I think I may be suffering long term effects of my drug use in years past — effects most evident in my current political thinking. Indeed, I think many people in my generation may be suffering in the same way.
Unlike Bill Clinton, most of us did inhale in the 1960s. A lot. And for years running. This was true not only for people in college in the 1960s, but people like myself who spent part of those years in the military. As anyone who actually lived back then knows from personal experience, smoking marijuana was as common as drinking bathtub gin during Prohibition.
Now comes this revelation from a study in Australia that found that long-term marijuana smoking causes symptoms that might last a lifetime. Symptoms such as delusions. And heaven knows, I’ve been suffering from delusions when it comes to the American political system in recent years. Big time.
I was actually deluded into thinking that a new President elected to bring about change meant it — meant that predatory special interests such as investment bankers and health insurers would be taken down a peg. And perhaps even that the long growing inequity between rich and everyone else would me moderated in his administration. Clearly, a delusionary belief on my part.
And that delusion I had about electing a Democratic congress with a big majority that would actually legislate, and even without a “super majority” would do what Republicans did in the past and will certainly do again when they get back in power — ram through the agenda they were elected to pass. Delusionary. Clearly, delusionary.
I even thought — you sane people who never puffed will laugh at this — I even thought that after the worst economic downtown since the Great Depression, brought on by the flagrant greed and outright stupidity of Wall Streeters who were under-regulated or not relegated at all, that there would be genuine regulatory reform, in spite of their lobbyists and campaign contributions. Can you believe anyone could be that delusionary in today’s America?
Well, the damage has been done. My brain, warped by marijuana use in the 1960s, will clearly never be repaired. Anyone crazy enough to think our present government in Washington will ever perform in a way that passes desperately needed measures on controversial subjects, or takes on special interests in a meaningful way, is clearly nutty as a fruitcake.
Guess people like myself can only now hope that the weed gets legalized soon. So we can groove on Sarah Palin moving into the White House after the 2012 election.