Read The Douchebag Bible Online
Authors: TJ Kirk
hot because it’s hot to us—but the sun isn’t hot to itself and all the
elements that make it up. Hot is our bias. Hot is subjective. Hard
is subjective. Fast is subjective. Everything that makes up our
seemingly solid world of airtight absolutes is entirely subjective.
Does this mean that all truth is ultimately subjective? I
wouldn’t say that, but I think that objective truth is so far beyond
our grasp (and so far removed from our hearts) that it is
essentially irrelevant.
I think that “sunsets are beautiful” is every bit as true as
“the sun is hot.” I think that “sunsets are ugly” is every bit as true
as “sunsets are beautiful.” I think that freedom is found in the
ability of contradictory ideas to coexist.
A nation on non-drug-users who all believe in drugs rights
would be a free nation. A nation of heterosexuals who allowed
gays to have equal rights regardless of how they felt about gay
people is a free nation. A nation of vanilla people who allow the
kinky people to be who they are, regardless of how they feel about
the kinky people’s lifestyles is a free nation.
Freedom is truth. Truth is paradox.
The New Slaves
A man said to me once that the reason that so many minorities
turn to lives of crime is because of gansta rap and movies that
portray the criminal lifestyle as glamorous. Certainly, that may be
a factor, but it’s not a problem for the reason he seemed to think
it was.
The problem is that minorities are stupid.
Whoa. Hold on. I’m not making any sort of argument
about race-based intelligence, as I find such arguments
repugnant. I’m simply saying that minorities are statistically
more likely to be impoverished and tend to live in areas where the
schools are underfunded. Shitty education creates shitty people
who make shitty parents who fail to instill within their children
any sort of principles. It’s no wonder that so many of these kids
either grow up to perpetuate the shitty parenting cycle by
producing offspring of their own or wind up initiated into gangs.
And since the crime rate is so catastrophically high in
many minority areas, there are fewer small businesses operating
there and therefore fewer jobs. Often times, the only means of
making money is to sell drugs or steal34.
The whole thing forms a vicious cycle that is incapable of
endings without the intervention of an outside force of some kind.
Violence and theft begets poverty and poverty begets violence and
theft.
Now, some will choose to play their little tough guy
34 Sometimes to eat, but often just to pay for drug habits.
routines and give us all that slow-clap speech about personal
responsibility and toss in some crowd-pleasing snide and
sarcastic “boo-hoos” that mock rather than address the
problem—but that is beneath us. Or at least it should be.
Minorities are stupid due largely to the racist policies that
have dominated the vast majority of American history, so of
course they view what is only intended as escapism (gangsta rap,
gangster movies) as guidebooks for how to live the easy life. It’s
natural enough that they would view that as the pinnacle of
human achievement when it is essentially the glorification of the
reality that they already inhabit out of necessity. Who doesn’t
dream of being the best at what they do? Of course every two-bit
drug dealer in the Ghetto will watch
Scarface
with envious eyes.
Tony Montana is a better drug dealer than him. Tony Montana is
the drug dealer he wishes he was.
Art may encourage us in our chosen paths in life, but rarely
does it set us upon them. More often, art is about learning to
accept a circumstance or to escape into a better version of your
own life than it is about making you into something that you’re
not. No straight-A student from a wealthy family decided to
become a drug dealer just because it looks fun35.
This hopeless cycle is made all the more horrible by the fact
that it has served—by design or by happenstance—the purposes
of an elite group of Americans.
The United States (
laaaaand of the freeeee
) has less than
35 Well, actually, some probably do, but they’re the exception, not the rule.
5 percent of the world's population, but it accounts for nearly 25%
of the world’s prison population36. If you’re reading that and
you’re not outraged, then your sole focus in life should be to avoid
breeding at all costs, because the world doesn’t need more idiots
like you.
Was it always like this? Were we always so fond of our
"lock 'em up and throw away the key" philosophy of crime and
punishment?
Since 1970, our prison population has increased by 700%37.
You're not reading that wrong. It has literally become 8 times
larger in just 38 years. (HINT: The US Population has only grown
by about 30-40% in that time—statistically negligible in the face
of our previous number.)
Hey, TJ, what year was the War on Drugs instituted
again?
I'm glad you ask, my child. It was instituted in 1972.
But, TJ, now that we've put these violent criminals in
prison, crime in this country has gone down! So the war on
drugs is working! Yay!
WRONG. Most scientific evidence suggests that there is
little if any relationship between fluctuations in crime rates and
incarceration rates. In many cases, crime rates have risen or
declined independent of imprisonment rates. New York City, for
example, has produced one of the nation’s largest declines in
36 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States
37 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/15/114022/882