Attn: Rant. read only if you have a lot of free time.

I should mention that I'm home for spring break and i finally get a chance to relax--by which i mean jump around and scream and vent out all the frustration that comes from 12-hour workdays and sleep in fifteen minute intervals between train horns. Unfortunately my mother doesn't really agree with this definition of the word "relax" and, after about two solid hours of me babbling about how atheism is the answer to all the world's problems she finally put down her newspaper, put her fingers in her ears, and shouted "Enough already!"

so. i guess that leaves me the blog.

*ahem*

I begin by making a declaration of fact: America is peopled with jerks. The US government, the law enforcement community, my friends and neigbors, me. One huge landmass of nothing but jerks. You still with me? I thought so.

But i've noticed there's two different breeds of jerk--those being the Master Jerk and the Slave Jerk. Master Jerks are the ones screwing people over and Slave Jerks are the ones being screwed over and whining about it. I fall into the second category.

My "discussion" today is spurned from a series of tv adverts carefully misnamed "Public Service Announcements." I'm sure everyone has seen them--government-sponsored montages of beautiful people telling kids not to do drugs. And don't forget the montages of haggard, spent-looking people telling parents to tell their kids not to do drugs. They discuss the dangers of drugs and comment on how peer pressure is going to convince your middle schooler to drink, have sex, and get addicted to heroin before they're 15. Way to brighten my day.

Public Service Announcements (PSAs) have several different purposes all at once. Under the smokescreen of "providing positive encouragement for families to remain healthy" which i'm certain nobody with an IQ above that of a cabbage is going to believe, we have at least three different headings as to their function.

1. PSAs are an example of "Your Tax Dollars At Work"--visible proof that the government is really giving something back to the community. Where the other thirteen trillion dollars a year are going we're not exactly sure, but Something has been spent (with a couple of contributions from Philip Morris Co.) to offer a positive message to the population at large. Great.

2. PSAs are an example of the modern judicial system's CYA (Cover-Your-Ass) Policy. So long as the tobacco and healthcare companies make the dangers of smoking and drugs public knowledge, they are not at fault when people get into the advanced stages of lung cancer. Thus they are under no obligation to provide affordable health care to middle aged folks who come into the hospital coughing up bits of their aesophagus. Its this beautiful "told ya so" idea that also keeps the US from developing a NHS (this is where things start to get complicated.)

The government announces that "smoking/drug use/alcohol is bad for you."
Thus if people continue to smoke/inject/drink/etc its their own fault if they get sick.
To tell people they cannot smoke, drink, or whatever and pass laws about it would be a return to prohibition, which gave rise to the organized crime rings now forever glorified in smudgy 1930s' detective films. (i.e. to make normal behavior a crime is to make everyone a criminal.)
But at the same time, if you offer free healthcare to people who willfully give themselves lung cancer and cirrhosis of the liver (and hepatitis and obesity and AIDS and anything else you might pick up from living immoderately or imprudently) it gets pretty damned expensive. On the flip side, making healthcare really ridiculously expensive does encourage people, to some degree, to behave in moderation to reduce the chance of incurring hospital fees. Those who have accidents that are not their fault are just SOL*.
To offer free healthcare to only those people who don't smoke, drink alcohol, use drugs, overeat, undereat, share needles, have casual sex, pursue a career with known occupational hazards, breathe pollution or secondhand smoke, spend undue amounts of time in the sun, dress or drive inappropriately for weather conditions, or fail to floss twice a day is to offer free healthcare to one five-year-old in Idaho.
If it is not the government's fault that you get sick, the government concludes that its not the government's responsibility to make you better.
So there. No NHS for you.

*(When you buy private insurance you are betting on your illness or injury being someone else's fault. The idea is, if you pay them a lot of money, if someone hurts you, you can almost afford the hospital fees that your insurance doesn't cover. Unfortunately, if you hurt someone else, you pay the insurance company more--for a long time--so the person you hurt can almost afford the hospital fees that their insurance company doesn't cover. Worse, if you hurt someone else and yourself, you're screwed.)

3. PSAs are a well-crafted form of reverse-psychology. Many are targeted at the 10-17 year old demographic--pubescents and adolescents who's hormones are encouraging them to leave their parents and reproduce, as humans had been doing up until the eighteenth century when their bodies said they were ready. Parental retention of teenagers--often into the third decade of life--is counter to this biological impulse and so generates high levels of anxiety and claustrophobia which culminate in the urge to escape this suffocating pressure. (Just like being hungry is contrary to what feels right, so you look for food.) The fact that there is no outlet for these prolonged children to get away without running (and knowing that once flown, they will be completely unprotected and left to starve as they have no skills or money and no law-abiding American will employ them anyway) they must find means of escaping parental constraints without trying to make it on the street. This behavior is known as "rebellion" and is one of the primary reasons for petty crime and drug abuse among teenagers today.
It works like this:
You don't do drugs.
Mom and Dad say "don't do drugs."
The government and your teachers say "don't do drugs."
You get tired of being told what to do.
You do exactly what they say not to.
You do drugs.

This is not, however, the same process that occurs in teenage sexual behavior. That looks more like this:
You don't have sex.
Mom and Dad say "don't have sex."
The government and your teachers say "don't have sex."
Your body says "FOR FUCK'S SAKE HAVE SEX."
Your body has always been right before, it probably is now.
You have sex.

Though this very simply explains why premarital sex and drug use are incorrectly grouped in the same category of "rebellious behavior" i have veered very far from my point.

Anyone who has gone through puberty (read: any adult) knows that, from about age 10 to age 18, "No=Yes." Usually people who are in government and advertising are adults, so they know that for the PSA target demographic, "No=Yes." And they put ads on television--the easiest way of reaching their target demographic--and say "No."

Now this is not to say that they should say "yes"--it doesn't work the other way around. Advertising is an amazing form of mind control. Say you want to advertise your new antidepressant. For the sake of discussion, let us call it "HappyDrug." You start your ad by posing the question "Do you frequently feel down in the dumps? Like no matter what you do, your life will not improve?" And of course 99% of viewers say "you know, i do!" because chances are, they're barely making ends meet, they work too hard, they haven't gotten a good night's sleep in months because their house is right next to the wrong side of the tracks, and all their hopes and dreams of one day being rich and famous have collapsed. They feel down in the dumps, and rightly so. So you continue your ad. "If your life sucks, HappyDrug will make it better! Talk to your doctor about getting addicted to our product that gives you a false sense of complacency by artificially telling your brain to fire off endorphins and detach you from reality! For as little as $30 a day your life won't suck! (until you try to wean yourself from our product.) May cause nausea, decreased sex drive, inability to operate a vehicle, coma, or death."
Of course, all the average viewer has heard of this is "If your life sucks, HappyDrug will make it better!" so they tell their doctor they want HappyDrug and get hooked on it. When they don't have it they have headaches and nausea and body aches and feel grumpy and annoy the hell out of everyone around them. When they do have it they're usually tolerable if often inattentive and glazed over, or giggling incessantly.
That actually sounds a whole lot worse than saying "If your life sucks, Marijuana will make it better! May cause paranoia, weight gain, decreased(or increased) sex drive, inability to operate a vehicle, poor judgement, or nausea if taken with alchohol." But people take the risks with HappyDrug, even though it may cause loose and oily stools and is known to be habit-forming. Whatever.

So with humans, "No=Yes", but "Yes=Yes" too. Just like my cat--i just told her "no it is not dinnertime" but i know all she heard was "dinnertime!"

So, taking teenage rebellious behavior into account, we may concur that PSAs are encouraging the nation's youth to try drugs. Why? There are numerous theories to explain this. I will itemize a few.

a. It gives kids and police officers something to do.
b. It prolongs drug trading relations with third world countries, which keeps their populations employed (if repressed.)
c. It keeps adults distracted so they don't make a fuss when the department of homeland security takes away more of our civil liberties. College students probably will, but nobody listens to them anyway.
d. As long as young, rebellious kids are stoned out of their minds in front of the television, they're not out slashing tires and stealing road signs.
e. It placates the religious right who casually forgot that they were once rebellious youths too and believe that the Man is really looking out for them and their children.
f. It makes what would be a common weed with some medicinal properties, a beverage blessed by the Christian God himself, and a normal bodily function into generation-damning Problems (with a capital P)--the touting of which keeps more people than is probably healthy employed.
g. "He'll just use it to feed his addiction to crack" is a good excuse to not give money to panhandlers.

(If anyone has reached this point in reading, I encourage you to submit a few reasons of your own!)

Now here comes the fun part. Get your conspiracy-theorizing caps on, squeeze a fresh lemon, and get ready to think i'm insane.

There is a link between PSAs and Terrorism.

beyond the expected "well they're both keeping the government busy."

They are both means by which the government is trying to control us. And may even be succeeding.

I recently read a piece by Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts describing an event on 2 February in the Little Falls, Maryland public library. Apparently two security officers, in the name of Homeland Security, burst in and announced that it is forbidden to use the library's computers to view internet pornography. One then looked over a computer user's shoulder, found the website he was viewing unsuitable, and asked him to step outside for a little chat.

The librarian called the police, who came in, found the officials to be out of their jurisdiction, and politely told them to fuck off. Well done Maryland.

But what do i think might happen if this same scenario occurred in the Fort Milll, South Carolina public library? Officials burst in and say "dont you even think about watching pornography--here or anywhere. It gives money to terrorists." You'd have ass-kissers and morons alike screaming "hear, hear!" and "hallelujah!" and congratulating W and his team of freedom fighters for protecting ourselves from our sinful selves. And if they'd found someone reading a medical journal on the symptoms of breast cancer on the internet the citizen would be lifted from her chair by the scruff of her neck and dragged outside and berated for her filthy, filthy mind. And then Jaysus himself would descend from on high and...okay, i may be exaggerating a bit. But i guarantee you a good chunk of the population wouldn't care, or would think the officials justified.

Why on earth, you ask? Why would people embrace the removal of their civil liberties to watch pornography, smoke a joint, drink a pull of whiskey or spank their children when they misbehave?

Because so long as the officials are preventing behavior that you don't approve of, you dont mind that others, who may not mind it, can't.

There's a delicate balance here. On the one hand you can argue that some people might not mind murder or arson, so is it right for them to be free to kill people and start fires? But on the other you can argue that a group of people might disapprove of alcohol use, so is it right for their will to be imposed upon others either?

This delicate balance between acceptable and unacceptable is the reason we have government. To represent and enforce what the majority of people have decided is right and wrong. The majority may not always have the best idea--i'm sure if you dig back in my quotation book you'll find the name that goes along with the line "It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be a member of the majority--by definition, there are already enough people to do that."--but one of the flaws of the human condition is our herd mindset. Most of us will go along with what everyone else is doing. If most everyone agrees to one mentality, most everyone is content with it. Those who disagree feel screwed over but there's not enough of them to matter or sway public opinion.

Unfortunately, another commonly-believed line "if you don't like it, you can leave" does not seem to apply here. There's not really anywhere better to go.

So anyway. The Department of Homeland Security screws with your brain by running ads which say "watching porn gives money to terrorists." This affects your mindset next time you sit down to enjoy some, even when you know it doesn't. Likewise, ads tell you "smoking, drinking, and sex are bad." This affects how you feel next time you decide to smoke, drink, or screw, even if you're able to do it in moderation. They also tell parents to distrust their children and permit schools to teach myths and outright bullshit as truth. What does all of this have in common? its all MEDDLING. Carefully moving in and attempting to control what the population puts in their bodies and minds. Trying to regulate what information we have access to, and of that, what we believe. Using guilt as a means of controlling the population's sex drive. Using scare tactics to associate the word "terrorism" with a departure from desired behavior. Using the television to perpetuate cycles of addiction and abuse for children and disgruntled adults.

TV isn't evil. It is just frequently used by jerks to control you.