\t\t\t\tBy Paul Dougan<\/p>\n
By a six-to-three margin, the Supreme Court proclaims sick Americans easing
\ntheir pain with pot are criminal. So, an 85-year-old grandmother trying to
\ndeal with the nausea caused by her chemotherapy, seeking, perhaps, to follow
\nthe advice of her physician, is an enemy of the state. Yes, here in America,
\nthat noble fountain of decency, democracy, and human rights, that light of
\nthe world, Grandma can be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Sounds
\ninsane, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n
I, however, understand the decision perfectly: The Court is a political
\ninstitution; currently, it’s particularly sensitive to the needs of the
\nright-wing of the Republican Party, the so-called neoconservatives. And that
\nconservative Court is functioning in a political environment that sees the
\nWar on Drugs as a national crusade, where being against drugs in any form
\nis a patriotic duty. Now, the problem with both medicinal marijuana and
\nindustrial hemp is that they involve cannabis; as the necocons will warn
\nyou, both of those issues are just stalking horses for the legalization of
\nall marijuana. To some extent, they’re right: the issues are interconnected,
\nand politically, the legalization of either medicinal marijuana or
\nindustrial hemp would strengthen the movement to legalize it. So, the
\nCourt’s decision wasn’t really about the specious connection between Grandma’s
\nmedicine and the federal government’s right to regulate interstate commerce;
\nit was about the larger battle to legalize marijuana in general.<\/p>\n
So, why not legalize it–all marijuana? It’s never caused a single
\ndocumented death. The recent sensational drug overdoses of students at
\nvarious colleges in Colorado were caused by alcohol, not reefer–theirs was
\nthe drug of the young George W. Bush, not Jerry Garcia. If our concern is
\npublic health, we certainly don’t improve it by jailing people. And the
\ngateway objection is laughable. A massive cause-effect fallacy, gateway’s
\nonly basis in fact turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: what little
\ngateway effect pot does pose is due precisely to its illegality. Marijuana
\nprohibition and the Court’s decision also fly in the face of the
\nneoconservatives own rhetoric about the horrors of big government–too
\nmuch intrusion into the lives of individuals, too much regulation, too many
\ntax dollars spent. And for decades, the thinking behind that prohibition has
\nviolated basic American values: the notion that one man’s freedom ends where
\nanother’s nose begins, that those not crossing that line have the right to
\nbe left alone. No, the flimsy, contradictory arguments against legalizing
\nrecreational marijuana make no sense either.<\/p>\n
But there is method to the madness: to legalize marijuana would be to
\nlegalize marijuana users; in particular, to legalize hippies, the
\ncounterculture, whatever term you prefer. Now, of course, we tell ourselves
\nhippies no longer exist, that the counterculture is just a faded memory, but
\nat another level, we all know that’s nonsense. In most areas of the nation,
\nit’s about impossible to go out on any given day and not see overtly hippie
\npeople; you watch the World Series, you see hippie baseball players; you
\npick up a newspaper or listen to talk radio, and there are the commentators
\nclucking about a wicked counterculture that’s allegedly ruining America.<\/p>\n
What we have in hippies is a new (forty-year old) ethnicity–a cultural
\nformation that displays virtually every aspect of ethnicity save for the
\nusual origins (and even those unusual origins pertain to only a portion of
\nhippies: we now see second- and even third-generation counterculturalists
\nwho’ve inherited their ethnicity). The reason we’ve come to believe that
\nhippies no longer exist is because the powers that be are engaged in
\nethnocide: they don’t believe hippies have the right to exist, they don’t
\nwant hippies around. For as long as there’s been a counterculture, that’s
\nthe message they’ve been sending, those are the policies they’ve been
\nenforcing–Hippies have no rightful place in this nation; America must be
\ndrug free. Zero tolerance is code for intolerance.<\/p>\n
America’s powerful, then, are reacting to and treating hippies much like
\nthey’ve traditionally reacted to and treated other ethnic minorities,
\nespecially those just off the boat and ethnicities of color. Hippies have
\nbeen stereotyped and turned into a social pariah; the counterculture has
\nbecome a boogey-man in the public mind, the stuff of demagoguery. Just, for
\nexample, as anti-Semitic Germans believed their loss in the First World War
\nwas due to Jews, many Americans have come to believe our loss in Vietnam was
\ndue to hippies. And just as for decades American politicians race-baited
\nrivals, today’s politicians regularly hippie-bait opponents; thus, we’re
\nsupposed to believe the Clintons secretly sport tie-dyes under their
\nbusiness suits, that former anti-war activist John Kerry was and is just
\nanother hippie protestor wearing flip-flops, that the Democratic Party is in
\nleague with what Rush Limbaugh calls the Birkenstock crowd.<\/p>\n
In addition to the political rewards of scapegoating and hippie-baiting, the
\nneoconservatives have another reason for persecuting hippies: they believe
\nthe counterculture is a mortal danger to Western Civilization. No, I’m not
\nexaggerating. A video currently in vogue among neoconservatives is entitled
\nThe Siege of Western Civilization; its maker, former Reagan aide Herb
\nMeyer, identifies three major threats to Western Civilization. One is the
\ncounterculture. Then again, for centuries the privileged in America had
\nthemselves and others convinced that any move towards equality by
\nAfrican-Americans meant the end of Western Civilization, that the
\nnegrification of society would lead to its downfall.<\/p>\n
There’s something happening here; what it is is exactly clear: prejudice
\ntowards and discrimination against the counterculture have become
\ninstitutionalized, become a central factor in modern American life in much
\nthe way that racism and other forms of ethnic chauvinism have long been an
\nugly mainspring of American history.<\/p>\n
As such, any issues in any way related to the counterculture are seen as
\npart of a life-and-death struggle between light and darkness, between good
\nand evil, between a healthy, vibrant America and a once-great nation broken
\nby the permissiveness and moral relativism bigots believe to be the
\nhallmarks of hippie culture–Forrest Gump, please come home: the
\ncounterculture is up to all kinds of no good, and Mama needs you. And that’s
\nthe real reason some cancer-ridden grandma–who likely as not isn’t
\nhippie–will be forced to make a sick choice: suffer or risk jail.<\/p>\n
Bio: Paul Dougan is a college English teacher writing a book: Happily
\nHippie: Understanding, Celebrating and Defending Forty Years of
\nCountercultural Ethnicity. He may be reached at pgdougan@netscape.com.<\/p>\n
Posted by: skip
\nViews: 12938
\nTopic:10\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Paul Dougan By a six-to-three margin, the Supreme Court proclaims sick Americans easing their pain with pot are criminal. So, an 85-year-old grandmother trying to deal with the nausea caused by her chemotherapy, seeking, perhaps, to follow the advice of her physician, is an enemy of the state. Yes, here in America, that noble […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drugs","category-guest-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}