I’m glad we connected here too. I read most of your other comments on this article and discovered that we’re both Southerners too. Although I gratefully escaped more than 25 years ago, I’ve given up trying to get the South out of my blood and no longer even want to.

I really liked most of your other comments, although since I was only reading yours I rarely knew what you were responding to. At last count there were well over 700 comments total, far too many to read, and most not worth reading anyway. I’m even more grateful than before that yours was and still is first. Even my first one, which started out on the first page, has been shoved down to page 10 already, I think.

In situations like this I nearly always think I’ve found a new friend, but I’ve learned over the years that I’m much too cantankerous and misanthropic for that, and I’m very much less tolerant than you are. I do not suffer fools gladly and have no interest in hearing the ravings of the small-minded lunatics calling themselves Christians who have overrun this country like a plague of locusts.

Nevertheless, I like you enough so far that if you have any desire to try continuing some kind of contact offline, let me know and we’ll figure out some way to exchange e-mail addresses safely. Or maybe we’ll just run into each other here again soon. Take care. I won’t call you Count any more, and I honestly don’t even know what the word snark means except as a Lewis Carroll creature.

Thank you, Count, for being a beacon of good sense and sanity in a crazy place today. And, again, I’m extremely grateful that you got your comment in there first. I almost surely would not have read on through the malice that followed soon after you.

Although I don’t think it’s a practical difference, I don’t happen to agree that people are innately good. I believe, however, that God is unfailingly good, and that’s all that really matters. As a happily gay liberal socialist Democrat, I cannot imagine having any hope at all apart from him in the world as it is now.

I agree with Margo, and I agree even more with Count Snarkula. I’m very grateful he responded first so I didn’t have to slog through all the insanity to get to it. There is some real garbage here today, and lots of it, and it’s easy to see why: The truth is terrifying to those who prefer lies.

The real issue isn’t racism, or politics, or patriotism, conservatism, or socialism. As the Count said, the root problem is fear. Fear is often exacerbated by ignorance, but even ignorance is a secondary factor. Ignorance in itself can just as easily foster love as hatred, tenderness as violence, but fear always blinds and always enrages its victims, and it always leads to violence in some form. When as many people are as frightened as they are in this country now, and as bound up together in their snowballing fear, the violence will be great.

The only thing I may differ from Margo and the Count on is the hint of pessimism I detect (maybe mistakenly) in their comments. I am very encouraged by the violent insanity in the world today (which, by the way, is even more rampant among people in the United States who consider themselves perfectly normal than among the most rabid terrorist cell in the Middle East). Things will certainly get very much worse in this country before they get better, but they will get better.

It’s exactly like a forest fire: terrifying as it rages, but necessary and restorative in the long run. Fires always burn themselves out eventually. The only permanent victims will be the ones who allow their own fear to eat them alive.

I agree that nobody, including the president, is really interested in upholding the law when doing so gets to be too much trouble.

I also agree that people who are interested in using illegal drugs don’t care what the law is, they only care about whether they’ll get in trouble for breaking it or not.

I don’t mean this as a personal attack, but looking for ways to get away with breaking drug laws may be a sign of at least an addictive personality, if not addiction itself. It certainly is not a sign of character or a good example for young people.

But then I also believe in obeying speed limits, not driving as fast as I think I can get away with driving (compulsive speeding is also a sign of an addictive personality), nor do I believe that shoplifting is okay as long as I don’t get caught.

I believe most laws regulating individual behavior exist for the good of society as a whole and for our protection as individuals, not as challenges to our individual egos.

Whether you choose to respect the law or not may "depend on who you talk to," but the law itself does not. The fact is that—as of this moment—production, distribution, possession, and use of marijuana are illegal under federal law everywhere in the United States. According to the Constitution of the United States, federal law always supersedes state and local law except when Congress explicitly permits state law to prevail, and Congress has not given any state jurisdiction over marijuana.

You are free to disbelieve this fact and disobey federal law, trusting that local attitudes and ordinances will protect you from arrested and prosecution under federal law, but they may not, and that would be a risk you were choosing to take.

Thanks, Margo for a perfectly brilliant, perfectly clear, and perfectly true picture of where we’re headed. It does not distress me as it seems to distress many other readers (although I confess I didn’t read all the comments because they’re so long today, and you can get a pretty good idea what they’re saying in the first few words). Anyway, as I said, this prospect doesn’t distress me at all—any more than death distresses me—because it is perfectly natural. Another Newtonian way to say it is: What goes up must come down.

Despite what many want, the process cannot be stopped, and the fate you so correctly see cannot be avoided. That’s like trying to avoid dying. (Which, by the way, is what’s really wrong with our health care system: its goal has shifted from healing to fighting death, an impossible and infinitely costly—and infinitely lucrative, for the few—objective.)

Anyway, thanks once again, Margo, for being a sane voice in a crazy, self-deluding world.

Deena,

You can read my reply to Andrea below for my previous ignorance of woWOWow’s overall coverage of the Jackson story. And I suppose I can understand the touchy reactions to Margo’s touchily denied mistake. But in addition to my defense of Margo’s own comments, I want to go on record as saying how very much I admire her for even participating in a forum like this.

I’m amazed that she even reads all these comments, much less takes the time and trouble to respond to them individually, specifically and personally. She doesn’t have to do that, and I know of no other national journalist who does it so thoroughly and consistently. I’d much rather have her bite my head off unfairly for criticizing her than sit untouchable in an ivory office tower or a gated estate somewhere.

Maybe everybody who writes for woWOWow is so remarkably responsive, but Margo is the first I’ve ever come across anywhere. Even when she attacks things and people I love (like Sarah Palin), I’m grateful for her extraordinarily unique and messily human voice.