Disgust

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.