RenOS
Falling Outside the Normal Fashion Constraints
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User ID: 2051
RenOS
Falling Outside the Normal Fashion Constraints
4hr ago
I think the biggest problem might actually be tolerated illegality. If you can buy, say, alcohol, tobacco and weed legally in a market, most people will just do that, even if it is more expensive. Especially if black market is treated as smuggling/tax evasion and cracked down on. Getting hard drugs is then not that easy, the friction is too high, so lots of people don't do it.
But if you just tolerate drug dealers selling weed since it's not so bad, then it's relatively easy to also sell harder drugs on the side. Which means that weed really does become an "entry drug". The same would happen of course if alcohol was illegal but tolerated.
On the second point, I used to think that (and my wife as well), but since legalization we changed our mind. Weed is an extremely pervasive, intruding smell and it's FUCKING EVERYWHERE NOW.
Also from my personal experience it's a much less social & fun drug, people are just sitting around blasted out of their mind not really interacting (or already alone to begin with). For alcohol there is an argument that it serves some function as a social lubricant, even if the side-effects are substantial. For weed I really have no positive argument whatsoever, it's entirely "well it's not bad enough to be illegal". Which I consider true, but it's just not something I'd advocate. There is also the problem among contemporary students that they treat it more like tobacco than alcohol so there is always some % of students in class obviously stoned (in fact some seem to be perpetually stoned all the time). They are not a nuisance as a drunk student, true, so they don't get kicked out, but even in the past drunk students weren't a substantial problem, just hangovers sometimes after certain days.
RenOS
Falling Outside the Normal Fashion Constraints
4d ago
I'll second that I consider it informative, even it clearly is quite negative. Lots of people know little about him, and so far I also had the impression that he is purple-ish. It's important to know that he is more in the Che Guevara tradition of tough socialist.
If it was about an already established politician & known incidents and texts, then I'd agree with you.
RenOS
Falling Outside the Normal Fashion Constraints
6d ago
I kind of agree in the sense that the freak himself and what he's proposing should usually not be seriously considered, but the choice of which freak is presented, and how the media talks about him, does reveal a lot about the media (also: Was Trump the "intended" freak of 2016, and represents how this approach can go horribly wrong if you misjudge your own popularity and that of the freak?).
But these are not the options on the table. They are parents against their kids' transition. I'm no fan of anti-vaccine sentiment in general, but they are very consistent: Trans, just like vaccines, are to them an imposition by the government, trying to supersede their parental authority "for their own/their kids good". It's not surprising that the same people oppose both. It just happens that they are correct on one count, and incorrect on another (at least from my vantage point), but there is no hypocrisy involved here.
Not to mention that of course the parents critical of trans-ideology and the parents critical of vaccines are not actually the same group, there is merely a significant overlap due to low government trust being a common reason for both.
I'm 100% convinced that if it really was entirely about liberal parents transitioning their own kids, the same people would consider that foolish and bad, but there would be very little resistance, just let them do what they want. The problem entirely comes from government institutions trying to push trans ideology as settled science and threatening & slandering any parent who is not 100% on board with their kids' transition.
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