I'm sick of America being a country so rooted in puritanical stupidity. Drugs are bad. Sex is bad. Language is bad. Freedom is bad…whoa, whoa, whoa…freedom is bad? It certainly seems that way lately. In a country as great as this one, a country whose very essence is built around the idea of independence, it’s baffling that we seem hell-bent on being the biggest wet blanket on the planet. For god’s sake, a couple hundred years ago we started the whole nation with the Declaration of INDEPENDENCE. And then promptly started telling each other what we are not allowed to do.
So let’s have a look at where have we landed? We’re not allowed to have alcohol until the age of twenty one. Really? Alcohol is actually verboten to someone legally able to enlist, get married, drive or hold a job. Do our pilgrim lawmakers really think that a sixteen year old is going to burst into flames the moment a bit of lager hits his lips? Is young Jimmy going to lose his mind and spiral into a Wild Turkey flavored oblivion if he has a drink at his high school graduation? Doubtful. We should be teaching our kids that responsible consumption is just another part of life. We are not going to build little chug machines just because our young adults have a beer now and then. If anything, I believe we would be easing them into that part of adulthood better equipped to handle it. I guess I should be grateful we’ve opened up this much. We all know how well prohibition worked out.
Recently, in some states across this great land of ours, there have been laws passed banning smoking in privately held buildings. I’ll repeat that. There have been laws passed banning smoking in PRIVATELY HELD BUILDINGS! Are you fucking kidding me?!? How in the world can it be justified that a bar owner may not allow his patrons to have a cigarette with his beer? We have devolved so far that we’ve allowed the government to dictate what happens in areas NOT controlled by the government. That’s just great. It needs to be our choice to smoke or not to smoke, depending on the owner’s policies. If you don’t want to smell smoke while you eat, then don’t choose go to places that cater heavily to smokers. There’s that pesky freedom of choice again. I don’t even smoke and I hate that law.
Technically, I can’t walk on the sidewalk in front of my own house with a bottle of beer. It’s a crime to be drunk in public. Having a single joint because I’m in pain can get me arrested. Stopping at a red light at 4:00am in the middle of nowhere with no cars in sight then rolling through the intersection gets me a ticket. I need a permit for even the slightest alteration to my own home. I’m responsible for keeping someone else’s kids out of my pool.
My wife cannot sunbath topless in our backyard. Whether she would or not is a different story, but shouldn’t she have that right, that CHOICE? Where is the harm in that? Someone might actually see a breast – gasp! Guess what, they’ve seen them before. I understand the need for clothing in general, but in your own little piece of the world how can the powers that be require what you wear? It can’t be the kids. Hell, most of them started life by feeding from the dreaded teat, let alone having seen one. And isn’t nudity so scary in America because we as adults teach the youngsters that it is? I know it’s a fine line between my argument and an all out nude fest. Believe me; I wouldn’t want to see me in the buff walking through the local Acme. But there needs to be a point where it’s not seen as disgusting.
We seriously need to loosen our ties a little. I sense a tipping point coming where we will begin to strangle on our own uptightness, and it doesn’t feel good. Excess is not always bad. Marching to your own drummer is not always bad. We just need to learn to embrace what is not the norm. Live and let live. It’s the only way we’ll progress as a society past the tight asses that came here in the first place.
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