It is an extraordinary thing to be caught between jurisdictions and the petty squabbling of Americans supposedly pulling in the same direction.
I, as an individual, am invisible and inhuman.
Gears of state and federal governments are crushing me.
I’m going through the grinder like McDonald’s pink slime.
The body horror pains me, while I quickly run out of time.
Now, as agency goes away, I’m stripped of my autonomy.
No power. No choice. No purpose. No chance.
I’m merely flesh, abused by bureaucratic robots and non-thinking machines—the exact opposite of me as a freethinking human being.
Prison guards in jackboots… No, strike that...
Bureaucrats in kitten heels, checkmark boxes, fill out forms and create new stats.
No longer a human,
I’m an alien.
No longer a name,
I’m a number.
Bummer.
They produce an insane pantomime of virtue signaling or toughness—one can be deported from the United States for cannabis—even if never convicted of a crime, even though consumption in the state of Colorado (where it was legally purchased) is constitutionally enshrined.
Like their bomb-laden flying counterparts, the collateral damage of their effort is irrelevant to these human drones. They’re harsh.
They don’t care about the decades wiped from the map of their victim’s life.
Generations have grown since I left my birth nation: an unrecognizable country, an undesired permanent destination. But it’s still good for a vacation.
The heartless machine of the federal government seems larger than all life. It is Thanos-Esque, murdering my American dream with a galactic-sized guillotine.
As with nature and God’s creation, like those plants growing in the ground, the machine of “freedom” makes an immigrants’ personal choice unsound.
I wonder, is it really that surprising so many disappear underground?
The individual doesn’t exist within a soulless structure that slaughters freedoms with impunity. You have no liberty; this world is bought and sold. You are free to pursue your happiness as long as you do exactly what you’re told.
You are chattel with a sticker on your behind, the small print explaining to whom you’re assigned. And, it is not yourself. Not if you resist. Not if you claim the right to be true—even if not one other person on the planet is being hurt by you, or your actions, or even cares what you do.
If the machine directs the mindless flesh masquerading as humans in their employ to act, one is no freer than cattle roaming a field before they’re rounded up to be whacked.
Suicidal thoughts take shape. Dark desires to prevent a faceless machine from pushing me around. I imagine a defiant and bloody, performance-art piece of self-harm before I hear the final bell sound.
Live free or die? No, not I. There’s no need to raise that alarm.
To be treated oh so differently, like a second-class personality,
Dismissed as a third-rate priority. I’ve given decades of decency,
To be a victim of bureaucracy? It’s a gross, political horror story.
MORALITY: Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. (Oxford English Dictionary)
A cannabis consumer is “Lacking in moral character.” Is that a joke? What say you folk? When it comes to morals or good character, is weed ever a factor?
The machine:
Grew into power on the backs of 400 years of slavery yet has the audacity to speak about knowing good from bad; they’re kidding, aye?
Rounded up 120,000 American Citizens in 1941, stole their Constitutional Rights, and corraled them into concentration camps by night. Is it me who can’t identify wrong nor right?
Are overseers to 5% of the world’s population but incarcerate (many for non-violent, victimless “crime”) 25% of its inmates. Is that demonstrating good moral character, or is it just a disgrace?
Oh, give me a break. I’m not woke, but I am awake.
The machine wouldn’t recognize good character if Jesus’ own moral principles metamorphosized and gave it a haircut and manicure.
Did we enter an alternate universe?
Go ahead, talk about obeying the law with no regard for what’s right if y’all need to play linguistic games to exercise your might.
It’s fine, suckle on big government if you will, but the US Constitution did not empower the machine; it began, “We The People.”
Some say that it’s always immoral to break the law.
Sam Adams? He kicked off the Tea Party in Boston.
Woodrow Wilson? He boozed through Prohibition.
Rosa Parks? She took her seat and stood no more.
The law has little, if anything, to do with morality.
It’s nothing but an ever-evolving political paradigm.
A nebulous, ever-shifting, position throughout time.
And a toolkit, consolidating power for the wealthy.
If the legal purchase and consumption of cannabis represent a “lack of moral character” as the US Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS] comically suggest, then how do they explain that 95% of We The People live in states that have voted to decriminalize some cannabis products at worst, or to fully legalize it at best?
How do they square their circle when 37% of Americans live where weed is legal for recreational use? Or, according to Gallup, that 68% of citizens said they are ready to see its prohibition completely vamoose, while about one in eight is actively pursuing their cannabis use?
Former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all officially lack moral character, according to the USCIS, because they have used cannabis.
Wait, President Biden is hiring?
We announced a few weeks ago that the White House had worked with the security service to update the policies to ensure that past marijuana use wouldn’t automatically disqualify staff from serving in the White House.
Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary, Tweeted on 3/9/21.
So, people who apparently “lack in moral character” are scoring jobs at the White House? But a decades-long, legally-residing, green card-holder, with a blemish-free record, maybe deported for doing the same in his own house?
Does any of this make sense to anyone with common sense?
Thankfully not to the Senators and Representatives from both major parties making moves to have the laws rewritten in Congress.
In 2020, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement [MORE] Act was decisively passed by the House of Representatives and reintroduced on May 28th as the MORE Act of 2021.
On July 14, a discussion draft of the Cannabis Administration Opportunity Act was introduced (for the US Senate, this was a first), with a legislative draft expected to go to committee after September 1st.
These bills, or rather whatever legislation eventually comes from the ensuing process, will inevitably deschedule cannabis and protect state-law-abiding immigrants from persecution by the USCIS.
But, for this fella, will it come soon enough? That’s anyone’s guess?
When Sha’Carri Richardson failed to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics due to testing positive for cannabis, the reaction from the public and politicians was pretty much the same. It was often not an admonishment of the athlete but disappointment in the antiquated rules of the games.
With representatives from either side asking that the ban on Richardson, along with the cannabis restriction, be lifted, it definitely proves cultural attitudes on nature’s gift have shifted.
However, for immigrants, when it comes to weed, why is there a bizarre moral character test? And why is the standard so much higher than for US Presidents, CEOs, Olympians, and all the rest?
In the meantime, does the machine-of-government-overreach continue to ignore the electorate's will or accept the clear direction the people demand of it?
Of course, if you know me, you’ll realize the cowardly and double-talking jive of this nonsense is what really bothers me.
In 2020, Colorado dealers pushed almost $2.2 Billion in weed through its more than 1,000 dispensaries. And $387 Million was returned to the state in cannabis taxes and fees.
This, in turn, benefits about 100,000 federal employees, along with their families, who suck on the teat of the Centennial State while it builds better schools, increases public safety and invests all the “immoral earnings” from weed into the public projects of Colorado like Robin Hood crossed with a desperado.
So, where are the federal agents in their gray suits and dark glasses? And why are they giving this immoral business in Colorado, so many hall passes? Because if it’s a lack of character that using cannabis is supposed to show, why does the machine stand idly by and let an illegal industry grow?
Basically, if weed is against federal law, why aren’t federal agents doing more?
In fact, you’ll find the answer is quite clear. Federal employees in Colorado appear delighted to take the “immoral earnings” from weed in kind. It’s cool, I understand, only a fool doesn’t want their kids going to a beautiful new school, and that’s fine.
But, and bear with me here, isn’t that conduct the definition of being corrupt?
What is the difference, exactly? Between taking an immoral earnings payment in kind and taking an immoral earnings payment, or kickback, directly?
Lacking in moral character? Do the G-Men possess a mirror?
But, let’s not kid ourselves. We all know the answer to why the drones-of-the-machine talk from both sides of their mouths.
It’s because, like all bullies, they go for the soft target. Preying on the most vulnerable, the poorest, and the weak—who drown in a sea of bureaucratic bullshitery as their situation becomes bleak.
Meanwhile, those with multi-million dollar dispensaries profit endlessly.
And federal employees continue to benefit shamelessly.
Such disappointment and terror,
Overwhelmed by a future uncertain.
Believing I would be here forever,
But glimpsed behind an ugly curtain.
I think of Kafka. A nightmare of surreal bureaucracy.
In this “Land of the Free” that irony is not lost on me.Twisted words cut deep and hurt,
Anti-immigration sentiment.
Judged by a soulless stuffed shirt,
Once more to be an emigrant?
Maybe yes. Maybe no. Whatever, they’ll never silence me.
Because, if I allowed that, then seriously, who would I be?
Molloy