PHILLY POST: I would like to respond to yesterday’s post by fellow Philly Post-er Beth Capriotti wherein she rhetorically threw her hands up in the air in bewilderment and, with a discernible note of pride in her glib know-nothingness, declared that:
Like rap music and twerking, [legalized pot is] something else I have to live with that I just don’t understand.
Beth, you are on your own with the twerking and rap enlightenment, except to say this: Twerking is just a modern version of dirty dancing, which has been around since at least Cleopatra’s day. As for hip-hop, I’m guessing that by “I just don’t understand” you actually mean that, blinkered by a generational divide and the remove of white privilege, you’ve never really made the effort to understand the last great evolutionary leap in the continuum of modern music and what is arguably the most influential sociocultural phenomenon of the last 30 years.
But I might be able to help with the pot thing.
I would submit that, after 50-plus years of absurdist, science-free Reefer Madness-style propaganda furnished by the prison-industrial complex, you are, like many Americans, a victim of Drug War Stockholm Syndrome. The cage is about to be unlocked and the prospect of confronting the unknown, aka freedom, is terrifying to you. The cage seems so safe and warm.
Be not afraid.
It’s what you don’t know that can hurt you. Which is why I would like to correct a few factual errors in your piece. MORE