Here’s the most recent thing.
So, it is 4/20 as I’m writing this. And we get all the normal stuff regarding that -- a lot of people really excited about smoking up, as if they wouldn’t have been doing it this weekend anyway. And this isn’t to say that I don’t think it should be decriminalized, because I do. And I know a percentage of my friends feel the opposite of that, but we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
It doesn’t matter; that particular argument bears only a small relation to the reason I’m mad.
Other trending topics popped up. Like ‘Hitler.’ And ‘Columbine.’ So I poked around at those, even though I was pretty sure I knew why people were posting about ‘Columbine.’
The shooting at Columbine happened. 13 kids gone. And as much as you want to blame the parents of the kids who fired the guns, you know that it is just as horrifying to them. Just.. pure tragedy in every direction.
It is Hitler’s birthday. Okay... I get that he was an amphetamine crazed monster, and had he not been born, a genocide most likely wouldn’t have happened. At least not on the scale that it did. We’ve also been making fun of him consistently for years. A Doctor Who companion got to punch him (and it was awesome). There is a cat meme devoted to him. We condemn the evil that he did, but we laugh at the man.
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| Plus, cats are adorable, even when they goosestep. |
Reading those trending topics were a lot of other comments, though. Not just commenting on how horrible those occurrences were, but saying that people who were posting about 4/20 were in the wrong, BECAUSE of it being the anniversary of Columbine and Hitler’s birthday.
People, I get what you’re trying to say... and feel free to judge your little judgey hearts out, because god knows I do... but, fuckin’ seriously?
You could go back on any day in history and find a tragedy. Do you know how many bad things have happened on Christmas? Emperor Hirohito began his reign then, and he’s the guy we fought against in WW2, who decided to bomb Pearl Harbor. Not to mention the local tragedies that have happened in the U.S. I don’t see you putting away your gifts and quietly being grateful for living. I don’t see you holding back on the egg nog.
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If your birthday fell on the day we dropped the bomb on Japan, would you stop celebrating it? In case you didn’t know, it happened on August 6th and August 9th. Now that you know, will you never go to a get together held on one of those days?
Everyone born on August 27th, hold up! Krakatoa erupted and killed an estimated 120,000 people.
We can find a bad thing that happened on any single day, because accidents happen, Mother Nature happens to be a strumpet, and people are completely off their nut sometimes. History is also filled with a lot of great things to celebrate, because discoveries happen, sometimes Mother Nature isn’t a total bitch, and occasionally people are pretty damn awesome.
Should we only ever remember the bad stuff? Should we never allow ourselves to look at all the great things that happened on tragic days, and celebrate the good anyway?
4/20 -- at its core, is a celebration. Much like Cinco De Mayo has become. (and on the 5th of May, 1944 - German troops executed 214 people in Greece). People come together, get inebriated, make jackasses of themselves, or just sit back and have a good enough time that they can still remember the next day. It is about camaraderie.
It is decidedly not about celebrating the tragic things that happened.
And that’s really all you need to worry about, if you’re gonna worry. If the intent is not to say “Happy Birthday, Hitler!” or “Columbine, I made a cake,” then you’re getting yourself all riled up for nothing.
And if you’re going to talk about war and genocide and guns being bad, the people who smoke pot are usually the ones against war, against unjust aggression and violence, and for gun control. These are the folks who are going to get in the voting booths, trying to make sure these things don’t happen again.
Hobos, however stupid you might think 4/20 is, whatever your opinion on people who partake of marijuana - does it serve any purpose to criticize people who are just trying to be happy, if the vast majority of them aren’t hurting anyone?
Maybe, instead of criticizing others, think about the fact that the people who got hurt, whose honor you think you’re defending - they’d love a chance to be here and be happy. To celebrate something, anything.
Enough awful things happen in this world. Find joy where you can. Let others find theirs. Let it be.
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