daughter to art class, then went to Walmart for corn-huskers hand-lotion. On the way to checkout I stopped at the magazines; I scanned them all and found the variety lacking. Walmart is the home of the bland. Barnes and Noble, the king of magazines, is about three blocks away, so I went there.
I looked through all the new books at the front of the store, working my way back to the magazines. There are one or two that I gravitate to, but I neglect no section, I scan them all.
One that I enjoy is called AdBusters. I could not open it, tonight. The cover stopped me. There were many things on it, but the largest image was that of a wailing man holding the body of a child. It nearly stops me cold thinking about it now. It is rare in America to see such a display of true emotion. My heart breaks for this man.
This image was brought to me by my country’s war in the middle east. We just cannot keep our pecker in our pants; we have to go over there and fuck up everything for them. I have nothing but disgust for anyone willing to put magnetic ribbons on their car with sappy slogans telling me to support the troops, yet, were god to ask them to send their child to die in a war on the other side of the world, they would say no.
I’m sure that I am much too cynical. I know that there are good things somewhere in the world, but it is hard to see beyond the pain that we inflict on others while browsing through the magazine rack at Barnes and Noble.
I’m tired of the debate over the war. I don’t understand why we are killing people just to hold our ground in a place we never should have been in the first place. Why are we there? I no longer wish to know the answer to the question, but will ask you one: would you trade places with that man on the cover of AdBusters, carrying a dead child?
Nothing is precious in America, because there is too much of everything. Mega-mass production has caused us to lose site of the planet earth beneath our feet.
I took my daughter to art class, then went to Walmart for corn-huskers hand-lotion. On the way to checkout I stopped at the magazines; I scanned them all and found the variety lacking. Walmart is the home of the bland. Barnes and Noble, the king of magazines, is about three blocks away, so I went there.
I looked through all the new books at the front of the store, working my way back to the magazines. There are one or two that I gravitate to, but I neglect no section, I scan them all.
One that I enjoy is called AdBusters. I could not open it, tonight. The cover stopped me. There were many things on it, but the largest image was that of a wailing man holding the body of a child. It nearly stops me cold thinking about it now. It is rare in America to see such a display of true emotion. My heart breaks for this man.
This image was brought to me by my country’s war in the middle east. We just cannot keep our pecker in our pants; we have to go over there and fuck up everything for them. I have nothing but disgust for anyone willing to put magnetic ribbons on their car with sappy slogans telling me to support the troops, yet, were god to ask them to send their child to die in a war on the other side of the world, they would say no.
I’m sure that I am much too cynical. I know that there are good things somewhere in the world, but it is hard to see beyond the pain that we inflict on others while browsing through the magazine rack at Barnes and Noble.
I’m tired of the debate over the war. I don’t understand why we are killing people just to hold our ground in a place we never should have been in the first place. Why are we there? I no longer wish to know the answer to the question, but will ask you one: would you trade places with that man on the cover of AdBusters, carrying a dead child?
Thursday, December 02, 2004
All Tomorrow’s Parties
by William Gibson
In All Tomorrow’s Parties we are given a dark vision of a ‘post-post-industrialized’ America (as one of Gibson’s own characters put it) where the rule of law applies equally to everyone, as long they aren’t too far from the police station.
The result of having volunteered to try an experimental drug, Laney is able to sense the coming of monumental events through the ‘data flow’ on the internet. He doesn’t like what he ‘sees’ for the future, and thinks he knows who’s behind it, so sends agents into the real world to change what he sees from cyberspace.
Rydell is a wannabe cop who Laney sends looking for Harwood, a god-like character that Laney ‘feels’ may be the one behind the next event that will ‘change the world as we know it’. Rydell has good intentions but has a hard time in their execution, ending up bruised and battered for his efforts.
Chevette ends up getting twisted into the plot, but for some reason I don’t remember if Laney has asked her to. She runs into Rydell, who is an old ex-boyfriend, while she is trying to avoid her latest ex-boyfriend at a bar on ‘the bridge’ where Chevette used to live.
Rydell is in possession of something Gibson calls an idoru. It is a holographic projector that contains the virtual person of someone called Rei Toei. Rei Toei is a woman who has never existed in the flesh, yet she is a sentient creature. She is also central to the big ‘event’ Laney has predicted.
I’m really not interested in delving too deeply into the main event of the book. For me Gibson’s writings are appealing in how he sees the future. The gadgets he creates are worth the price of admission. The idoru, (which could be a made-up word; he did coin the word ‘cyber-space’ after all) is a genius idea on its own; one he liked so much he wrote a whole novel around it. And though a lot his gadgets don’t exist, (as far as I know . . .) he doesn’t stray too far from the probable.
Most writers of science fiction tend to concentrate on either the hardware or the social/cultural aspects of the future, where Gibson blends the two seemlessly in his bleak future-visions. In Gibson’s future smoking is illegal, and people live on suspension bridges that are barred from automobile traffic due to structural damage caused by an earthquake. They are dressed in what may or may not be clothing, and they fall in love with the avatar of no one who ever existed. They live in cardboard boxes while saving the world by surfing the internet.
In All Tomorrow’s Parties we are given a dark vision of a ‘post-post-industrialized’ America (as one of Gibson’s own characters put it) where the rule of law applies equally to everyone, as long they aren’t too far from the police station.
The result of having volunteered to try an experimental drug, Laney is able to sense the coming of monumental events through the ‘data flow’ on the internet. He doesn’t like what he ‘sees’ for the future, and thinks he knows who’s behind it, so sends agents into the real world to change what he sees from cyberspace.
Rydell is a wannabe cop who Laney sends looking for Harwood, a god-like character that Laney ‘feels’ may be the one behind the next event that will ‘change the world as we know it’. Rydell has good intentions but has a hard time in their execution, ending up bruised and battered for his efforts.
Chevette ends up getting twisted into the plot, but for some reason I don’t remember if Laney has asked her to. She runs into Rydell, who is an old ex-boyfriend, while she is trying to avoid her latest ex-boyfriend at a bar on ‘the bridge’ where Chevette used to live.
Rydell is in possession of something Gibson calls an idoru. It is a holographic projector that contains the virtual person of someone called Rei Toei. Rei Toei is a woman who has never existed in the flesh, yet she is a sentient creature. She is also central to the big ‘event’ Laney has predicted.
I’m really not interested in delving too deeply into the main event of the book. For me Gibson’s writings are appealing in how he sees the future. The gadgets he creates are worth the price of admission. The idoru, (which could be a made-up word; he did coin the word ‘cyber-space’ after all) is a genius idea on its own; one he liked so much he wrote a whole novel around it. And though a lot his gadgets don’t exist, (as far as I know . . .) he doesn’t stray too far from the probable.
Most writers of science fiction tend to concentrate on either the hardware or the social/cultural aspects of the future, where Gibson blends the two seemlessly in his bleak future-visions. In Gibson’s future smoking is illegal, and people live on suspension bridges that are barred from automobile traffic due to structural damage caused by an earthquake. They are dressed in what may or may not be clothing, and they fall in love with the avatar of no one who ever existed. They live in cardboard boxes while saving the world by surfing the internet.
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