Ālea iacta est

"Stop it! Stop! Stop the whining and the sniveling right now! There are Christians in this world who are oppressed, yes. There are Christians in North Korea who can't go to worship without risking being thrown into a Gulag. There are Christians in Palestine who can't even get to their churches because of Israeli checkpoints and walls. You are not oppressed as a Christian in this country. Quit your sniveling whining! That savior you claim to serve said take up your cross and follow him and you're whining and crying because what? Because nobody's letting you treat gay people like shit anymore?! What the hell is wrong with you? Quit whining! Stop it!"

And while everyone's reaction is usually "haha they're so stupid lol!!" Let's not forget that this is one of the ways they transparently demonize addicts in order to keep the populace convinced that they are evil, horrible people that deserve to be locked up. They know that citizens will eventually start thinking "hey, they're really only hurting themselves, shouldn't they get help instead of being punished?" so in order to keep everyone comfortable with criminalizing drug addiction, they spread the idea that addicts have a secret agenda to turn EVERYONE into addicts, so they just *NEED* to keep them locked up.

"They're coming after our children! They're trying to turn our children into _____!" (Does that sound familiar?)

Time transfixed via Rene Magritte

He had a woodshop, which outlived him by many years; he wasn't the one who taught me to use the tools in it but they were his nonetheless. I learned on his band saw, his drill press, made little things out of lumber he felled and milled and laid away for projects he never got to. The cutting boards I use for special occasions are black walnut he milled the year I was born, that I planed and cut and sanded in his woodshop eighteen years after his death. The woodshop, too, is gone now, but I have many of his tools still. Hand drills and files, vices and hammers and a thousand little jars of screws and nails, which will likely last my lifetime and more. I have tools from my great-grandfather, too, who I never knew, but the hand planes still cut long curlicues of wood smooth as butter.

And I have his china. Gifted to my grandmother as an engagement gift; an extravagant expense, carried in his hands bit by bit from Japan, a hundred and twenty pieces chipped and cherished through generations of family thanksgivings. A poor man's gift to a rich man's daughter, with gold on the edges.