Happy 4/20 everybody, go and do something stupid. Enjoy yourselves, but don't get caught! You wouldn't want your rights stripped away from you as you get driven down to the station because you were acting suspicious or ordered one taco too many across from a cop who's being eyeing you because you smelled too dank.
Just have good clean fun under the influence today. Maybe next year we can celebrate with decriminalized weed. Maybe in two years we can celebrate with legalized weed. Maybe in three years an eighteen year old can walk into a liquor store, buy a cube of silver bullets and a prerolled blunt. Maybe in four years cats will grow on trees. Just keep in mind this may be one of the last years of a greater police presence on 4/20.
But this post isn't going to about marijuana. No, this post is about freedom and our apparent lack of it. The Democracy Index, a global ranking system that rates how well a country does in the act of democracy based on these five areas: "electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture." The US ranks 18th, just above the Czech Republic, a former Soviet satellite and below Japan where totalitarianism reigned until 1945.
Why are we so low on this list of freedom? We still fall into a top spot very well, yet we're losing to places that historically had always been beneath the US on terms of liberty.
We're lower on this list:
1. Because Americans expect help from the federal government and when Big Brother steps too close, citizens retreat to the state government, demanding congressman and governors stand up for them.
2. Because the War on Drugs has been a colossal failure resulting in upheaval in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru to name a few.
3. Because despite having the freedom to buy a semi automatic at Walmart, we keep killing each other to get on TV.
4. Because the government finds secret internment easier than the highly blocked up American justice system.
5. Because we are built on traditional, "moral" values that do not always stack up to what is freedom for anyone gay, female, non-white, non-Christian, non-able bodied, or poor.
6. Because the drinking age is too high.
7. Because we give environment-damaging companies the go-ahead to destroy wildlife, evict local tenants, and waste away valuable resources.
8. Because we allow corporations to become, "too big to fail."
There are more reasons, but I don't want to ruin your day. So get high, watch a movie, throw a frisbee, jam out, get some munchies, and feel good on this most holy of stoner holy-days. Tomorrow we gotta start fixing our country
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