Escapism: America's Favorite Pastime

It's official:  the pandemic is over.  2022 is the year of celebrity gossip.  America is tired of the wages of death wrought by COVID & its infinite mutations; of the outrageous & offensive inflation driving up the cost of living in every area from housing to gasoline to groceries & wood.  We want nothing to do with the fact that our primary methods of communication & media are being snatched up by a handful of billionaires & our pool of political candidates is reduced to a few powerful families that include the Clintons, Trumps, Bushes & Kennedys.  And don't even get us started on the ever-rising climate.  Summer's coming and who wants to think about all the heatwave deaths, hurricanes, tornadoes & other climate change-related suffering that's to come?

It's not just Musk.

We have no will to talk about these pressing issues.  We've moved on to bigger things like The Slap & the public trial of Johnny Depp & Amber Heard.  What's more, the public has already written their own narrative for these two totally unrelated stories.  They go like this:  both of these incredibly wealthy, famous celebrity men are victims of abuse by the women in their lives.  And we (society) need to talk about it.  Like some kind of fucking Afterschool Special.  

Toxic femininity is to blame, they tell us.  Justice For Johnny protesters are out in force outside the courtroom & fill the Youtube chats with vitriol toward Amber Heard & women like her daily.  Meanwhile, Will Smith's public assault of Chris Rock is blamed on the closest adjacent woman in his life--his wife.  All the articles since that time have focused on their dysfunctional relationship, her so-called "infidelity" (never mind that he also has a history of sleeping around that predates her August Alsina entanglement) & Jada's attitude.  For some fucking reason I can't comprehend.  [Church Lady voice]:  Could it be...MISOGYNY?

The Totally-Not-Biased Public

Depp was already denied a chance to sue for libel against The Sun newspaper in Britain which labeled him a "wife beater," as the courts there found the claim to be "substantially true" based on all the available evidence.  In other words, the British courts found Depp guilty of being a wife beater.  Not the court of public opinion, the actual courts.  And the world saw with their own eyes that Smith smacked the shit out of Rock on live TV.  He walked onstage, assaulted another celebrity, went back to his seat, screamed obscenities & proceeded to dance all night to his own music after receiving an Academy Award.  But it's somehow the women's fault.  These men, not only adults but over-the-hill 50-something OLD men, are not held accountable for a single thing they do.  They're apparently zombies going through life on autopilot, being lured into relationships by these all-powerful witches and then held there by force and hypnotized into doing things like assaulting people at the Oscars.  

It's typical America.  We had #MeToo & the Brian Laundrie/Gabby Petito tragedy, now we have to undo it by showing that women can be evil too.  (Never mind that 2 of the movement's most visible targets, namely Bill Cosby who was released from prison on a technicality & Louis CK who recently became the 1st comedian to receive a Grammy for an album in which he admits to sexual abuse, suffered no lasting repercussions for their actions).  Even if it means excusing the violent actions of wealthy, privileged grown ass men.  

Let me be clear:  If Amber Heard hit Johnny Depp as she claims on the tape, that's also a crime for which she should be charged.  But Depp has already been found guilty of domestic abuse by a British court & everyone's ignoring that.  They're also downplaying his lifelong polysubstance addiction, his admission that he mutilated his own finger & smeared blood all over the house, wrote graphic violent threats about raping his wife's burnt corpse & minimizing all the vile verbal abuse caught on tape that we can hear with our own ears ("Cuuuuunt!", etc).  He's also a man in his 50's dating a 20-something.  Not illegal but kinda gross.  And everyone expects her to be on the same maturity level as Grandfather Time which is not how that works.  At this point it wouldn't matter WHAT came out about his actions in the relationship--people have made up their minds.

Like attracts like.  Domestic abuse is a dynamic involving 2 people.  If it doesn't end, someone ends up getting killed (usually the woman).  I'm glad Johnny & Amber ended things before it got to that point but the fact that the tawdry details are being broadcast to the public years later is so ridiculous they should both be ashamed.  Instead he's being lauded as some kind of hero.  People who've heard bits and pieces of recordings from a 4-year relationship are suddenly experts on who was the bad guy when in all likelihood they both were the baddies at various points.  The fact that he's airing it out publicly all these years later makes him look slightly worse (more petty) if anything.  The bottom line:  They're both too damn old for this & so are most of us.

I have no problem with substance use, but when a person uses that many different drugs for that long, there's no denying it can have an effect on mood & behavior.  He should've snapped out of it back when River Phoenix died suspiciously in his club The Viper Room in the '90s.  Amber sounds like a Borderline Personality based on her fear of him abandoning her during fights (and her propensity for picking them).  And Borderlines are disasters in relationships.  Lying, cheating, manipulating, raging disasters.  I'm glad that's getting attention if nothing else, but it has NOTHING to do with women in general.  It's a personality disorder that this one woman in particular is suffering from.  Their relationship is very reminiscent of the Phil/Brynn Hartman dynamic in which he'd go to bed or walk away during their arguments and she'd get enraged which eventually lead to their tragic murder/suicide.  As I said, I'm glad they ended it.  But there's no clear good guy/bad guy here & no "teachable moment" other than that leaving unhealthy relationships is important if you want to stay alive.  America just wants a crusade & a distraction.  

That energy would be better spent focusing on our collective problems as a nation.  Escapism feels good for a while but when you wake up, your problems are still there staring you in the face.  Elon Musk owns Twitter now.  The average price of gasoline in the country is $4.123.  Used cars cost more than new cars & are nearly impossible to buy at any dealership.  The average housing price is $374,900--a 16% increase from this time last year.  All of it is being blamed on that offensively tiny "stimulus check" we got last year.  Never mind that U.S. billionaires got 62% richer during the pandemic.  Surely that has NO effect on the economy, right?  😒  This is what we should be concerning ourselves with, talking about around the water cooler & on social media--not trumped-up celebrity drama.  You can have your opinion on it but don't think for a second that the constant flooding of your timeline with these inane issues isn't by design.  Just look who owns our media.  

Dear Readers,

My life is in transition right now so I'll probably be publishing with less frequency for a while.  You can still find me on Twitter (@BannedintheUSSA) & Instagram (instagram.com/ann_fetamine) and I'll push out a thought or two on this blog when the inspiration hits, but I just don't have the time or energy right now to write several full-length articles every week, especially when donations are non-existent and Google's fucking with my traffic.  As much as I enjoy writing, it IS work and I can't always afford to do it for free.  Big IRL changes are afoot.  Some good, some super stressful.  But stay tuned because I'm not going anywhere in the long term.  I'd rather go quiet than pump out crap just for the sake of publishing.  Go check out some of my older articles in the meantime.  I think they've aged pretty well.

Love,

~Your Friendly Neighborhood Drug Blogger~

For Those Confused About the Purpose of Legalization:

You don't promote drug legalization because you have a hard-on for a particular drug.  You do it because making drugs illegal & locking people up for their possession is wrong and bad... a detriment to society that takes a serious issue--drug addiction and overdose--and compounds it tenfold.  It makes the drug itself more harmful, gives control of it to violent criminals, allows it to be sold to children & ensures that more deadly variations will pop up in its place (see:  heroin > fentanyl > carfentanil > isonitazene).  

So you think cannabis or mushrooms are "good for a number of health ailments" and "natural" and "non-toxic"?  Great.  And probably true.  I would agree with that assessment.  Unfortunately, that has fuckall to do with why we need to legalize them.  Even a drug like fentanyl, which is super potent & has the potential to cause death by respiratory depression, or PCP which causes unpredictable mania and aggression at high doses should be legal so that users:

1.) Know what drug and dose they're getting when they purchase it.  (No adulteration).

2.) Can easily and legally purchase it from a trusted source rather than a shady/potentially violent drug dealer.  (Safety & convenience).

3.) Don't have to worry about being sent to jail & having their lives ruined for simple possession.  (No carceral state involvement). 

4.)  Can access harm reduction/educational information & clean paraphernalia when they purchase the drug.  (No abstinence-only propaganda; reduced disease transmission).

5.) Don't have to sell their bodies, steal or do other illegal/dangerous things to obtain their drug of choice as it will be affordable.  (No artificial inflation). 

6.) Are carded at purchase to ensure they're of legal age.  (No sales to minors).

7.)  Have other safer alternatives available at the point of sale so they may opt for them instead of these less desirable ones (eg - opium instead of heroin; Adderall instead of meth; ketamine instead of PCP).  (More & safer options).

8.)  Don't resort to Frankenstein chemicals that are even LESS studied and more dangerous than the drugs they're meant to mimic.  Users only take these substances because they're legal and/or so they can pass a drug test, not because they're preferable to their illegal counterparts.  (See:  Spice vs. marijuana; Hexen vs. MDMA; 25i-NBOMe vs. LSD, inhalants, etc).  (Demand for experimental research chemicals will dry up once safer, more preferable options are available legally).

The bottom line is there won't be a market for carfentanil or other monstrously potent opioids if pharma-grade heroin and morphine are legally available from a trusted source.  We know this because countries with softer drug laws like Portugal & Switzerland do not have these problems.  Even fentanyl can be used safely when the user takes it willingly & knows the dose beforehand (but when other options are available it's not generally in the Top 3 most desirable opioids for most addicts).  And nobody will be shooting up in broad daylight on street corners or stealing away to get high in public bathrooms where children might see them if there are safe injection rooms available for them to do so without fear of arrest.

While this isn't as palatable to think about as free spirits vaping DMT or New Agers rubbing Rick Simpson Oil on their cold sores, it's a vital public health issue whether you partake in hard drug use or not.  (The distinction between "hard" and "soft" drugs is not based in science whatsoever, by the way).  This is about personal freedom, the safety of the American public and ending the violence caused by the cartels, gangs & other criminals involved in the drug trade not just in the U.S. but in Mexico, South America and around the globe.  On a local level it's about stopping the tidal wave of death caused by accidental overdoses due to an adulterated drug supply tainted with illicit fentanyl & nitazenes.  

And don't think for a second you're safe just because you don't use opiates.  Illicit fentanyl has turned up in everything from MDMA and cocaine to fake Xanax bars, ketamine, Adderall, meth & even Tylenol.  Yes, (fake) Tylenol.  There's no limit to the shapes fentanyl powder can be pressed into when not sold in its powder form.  People who've never touched heroin or taken a Percocet are dying from a single Ecstasy tablet or line of coke to the tune of 100,000+ overdose deaths in 2021 alone--an all-time record.  And that was before the rise of the nitazene family which is 20x more potent than fentanyl on average.  

The odds are not in your favor.  Either you or someone you love very much is headed for the grave if something drastic doesn't change, and fast.  

If that's not reason enough to support the legalization of ALL drugs, you need to check your moral compass because it's broken.  While legalization also is great because it allows us to study the medicinal benefits of various drugs like psychedelics & MDMA, we're so deep in death & destruction from prohibition we can't even focus on that.  Now is the time for the drug-using public to band together like never before and demand our voices be heard.  Non-drug users too.  Drug snobs will be called out as the petty, narrow-minded turds they are.  There's no time for the "I got mine, fuck you" mindset.  Not when we're dying in unprecedented numbers with no end in sight.  

Prohibition didn't work with alcohol and it's not working with other drugs.  In fact, the parallels are uncanny:  A poisoned supply controlled by violent criminals leading to unnecessary death.  Whether your drug of choice is cannabis or crack, we need you to stand against the war on non-violent drug-using Americans.  Our lives literally depend on it.  

Only criminals support & profit from the drug war.

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Move Over Fentanyl: Nitazenes Next Wave in Opioid Epidemic

In 2021 the U.S. lost a historic 100,000 citizens to drug overdose, largely due to illicit fentanyl and its analogues adulterating the drug supply.  As we struggle to combat this problem with tools like fentanyl test strips and other imperfect stop-gap measures, suddenly bad news arrives:  There's a new family of super-potent synthetic opioids on the black market that are even more powerful than fentanyl.  

Introducing the nitazenes, also known as benzimidazole opioids.  

But this bad news is totally predictable to anyone who's been paying attention for the last 80 years.  When the law cracks down on one drug, another pops up in its place immediately and that new drug is almost always more powerful & less safe than the one that was banned.  That's certainly the case here.  

The nitazene family (isotonitazene, fluonitazene, bronitazene, etc) are fully synthetic and can be up to 20 times more potent than fentanyl.  (For reference, fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100x stronger than morphine).  There are currently no commercially available test strips to allow drug users to test for the presence of these substances, and attempts to revive patients who have overdosed on them with naloxone--the gold standard in opioid overdose--often fail due to their potency.  They've turned up in Florida, Iowa, California, Louisiana, New Jersey and several other states and have been responsible for at least 250 overdose deaths so far.  I personally had one online dealer try to sell me "iso" before I realized what was going on.  

As much as I emphasize the importance of avoiding hyperbole when talking about drugs of any kind, it becomes more difficult when these hyper-potent drugs are unleashed by the black market.  What might be safe in a lab or in a carefully measured pharmaceutical dose becomes deadly when distributed unevenly in a pressed pill or powder of unknown potency or taken without the user's knowledge.  And that's exactly what's happening here.  Thus, these substances are more akin to a biowarfare agent or poison than a drug... at least the way they're currently being used.  

 Isotonitazene

As dangerous as black market fentanyl is, nitazenes are worse.  Heroin was bad enough.  The OxyContin epidemic was bad too but as we see now, things can always get worse.  Every time new laws are passed making it more difficult to obtain a drug like prescription pain pills, opioid users--be they chronic pain patients or legit addicts--are driven to more extreme corners of the black market.  And the criminals controlling it always opt for the most potent, cheapest & easiest option to satisfy the demand.  Why wouldn't they?  The risk inherent in producing, packaging, smuggling and delivering illegal drugs necessitates cutting your risks where you can.  Heroin was once the opioid du jour on the black market until they discovered fentanyl which was more potent and could be made in a lab with no need to grow & harvest fields of poppies to make a small amount of heroin.  But the rise of anti-fentanyl laws has made it a more risky choice, hence the advent of the new Frankenstein drugs:  nitazenes.  Whatever comes next I don't want to see.  

It doesn't have to be this way.  We could stop this cycle of death right now by changing our drug laws and giving control of the drug supply to government-designated entities that dispense pure opioids to adults over 18 or 21.  Instead, we're seeing drug laws trend the other direction, prosecuting dealers for murder when users overdose on fentanyl.  This is exactly why new monster drugs like the nitazenes are coming into existence.  

How many more young, vital Americans are we going to sacrifice to this man-made pandemic before we stop this madness?  We have Democrats controlling all 3 branches of government--supposedly the "liberal" party--yet our draconian drug laws around the use and dealing of drugs remain the same.  If we don't start instituting radically different approaches like Switzerland and Vancouver, which have legal heroin substitution programs and Dilaudid vending machines for addicts, we're in big trouble.  We already are but it's about to get incalculably, indescribably worse.  

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it's time to start calling a spade a spade:  This is nothing short of genocide.  These deaths of despair in the midst of historic economic lows, an unprecedented pandemic & the threat of nuclear war while the government sits on its hands are an outrage.  This is not the fault of "the cartels" or the dealers and we can't prosecute our way out of it.  Throwing addicts in treatment or jail against their will is not the answer.  These deadly black market analogues will only get more deadly with every wave of new drug bans.  They are killing us and they know it.  All the data is there but they have to keep the game of deadly Whack-A-Mole going to justify the existence of the DEA & other 3-letter agencies.  This overdose and addiction pandemic started with the pharmaceutical companies' overprescribing and now it's being continued due to our own laws.  We must legalize all drugs to stop it.  Failure to do so is to declare war on American citizens.  Do not blame the drugs--blame drug prohibition.  Every fentanyl or nitazene overdose is a prohibition death.  Failure to report it as such is disinformation.  

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America: Nation of Extremes

I've said it so many times I might as well do a full article already:  Americans are embarrassingly, almost humorously bad at moderation.  Whether with sex, drugs, health, finances or politics, we have a history of swinging wildly between two poles to dramatic effect.  Since this is a drug blog, let's start there.  

At the turn of the 20th Century, speed was as ubiquitous as opiates are now.  Legal amphetamines to be exact.  They were prescribed in every pharmaceutical form imaginable:  inhalers, pills, ampules for injection, liquids & more.  According to Drug Addiction II: Amphetamine, Psychotogen, and Marihuana Dependence, by 1962 the yearly production of amphetamines was sufficient to supply every American man, woman & child with 250 mg of amphetamine apiece.  These meds were prescribed for everything from common fatigue to headaches & deemed miracle drugs with very few risks.  

And then the tide turned.  As public opinion shifted against the transients at the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco after the Summer of Love, many of whom were intravenous speed users, officials decided amphetamines were devil drugs with very few medical benefits, slamming the banhammer down on patients who were then driven to the black market.  And the black market always provides.

Anti-amphetamine ad from 1969

Biker gangs took over the production of methamphetamine & that's when illicit meth became the amphetamine du jour for the nation.  Like the Mexican fentanyl crisis of today, black market meth was a direct outgrowth of the changes in the medical/pharmaceutical world that made it difficult for amphetamine users to get their drug of choice.  Methamphetamine is the most potent amphetamine & the street form comes ready to eat, snort, smoke, inject or use rectally.  It's a nightmare as far as addiction is concerned & remains a scourge to this day.  

A similar thing happened with Quaaludes (methaqualone) and "Stress Clinics" in the '60s and '70s--these clinics were as common as the pill mill pain clinics of the early 2000's and 2010's.  They were mostly used recreationally in clubs and discos like Studio 54 but occasionally were abused as date rape drugs a la Bill Cosby and began to contribute to a rash of car accidents, addictions & overdose deaths.  And then Quaaludes were placed in Schedule I and deemed to have no medicinal value whatsoever.  Total reversal of medical and legal opinion.  Just like that, they went from "non-barbiturate miracle drug" to "Schedule I demon drug" almost overnight.  No middle ground.  

If we'd respected the power of these substances while acknowledging their potential for medical (and yes,  recreational benefit), we could've used them responsibly without creating a violent, unregulated black market.  But NOOOOOO.  We had to do it the hard way.  The American way.

From Prudishness to Promiscuity

Around this time, a sexual revolution was under way.  It's hard to emphasize just how big a departure the '60s and '70s were from the '40s and '50s in terms of sexual attitudes.  After the repressed 1950s, the new generation was determined to break down walls & rebel against the old norms.  The advent of The Pill made sex for pleasure possible to a large degree but there was also a palpable attitude change afoot.  Sexual topics that were once whispered about in hushed tones were now screamed about in magazines like Playboy, Hustler & Cosmopolitan.  Sex itself, which was previously viewed as an act to be saved for marriage & procreation became a political act for hippies & the gay liberation movement as well as a source of immense pleasure.  In the span of a few years, we went from Father Knows Best to swinging, sex parties, free love at music festivals, anonymous sex at gay bathhouses & adult movies available on demand on VHS.  

As liberating as this was, there would be an unimaginable price to pay.  First it was a general rise in "VD" (venereal disease, known today as STDs or STIs) such as gonorrhea, chlamydia and genital warts, which are mostly curable.  Then came the rise in resistant strains of some of these diseases as well as new illnesses in the gay community colloquially known as "gay bowel disease"--sexually transmitted bowel infections like shigella, hepatitis B & campylobacter.  And a new incurable disease even made headlines in the straight community:  herpes.  But for the most part, people pooh-poohed these & continued having uninhibited sex because none of it was life-threatening.  Indeed, the idea of a deadly sexually-transmitted disease never entered anyone's mind even though syphilis--which maimed and killed millions--had only been treatable since the 1940s.  

Plato's Retreat:  Famous swinger's club in NYC in the '70s

Our failure to learn from this recent history was our downfall.  In June of 1981, the first reports came out warning of homosexual men contracting a rare cancer that would turn out to be caused by AIDS.  

Just like with COVID, America was known as Ground Zero for AIDS throughout the '80s.  It was first discovered here and cases were highest in New York, San Francisco and other U.S. cities compared with the rest of the world.  While it was eventually found that the virus originated in Africa, it exploded in this country first due to our hedonistic sexual practices & rampant IV drug use as well as our greedy, unsanitary blood banks refusing to test the blood supply for Hepatitis B, which at the time was the best indicator that a batch of donated blood contained HIV before a test was developed.  Many innocent people contracted the disease needlessly as a result.  Even after it was clear to medical professionals that it was caused by a sexually-transmitted agent, many remained in denial & continued having unsafe sex & fighting to keep bathhouses and swingers' clubs open.  

First reports of new virus (HIV) in American men

Extremist Aesthetics

Even the appearance of the human body in America is marked by extremism.  From the moment supermodel Twiggy stepped onto the runway, girls and young women strove to obtain her impossibly tiny figure, sometimes to tragic effect.  The late 20th Century was wrought with eating disorder horror stories, from the death of singer Karen Carpenter at age 32 to actress Tracey Gold's public battle with the disease while on the sitcom Growing Pains in the 1990s.  Studies have shown that countries without access to Western Media tend to not have eating disorders but quickly develop them when it's introduced.  This is known as a culture-bound syndrome and indeed, anorexia nervosa is listed as a culture-bound syndrome on Wikipedia.  The pressure on women to be a size 0 remained high as thousands of women & girls perished from eating disorders brought on by this cruel trend.  

1960s model Verushka looking gaunt

And then that suddenly changed too. 

While these eating disorders most certainly still exist, mainstream culture has moved on in terms of what is considered "beautiful" and acceptable for women.  Now the Kim Kardashian/Beyonce look (exaggerated butt, voluptuous breasts & thick thighs) is the coveted look.  Anyone with a "flat" butt or no curves is told to "eat a cheeseburger" or similar.  Women are killing themselves with dangerous butt implant surgeries & mistaking medically overweight for "normal".  At the extreme end you've got magazine covers telling women that full-on obesity is healthy which is a deadly lie.  (If you'll notice, the standard of attractiveness for men has remained more or less stable over time in terms of anything that would put their health at risk).   Yet again, we've failed to honor the middle ground between the two extremes and are paying with our health.  

...the other extreme:  morbidly obese models

Political Polarization

The dramatic division between "conservatives" and "liberals" at the hands of those funding our elections has caused irreparable harm at every level of society.  We used to have moderates capable of free thought who, when asked whether they were conservative or liberal, would reply:  "On what issue?"  Now everyone gives a kneejerk answer as if they belong to a cult.  No introspection, no deeper thought.  Just red or blue, donkey or elephant.  If you can't see why that's a problem you need to do some reading on the topic of cults because I've got bad news for you.  

If you haven't caught on yet, I'll spell it out for you:  our biggest collective failing as a nation is our inability or unwillingness to learn from the past--even the recent past.  Past pandemics, wars, natural disasters & economic hardships that should've been valuable learning lessons have been lost to the sands of time, treated as a relic of some ancient irrelevant era.  We view every current problem as if it's completely unprecedented when that couldn't be further from the truth.  This "current moment exceptionalism" is a narcissistic, shortsighted worldview that lands us in more trouble than we need endure.  Combined with our inability to navigate the middle ground, it's costing us money, jobs, our health and our very lives.  And it doesn't have to be that way.  

While history doesn't repeat, it often rhymes.  Instead of learning from our past, we now have right wing groups trying to suppress the teaching of history they don't like in public schools, actively preventing kids from learning the full scope of America's mistakes along with its triumphs.  That's not doing anyone any favors, including your precious WASP children.  Ignorance of the facts doesn't change them, nor does it prepare your children for the real world.  Issues like the "critical race theory" debate and the fight against teaching evolution, science-based Sex Ed & harm reduction is a big reason America's education ranks near the bottom of developed nations while rates of addiction, overdose & teen pregnancy are sky high.  In fact we're at or near the top of the list for all those conditions.  

Rates of teen/adolescent pregnancy for the years indicated above.

And what does the left choose to focus on?  Abolishing sex-segregated sports & bathrooms to appease a tiny minority of trans-identified students.  If I didn't know better I'd think this entire debate was a giant disinformation campaign started by an enemy nation with the intent of causing internal division among the left & right while they further ruin our country.  It's just so fucking stupid when only 0.6% of the population is transgender.  This means the problem could be solved by designating separate bathrooms/changing rooms for this group as well as sports leagues for them to compete against each other if they wish not to compete against their natal sex.  Instead, we're wasting valuable education and planning time on a self-created problem & holding heated school board meetings that could be better used focusing on the curriculum.  

The choice to let male-bodied trans kids into girls' bathrooms and changing rooms has resulted in exactly what opponents warned would happen:  violent sexual assault.  Girls' sports are also being rendered pointless for female athletes as competitors who went through male puberty & have enormous physical advantages beat them at every turn.  Meanwhile, our last-in-the-developed-world education quality keeps getting worse while we bicker about these non-issues.  This literally wasn't a discussion 20 or even 10 years ago.  Suddenly it's all anyone can talk about.  Ask yourself why.  

We are a nation of attention-deficit toddlers fighting the short fight.  We've got to start looking at the big picture, and fast.  Our goldfish memories are going to be the downfall of us.  If you want to know what to do about the current pandemic/war/hot button social issue, look at our response to the last one of similar magnitude, see what we did right & improve on that.  And when you feel lost, always seek the moderate path first.  

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