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DownerMan Revival
Me For King!

by Alek Grabinski - alek@best.com

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Hey, less than thirteen months before it's time to pick the first president of the new millennium! Dan Quayle has thrown in the towel, so I figure it's safe to emerge from my shell and declare my intentions to consider forming a task force to evaluate an assessment of conducting a poll to determine the viability of establishing an exploratory committee. Yes, you got that right; it's DownerMan for Prez in 2000!

No, on second thought, scratch that. DownerMan can't become President, because he was born on heathen soil (well, Canada), and he won't be wizened, wrinkled and gray enough by Inauguration Day to pass constitutional muster. Not that those criteria make a whit of difference; given the clowns-as-usual it looks like we're going to be presented with, perhaps we should consider a return to the monarchy.

As your king, let me declare that the following changes in the law would take effect immediately:

Cellphones and Cars: Using a cellphone while driving is now forbidden across the land. Did you know that a cellphone-using driver is as likely to cause an accident as is a drunk driver? You can get more information from Tom and Ray, the CarTalk guys, at their website, and get a free "Drive Now, Talk Later" bumpersticker taboot. Punishment for violating this new ban is also driving - driving a carrot into the offender's ear canal, using a wooden mallet. Repeat offenders have other objects driven into other orifices.

War on Drugs Ended: The Onion's book Our Dumb Century got it right on page 163: "Drugs Win Drug War." Let's face it; altering consciousness is an innate animal drive, like eating and reproducing. Little kids and spinners at the back of the concert hall share the same drive, the desire to get whacked out and transported to a different reality. Try as they might, America's moral "protectors" can't keep people from wanting to feel good - and things have gone way too far in trying to prevent human nature.
On the day of my coronation, the prison doors will be thrown wide open. Out will walk every person who has been incarcerated for any marijuana-related offense. They will be followed by every person jailed for possession of any hallucinogen, in any quantity, and every person who is in prison for possession of less than a fatal dose of any substance. They will each be greeted by George W. Bush, who will demonstrate his compassion by telling them that they are forgiven for their youthful indiscretions.
With half the jails and prisons now empty, there is no longer a demand for more cells. All prison construction is halted. All bond measures passed by all the states for prison construction are canceled. Some - most? - of the recovered money is used for effective treatment programs for the millions of recently released, bogusly imprisoned citizens.
The government gets into the drug business. Drugs are available at cost from government-sponsored DrugShacks(tm), much like some states control the distribution of liquor. The criminal element disappears overnight, because the Gummint sells drugs at reasonable prices. In order to be able to purchase, users are registered and helped into treatment (hey, don't go crying to me about Big Brother; I never had a Big Brother and I think it would have been cool to have someone to look up to).
The US government stops pressuring countries like Columbia to poison their agricultural areas with herbicides such as teburithion and paraquat - chemicals so dangerous that their use in the USofA has been banned for decades. Paraquat, you probably don't recall, was used against marijuana crops in Mexico in the '70s and '80s but its use was suspended after pressure from the US government - turns out that American citizens were getting sick from smoking south-of-the-border wacky weed, and Uncle Sam stepped in. Yay! Thanks, Uncle Sam!

Tobacco Out, Hemp In: Let's get real: If you went to the FDA and asked for approval of your new product, which was lethal if used as directed, you'd be laughed out of Washington. But that's exactly what tobacco is - lethal. The fact that we still tolerate this stupid and filthy habit is beyond me, but if I were king, the tobacco companies would have their charters revoked. All that acreage in Kentucky and North Carolina and the other tobacco states would be converted to hemp production. Government subsidies which currently prop up tobacco farmers would be used to develop hemp for all its wonderful uses. Smoking in public would be criminalized, as we have done with public drinking. (And before you individual-right-defending smokers get on your emphysematic high horses, realize that DownerMan smoked for ten years, and quit in 1996 using The Patch. If a moral weakling like DownerMan can do it, so can you, you freakin' butt-suckin' ashtray of a human being.)
Oh, and I'd make it illegal to do genetic engineering on hemp. This hardy weed doesn't need any help from profit-driven lab-coated meddlers. There's a bio-crisis looming, my friends; let's try to keep it at bay as long as we can...

The Last Gun is Made! DownerMan used to be a pretty lefty kind of guy. He once advocated revocation of the Second Amendment. But now he's changed his stance; guns are as American as Motherhood (which is universal) and apple pie (which is German), and there's no getting around the fact that there are more guns in America than there are Americans to wave them around maniacally. But now that we have enough hardware to arm every man, woman, and child in this country, it's time to settle into Phase II. Shut down the gun companies (before they shut themselves down, like Colt recently did with handgun production). Increase the number of guns-for-toys, guns-for-CDs, guns-for-a-date-with-the-Backstreet-Boyz programs, all funded by 1000% taxes on ammunition (when a bullet costs $10, criminals will think twice about using a weapon which shoots five rounds a second). The trade in guns will slow as people hoard the ever-more-scarce weapons. It's the boiling frog approach to gun control - slowly reduce the availability of guns, rather than try to get rid of them all at once.
And while we're at it, any movie studio which makes a movie with gun use will have to fork over ten thousand guns for every simulated bullet fired. To replace the violence, studios are hereby authorized to show more skin!

Speak for Yourself: I'm all for faith - the belief in the unprovable, the explanations of the inexplicable that allow us to continue to exist in this world without collapsing into hopeless heaps of protoplasm. But what really chaps my hide is the unassailable confidence that the faithful have - again, bully for them that they can wake up and face the world with conviction. That's not the issue. The issue is that the flipside of that confidence is the "knowing" that everybody else is wrong, and having the Word of God to prove it. This is hubris of the worst stripe. In my kinder, gentler America, I decree the following: It is hereby forbidden to utter the phrase, "God says that..." Instead, the speaker may say, "The holy book of my religion says that..." That would bring the level of discussion down into the human realm, where it belongs - and besides, it wouldn't upset God so much when her words were taken out of context by well-meaning - or hate-spewing - believers. Donald Wildmon and his pack of homophobic haters will no longer be able to carry signs reading, "God Hates Fags." Instead, they will carry signs which say, "The Christian Bible, a collection of narratives, poetry, fables, and ancient social policy, suggests in some passages that homosexuality is disliked by one or more of the writers of this here book, and we agree with them." To convey their message, the protesters would be free to carry much larger signs, or to shrink the font size - their choice. And isn't free choice what America is all about?

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That would be Day One of my reign. Then I would rest.


DM

DownerMan is made of dust and mud, with a creamy spiritual filling.