alt Hacker NewsIn theory I'm ok with drugs being legalized, but I will admit that I have a strong distaste for people who routinely use drugs and drug culture.
I'm not talking about people who drink during the holidays or smoked weed in high school, those people don't bother me. I'm talking about the people who need to lecture about how great weed is and feel the need to smoke it every day and make it a vital part of their identity. I find people like that insufferable. I think the people wearing cannabis-leaf t shirts are generally annoying, and I hate how everyone who smokes a joint and watches a Carl Sagan video seems to decide that they're a philosopher.
I'm a pretty boring American liberal, I think drugs should be legal, but I guess that's more in an abstract sense, sort of a NIMBY thing. I'm ok with people doing drugs, as long as I don't have to deal with those people and they do it far away from me.
I acknowledge the hypocrisy in this. Can't help how I feel.
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That's not NIMBYism or hypocrisy. It's just liberalism. You don't like something, but you think it should be legal. That is exactly what liberalism is about. You do not have to like everything and in fact, if you only want to allow things that you like, you're not liberal. It's precisely the acknowledgement of other people's right to do things that you do not like that defines liberalism. But at the same time you have the right to not associate with people who do these things. You give them their freedom and they give you yours. There is nothing hypocritical about that.
Also some of the things you describe are just addiction and coping, euphemizing it.
> I think the people wearing cannabis-leaf t shirts are generally annoying, and I hate how everyone who smokes a joint and watches a Carl Sagan video seems to decide that they're a philosopher.
Oh god. You just reminded me of my last "smoke buddy". Someone I tolerated because we got high together. He was definitely the type to watch some shit he didn't understand and have some sort of revelation. One of the last before I cut ties with him was about how he believed the earth would one day "become another sun". The earth is getting all of this energy over time from the sun, so it will eventually have enough energy to become a sun itself! He was really proud of that one.
This is entirely normal. I think jet skis and French arthouse cinema should be legal, I just don't want either of them anywhere near me.