People like jordan peterson and joe rogan, who are terrified of the "alphabet brigade", and rant about it constantly to an audience of millions while claiming to be victims of censorship, are making it their raison d'etre to wage war against the activities of marginalized and oppressed groups in defending themselves. That's what those scary acronyms LGBT and BLM are really about. "Wokeness" can be cringy but the core of it is simply the assertion of equal rights for fellow humans. The forms this assertion takes change over time with culture and language, sometimes in messy ways. The current manifestation does things that still feel goofy and unnecessary to me, like stripping out the female pronouns from Rupaul's Drag Race after season 6, or whatever. But so what? The important part is that large groups of people not suffer needlessly from the inertia of savage history. People who've been fighting desperately to overcome the brutality of institutionalized racism and homophobia and transphobia are bound to get a little angry and uncivil, gosh, even cringy, during their struggle to be treated fairly. I think straight white guys can deal, and spend some time talking about more important things like climate change. If your life's work is to complain about wokeness, get a hobby for chrissake.

Here's a galaxy-brained idea I'm gonna share just cause I haven't yet heard it anywhere: What if we made a deal with the climate obstructionists: Total amnesty for your dooming us all to have to fix the mess you created so you could make your extra millions. No trials, no jail, no public shame or harassment. You can even keep your profits, as we're enduring decades of ecological catastrophe. All you have to do is stop obstructing and be part of the solution, NOW. Just stop making things worse, and either get on board with the solution or at least stay out of the fucking way. Could we make a deal? 

the tree of cognitive liberty must be watered with the barf of junkies

One of the few things I agree with some libertarians on is the idea of cognitive liberty. Even though I've abused drugs in the past, and now avoid any substance that feels too good, I haven't changed my view that the drug war is insane, and we should err more on the side of personal freedom. But I'm not an absolutist on that, or much else.

Although I thought guns were cool and fun as a teenager, I've outgrown that obsession and mostly associate them with pain and death and vulgar displays of power and paranoia. But I'm not an absolutist about gun rights. Like with most things, there's a balance to be struck. It's not my hobby, but I can imagine people with legit concerns about self-defense, or just feeling entitled to a hobby as long as it doesn't hurt others.

I hope for a world with more freedoms for drug use. But good god, can you imagine if rights for users were ANYTHING LIKE the freedoms that gun owners have in america, freedoms that single-issue gun rights voters demand never be rolled back an inch? And can you imagine if I acted the way these gun-nuts act about their hobby? Here's a silly story I wrote in an attempt to imagine it:

I'm at Walmart, buying two grams of carfentanyl as I normally do after every second paycheque. No waiting period, no background check, no sanity check, let alone any paperwork to show I might be in need of elephant-grade pain relief. Last week I was feeling pretty down about the prospects of any future in this world, and frankly, beyond the ideation phase of suicide - I did have some plans written down, but I deleted the text file and nobody needs to know. Today I'm feeling a little more up, albeit angsty, and it's just to take the edge off. Yes, I need carfentanyl, shut up, it's not your business. Heroin has long since lost its effectiveness for me, in fact I'm getting tolerant to plain old fentanyl, who are you to tell me the carfent is too potent? Anyway, Walmart is out of methamphetamine, so I pop over to a drug show in the afternoon. Plenty there, I'll need some up to balance out the fent, don't want to be too noddy for the barbecue this evening. There's a crack booth too, so I pick up some for my cousin. He's turning thirteen next week, so it'll make a great gift, it's time the boy learned how to smoke. I'm excited to gift him my father's crack pipe when he's ready, it's a fine piece, been in my family for generations.

On the way home there are some annoying protesters waving signs about drug control. I guess there was a mass fent poisoning in Seattle yesterday, gawd, so they want to take away the rights of all us responsible users? And the radio said Washington State's got the strictest drug control measures in the country, so clearly drug control doesn't work. Oh, it's Purdue lobbying the government, they say, Mylan buying politicians, the Sackler family, Heather Bresch - blah blah blah. If they come for my rohypnol, I promise you, they better watch their damn drinks in the future, because we aren't going to take it lying down.

I'm a proud drug rights absolutist. I was baptized in dimethyltryptamine. I've been a member of the Church of the Inner Light since before I left the astral plane to inhabit a human body. This country was founded on liberty. Specific liberties. What part of "the pursuit of happiness" do you not understand, you nanny-state nazis? You want me to wait a week to buy my ketamine? But I want it now! How dare you infringe on my rights! Tyrant! What kind of SJW scold wants to flag people who drug their dates and post endlessly on social media with detailed fantasies about spiking their city's water supply with clonazepam? Do we want to live in a such an oppressive society, just for the dubious benefit of less mass-poisonings? The ban on aerosolized diacetylmorphine they're calling for in the wake of the Denver drugging is just the beginning, it's a slippery slope. Because what they really want is to ban all drugs, for everyone, forever! This issue, and only this issue, is why I vote. Because we can never give an inch! They'll take a mile. And keep taking!---

So, that would be a bad future. Even though I care about cognitive liberty, in the bizarre scenario where I lived in a world where politicians catered to my wacky culture based around dangerous narcotics, were terrified of upsetting me, and fully indulged my hobby, I would not be a drug-nut and demand that society endure continual mass death so I could have my freedoms extended fully in every direction. In that case, if my freedoms were causing, I dunno, mass fentanyl poisonings every day, maybe I would be willing to give a little bit, maybe accept some common-sense drug policy. Maybe I could even still have the right to cannabis products, alcohol, nicotine, coca leaves, opium, even some synthetics, we could take those freedoms a hell of a lot further before you get anywhere close to a situation analogous with the gun rights dystopia that exists now in america. Obviously, drugs and guns are different, and require different laws and standards - being an absolutist either way, about either issue, is stupid. But man, if I was a gun guy, I think I would maybe shut the fuck up right now, and let the victims of gun violence have some say in policy.