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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 5/21/17

Jeff Sessions, Jesus Christ and Reefer Madness

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Message John Grant

Good people don't smoke marijuana.

- Jeff Sessions

Gage ain't nothin' but medicine.

- Louis Armstrong

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

- Matthew 5:7 (The words of Jesus Christ)

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has sent a memo to all federal attorneys (those he hasn't fired) setting in motion a radical reversal of the trend toward bi-partisan reform that has been building for at least a decade in the criminal justice system and the drug war. The memo states: "Any inconsistent previous policy of the Department of Justice related to these matters is rescinded, effective today." This flies in the face of a movement that has led to 30 states to reform their criminal justice systems in the area of mass incarceration. Sessions would, from the top down, re-establish "the sort of mass incarceration strategy that helped flood prisons during the war on drugs in the 1980s and 1990s," according to The New York Times. "We're going to double down on an approach everybody else has walked away from," says Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. Sessions has personally emphasized a particular disdain for marijuana, as in the remark cited above. The federal government, of which Sessions is the top lawman, has adamantly refused to ease its marijuana laws as state after state modifies or legalizes their laws.

A call to prayer, a pipe and Jeff Sessions in the Times
A call to prayer, a pipe and Jeff Sessions in the Times
(Image by Lou Ann Merkle, John Grant)
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As I read this stuff, all I can think is Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a guy who needs to smoke a doobie. It must be incredibly stressful being attorney general in an administration in tragic free-fall, especially after he was forced to recuse himself on the intense Russia collusion investigation due to lying about his own meetings with Russians. Meanwhile, profound change is in the air as the nation's business is rapidly being consumed into a wildly expanding internet-connected world that threatens to unravel life as we know it. Narrow-minded concerns like re-toughening sentencing for drug offenses seems dangerously out-of-synch with the times. There is so much research on the tenets of harm reduction as an alternative approach to incarceration and the ideas of a "war" on drugs that to suddenly wind the clock backwards now is tantamount to a crime in itself. One has to wonder: What's up with this fellow from Alabama?

One of the ironies of the drug war is that while weed is being legalized locally, it remains illegal under federal statutes. But that should not stop Mr. Sessions from at least trying grass to see what the hubbub is all about. Expand his thinking. He could do like William Buckley famously did and take some rich friend's yacht (I'm sure he can find a rich friend with a boat) out beyond the 12-mile-limit to do his reefer. Or, much more relaxing, he could declare he's acting under local jurisdiction (remember how conservatives like Mr. Sessions used to passionately advocate for states' rights, instead of the other way around); he could smoke his spliff in the comfort of his home in the District of Colombia, the city where he works. Many people may not know this, but it's perfectly legal in D.C. to possess under two ounces of pot and smoke it in a private residence. It would be perfectly legal for President Donald Trump to light up a bone in the private quarters of the White House; he would have to consult with his attorney general if he wanted to take a hit in the public Oval Office.

I don't mean this suggestion disrespectfully -- or even sarcastically. I'm dead serious. As in: Please, can we lighten up and focus on what's really important? As in: By all means, yes, let's discourage pot use among tender young minds, as we improve the less-than-stellar education of those young minds with better curricula in areas like history and critical thinking. We're now shamefully a basket-case nation in education compared to places like Finland, where kids are taught how to think. (Which seriously raises the question: In a marketing-based, consumer culture, is critical thinking subversive?) In an open-minded, educative spirit, I honestly think it would benefit us all if Jeff Session were to learn what it practically means to smoke marijuana. I submit it would open his moral outlook to a wider range of human empathy in a nation where he serves as attorney general; that is, it would help get him out of the narrow world he has fashioned in his mind. He'd begin to understand that pot is nowhere near as socially dangerous as alcohol -- a legal intoxicant the country went through a difficult period trying to outlaw. That period, as we all know from the movies, succeeded only in giving us Al Capone, corrupt cops and help in establishing a powerful criminal underworld.

Mr. Sessions might also begin to realize the issue of pot has absolutely nothing to do with God and his only begotten son, Jesus Christ. Sessions, who is a favorite among evangelicals, was appointed attorney general by the deeply spiritual Donald Trump. Earlier, President George W. Bush assured us the ideas of Jesus Christ were tops in his mind and, thus, a fine guide on how to run the country. We can't be sure whether Jesus Christ would have fired James Comey or whether he would have colluded with Russians. It's likely Jesus Christ would have turned the other cheek and forgiven Mr. Comey for not swearing 100% discipleship. But, truth be known, it's absurd to suggest anyone can really know what Jesus Christ would do in a modern context. Which means one is left to imagine what Jesus Christ would do: imagination and metaphor construction are how the philosophers suggest we humans make sense in our heads out of the chaos of life. So all we can know for sure is that the answers to all these questions are somewhere in the attorney general's deeply religious mind and in his powerful hands.

A New York Times article recently reported on research that showed many conservatives don't really care what politicians like Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions believe or even about the policies they pursue; what they most love about these fellows is how they smack down liberals and leftists and like to rub their noses in the fact Hillary Clinton lost the election. It appears to be the case that calling leftists terrible names and ridiculing them with that special sadistic edge may be a better high than doing a bong hit while listening to the Moody Blues' "Tuesday Afternoon."

Jeff Sessions seems a likeable, diminutive, gnome-like fellow. I'm sure he's the life of the party, even if he only drinks red Kool Aid. I perceive a kindly quality about him; I'd even say there's something incongruously "cute" about his facial aspect. Every time I see him on TV, he always seems a bit perplexed and a little vulnerable. Maybe that has to do with the possibility, in the midst of this crazy Russia-collusion hysteria, he can hear the bloodhounds baying in the woods and is having second thoughts about signing on with the Trump insurgency. In European myth, gnomes were dwarfish figures who lived underground and spent their lives guarding buried treasure. As attorney general, you might say he guards our constitutional system of laws, and many people go on and on about how the Constitution of the United States is our national treasure. So maybe there's something to the Sessions-as-gnome idea. It would be interesting to see what comes up on an Ancestry.com search, where people can send in a gob of spit and "Discover what makes you uniquely you." Like the story about a "white" police sergeant from Michigan who was shocked to learn from Ancestry.com that he was 18 percent African, it's hard to say what impact discovering gnome DNA in his genes would have on Mr. Sessions and his career.

I'm re-reading Kurt Vonnegut's wonderful novel Slaughterhouse Five, and Vonnegut has the classic absurdist rejoinder for all this cultural towel-snapping and horsing around: "So it goes." Life is a many-hued carnival, something Mr. Sessions might be more accepting of if he took an evening with some of his hipper friends to get out of the straight-jacket of madness he's strapped himself into, put on a classic Alabama anthem and inhale on one of those nifty vaporizers. Visualize our gnomish attorney general with a gentle buzz leaning back in his Barcalounger, his trusty dog Jeff Davis asleep by his side, listening to those great fiddles on "Song Of The South." Lord have mercy!

Cotton was short and the weeds were tall." / But Mr Roosevelt was gonna save us all. ... / Momma got sick and daddy got down. / The county got the farm and they moved to town. / "Papa got a job with the TVA." / He bought a washing machine, then a Chevrolet. .../" Song o' the south." / Sweet potato pie and shut my mouth. /" Stonewall and Gone With the Wind." / Ain't nobody lookin' back again.

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I'm a 72-year-old American who served in Vietnam as a naive 19-year-old. From that moment on, I've been studying and re-thinking what US counter-insurgency war means. I live outside of Philadelphia, where I'm a writer, photographer and political (more...)
 

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