Pool Tables & Penis-Grabbing

Kat’s surefire way to gain, maintain and expand power and control

Step 1–create a common enemy.

Now, it’s okay to have this be a living being–say, Hitler– or a country of living beings–say, the USSR. But since those things can and do talk back it’s even better to make an inanimate object the targeted cause.

Well, either you’re closing your eyes
To a situation you do now wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated
By the presence of a pool table in your community.

Step 2–release escalating propaganda about the dangers caused by this enemy.

Since people aren’t necessarily scared by an aspirin or a weed or a piece of metal you’ve got to tell them what’s so bad about it.

I say that any boob kin take
And shove a ball in a pocket.
And they call that sloth.
The first big step on the road
To the depths of deg-ra-Day–
I say, first, medicinal wine from a teaspoon,
Then beer from a bottle.

Step 3–Threaten people’s families.

Nothing gets someone’s goat like being told about the dangers posed to The Children. (Just a note. The correlary to Step 1 is to always rely on The Children as people’s common cause. It’s safer than religion or nationalism but serves the exact same purpose–fueling steaming piles of indignation and spurring otherwise disengaged and self-involved folks to frenzied action.)

An’ the next thing ya know,
Your son is playin’ for money
In a pinch-back suit.
And list’nin to some big out-a-town Jasper
Hearin’ him tell about horse-race gamblin’.
… Make your blood boil?
Well, I should say.

Step 4–Move In For The Kill. The people are yours.

We’ve surely got trouble!
Right here in River City!
Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock and the Golden Rule!
Oh, we’ve got trouble.
We’re in terrible, terrible trouble.
That game with the fifteen numbered balls is a devil’s tool

And that’s how we get to the place in the land of the free that school teachers and principals (remember..he’s your PAL!) are allowed to root around in your child’s underwear to make sure he’s not sneaking aspirin into class. Or heroin. Or whatever.

I was a teenager once and the thing I remember most about that time is that what was most attractive to me was also what was most forbidden. So I think that perhaps one of the causes for the rise in drug use in the suburbs is the very forbiddenness of it.

Do I favour legalising all drugs? No. Just pot, really. But I also favour stepping down from the unwinnable War on Drugs to the place where we no longer fetishise drugs and turn them into a totem for absolute evil. That means the cost of fighting the absurd war will go down and this nonsense about violating the privacy of citizens will cool off. We hope.

Hat Tip: The Divine Miss R, Radley BalkoReddit Libertarian and of course Aunt B. Oh, and Meredith Wilson