The Douchebag Bible (35 page)

hot because it’s hot to us—but the sun isn’t hot to itself and all the

elements that make it up. Hot is our bias. Hot is subjective. Hard

is subjective. Fast is subjective. Everything that makes up our

seemingly solid world of airtight absolutes is entirely subjective.

Does this mean that all truth is ultimately subjective? I

wouldn’t say that, but I think that objective truth is so far beyond

our grasp (and so far removed from our hearts) that it is

essentially irrelevant.

I think that “sunsets are beautiful” is every bit as true as

“the sun is hot.” I think that “sunsets are ugly” is every bit as true

as “sunsets are beautiful.” I think that freedom is found in the

ability of contradictory ideas to coexist.

A nation on non-drug-users who all believe in drugs rights

would be a free nation. A nation of heterosexuals who allowed

gays to have equal rights regardless of how they felt about gay

people is a free nation. A nation of vanilla people who allow the

kinky people to be who they are, regardless of how they feel about

the kinky people’s lifestyles is a free nation.

Freedom is truth. Truth is paradox.

The New Slaves

A man said to me once that the reason that so many minorities

turn to lives of crime is because of gansta rap and movies that

portray the criminal lifestyle as glamorous. Certainly, that may be

a factor, but it’s not a problem for the reason he seemed to think

it was.

The problem is that minorities are stupid.

Whoa. Hold on. I’m not making any sort of argument

about race-based intelligence, as I find such arguments

repugnant. I’m simply saying that minorities are statistically

more likely to be impoverished and tend to live in areas where the

schools are underfunded. Shitty education creates shitty people

who make shitty parents who fail to instill within their children

any sort of principles. It’s no wonder that so many of these kids

either grow up to perpetuate the shitty parenting cycle by

producing offspring of their own or wind up initiated into gangs.

And since the crime rate is so catastrophically high in

many minority areas, there are fewer small businesses operating

there and therefore fewer jobs. Often times, the only means of

making money is to sell drugs or steal34.

The whole thing forms a vicious cycle that is incapable of

endings without the intervention of an outside force of some kind.

Violence and theft begets poverty and poverty begets violence and

theft.

Now, some will choose to play their little tough guy

34 Sometimes to eat, but often just to pay for drug habits.

routines and give us all that slow-clap speech about personal

responsibility and toss in some crowd-pleasing snide and

sarcastic “boo-hoos” that mock rather than address the

problem—but that is beneath us. Or at least it should be.

Minorities are stupid due largely to the racist policies that

have dominated the vast majority of American history, so of

course they view what is only intended as escapism (gangsta rap,

gangster movies) as guidebooks for how to live the easy life. It’s

natural enough that they would view that as the pinnacle of

human achievement when it is essentially the glorification of the

reality that they already inhabit out of necessity. Who doesn’t

dream of being the best at what they do? Of course every two-bit

drug dealer in the Ghetto will watch
Scarface
with envious eyes.

Tony Montana is a better drug dealer than him. Tony Montana is

the drug dealer he wishes he was.

Art may encourage us in our chosen paths in life, but rarely

does it set us upon them. More often, art is about learning to

accept a circumstance or to escape into a better version of your

own life than it is about making you into something that you’re

not. No straight-A student from a wealthy family decided to

become a drug dealer just because it looks fun35.

This hopeless cycle is made all the more horrible by the fact

that it has served—by design or by happenstance—the purposes

of an elite group of Americans.

The United States (
laaaaand of the freeeee
) has less than

35 Well, actually, some probably do, but they’re the exception, not the rule.

5 percent of the world's population, but it accounts for nearly 25%

of the world’s prison population36. If you’re reading that and

you’re not outraged, then your sole focus in life should be to avoid

breeding at all costs, because the world doesn’t need more idiots

like you.

Was it always like this? Were we always so fond of our

"lock 'em up and throw away the key" philosophy of crime and

punishment?

Since 1970, our prison population has increased by 700%37.

You're not reading that wrong. It has literally become 8 times

larger in just 38 years. (HINT: The US Population has only grown

by about 30-40% in that time—statistically negligible in the face

of our previous number.)

Hey, TJ, what year was the War on Drugs instituted

again?

I'm glad you ask, my child. It was instituted in 1972.

But, TJ, now that we've put these violent criminals in

prison, crime in this country has gone down! So the war on

drugs is working! Yay!

WRONG. Most scientific evidence suggests that there is

little if any relationship between fluctuations in crime rates and

incarceration rates. In many cases, crime rates have risen or

declined independent of imprisonment rates. New York City, for

example, has produced one of the nation’s largest declines in

36 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States

37 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/15/114022/882