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"The Anti-Smoking Fascist Nazi Gestapo Bastards"
Posted by Doc Farmer
Wednesday, February 04, 2004

(Author’s Note: I’m a non-smoker. I used to smoke, but I quit just over a year ago. Just so you know that I’m not biased. Well, not very biased, anyway.)

***

Freedom used to be the cornerstone of this country. You were free to do or think or feel or worship as you so desired, just as long as you didn’t infringe on anybody else’s liberties. Simple enough as a concept. But that concept no longer works in America. The land of the free and the home of the brave has been turned into the land of the inhibited and the home of the fraidy-cat.

You saw a lot of that during the Christmas season, which can’t be called that anymore in case somebody might be ''offended'' by the core belief system of the vast majority of Americans. Holiday season is also a no-no, because it’s a corruption of ''holy day,'' and as we all know, if something’s holy, we can’t have anything to do with it as a country. Now, if you want to dance around non-Christmas-tree-type-shrubbery naked at the dawn of the Equinox, that’s okay. Druid good, Jesus bad.

However, Christians aren’t the only people dealing with niggling idiocy and obscure bureaucratic regulations. Burn a pile of leaves in some parts of America, and the ''Code Nazis'' will have a dozen swat teams (using environmentally friendly bullets, mind you) descending on your property like Janet Reno on a Waco compound. Don’t mow your lawn fast enough for some persnickety weirdo driving by your house in his or her environmentally friendly solar-powered baby buggy, and you’ll get a massive fine (for making somebody sneeze).

The worst offense against freedom, however, has to go to the lowly smoker.

When I was a kid, smoking was cool. Almost everybody on TV smoked. News anchors, actors, and actresses, all puffing up a blue (or, back in those days, light grey) streak on the small screen. Movie people smoked. Athletes smoked. Doctors smoked. For all we know Mister Ed smoked, but they never showed that on TV because of the potential fire hazard (all the hay in his room).

People smoked while driving. At the beach. Walking down the street. Riding a bicycle. Before and after sex. Probably during, too.

And everybody, EVERYBODY, knew it was bad for them. Warning labels abounded. People coughed. People got cancer. People got emphysema. People died. People understood the risk. And they still chose to smoke.

Until the Anti-Smoking Fascist Nazi Gestapo Bastards came along.

The Anti-Smoking Fascist Nazi Gestapo Bastards looked at all of these people doing something that THEY personally objected to, and personally chose not to do, and they decided that if it was bad enough for them to avoid, then it should be banned for everybody.

They made up signs. They made up TV and radio ads. They made up billboards. And when people didn’t react quickly enough, they made up lies about the dangers of smoking. They made up lawsuits. And then the Anti-Smoking Fascist Nazi Gestapo Bastards did the most dangerous thing they could do.

They made up laws.

It used to be that you could smoke at work. Can’t do that anymore. You have to go outside. And many people still do. Blistering heat, monsoon rains, or white-out blizzard, you’ll still see them near the fire escapes, the emergency exits, or the back doors of offices and businesses, huddled together, draggin’ down that smoke faster than Cheech and Chong with a cop car behind ‘em.

But now, laws are being passed that prevent people from smoking outside. In public. In the open air.

You can’t smoke in malls anymore. I’m not talking about inside the shops. I mean in the open common area of the mall. Where people walk from shop to shop in air-conditioned comfort. With air handling systems designed for large volume air movement and filtering.

Mom enjoys pointing this one out to me a lot. The Fort Wayne War Memorial Coliseum was recently enlarged. And there’s a strict no smoking policy in the building. However, you’ll regularly find the Coliseum has monster truck rallies, indoor tractor pulls, indoor motorbike races, etc. Now, which is worse--sucking down on an unfiltered Camel cigarette, or sucking down on the tailpipe of ''Big Bertha'' the monster diesel car-crushing 10,000 horsepower destruction machine?

To the Anti-Smoking Fascist Nazi Gestapo Bastards, it’s the cigarette.

Now, to most lib/dem/soc/commies, this would seem reasonable. Although, frankly, they’d also get rid of ''Big Bertha'' as well. Since it is for the ''common good,'' none should partake of such a great risk as cigarettes. And since freedom of choice and individual responsibility are too dangerous in this instance, they’ll just take that away. It’s for our own good, they’ll claim.

Until they come to the next ''great risk.'' And, although that risk may not be as great, well, it worked so well for cigarettes they might as well try it here too. And little by little, item by item, our freedoms and our rights are slowly eroded away until we have none.

A cigarette is a small thing. And the choice to have one is a small thing, too. But it is MY choice to smoke or to not smoke. It is not anybody else’s right to make that choice for me.

I choose not to smoke. I’ve made that choice for over a year. But I don’t give people static if they choose to smoke. It’s a legal (albeit potentially dangerous) choice. But it’s their choice. Not mine. And since I’m not allergic to cigarette smoke, it’s not any of my business, or my concern, whether they smoke in front of me or not.

Somebody once told me that the most rabidly anti-smoking were former smokers. Well, I personally prove that rule is incorrect. Because I don’t believe in prohibition. But the Anti-Smoking Fascist Nazi Gestapo Bastards do. Prohibition of cigarettes. Prohibition of religion. Prohibition of speech. And on and on and on.

Perhaps somebody should remind them just how successful was the last national prohibition.

~~~ooOoo~~~

Doc Farmer (cough) is a former (cough) resident of Qatar (cough cough) who now lives (cough) in Indiana. He (cough) can be contacted (cough) at: docfarmer9999@yahoo.co.uk

posted by HCL at 1:13 PM