And yet, our actions don't support our desires.
Why? How did this happen?
Two supreme court justices came before congress to point out how bad things are and suggest we institute changes. And it's about time. America should be ashamed on so many things.
We need to start turning those things around.
And we are, as the war on drugs (war on American citizens) has drawn to a close and Cannabis is being legalized in state after state after state. And the results are it, it's hurting the drug cartels just as we'd said it would for decades and law enforcement said it wouldn't. Except, shout out for, LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition).
Founded on March 16, 2002, LEAP is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization made up of current and former members of the law enforcement and criminal justice communities who are speaking out about the failures of our existing drug policies. Those policies have failed, and continue to fail, to effectively address the problems of drug abuse, especially the problems of juvenile drug use, the problems of addiction, and the problems of crime created by criminal control of illegal drug sales.
On all that, first allow me a brief aside.
LGBT communities have been given protections, that conservatives are now however trying to repeal, to work their slithery hands around to strangle those protections under the fallacious guise of "religious freedom", a disingenuous misnomer if ever there was one.
Why we have to fight all over again for something like Roe vs. Wade, when it was settled decades ago, just shows you the archaic viewpoints of some of the vocal minorities who are trying to subvert freedom in America to be freedom under their auspices and how only they view it, but not the majority of modern, intelligent Americans.
One delectable example of how religious Onanism in politics can backfire is the recent Indiana "religious freedom law" where Wiccans are now saying that the law will allow them such things as polygamy and nude rituals at the capitol. Not that they are wanting or asking for it, just stating that people need to understand what they are doing in trying to subvert America from rule for all to rule for some.
The article says:
"The Daily Beast‘s David Freedlander spoke to Dusty Dionne, a High Priest and High Summoner of the Aquarian Tabernacle Church, who confessed that while he believes “these bills are horrible,” they do provide a unique opportunity for practitioners of his faith."
I've been saying myself for years that religions need to stop involving themselves, dabbling in politics, as it's only going to backfire and it has, time after time. The more they try to skew things toward themselves the more it will come back on them in ways unforeseen and negatively affect them. We have a good system, the more you muck with it, the worse it will get. So in a way, keep it up, but you need to know you are working more for us, than yourselves.
We need to have a secular government to allow religion, all religions, not just those who think they are the "chosen few" as so many religions do, and openly profess. Religions tend to be bullies by the mere nature of their beliefs. If we are to be a mixed salad nation, as we are, we cannot have merely Christianity be the national religion.
We have seen enough around the world of religions trying to govern a diverse (even a monotheistic) populace.
Religion has in so many cases led to a pettiness, mostly from the ignorant vocal minorities of the religiously stunted, professing what they have been told, motivating them to act on emotion rather than rationality.
Mostly they blindly follow those with greedy political or economic intent to better their own personal positions under the auspices of better life for their community or constituents, without realizing those they are following, are only using them.
Wake the hell up people!
I would personally like to see religion fade completely away, as they are now, though much faster than their current speed of demise. As religion seems to teach us to be foolish in our choices, rather than look for the best solutions for all, to follow them up without having to go through the false filters of religious doctrines that are simply not a fit for everyone, there are better ways to live.
That being said we also need to kill off certain so called "religions", like Scientology, the scourge of religious freedom in America and worldwide. I might also argue the same for newer religions like Mormonism, another ridiculous theology, though I have to admit, Scientology takes the prize for an truly asinine "theology" based in pop psychology and literally, science fiction. Look it up.
But getting back to the point of all this....
Supreme Court Justices Blast The Corrections System.
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| Justices Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy during a congressional hearing Monday, March 23 |
As I have been saying myself, prisons are a way to retrain and make productive again, those who have been caught breaking the law and not, as institutions for high criminal learning and ingraining anger against the system, as they now are. HOW is that productive? There may have been a time when this was a functional system, back in the 1800s, maybe. But this is a new millennium.
We need to try thinking, using new information, and sloughing off our old and archaic religion based theories of what works, to see how it doesn't work. Then turn our enlightened eyes toward other things that don't work. Like bigotry against just...people. Where religion tells some to turn their backs on those people and treat them like animals or worse.
Face facts my friends.
We are supporting broken institutional and conceptual processes while there are answers for how to make these things work far better. If we would just, open our eyes.
Why aren't we making things more functional rather than throwing money at and trying to make work, those things that simply do not work and have not worked now for nearly 100 years? The war on drugs has failed almost on the day it had begun, and we are only now facing that. Finally.
Isn't it now also the time to face all those other things we have stupidity supported for apparently no good reason other than tradition, to make more money, to support dysfunctional mindsets we once found emotionally pleasing for apparently juvenile religious reasons and so continued to blindly support some of the most foolish and abusive processes in our modern history?
Isn't it time for a new way? A more educated, modern way? Ways that are being proven around the world in other more enlightened countries?
I really think it is.
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