The issue of legalizing pot (marijuana) is a topic that we have avoided because “we don’t have a dog in that fight.” Hence we have not been monitoring that debate. The World’s Laziest Journalist News Organization doesn’t get very many news tips and so when a discussion about pot included the information that pot is a very effective (perhaps the best) way for people to cope with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after being in combat. Then, we realized that one particular American Political Party may be hypocritical about their support for veterans.
If one political party is very enthusiastic about sending America’s younger generation off to any and all wars on God’s green earth, but then oppose making a very effective means of treating PTSD available to veterans, then, perhaps, those hypocrites should be called out for exemplifying the “alligator mouth-hummingbird ass” attitude. They promise all sorts of support for retuning vets but hen when they get a look at the amount that will be due on the bill, they balk.
Conservatives seem to be traumatized by pot itself.
Back in the Sixties, as we recall, a NYC newsman was arrested on air during a TV news broadcast for holding a “roach” (i.e. marijuana cigarette) up as a visual aid for his report on the devil weed. We never did learn how that worked out for that particular journalist.
At first it seems that an alliance between combat veterans and war protesting hippies is a oxymoron concept but as we were reminded this week whilst re-reading Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test:” the first rule of the bus (page 70) is: “All of us are beginning to do our thing, and we’re going to keep doing it, right out front, and none of us are going to deny what other people are doing.”
What next? Will today’s music fans make Mrele Haggard’s “Me and Wounded Vets” the new hippie anthem?
Conservatives must be alarmed by the fact that a California ballot measure retroactively changed the status of pot (AKA cannabis sativa) smoking to an infraction and at the same time a similar change was ordered in New York City.
Yikes! The next thing you know the pot smoking hippies will try to levitate the Pentagon.
If this trend continues the gateway to the future will be found in the best selling books from the Sixties!
It’s just like Ken Kesey said (on page 78): “Now, you’re either on the bus or off the bus. If you’re on the bus, and you get left behind, then you’ll find it again. If you are off the bus in the first place – then it won’t make a damn.”
So you either want to help those with PTSD or you want to make pot a felony.
Why would any legislator who voted to send kids off to war, want to deny the Vets something that helps them cope with PTSD?
Whatever happened to San Francisco’s Sixties Folk Hero, Sgt. Sunshine?
Things are getting more and more convoluted. (I.e. “It’s weird, man!”) A Democratic Senator from Louisiana helped the Democrats prevent funding for building the XL Pipeline; now she is urging passing the bill so she can get re-elected.
If the solution for the PTSD problem is to permit the vets access to pot, it will be an example of über-irony. The soldiers who went away to war will become pot smoking hippies while the anti-war protesters become supporters of proper treatment for the wounded warriors.
The pot smoking vets will, essentially, be getting on the bus a bit late but on the bus none the less.
Doing the fact checking to authenticate the assertion that pot is a very effective means of assuaging the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder would take a lot of work and so the World’s Laziest Journalist will leave the “heavy lifting” journalism work to the pros of the mainstream media and since the conservative media owners are not likely to want to aggravate other staunch Republicans, that means the Vets will have to wait until something better comes along.
Meanwhile, the Republicans who were always urging passage of funding for the XL Pipeline will be glad to see that the Dems, who have been left behind on the issue, have found their way back onto the bus and, next week, will be welcomed to get onboard the Pipeline bus, just like in the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son.
[Note from the photo editor: Folks who read the newspapers will be hard pressed to find stories reporting that marijuana is an effective way to treat PTSD. We selected a photo taken in Culver City to run with this column. These days, there isn’t much in a newspaper that the conservative owners don’t want you to know. Such is life.
Various publications have a quote of the day, some a quote of the week. Why don’t the people who publish the Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations have an annual “Quote of the Year” award? If they did, our candidate would be the lead sentence from Maureen Dowd’s column for September 20, 2014: “WHEN Willie Nelson invites you to get high with him on his bus, you go.”
Now the disk jockey will play Peter, Paul, and Mary’s song “Puff the Magic Dragon,” the Beatles “I am the Walrus,” and Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow.” We have to go see if there will be a new “smoke-in” event anytime soon. Have a “fa-a-a-r OUT!” type week.