Although it happened last week, the grounds for a new metaphor are too great to let me pass it up. President Obama was on Google+ doing a web town hall meeting or some such. Requests for questions were submitted beforehand. Issues around marijuana (legalization) were number one on the topic list. And the Prez did not answer a one. Fair enough. One of those topics I know. But what of metaphor?
I want to say that it is one of those issues that define our culture. Other issues may serve this purpose as well but not with such a spark of illegality. What one’s views on marijuana are may place them, define them. Do you or don’t you support government involvement, regulation? Does government need to regulate morality and, if so, in what ways? So what of the president?
Marijuana rules are one topic that he may not want to broach because of what is at stake in maintaining the status quo. Think jobs. He is trying to create jobs. Legalize It! and quite a few prison and law enforcement jobs are gone. While many people may breathe a bit easier during their recreational activities, many will be looking for a job. The cops and robbers game over, those that supply this plant to America would also be out of work. More pressure on the job market.
But never mind that. Let’s take this metaphor further. Why do we have a country that makes this plant illegal? At the level of metaphor the plant becomes symbolic. It becomes “a thing to be kept illegal”. We can then say that our country keeps certain things illegal. By extension that means that the populace allows things to be illegal. Indeed this is the front put up by politicians and law enforcement. This is the social contract which means giving some freedom up in order to get more. Careers in politics are made being tough saviors of society.
Change is tough. Change was an Obama campaign concept but I’m not sure he imagined the bind it could put him. He may have not imagined the economic downturn either. Not following up on one’s campaign’s promises is basically required in American politics so whatever on that point. And whatever the reason may be I think some realpolitik decisions are being made by the president. Not talking about marijuana in a one-off web chat can say a lot.
But the last thing that marijuana may stand for is the inability to talk. Uncommunication. It needs a neologism. This in-communication exists, rampant everywhere. Families and relationships: the things unsaid. It enables ruts to form and then mire. At the countrywide level I would say that there are things that we just don’t talk about, the plant in question being one of them. It is painful to broach some subjects. If some post-apoc scenario became manifest (overnight, of course) some of these questions would quickly come to the fore (then retreat into the background). In some such now-only-hallucinated future we would perhaps crave a government hand to hold a defending sword over our heads and in front of our enemies.
Questions of what our personal relationships to government are tough to ask. They are part of the structure of our culture. Everything is together. To pull on one string may compromise the whole. Metaphorically speaking.
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