Golden Goat
Barton and the guys sit around his large-screen TV, playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, passing a bong. Courtney and Tyler man the controls, shooting the shit out of each other and their nemeses on Playstation Live. Jack takes a hit and expels his theory on the legalization of marijuana and the good that would come from ending the War on Drugs-how politically beneficial it would be for securing the lower-middle class for domestic elections, how neutralizing it would be in the face of the major foreign and international threats from the third world, how therapeutic it would be in equalizing the cultural divide of the races (DUI’s and getting jobs and prejudices inherent of the power structure). Not to mention how much it could help in areas like science and discovery. I mean, look at that guy who discovered LSD.
The guy that discovered the binaural beat.
Yeah. Him too. And thinking about how Obama is the best chance we’ve ever had since the invention of the War on Drugs… to re-legalize a plant. Something that grows in nature. And the only reason no President had utilized the power invested in them to decriminalize this plant and benefit from the taxation and control of this plant, was because they were white, and because they were too blind to see that it was their expectation of minorities as drug dependent, rather than the reality of the situation. Now, I’m not saying that Obama’s likely to redeploy the War on Drugs, but he’s the first anything-kind-of-a-chance that we’ve had to put an end to this rubbish.
Rubbish, dude?
Yeah. What about it?
Nothing dude. Just: Rubbish?
What? It’s an ok word, isn’t it?
Ok…
What? Just because it’s faintly British means it’s no good to use in conversation. It’s a good word, you said so yourself.
I didn’t say it was a good word.
An ok word.
An ok because it wasn’t good enough to get around it’s Britishness? What’s wrong with being British?
What’s wrong with being American?
There’s nothing wrong with being American, man, it’s just that being American doesn’t mean what it used to mean in the past, when the people floating the new definition were growing up under the old one. It’s hypocritical, is all.
What’s hypocritical about believing in freedom, and equality? I believe in equality-don’t you dare try to imply that I’m racist, Jack, because I will fucking beat you down if you do that.
I’m not doing that, man. I’m not saying that at all. Freedom and equality are good. Freedom and equality are probably the best things there are. That’s American, no doubt about it. But it’s also French, and that’s another thing that it means to be American: Arrogance. We think it’s American, even though we were taught in 6th grade that the Statue of Liberty came to America from France. Voltaire and his Age of Enlightenment were French. The French bankrolled our revolution from Britain, but it was our war, and we won, so we created democracy. We created freedom. And equality, when in fact, the most recent face of America has been one that which wallowed in inequality.
What? And France isn’t racist, bro? Don’t forget the Paris riots, ok? Don’t forget about the Muslim middle-class, throwing cocktails in the streets, because they thought we were being hypocritical.
No man. What I’m saying is that there doesn’t have to be one point of view. There isn’t one truth. There are only experiences, and we can only judge events of the world from a point of view sprouting from our experiences. But when you open your mind to accept different points of view, that’s when you grow. That’s when you elevate your thought processes to a level that most are afraid to rise to. And I’m saying that drug usage has the ability to accelerate you to that higher level, but those who are in charge refuse to let others into the club.
What are you, Jack? Some kind of fucking socialist?
Uh, yeah… I am…
Really?
Yeah, man. I am.
Wow.
What? You thought socialist was a dirty word or something? An insult? Dude, it’s only an insult to Americans. Because we believe someone should be at the top of the natural order of things. That’s what “American” means now, man, to the rest of the world. It’s not just freedom, it’s freedom of our own, standing on the shoulders of third world industrial slavery. It’s not just equality, it’s this sense of superiority over the rest of the world, so Americans are all equal in that we’re all at least more valuable than our enemies.
How can you say that?
Because we’ve lost 5,000 of our troops in a war and we’re only now beginning to think it’s been too many lives to stomach.
Well isn’t that what you want?
If it takes 5,000 lives to end a war, why haven’t we ended it by now?
Well, it takes some time to end a war-
No. If we didn’t think that American lives were more valuable than Iraqi lives, or Muslim lives, or just non-American lives, we’d have demanded this war end after the first night of this war. When we shocked and awed the fuck out of the civilian Baghdad population. But we decided to wait until that number was up to over 600,000 dead before we started to second guess a president who went to war for the most transparently bogus reasons, ever. But we didn’t do that. And it’s because we think we’re better. Because we’re arrogant. Because that’s part of what it means to be “American,” now.
And that’s why you want Obama to end the War on Drugs?
No. That’s the reason that I think it exists in the third place. To limit the freedoms of the classes below us. Look at what would happen to Mexico if we’d let them tax their drug trade. They’d be a first world country with a GDP the size of a Scandinavian utopia or something. Look how it would stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan. They wouldn’t need to go to jihad against us because they’d have money for infrastructure and schools and air conditioning. Money moderates ideology. It corrupts. It corrupts us to think that babuls are more precious than lives, that beliefs really aren’t worth fighting for. And then we wouldn’t live on a world that was so close to tripping over our own booby traps. They don’t hate us for our freedoms. They hate us because they see our image of freedom and see as we enact policies that actively deny it from them. I want to see them-whoever “them” is-to call off the War on Drugs because I think it’s the most valuable thing we can do to begin healing the international stresses out there.
Hmm.
Theo looks up from whatever he was doing.
You are such a fucking hippie, he says to him. The rest of them erupt into laughter, even Barton, who was nodding his head the whole time Jack was talking, agreeing with every single word he said. They erupt into laughter, and Jack hangs his head and sighs, relaxing into a smile. Theo rises and crosses the room, laughing, and gives Jack a high five that turns into a hug. He pulls away, looks into Jack’s eyes and says, quietly but solidly. For real, though. For sure.
Jack laughs and clasps his hand in Theo’s. He pats him on the opposite shoulder. All right all right, he says, his best impression of Wooderson.
The guy that discovered the binaural beat.
Yeah. Him too. And thinking about how Obama is the best chance we’ve ever had since the invention of the War on Drugs… to re-legalize a plant. Something that grows in nature. And the only reason no President had utilized the power invested in them to decriminalize this plant and benefit from the taxation and control of this plant, was because they were white, and because they were too blind to see that it was their expectation of minorities as drug dependent, rather than the reality of the situation. Now, I’m not saying that Obama’s likely to redeploy the War on Drugs, but he’s the first anything-kind-of-a-chance that we’ve had to put an end to this rubbish.
Rubbish, dude?
Yeah. What about it?
Nothing dude. Just: Rubbish?
What? It’s an ok word, isn’t it?
Ok…
What? Just because it’s faintly British means it’s no good to use in conversation. It’s a good word, you said so yourself.
I didn’t say it was a good word.
An ok word.
An ok because it wasn’t good enough to get around it’s Britishness? What’s wrong with being British?
What’s wrong with being American?
There’s nothing wrong with being American, man, it’s just that being American doesn’t mean what it used to mean in the past, when the people floating the new definition were growing up under the old one. It’s hypocritical, is all.
What’s hypocritical about believing in freedom, and equality? I believe in equality-don’t you dare try to imply that I’m racist, Jack, because I will fucking beat you down if you do that.
I’m not doing that, man. I’m not saying that at all. Freedom and equality are good. Freedom and equality are probably the best things there are. That’s American, no doubt about it. But it’s also French, and that’s another thing that it means to be American: Arrogance. We think it’s American, even though we were taught in 6th grade that the Statue of Liberty came to America from France. Voltaire and his Age of Enlightenment were French. The French bankrolled our revolution from Britain, but it was our war, and we won, so we created democracy. We created freedom. And equality, when in fact, the most recent face of America has been one that which wallowed in inequality.
What? And France isn’t racist, bro? Don’t forget the Paris riots, ok? Don’t forget about the Muslim middle-class, throwing cocktails in the streets, because they thought we were being hypocritical.
No man. What I’m saying is that there doesn’t have to be one point of view. There isn’t one truth. There are only experiences, and we can only judge events of the world from a point of view sprouting from our experiences. But when you open your mind to accept different points of view, that’s when you grow. That’s when you elevate your thought processes to a level that most are afraid to rise to. And I’m saying that drug usage has the ability to accelerate you to that higher level, but those who are in charge refuse to let others into the club.
What are you, Jack? Some kind of fucking socialist?
Uh, yeah… I am…
Really?
Yeah, man. I am.
Wow.
What? You thought socialist was a dirty word or something? An insult? Dude, it’s only an insult to Americans. Because we believe someone should be at the top of the natural order of things. That’s what “American” means now, man, to the rest of the world. It’s not just freedom, it’s freedom of our own, standing on the shoulders of third world industrial slavery. It’s not just equality, it’s this sense of superiority over the rest of the world, so Americans are all equal in that we’re all at least more valuable than our enemies.
How can you say that?
Because we’ve lost 5,000 of our troops in a war and we’re only now beginning to think it’s been too many lives to stomach.
Well isn’t that what you want?
If it takes 5,000 lives to end a war, why haven’t we ended it by now?
Well, it takes some time to end a war-
No. If we didn’t think that American lives were more valuable than Iraqi lives, or Muslim lives, or just non-American lives, we’d have demanded this war end after the first night of this war. When we shocked and awed the fuck out of the civilian Baghdad population. But we decided to wait until that number was up to over 600,000 dead before we started to second guess a president who went to war for the most transparently bogus reasons, ever. But we didn’t do that. And it’s because we think we’re better. Because we’re arrogant. Because that’s part of what it means to be “American,” now.
And that’s why you want Obama to end the War on Drugs?
No. That’s the reason that I think it exists in the third place. To limit the freedoms of the classes below us. Look at what would happen to Mexico if we’d let them tax their drug trade. They’d be a first world country with a GDP the size of a Scandinavian utopia or something. Look how it would stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan. They wouldn’t need to go to jihad against us because they’d have money for infrastructure and schools and air conditioning. Money moderates ideology. It corrupts. It corrupts us to think that babuls are more precious than lives, that beliefs really aren’t worth fighting for. And then we wouldn’t live on a world that was so close to tripping over our own booby traps. They don’t hate us for our freedoms. They hate us because they see our image of freedom and see as we enact policies that actively deny it from them. I want to see them-whoever “them” is-to call off the War on Drugs because I think it’s the most valuable thing we can do to begin healing the international stresses out there.
Hmm.
Theo looks up from whatever he was doing.
You are such a fucking hippie, he says to him. The rest of them erupt into laughter, even Barton, who was nodding his head the whole time Jack was talking, agreeing with every single word he said. They erupt into laughter, and Jack hangs his head and sighs, relaxing into a smile. Theo rises and crosses the room, laughing, and gives Jack a high five that turns into a hug. He pulls away, looks into Jack’s eyes and says, quietly but solidly. For real, though. For sure.
Jack laughs and clasps his hand in Theo’s. He pats him on the opposite shoulder. All right all right, he says, his best impression of Wooderson.