I think it is time for me to speak out on what drives my views and opinions as a person, and from which school of thought I make my wild and outlandish accusations which I write down and few read. This decision to lay it all out there comes on the heels of an interesting conversation with a couple at Carrow’s while watching the end of the USC game after finishing my most recent screed on the 912 Project championed by Glen Beck. This conversation started out nicely enough on politics of Alaska and then the US in general which spiraled in to a black hole of theological debate and inference that ended with me leaving after being cursed at by a very large Christian Conservative. It was a bit of a scene.
This man was in town for the gun convention where he and his wife sold night vision and prescribed to what seemed to be a fearful, biblical end of days scenario where the government was off its rocker and we were all fucked because the Muslims were going to ‘take over’ as he put it. I was content with being open minded, disagreeing at points with them, casually, and then expressing my own brand of open minded cynicism on the world today. What came of this as it began to spiral out of all semblance of control and level headed thinking was an eventual break down in conversation where my ideas were ‘fucking shit’ and at that point I felt it was time to finish my bloody mary and end the conversation without incident of violence or further disturbance of the peace. I am fascinated by conversations of this nature where those who have chosen a side get awnry, and I am surprised the conversation lasted as long as it did to be frank, but inevitably they all fall apart because what you get is those who are not open minded and are not ‘good Christians’ most of the time, which is to say that they don’t love all of God’s creatures and are not shepherds as it were.
Now I did not really want to get in to this conversation but what it has brought out of me is the interest to express all of my crazy ideas and to explain my position on a few wild platforms so that when you read my pieces I put up you can better understand what kind of soapbox I am preaching from. First off, I am a liberal, but not in the traditional sense. I feel that I am a child of the 21st century. My formidable years where I had a slight understanding of what was going on around me are memories of Michael Jackson scandals, OJ trials, and Clinton scandals. Basically my youth my mired by infidelity, purgery, murder, and pedophilia. Great youth. Barring these items and incidents I love Michael’s old work, I think OJ did it, and Clinton was a good President, though his choice in women leaves something to be desired. He is Slick Willy, you know he can get better trim than that! None the less I am a liberal, though my adherence to traditional party lines is far from normal. Also, as my politics runs a little to the weird my religious views are that of a wild man and I think you will see that these two driving pillars in my life have shaped the pessimistic writer you read today and are the ravings of, as per usual, a mildly informed, moderately biased, and limitedly researched, young man.
Liberal, but not in the traditional manner, I have some wild ideas to turn this country in to a maddening looney bin that would make the rest of the world recoil in horror. I am a strong believer that America is a caricature of a nation, a cartoon of itself. As such, I think we do everything to the nth degree because we think we can get away with it. Why else would we pollute the rest of the world with disgusting versions of burgers and coffee like McDonald’s and Starbuck’s in even third world countries? We just think we can get away with it. Well, I have got a few policy platforms on which I would run if I were running for office of some kind, say Governor in 2010 though I am not eligible and would never win in a thousand elections.
Item 1, Here we go, legalize prostitution. There you go I said it. It is the world’s oldest profession, chicks selling it out of both pant-legs, and it has been unregulated for too long. What do you mean, Wes, you ask? Well, as a job, it should be something you need a license for, just like a seller’s permit for liquor you need a license to sell some ass. The guidelines for such would be strict believe you me. first off, much like the porn industry, you would need regular testing for disease. This covers the John’s and the whores. So, now we have two clean, disease free people having sex. Also to be a prostitute you would need to apply for the job at a brothel, a legal venue with a license to sell where you would be given a place to live and work. All of this well regulated there would be income taxes, regulation, employment, and a higher class of ass to choose from. Have you seen street skanks in LA, no thank you, I wouldn’t fuck them with someone else’s dick, let alone pay for it. So here, already we have solved many issues with one fell swoop. We have now housed women, protected them from violence, regulated sex to limit spread of disease, taxed monies in exchange for the good and then put them all in a regulated building where it is all contained. So now the streets are clean, the girls can’t do drugs or have disease, so they are clean, and now we have higher employment, new jobs, whores with resumes, and taxable income for the state…I don’t see a downside.
Item 2, legalize drugs, I mean all of them. I am not kidding either, I am talking from pot to heroine, legalize and sin tax the shit out of it. Here is a similar concept to the whoring thing. Here we can regulate dosage, tax income from licensed distributers, contain those doing drugs in buildings, and regulate a runaway industry that is killing people and will not go away no matter how many times we declare a war on it. Guidelines, the Government creates departments, or the free market can, where companies create the cleanest, and most potent, but non lethal doses of the greatest drugs you will ever get. If the Government or private companies can create the best drugs on a mass scale, then they can get the best price, killing the street competition. Why buy from anyone that will charge more for dangerous product? In doing so we have licensed dealers that get shipments form the government, they keep track of who gets what and how much, these are matter of record for employers maybe, and now the folks can get high at a hotel like place as if they were going to a bar. Again, the streets are cleaner, you have people filing w-2’s for taxable income on legitimate jobs, no more dirty needle sharing, the gov regulates so less, if not no more, overdose, and the people still get their fix with the best stuff they can get their hands on.
Item 3, everyone gets a gun, I mean almost everyone. Here is my thing, it’s in the constitution, so it’s not going away. How about we not just give people the right to bare arms, but the government issues them arms. I mean something like this. At age 18 you are issued a Glock 9mm. Every man woman and child is given a gun. Federal regulation now stipulates that you can carry it on you at all times in every place, maybe even requires it. Here is my logic, if all citizens are required to carry and learn how to properly use a gun, like you need a certificate, like getting a license to drive, deadly weapon a car is, might as well have a gun too, then who would have the balls to shoot up a college campus when every one is carrying? Who would be dumb enough to draw a gun in a room full of armed people. One versus 40, 50, 100 people, I would suggest torturing animals, they don’t shoot back angst-filled teen. If guns are going to be prevalent in the fabric of this country then I say we arm all of our citizens, you would need a passport, driver’s license, birth certificate, social security card, blood test, fingerprinting, a whole host of other regulations, which would require a new branch of government which means new jobs like a DMV, and even the playing field. Much like a license you can get like a Class A or a Haz Mat permit, then you can apply for an AK-47 or AR-15 or a 12 gauge shotgun you can carry at all times. Variety is the spice of life. Like my teacher taught me in school, don’t bring it in if you don’t have enough to share with the whole class. If one can have a gun, we all should, creates a sense of civil obedience and responsibility without policing. Think about it.
Item 4, if I were to become an official of some kind, say governor, I would make my office buy up time right after the weekly lottery numbers to inform the public of local and state issues to create and open dialogue and see how the public as a whole would like me to proceed. I think of this ever since American Idol started voting with text messages. If we can decide who is America’s least lame douche bag by text then there is no reason we can’t make some decisions as a state in the same manner. If something were coming to a vote as a Senator I would ask my constituents which way they want me to vote for them first. This is a simple concept, American Idol does it for shit sake, so I don’t think it is too much to ask. I mean, by in large this person, a Senator, should have the popular vote, so he should have the backing of the people by majority, but he needs to be their mouthpiece, their advocate, and as such, he needs to represent them, so what better way to represent them than to vote exactly how your state or district wants to vote? I don’t see any issue here, there is one person casting a single vote for the good of the majority of his constituents. No Brainer.
Now, those are just a few of my crazy ideas, I also have stuff for limiting NASA funding, green education, conversion from text books to tablets like a kindle, etc, etc, but now onto my religious and theological views. Now, this is a doozy, and you might be surprised so hold on to your hats…I am mildly Agnostic. That is, I do not prescribe to any one set of denominational truths. I have written about this before, but I want to get it all out there so bare with me. I own two books you might have heard of and look for answers in both as a strictly academic endeavor, the Koran and the Bible. These are the two commanding powers in the world right now, the driving forces behind so much angst and misunderstanding. Years ago I decided to inform myself on these subjects, really read in to them and the lore and misinformation that surrounds them. In doing so I learned a lot about what has shaped the world today and I decided long before my study that I wanted to be open to possibility, in doing so I have created my own set of beliefs and principles I live my life by.
First off, there are many texts that were available at the time that were not canonized for either book. I find it difficult to believe that any one group has it down pat or that the chapters and gospels contained there in either piece are the whole story. I cannot listen to a man at a pulpit interpret the word of God for me in my relationship with him. I believe in the basics of the commandments, which are in both books, and I believe in the overall philosophies of both Jesus and Muhammad, but I will not prescribe to the narrow minded details on how day to day life should be led. These men were great thinkers of their time without formal education or truly worldly views. These were men that saw injustice and wanted to create a way to bring the globe together in a harmony of their own design. They were men, human men with agendas and ideas. They were both blasphemers of their time, revolutionaries that spit in the face of the status quo and saw a people suffering in a limited area and created a set of ideals that are scarily similar. There is little to be argued with their philosophy, it is when we get mired in the idea of religious sects that misunderstanding, hatred, and violence are bred and spread amongst the people.
I feel that when you pick a side and say your way is the only way you create a hostile environment for the fair exchange of ideas and create a no mans’ land where concessions and understanding cannot be had or made. In this you create a right and wrong, in the eye of the beholder, and your interpretation of things, key word here is interpretation, becomes law, and those that break it are to be handled with severe consequences, how else can you explain the Spanish inquisition and the Crusades? I have a theory I have written about before that every major religion goes through a period of violence I like to call the adolescent years where they act out and bad things happen, Christianity had theirs and Islam is in their period now. Be on the lookout for the Mormon’s to have some restless period in a few hundred years as the growing pains get to be too much and the hormones kick in. This is to be expected from every movement in history, a boil as it were, and in the melting pot of America a boil can be a dangerous thing while a good simmer can bring about great change if it is controlled with the proper amount of heat.
I am a dreamer, a man with an ideal of life I strive for. I try to listen to people and am fascinated by people with a different mindset than my own. I think far too often we surround ourselves with people we agree with and live in a vacuum of contentment, I like to push that boundary. I look for answers in odd places and I like to take a little bit from everything to create my own principles. I can be hard to handle, because I like to push people out of their comfort zone, experience and discuss something new, and this can put people off. My brand of cynicism and angst over things is mildly embellished, but on the whole it is what I believe and I challenge people to really get outside the box and figure things out for themselves, find what they are comfortable with what they can tolerate. My biggest fear is homogenizing the globe with views, politics, and religion. No longer would things be interesting or cultures so different. It is those differences that make the world interesting for me as a journalist, traveler, and photographer. If we all were of the same mind than we would all be eunuchs of no interest and people would not be fascinating, and that is the one world I don’t want to live in. I would rather it be kinda scary out there than simply vanilla. Take care and read on in my blog with these things in mind. I am one fucking stark raving mad son of a bitch. Laters.
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