The war on smoke

Full employment, taking the piss, or putting the cart before the horse



The theory of the smoking gun has put the gun before the smoking.

The UK Parliament has voted for a total ban on smoking in all public areas. One spokeswoman of the Liverpool anti-smoking campaign pointed out how they had been inspired by advisers from California, where the trend in this direction had started. A decisive argument for the ban in Britain however had been to protect the health of workers. From the time of the mining-industry, pubs already used to close early in Britain, to help workers go to bed and get up early. This has recently changed. Yet, workers have always enjoyed much protection as such, not necessarily as individuals.

Ronald Reagan, who moved California and the world in the rightist direction, was a promoter of the war on drugs. Influential people like Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman have stated that such a war is an exercise in futility and can never – either morally or strategically – be won as it would be criminalising the whole of society.

So it has been.

As indeed this war could not be won, its frustrated adherents have fabricated a ban on smoking as a form of compensation. The war on terror was based on the same premises, and perhaps the UK has realised its error more gravely than the US in its involvement.

After the identity-card had been strategically introduced in several European countries and then Britain, in the context of the war on terror – to make up for a lack of inner identity, we saw no terrorists being arrested but many of the elderly, handicapped and children.

Something similar we have observed in the Dutch ban on urinating wild (in the open air), one other variation on the war on terror. Only children were caught from behind a tree, hardly any drunken hooligans pissing in your porch at night. High fines were given in many parks by the alerted police, hiding in the bush, in this moral renaissance, survival of the fittest, while urinals are inaccessible or no longer free of charge. Class has finally permeated the realm of urine by natural selection. Sigmund Freud has been posthumously awarded. The anal phase was true. Charles Darwin, say no more. Go and see for yourself how our respectable bideps have lost their tail and how we have evolved on Temptation Island!

Naturally in line with the evolution of species ought to be seen as well the many traditional street-benches in Amsterdam (Holland), having been divided by two iron bars to technically prevent the homeless from lying down and rest.

The ban on smoking was inevitable in a prestigious and global war about norms and values.

Because the war on terror was a waste of time and energy and a loss of face, perhaps the only effect having been rising oil-prices, the UK could only vote for a ban on smoking.

Since the Masters of the Wisdom have returned to the everyday-world, it seems the least relevant aspect of their presence, their suggested immortality, has been absorbed, only by clever and ambitious people who have immediately assumed this to be theirs by greedy emulation and pretence, their own merit and success and even a favour to us, to be taken for granted – as long as nobody around is smoking. Yet, the aura of many, exactly such people remains quite smoky, even polluting. And those who are one of a kind won't prohibit each other poisoning either the spiritually more advanced minority. Instead of smoking, so-called for others, now people are watching, hating and checking each other in private. This possibly makes clear as well why there is such a loud call for democracy. The majority of citizens feel discriminated, especially in rush hour. And they will always tend to blame the proverbial other for their own lack of quality in life, likely me.

In many public places it was not even allowed anymore to sit and read (anything but the price). Conceit, control and consumption around-the-clock are already taken to be the same norm as non-smoking since a long time, and either complete silence or applause: talking or shouting, laughing or crying affirmative nonsense about the various brands of beer in stock is tolerated by law.

If politicians have nothing to do, at least let them not run wild and ruin all social structures pretending to be busy. Let us pay sufficient taxes for their income on condition once in a while they keep their mouth shut and do nothing. To do nothing is not yet to do harm.

The problem is that full employment is needed to be able to destroy planet earth.

There is one negative side to a ban on smoking that has been overlooked.

It has been scientifically proven how schizophrenics who smoke, take a smaller risk in getting lung-cancer.

And smokers hardly seem to be ever schizophrenic. Who knows is smoking not an antidote to schizophrenia?!

If the cap fits, wear it.

He who has an ear, let him hear.