Quote:
Originally Posted by CU Tiger
"If tomorrow through whatever special session was necessary to enact emergency federal law, a law was passed that made tobacco a federal controlled substance and made possessing, consuming, smoking, whatever illegal...what would you do."
|
I don't know if it was a sidestep earlier as much as what you noted -- different situations, etc -- but eh, that's cool.
I'll give you a direct answer: I'd look to move out of this place a.s.a.p. Or maybe I'd just off myself, having been given a final push to the door. Hypothetical answers but it's a hypothetical question, that's as good as I can give you.
The disconnect you're experiencing with the legalistic nature of my point of view may (*taking a stab here, if I'm wrong then I'm wrong, no harm intended) stem from not looking at the big picture from quite the same angle I do.
I see a country that has eroded in values for basically my entire lifetime. "Accepting the unacceptable" is my frequent shorthand. We've got,what, 50-60 years of law enforcement attention paid to the substances we commonly group under "recreational drugs today"? Yeah yeah, all of them were around before that but I'm talking about them being a point of emphasis for lack of a better phrase. Wiki tells me that Nixon was the first to declare them "public enemy number one" in 1971, so 40+ years for the "War On Drugs" if you want to use that benchmark.
There's no question that it's been a point of emphasis at least in terms of lip service. I don't believe there's an American citizen who doesn't consciously know they're breaking the law when they light up/snort/shoot/whatever. It's a willful act, consciously undertaken voluntarily. This isn't speeding, which can be an act of carelessness. It's not even entirely analogous to drunk driving, at least some small percentage of drunk drivers are genuinely surprised when they discover they're legally drunk (not claiming many, but surely some small portion legit thought they were legally sober). This is straight up do/don't - yes/no - lawful/unlawful stuff we're talking about.
And the damage in surrender -- greater than all the lost brain cells, all the side effects, all the emotional & physical destruction connected to it -- is the message it sends: keep breaking the same law long enough & we'll just eventually give up.
Go back to what I said a few paragraphs ago, about what I've witnessed in my lifetime. If I hit the lottery tomorrow, aside from Vegas as a destination I'd strongly be looking to get the flock out of the country altogether. I'm genuinely ashamed of what depths "my" nation has sunk to in recent years/decades. The "proud to be an American" moments are so rare for me in my adult life I could just about name them (an even more far flung aside that I'll forego here). We've surrendered, abandoned, trashed, set aside and otherwise done away with so much of value ... the thought of capitulating yet again, and in doing so emboldening the forces of collapse even further, it's anathema to me.