Smokers never seem to get angry about smoking bans. But maybe that’s because they’ve been under attack all their lives. They’re used to it.
On Forest’s Zoom meeting recently Jacob Grier said it went back to the 1940s and 50s, But it goes back further than that. It goes back to Hitler in the 1930s, and to King James circa 1600. There have been antismokers for as long as there’s been smoking.
And smokers don’t fight back. They just roll with the punches. With each new prohibition they just move another few yards down the street.
One day there’ll be no smoking allowed anywhere.
And then?
Can anything really be prohibited by law? Cannabis was demonised and prohibited for a long time, but now it seems to gradually being legalised. Now it’s tobacco that’s being demonised and prohibited. The evil eye has switched from one thing to another.. It seems that something always has to be demonised and prohibited.
Maybe it’s that when anything is persecuted enough, the persecution loses power, and the persecuted recover their strength.. The emperors Nero and Diocletian persecuted Christians, and then Christianity took over the Roman empire. Would that have happened without a period of intense persecution? Christianity is the religion of the persecuted: its founder was crucified.
Same with alcohol prohibition. That didn’t last long either.
No Smoking signs indicate persecution. There aren’t any No Blacks signs, or No Women signs these days…
…
I’ve lost my thread.
I’m having a lot of difficulty with WordPress these days. It used to be easy to post a new blog, but now it takes me ages – 10 or 15 minutes – to be able to just start or finish editing a new post. There’s a + option to start a new post, and that option no longer appears. I have to hunt for it.
I have less to say, and it’s harder to say it.
Lionel seems to have the same problem.
Frank Davis 
Always makes sense to me Frank. Liked the birdsong one. Food for thought. Calming effect.
Jacob Grier buys into the propaganda that “cigarettes are the most dangerous consumer product ever created.” If the public believes that, they will always support extreme anti-smoking measures. The libertarian argument that no matter how harmful something is, people have a “right” to partake of it and manufactures have a “right” to produce it will never be popular.
Heroin and fentanyl are consumer products, illegal but still consumed products. And they kill very few people a year. Yes they’re in their teens and twenties a lot of times but there aren’t that many of them. And, hey, they’re not as addictive as cigs, right?
So if your 13 year old wants to shoot up its better than it they’re smoking, right? And,heck, bicycles probably kill more kids (with a little help from Deathmobiles of course) than heroin OR cigs! Bicycles are clearly the most dangerous consumer product and need to be banned immediately!
Ok. Next problem?
I’ve been thinking about the prospect of people being banned from everywhere if they’re not vaccinated. Thinking, what the hell, I’ve been banned from almost everywhere just because I smoke. Strikes me as the same template. And the new trend. Ban people you don’t like or have been engineered to fear (in this case, confusing “unvaccinated” with “infected” —or are they? Is it more like a ban on the presumed deplorables?) but the trend is to create a more and more rarified society where the self-annointed Good People will only be with their own very good kind in, as the old jingle went’ “per-fect har-mo-nee.” Sort of like the banished Eloi to the…what were they? Awoks?
It’s probably lockdown ennui. I’ve been finding it very hard to keep a focus on anything lately.
Yo Leg mon, ya had two 8 letter words after “It’s” so I loss focus. My bad
L8R Dood!
– MJM
Always keenly anticipate your blog posts Frank, even if comparatively brief lately. None of us are getting any younger, need to get out in good weather if the infallible government allows it, hope you don’t have some obscure complications from your NHS treatment (hospitals are best avoided; too many ill people).
Bach on guitar, a solo concert.
Get past the first 2 mins of introduction, and enjoy!
_
PROGRAM:
Flute Partita in A minor, BWV 1013
by Johann Sebastian Bach
(Transcribed by Valter Despalj)
-Allemande (3:06)
-Corrente (8:40)
Violin Sonata No. 1, BWV 1001
by Johann Sebastian Bach
(arr. by Manuel Barrueco)
-Adagio (12:44)
-Fuga (16:38)
-Siciliana (21:19)
-Presto (24:25)
Un Dia de Noviembre (27:36)
by Leo Brouwer
Gran Sonata Eroica, Op. 150 (32:17)
by Mauro Giuliani
Sonata in E major, K. 380, L. 23 (41:39)
Sonata in D minor K.1, L. 366 (46:28)
by Domenico Scarlatti
Nocturno (48:55)
by Slavko Fumic
Encore –
Asturias (53:49)
by Isaac Albeniz