The fact that they'll do something the majority of their constituents supports sounds more like democracy than what we have now. Just how often has government truly done something beneficial to our expectations? How long have we not had single-payer healthcare, which the majority of Americans support? Does the fact that your friends did nothing but getting high and sitting around tell more about them or the drug? When I ingest cannabis, I read on agorist class theory, or on the success of the CNT during the Spanish civil war, or the latests posts on ProPublica or AlterNet, or I may even exercise to get my fat ass into shape. An inanimate substance doesn't make you do anything, but it may influence your decisions. The decision still solely lies with you, though (at least from my experience with cannabis). Honestly, I think if some politicians smoked some weed, they'd guilt trip themselves into not lying so damn much. I feel horrible whenever I lie when I'm high, most of the time I recant my statements and tell people outright that I lied, because I know that telling the truth is a lot easier than keeping up a lie. I think the substance has an incredibly humbling effect, even on the coldest people it seems to inspire empathy. Watch a FRONTLINE documentary while under the influence of cannabis and just try, TRY not to cry. Its pretty damn difficult. And from what Ive seen, people are far more collaborative and creative when they're high than when they aren't. The fact that you're rambling on and on about fuck-all with your friends is more collaborative than going to a movie or other entertainment venue and commencing in trivial small talk of no consequence to anybody besides the distributors of said entertainment. Maybe its just me, but at least people that smoke weed sometimes get inspired to take action about injustice or poverty or racism or whatever. Had it not been for my experimenting, Id probably be not too different from your run-of-the-mill Fox or CNN viewer. I cant imagine what my life would be like if I didn't start watching PBS and Democracy Now! at a young age.

Its not sustainable as opposed to the other possible political systems we could have, but dont because of petty greed, vindictiveness, and fear. Its not simply capitalism vs socialism, and socialism isnt inherently authoritarian. Stalin, Mao, and Kim Jong-il are authoritarian socialists, while Mikhail Bakunin, Noam Chomsky, and the Wobblies are libertarian socialists. Similarly, Murray Rothbard, SEK3, and Ludwig von Mises are libertarian capitalists, while Deng Xiaoping, Bush 43, and Pinochet are authoritarian capitalists. Had it not been for the intervention of the State over the years, wasting money on frivolous and illegitimate wars, trying to save money by exploiting people or trashing the environment, Im sure that technology would have progressed further. Its far cheaper to fix something before it breaks than trying to clean up the clusterfuck afterward. America is not much less culpable than the Soviet Union in that sense, we just have a moderately free press to report on it, which resulted in some moderately improved legislation regarding the environment. Nothing radical enough to result in real definitive change, though. We always have to compromise with big business. Why the hell should we compromise when it hurts the hand that feeds all of us? Its seems that we only change our harmful habits in the face of immediate, perceivable danger.

I have a 900sd, and through a lot of googling, I came across Crunchbang linux, which is very minimalist and runs default on openbox. You can of course change this relatively easily to gnome or kde or whatever you prefer. I highly recommend Cruncheee because its very fast compared to the default Xandros installation, or the Ubuntueee installation (now called Easy Peasy). Cruncheee comes with pretty much complete driver support right after installation. Wireless worked right after installation, so did microphone, so did SD slot support, and based on the reports Ive seen, so would the webcam (if I had one, but instead it has a plastic covering? wtf?). Ive used this distro pretty much since the beginning I got the netbook, and am very pleased with it. It even comes with PCman as a file manager. The only gripe I have is that I got a crappy eee pc (for christmas, cant complain). It was supposed to have a webcam, doesnt. Was supposed to have an 8gb harddrive, instead it has a 4 gb harddrive. I actually have more space available in my sd slot than on my freakin internal harddrive. It doesnt even have an Atom processor like the rest, it has Celeron. So im selling it and getting the 1000 instead, lol.