Welcome to what now appears to be the Cognitive Dissonance corner. In today’s edition, we’ll explore how President Trump might pull the rug out from under the Democrats by legalizing marijuana in an “October Surprise.”
Many people view the world in terms of either black or white and don’t see the million shades of gray in-between, and have a fetish for labeling and pigeon-holing people based on the most-scant of evidence. So indoctrinated by partisan politics, they read the exact same words and one calls me a Republican (the Democrat) and the other calls me a Democrat (the Republican).
News flash: like me, most of the country is purple, not red or blue.
I’m not a Democrat and I’m not a Republican. Calling me a Democrat is fightin’ words; I consider Bernie a Centrist (as any European would) and Biden/Harris boot-licking police-state lovers. Yet, I long for the GOP of William F Buckley, principled in its selfish reasoning. As you can see, I belong to the largest voting bloc in the country, that of Independent.
The Left and the Right, United Against Harris
So far I’ve written about Biden’s Bad Bills, the fact that JoMala owes us, and that Harris was born to legalize (and why). I haven’t written on Trump because I don’t feel the need to belabor the obvious: a 32% drop in GDP (the “Trumpression”) from mismanaging a pandemic killing mostly his base, 40 million recently unemployed, and a once-glorious nation reduced to a global laughing-stock, now the punchline to a bad joke that will last throughout history. “Let them eat cake” will be replaced with “so much winning.” “Benedict Arnold” and “Neville Chamberlain” got bumped for “Donald Trump” as shorthand for a nation’s betrayers to their enemy. Ironically, by shitting on Obama’s legacy Trump actually ensured it, making clearer the contrast in governing competence.
Small-minded people on both sides used not facts, analysis, or well-considered reasoning to get me to change my mind. Instead, they fell back to the ol’ American standby: bullying ad hominem, juvenile name-calling, and bluff and bluster. A lifetime of being the Outsider has made me impervious to it, in fact it gives me the strength to dive deeper. I leverage their animus. One has to care what their vapid opinion is for it to have impact, so save it for someone who does. Consensus is over-rated. If, on the off-chance someone has a better plan or vision, I’m all ears. I keep expecting a George Will or Gore Vidal, instead I get Mister Ed.
New Day Requires New Vision
It seems most want to assume that the way it always was is the way it will always be. I don’t agree, we are in unprecedented times and it requires new thinking, a new vision, and since power concedes nothing without a demand, a demand for change. I’m not suggesting forgiving and forgetting Biden and Harris’ bad record on marijuana, rather I want to leverage it for change. Use their record to encourage their continued evolution on this, to get legalization. The worse they were back then, the more we can leverage it today. Tweet about it, ask about it at Town Halls, hold their feet to the fire.
Those on both sides need to step out of their narrow partisan lane for a moment and consider new information. Don’t be that guy who thinks the same thing on Wednesday that he did on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday. We are in new terrain here, the old tropes and baked-in mindsets don’t work anymore. The GOP of yore is not the GOP of today, and the Dems have to either react appropriately or perish.
The nature of politics is that legalization today requires a Prohibitionist prosecutor to change his or her mind. Someone like Tommy Chong or Steve DeAngelo is not likely to rise to the “highest” office in the land, but a “California’s Top Cop” like Kamala Harris is. So I don’t understand why those on the Left can’t appreciate what is happening here in real time, Harris’ “come to Jesus” moment.
Bizarrely, some actually think that an open ex-stoner Jamaican/Indian from Oaktown sponsoring the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement Act (MORE Act, SB 2227) descheduling marijuana, co-sponsoring Senator Cory Booker’s Marijuana Justice Act, co-sponsoring the SAFE Banking Act, sending a letter to the Justice Department demanding they stop blocking research on medical Cannabis, and tweeting that “legalizing marijuana” was one of the necessary steps toward her goal of ending mass incarceration is all just one big insincere ruse to trick us into voting for Biden.
There is little upside to Harris, Bernie Sanders, or Booker to sponsor legislation to legalize marijuana. Notice Warren didn’t, nor did Klobuchar, Gabbard, Patrick, Delaney, Bullock, O’Rourke, Ryan, Sestak, Gillibrand, Moulton, Gravel, Swalwell, Ojeda, or Bennet. It’s hardly a sure ticket to the White House, legislating your conscience by legalizing marijuana has its risks.
Even the most-liberal Congressman from the most-liberal town in the country had awful ideas about marijuana, wanting to treat it like alcohol, tobacco, guns, and bombs. If we can’t take Harris at her word now on this, no one else will rise to the challenge and join her. It’s imperative that her MORE Act get some traction, and it appears that’s happening even without the Left’s help.
One Issue Voter: Legalize
I don’t have a horse in this race, save one: Marijuana legalization. Yes, I know Biden and Harris suck, yes I know Trump and Pence suck, yes I know the Dems and the GOP suck. I’m not stupid, I’m hopeful. I’m not fetishizing the past, I’m looking to the future. I’m not blind, I see a path to using their Prohibitionist record to get legalization, either by them or by Trump (as to which: “I really don’t care, do U?”).
Being from the San Francisco Bay Area, my first and longest political affiliation was the Peace and Freedom Party. I cut school to go to anti-war and “ecology” protests in the ’70s. For that I was called “commie” and “pinko” by John Birchers, many of whom have children today totally cool with Putin running the show in the White House. I’ve been advocating for marijuana legalization since educating voters outside grocery stores on California’s Prop 19 to legalize in 1972, at 16 still too young to vote myself. Reading the words of Thomas Jefferson, I’ve wanted a revolution for almost 50 years now in order to preserve our liberties, willing to “refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Ironically, we got a revolution in 2016, fake hair and tan and all.
The right wing and the left wing are both parts of the same rotten bird, and having a (D) or an (R) after one’s name means little in the grand scheme of things. Yes, there are real policy differences between the two for sure, but today I’m a One Issue Voter. After 83 years of racist unconstitutional laws, I want real, full, true marijuana legalization. I know we’ll never get “our” XXIst Amendment, or “our” DSHEA, so I’ll settle for simply no longer locking up and stealing assets of those involved in growing a popular safe medicinal plant.
And I don’t much care who does it, just that it gets done. Ex-stoners Clinton, Bush, and Obama betrayed us. That leaves Biden/Harris to step up, or Trump to steal their thunder. So know that when I say while Harris was born to legalize as Bob Marley’s spiritual daughter and everyone will love Joe’s repentance story on marijuana, I’m totally cool if Trump does it.
Both parties have blood on their hands on this. The Dems had their chance over and over to retract the bad laws they wrote, but failed. That’s 83 years of a now-profoundly unpopular law (90% of the public support legalization of medical) Democrat FDR gave us, racist and unconstitutional from Day One. Schedule 1 from a Democratic Congress 50 years ago was in defiance of Republican President Nixon’s hand-picked Shafer Commission recommending decriminalization, and was against Congressional intent. The Dems’ crime bills and minimum mandatory sentencing has put some of our best and brightest away for years in prison and worse, while doing nothing to slow addiction and the rise of gangs.
At first blush ending the war on marijuana might seem trivial, insignificant. But it touches so much: economic expansion, jobs, real estate, police reform and safety, re-deploying police funding, increasing respect for the police, reducing the daily danger to police, criminal justice reform, gang/cartel disruption, redeploying resources to catch pedophiles, reducing militarization of police, reducing systemic racism, reducing mass incarceration and its impact on families, voters’ rights, states’ rights, rehabilitation of inner cities, reducing state and federal expenses and increasing tax revenue, tax reform, USDA, FDA, TTB, FBI, banking, private prison reform, reducing corruption, reducing teen marijuana use, improving public health, increasing societal happiness, reducing disability, deaths and suicides, the surveillance state, civil liberties, Constitutional protections, patient access to safe affordable medicine, sustainability and climate change, food security, DUI and deaths from traffic accidents, government waste, reducing reliance on imports, increasing farm revenues, sustainability of industrial hemp, reducing Big Pharma’s influence in politics, and more.
October Surprise
In the waning days before the election, desperate AF, Trump’s October Surprise might go like this:
“Today I directed Timothy Shea, Acting Administrator of DEA, to start the process of DESCHEDULING marijuana, or “Cannabis” as my kids call it, to be completed within 6 months of my inauguration. Eric lived in the GREAT state of Colorado after college, and learned much about it. He’s very smart.
And what Roger Stone, Kanye West and Rush Limbaugh told me makes sense: sick people NEED access to safe, affordable medicine and I say “why not let them?” It’s just the RIGHT thing to do, William F Buckley and Milton Friedman would agree.
Police have better things than to do than spend $13 Billion per year to protect NASTY Big Pharma, who the dirty Democrats are totally in bed with. I’ve always been a big fan of States RIGHTS. The biggest. “Jailin’ Joe” and “Devi” put many in prison, mostly black. Millions. Took away their RIGHT to vote. I’m going to fix that.
God gave us this plant and I’m told God does not make mistakes. You can’t let the cure be WORSE than the disease. Some of us are so SMART we can afford to lose a few IQ points to be healthier. Let investors in on it, close the open border to grow and make it here in USA = more JOBS. Focus instead on addictive and deadly opioids.
Healthier people, fewer death and suicides, less PTSD in vets (thank you for your service), frees police to catch PEDOS instead of farmers… it’s a WIN-WIN!!!“
Biden’s Defense
If Trump does that, Biden could see the writing on the wall and give this speech:
“I have worked to reduce the pain of drugs on society, which I have seen first-hand. Since the 1980s, I have worked long and hard to put pushers in prison where I thought they belonged.
But now I realized times have changed, and more importantly I have changed. What we thought was best back then turned out to hurt certain parts of the population more than others. The unintended consequences of protecting children from the ravages of drugs resulted in far more people of color in prison than whites. My wonderful wife Jill, an educator, has shared the recent research on using Cannabis to treat so many afflictions, and I must say it was very impressive. Over 40,000 studies.
I realized what is right then isn’t right now, and that our laws must reflect that. Times change. Therefore, my administration will deschedule Cannabis, as set forth in my running mate Senator Kamala Harris’ bill, the MORE Act. Hopefully we can heal the division in society caused by these laws, and for my part in them I ask your forgiveness. ‘Forgive them Lord for they know not what they do.’“
Senator Kamala Devi Harris will be just a heartbeat from the Presidency, and could very well be our first female President. With her heritage from the oldest and biggest marijuana country (India) as well as the most famous (Jamaica), straight outta Oakland, and prosecuting many POC as DA and AG to appear properly deferential to authority, was she born to legalize marijuana and reform the federal Criminal Justice system?
But Trump also has a play here as well, and could easily co-opt the Dems and steal their thunder on this massively popular issue, which was once in the GOP ideological wheelhouse.
Textbook PoliSci, I agree it’s far-fetched. But Trump has rewritten the rules. ANYthing can happen now. Even legalization.
I don’t put anything past him. And I never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory come November 3.
#1iv #1issuevoter #BidenHarris2020 #Trump2020 #Legalize