The Universe gave us a test, California, and we couldn’t even spell our own name, much less correctly answer the first question. Last week I was being lyrically abusive in the spirit of political optimism. Today I’m simply talking shit.

First, before class begins, let’s check attendance. There are no reliable numbers for me to say how many students of cannabis there are in this class, so I’ll estimate that 40 percent of California’s population either 1) smokes weed frequently or 2) once did and might blaze up again in the future. If so, there are 14.8 million stoners in California, and there were 3.3 million “Yes” votes for Proposition 19, a law to legalize marijuana.

For humor’s sake, I’ll assume that all 3.3 million “Yes” votes were cast by stoners last Tuesday. In no way is that a reasonable assumption — even my sober phantom alter ego in a parallel dimension would realize that $1.4 billion sounds pretty good when your regional budget is totally fucked.

If every single person who voted for Prop 19 did so for the explicit reason that they only wanted to get high in simple peace, then there were still 11,500,000 stoners left in the state that just couldn’t figure it out and get to the damn polling station.

The final tally was 46.2 percent for legalization and 53.8 percent against, with a failure margin of 528,897 votes. If every “Yes” vote was by a stoner, then there were still over ten million who did not vote. If one out of every 20 of these lazy-ass stoners was worth the weed they’re smoking, then marijuana would be legal today. I repeat, today we would be smoking cannabis in honor of democracy.

Instead, I feel disappointed with the state of America’s inspiration. Stoner turnout of 22 percent is a failing grade, California. Today I blaze not for democracy, but only to forget the sad reality that I am actually one of the industrious ones. That should not be the case, for I am rarely ever as sober as the people bitching about “Demotivation Syndrome” and desperately trying to prove that stoners’ grades are lower than non-stoners’.

I’m certain that cannabis doesn’t demotivate me — quite the contrary in fact. So this is the cause for my disappointment: I know that the reason we failed is because so many of us were so lazy that we couldn’t commit even to our own pleasure-habit.

No, the country is dedicated to arguing which flavor is more pleasantly mediocre: shit-chocolate or ass-vanilla. The ship of state is sinking, and it’s taking on more and more water (debt) every day. In 2006 and 2008, I felt like I helped a mutiny break into the steering room and retake control, but years later I realize that nobody had any sailing expertise and that our ship is now more on course to collide with an iceberg than it was before — and that’s scary shit.

I’d try and tell the new captain, but his advisers have welded the door shut and it seems that they are all high on PCP. The passengers are too distracted to know that their ship is sinking or what to do about it, content to argue whether Jacob or Edward is “better.” Competing fantasies dominate the public mind while the truth is swept under the rug. So I’m building a life boat, and its purple plush with a strobe light and a keg.

Everyone seems to have their little ‘pet’ issue that they obsess over, that constrains their sense of reality into a tunnel. At least with marijuana legalization we propose a partial solution to America’s largest problem — debt.

In the future, the ship will sink. The crafty ones will trick out a life boat. The stupid ones will think that by singing songs and giving rosy speeches they will somehow move the iceberg. Any that chain themselves down to the ship’s deck will either drown with it or abide by the terms of their rescuer ship, unconditionally.

On the scoreboard of government achievement, the most irresponsible legislative behavior occurs when one political party controls the majority of both houses of Congress. Sound fiscal policy and balanced budgets, on the other hand, are the result of intense debate and disagreement among the various factions competing for power.

Either pair of two red hawks or two blue vultures will probably prey upon me if they perceive that I am vulnerable or weak. If one red hawk and one blue vulture both seek to gain something from me, I at least have the chance of setting the two predators to battle each other, while in the mean time I train a green falcon to “represent” me.

The more poetic thing to draw from this avian metaphor is the realization that even if the eagle has one wing blue and another red, the bird remains a bird of prey who will capitalize upon vulnerability in the same predatory manner as the hawk, the vulture or even my vicious, bad-bitch, “high-flying” green falcon.

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