>>I've heard it said that part of what makes U.S. paper currency unique >>is that hemp is used in the paper, but I'm not sure if this is true. >>Maybe the whole matter, the whole giant friggin hypocrisy of it all, >>makes me so upset that I decided to focus on less upsetting things >>like the needless throwing away of American Economy and Policy >>Independence to those who have zero interest in a sustainable future >>for any decent values, economies, societies, or whatever, particular >>to those whose focus is to prevent progress in energy technologies. > >I can understand that. All those people in jail for no good reason, >being brutalized and criminalized, it's outrageous. It's also >completely out of step - the other industrialized countries are >moving in exactly the opposite direction. The industrial hemp >prohibition is also out of step, and will see the US being left >behind. Insane, really.
One of the things I did with the energy issues is, corrolary to my treatment of it, examine how we criticize our Presidents, leaders, politicians, policy-makers. I explained that I thought there were better things to criticize about President Clinton than his sex life and alleged "criminal behaviour", and that I thought it was a tragic (and indeed destructive) waste of the country's time to spend our valuable time during his administration playing "get the President". I explained that if there were really folks who wanted to criticize his policies and ideas and whatever, that there were many other areas that much more cogent and effective criticism could be brought to bear, such as his National Energy Policies, or lack thereof. This was a compilation of some of my stuff, which had been written out a few times in months prior to March 2000: http://www.herecomesmongo.com/ae/03092000.html I failed to make sufficiently clear a few other related points. I think we all have a responsibility to offer cogent and intelligent criticism of our leaders if we are to offer criticism at all. Our leaders (who are also, in effect, our hired employees, where they are sort of CEOs and corporate officers and we are their board and their shareholders and customers) suffer when we fail to offer them the best possible criticisms of the jobs they are doing, because they can really improve their performance if the get top-notch criticism that really gets to the point and hits home. It's hard to improve yourself when the criticisms that you're getting are ankle-biting nonsense unworthy of consideration or time. It's easy to criticize the boss or the CEO when you're a peon, but how do you bring *valuable* criticism to everone's time? Effective and good criticism is not only well-intended and high-reaching, but I think it should incorporate some policy of actively trying to decide for oneself and define "What is a good job" rather than waiting, reacting to individuals' actions and then criticizing those actions. It is asking yourself: "Ok, smartypants, you think you're so smart, what would *you* do if you were thus-and-such office-holder?" It is, in the case of criticism of Presidents, understanding that a primary potentiality and power of the office is in simply having the Podium for four whole years, having the opportunity to exercise one's place at the "Bullypulpit" to bring attention to whatever issues one and one's team think are in need of attention. Failure to bring attention to other issues becomes, at that point, a sort of choice. If a critic defines an issue as important, and if a President fails to *discuss* an issue in four years of Office, then a very effective criticism can be brought to bear at that point, on the issue of failure to do or say a needed thing, rather than commission of some allegedly bad or illegal of half-baked act. An example of such a criticism of a failure-to-discuss, not a great example, but an example, would be that in the Debates of 92 or so, between nominee Clinton and President Bush Sr., (Perot may have been on stage also), President Bush Sr. said something about the Aids crisis, and it was a nice little statement that I think expressed desire to do something about a terrible problem, although it was in the context of running for office and not of exercising the already-gained powers, and President Clinton responded something like: "That's a very nice sentiment, but it's too bad that in four years of office that's the most you've ever said on the issue and pretty much the first time you've ever bothered to voice such ideas". How right he was, and that President had previously served eight years in another administration which was also woefully silent compared to what it should have voiced. It was one of the few times in my life I somewhat felt like standing up and cheering in listening to public discourse. Mr. Clinton did go on to try to bring more attention to the AIDS crisis as President, I guess. He did not unfortunately go on to do say or do enough to discuss a wide variety of problems, though. He said very little to call for discussing issues where he was personally week or vulnerable to ad homenim argumentation, and we all suffered both for his failures and the policies of his enemies who were all too anxious to waste the nation's future with their ad homenim attacks. He was vulnerable and under personal attack in areas of sexual harrassment and sexual behaviour, and he probably did not do enough to discuss and combat the AIDS crisis and other sexual-behaviour-related policy areas. He was personally vulnerable and under attack on Drug Related issues (obviously he had at one point smoked pot: big deal), and perhaps because he was simply not a good enough President to call attention to the issue, we did not do enough during his Presidency to discuss the wisdom of the Drug Wars. And, for whatever reason, we did not do enough to discuss Energy Policy Issues, Waste-disposal issues, etc. To bring this philosophy of criticism to the present issue, Drug Policy and such, I think that both President Clinton and President Bush, and their teams, have failed to do a good job of addressing the Drug War Issue. In the case of the current President, they have pathetically, quietly, weakly, offered up the hope that they will focus less attention on the Drug war because limited resources are more needed for the War on Terrorism. Likewise, for 10 or 15 years, some Conservatives have offered the idea that since the economy is arguably hurt by the whole matter, they might be willing to reconsider it. They *never* offer up the idea that the entire mess, every last little single shred of it, might be inherently inimical to our most basic ideas of freedom. They *never* even want to *discuss* it. I have heard nearly ZERO about this from the present Administration. And THAT is WRONG. Never mind that the President has probably, in his life, violated the law and used and possibly purchased illegal drugs. I DON'T CARE. What I do care about is that our basic freedoms are threatened, and millions of individual lives have been and continue to be fundamentally damaged, and Drug Laws are routinely increasingly used as Pretexts for all manner of violation of basic Property and Individual Constitutional Rights (for example: Drug Property Seizure Laws) and this goes on for decade after decade after decade, and we don't even discuss the matter, ever. Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
