Spring into Action

I am ready for spring. It is well on the way, but the fresh four inches of snow last night was a little discouraging. I am ready to fish and be out on my boat for a few days. Soon enough I guess...

So life has been relatively calm. No tragedy to speak of today, thank gawd. I needed a respite.

I saw the movie V for Vendetta the other day. I liked it a lot. The mask was a bit creepy, but it is a very entertaining movie, and very relavant. It's creepy to watch as an American. Creepy because it's so true. Just watch our news any day of the week. Our news is always the bad news, or else good news that is completely irrelevent (Cat falls from tree, runs away, soon reunited with owner). Why don't we ever hear news about the advances in research to combat AIDS? What about steps forward in protecting the environment? How about people giving their lives to good causes? None of this is ever shown, because if we start giving these things attention, for one things, we'll keep giving them attention and might actually start helping those causes ourselves (who knows how much money and public attention would be lost if we all started picking which issues were important to us?). The other problem with an honest media would be that many of the corrupt systems we have in our government would be exposed. Look at the drug war. How is it that the American public still believes that marajuana is a dangerours narcotic? And please tell me who it is that believes fighting an expensive war on drugs, jailing those who possess small amounts of these substances and treating them like violent criminals is doing anyone any good. Just imagine a world in which a cop comes across a struggling junky on the street, and decides to help him out rather than knock him on the head and jail him for a year. I'll tell you one place where it works: Amsterdam. You can tell by spending only a week there what a difference law is. When you eliminate the petty bullshit from your law and make only serious crimes illegal, suddenly police become protectors, people who can be trusted and looked at as heros. Here in America, the cops are simply power hungry brats who don't want to put all the effort into busting smart criminals, so they stick with being a public annoyance. "Hey, there's an 18 year old with a beer, let's arrest him and throw the book at him!" Way to use our tax dollars and policemens' time. Fuck that.

Anyhow, my rant has come to an end. I hope at some point we, as a country, can get on top of the ball. We are all being stifled, and that sucks when you are the country with some of the highest potential for good in the world.