"WHEN FASCISM COMES TO AMERICA IT WILL BE WRAPPED IN THE FLAG
AND CARRYING A CROSS." -SINCLAIR LEWIS

Monday, August 2, 2010

American Power And Nanny Statism

So it seems that my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power has once again declared his ignorance opposition to cannabis via California's Proposition 19, a ballot initiative that would legalize individual amounts of cannabis here in the Golden State, in his newest post "Oakland Pot Factory Sham is Shame of a Nation":

After the budget and jobs, drug decriminalization's likely the most important issue on the ballot in November's elections, and Oakland's at the forefront of the fight for sanity. (Note here that I'm always amused at JBW's childish arguments about getting the "nanny state" out of our lives, even more hilarious as he's down with Obama's uber-nanny nationalized socialism in every other area of the economy — but more on that later.) It turns out LAT has a piece on the "Walmartization" of Oakland's "medical" marijuana industry, and get a load out of that picture at the screencap. Looks like a bunch brothas from de 'hood be cruisin' down for some phat sweet-stick smokas, yo!
It's a scam, obviously
... Unbelievable, really. But that's what the nihilist left wants in today's America.
Ignoring the fact that Don seemingly lost his own fight for sanity years ago, I'm always similarly amused at his own personal reefer madness when it comes to the issue of adults deciding for themselves what they can and can not put into their own bodies. Recall that I wrote my post "American Power And Hypocrisy" over a year ago as a direct rebuttal to Don's empty declaration at the time that cannabis is somehow inherently evil and he has yet to even attempt to refute me. Instead he prefers to deploy devastating rhetoric like calling people who disagree with him "losers" for doing so. Ouch.

But let's quickly unpack this latest post, shall we? First, the slang: as always it's as embarrassing as it is hilarious. Is it possible that being unhip is a chronic condition? This guy makes Michael Steele look like Jay-Z. Next, the hyperbole: notice that supporting President Obama in certain policy areas automatically means that I'm "down with Obama's uber-nanny nationalized socialism in every other area of the economy", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Apparently my desire for every American to have access to affordable health care is a much more oppressive policy position to take than is Don's own desire for every American adult who uses cannabis to be arrested, fined and imprisoned as a result.

That's just where we disagree about the role of government, I guess: I believe that the purpose of the government is to do for the people what they cannot individually do for themselves while Don believes that purpose is to protect people from themselves by punishing private personal behaviour that he finds distasteful. This is also why Don believes that adults should be arrested for frequenting prostitutes, that the government has the right to listen in to our phone conversations and monitor our email and even disappear American citizens terror suspects obvious terrorists who require no legal protections off of American streets and torture them to death overseas, all in the name of protecting the American people from those who would torture us overseas.

You see, neocons fear many dangers in the world today and they have no qualms about ceding a vast swathe of their personal liberties to a powerful government in order to feel all protected and safe in their beds at night. This is how Don can at times claim to be a libertarian out of one side of his mouth whilst simultaneously calling for the imprisonment of consenting adults participating in victimless crimes out of the other. Cannabis legalization in California obviously isn't going to destroy society and we could actually really use the additional tax revenue that it would generate (although from looking at the polls I doubt that Prop. 19 will pass this November but perhaps I'm wrong on that count) but Don can't afford to take that chance. His fear requires governmental nanny statism to protect him and the rest of us from anything and everything that scares him, our own liberties and freedoms be damned. That's the type of "free" society that cowards like Don would create with American power.

[Update: Don answers the above post by not answering at all:
Heh ...

Yo, JBW, 'nuff said:
Yeah, that's what I thought. Intellectual coward.]

8 comments:

EUROman said...

I think it's a bit weird to call us the nihilists, as that suggest we don't believe in anything such as the human spirit, morals and that there is a purpose to life, but I don't think he means that and it's probably just something he heard used as an insult once.

JBW said...

Wow EUROman, for someone who's new around here you seem to have nailed down Don's M.O. fairly quickly; I'll just chalk that up to my brilliant post. Check out American Nihilist if you think Don's someone you might enjoy laughing at further: they tear him apart over there.

EUROman said...

The only things I've read about that guy is his post on cannabis and his comment on your cannabis post and he just sort of came of as that old guy who really doesn't like them young'uns today with their liberal attitudes and their macbook computers.

Kevin Robbins said...

Wow JBW, you're a busy blogging beaver lately. Thanks for throwing in the link to us nihilists. We crave attention.

I caught the post at AmPow. I thought Don had quit you. He's smitten, tho. Love his hipster doofus lingo. It's so 1990's.

As to, Is it possible that being unhip is a chronic condition? A little chronic might help it, no?

Don't mind showing how unhip I am as well. As WASP as can be.

JBW said...

My blogging is inversely related to how much sleep I'm getting ex DLB, so you can imagine how bleary-eyed I've been lately. And I loved the "chronic" line, dude; for someone from Hometown, USA you're down from day one, kid.

AmPowerBlog said...

Losers ...

Ha, Michael Ramirez agrees, ROFLMFAO!!!

EUROman said...

Ramirez is a okay cartoonist but not exactly the man I look to for an informed opinion on...anything.

JBW said...

"Losers" is all you've got, Don. A respectable PhD would be able to flex some grey matter and tell me why I'm wrong. Full marks for consistency though, I'll give you that.