âI smoked pot with David Brooksâ:
Donât Bogart that freedom, David.
I like that he says this, âLaws profoundly mold culture, so what sort of community do we want our laws to nurture?â after saying that marijuana was nothing more than harmless, mild fun and frolic for him.
Do you want our community to allow HARMLESS, MILD FUN? DO YOU, YOU COMMIE TERRORISTS?!?
Christ, what an asshole
What arts? Everyoneâs too sober.
â[S]moking weed doesnât really make you funnier or more creative (academic studies more or less confirm this).â
We need to develop recreational drugs that actually increase funniness.
This is just the gentlest, most loving smackdown I have ever read.
I am So Glad you linked to Gary Greenbergâs piece. I really hope that it sweeps the Interwebs over the weekend.
While most of it is indeed hand in glove, the fate of the black student left to take the fall for Brookâs silence chills my blood. Karma can take a long, long time to come around, but paybackâs a bitch; Brooksie canât be too happy to see that bit of history surface.
From David Brooks (idiot):
We didnât give it up for the obvious health reasons: that it is addictive in about one in six teenagers; that smoking and driving is a good way to get yourself killed; that young people who smoke go on to suffer I.Q. loss and perform worse on other cognitive tests.
Thatâs all very debatable for marijuana, but not for alcohol. So, why does David Brooks still consume that dangerous drug, alcohol?
1) Alcohol is highly addictive and 15% of people living in the United States are considered âproblem drinkersâ.
2) Every 2-hours, three people are killed in alcohol-related highway crashes. Not to mention all the alcohol-related violence that contributes to sexual assaults, injuries and deaths.
3) Alcohol consumption can create permanent brain damage among many other neurological issues.
http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa63/aa63.htm
http://www.alcoholaddiction.info/alcoholism-statistics.htm
Perhaps David Brooks is brain damaged from alcohol? That would explain a lot.
Alcoholâs effects on the body:
Actually if there is a time to NOT smoke pot, itâs when youâre a teenager and your brain is still developing. Maybe this is the reason behind this article.
That blog post is absolutely awesome.
David Brooks is a jerk, plain and simple. I occasionally find myself agreeing with him, and then I realize the only reason Iâm sympathizing is because he isnât full-on whacko conservative, heâs just elitist douche conservative, and things are so whacked these days, that actually strikes me as decent, when it really shouldnât.
What a bastardly hypocrite.
Your headline, âI enjoyed pot, but you shouldnâtâ, is not what I got from reading his article.
Iâve sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didnât want to do it. I felt I owed it to them.
If I was to guess, Iâd say Brooks wants marijuana use gently discouraged.
And if youâre middle class and white, thatâs pretty much what the current enforcement and legalization means.
And if youâre not? Well, I doubt he thought about that.
Personally, I am not thrilled at the idea of marijuana usage becoming more common around me. But it doesnât take a huge genius to realize that the cost of that discouragement is a legal system that can choose to destroy someoneâs life at a whim. And that is too high a price to pay.
Where have you been? Missed you, chap.
Brooks is hardly the only example(though he certainly is a good one, staring down at us in his engorged and lofty serenity as a Serious Commentator); but it just baffles me how allegedly-competent-adults, much less Public Intellectuals donât seem to grasp what making something a matter of criminal law means.
Heâs blithering on with a stream of anecdotes and aesthetic arguments that would be (whether or not they are correct, Iâm not wildly interested) suitable in tone if you were giving some friendly-advice-from-someone-whoâs-been-there to a younger relative or good friendâs kid brother or something.
But heâs talking about criminal justice policy. Yâknow, the set of rules that governs who gets hunted down by armed agents of the state, imprisoned, sometimes disenfranchised for life, denied various educational and vocational opportunities, and so on. This isnât fucking âSome Heartfelt Advice for My Dear Nephew as He Heads Off to Collegeâ territory. And, however much our good friends in law enforcement and âcorrectionsâ try to brutal it up at home, the real meatgrinder is usually in the various lucky locations that handle production and trafficking.
Thatâs the disconnect that I just donât understand (though, obviously, being totally immune to the consequences when he was doing it helpedâŚ): There is a world of difference between âGosh, I really would advise you to reconsiderâŚâ and âYup, I, for one, approve of a vast expenditure of public money aimed at equipping our security forces to get their Discipline and Punish on against the stoner menace!â
Itâs not even a difference of degree, itâs one of kind.
All of that wonderful art he appreciates, the entirety of which was of course created by a lot of stone-cold sober teetotalers in heightened states of mental clarity.
I disagree with a part of the summary. The article goes to the core of whats wrong with Mr. Brooks: that he is a narcissist idiot that cant wait to tell you in a very soporiphic way some âhard earned wisdomâ he got from 5 seconds of looking at his navel. And will coach that as fair, balanced, mature political commentary when it is, mostly, pathetic.
According to his article the problem is that legalization will make it âa bit more difficultâ for people âlike himâ to become the âbetterâ kind of people they (well, he), wants to be. Or, summarized âif it is legal I may smoke it but I dont want toâ? What a relevant and important topic to address the fucking War on Drugs cost on human lives.
Thank you, IMB! I got banned for a short while for threatening a badger with a shank. The ban was lifted, but I hadnât checked in for a while afterwards, then the holidays hit. I blame myself, the holidays and the badger. And, the dank weed I bought from David Brooks.
