You’ve come a long way baby. Medical marijuana is now legal in Ohio. A bill passed, establishing an industry that will serve a significant portion of the state’s patient population. Certified physicians will recommend cannabis to those with one of 21 medical conditions. The plant will be grown in giant warehouses, processed into oils and tinctures, tested for contaminants and sold in dispensaries around the state. With patient numbers estimated at over 150,000, the Ohio market may well exceed $200 million.

But we still have a long way to go. The roll out of Ohio’s Medical Marijuana Control Program has hardly been smooth. As widely reported, marijuana will not be on the shelves by the program’s promised deadline of September 8th. Neither will it be tested as required in the legislation that begat the program. Processors have yet to be picked. Patients and caregivers must wait until September for cards. Further, hundreds of cities around Ohio have imposed moratoriums or even bans to keep medical marijuana businesses, and by extension, patients at bay.

Domination at Home and Abroad

As the midterm election heats up in Ohio, it’s time to recognize the important role minor political parties play in our bellwether state, as well as across the nation. Although commonly referred to as third parties or alternative parties, the ideas behind these groups are popular and can have a major impact in the future of our nation’s political landscape as the millennial generation continues to look for its voice.

For example, in my personal experience I always considered myself a Democrat -- I turned 18 in August 2001 and was an adult for one month before we entered a post-9/11 world. During my formative college years I quickly grew to resent the Bush administration and their war mongering, socially conservative, anti-civil liberty agenda. But as the Democrats eventually took power in 2008, I started to realize that they had a similar corporate, anti-populist agenda that differed from my own and I looked elsewhere for where exactly I fit in. I took my political activism seriously and knew that my generation had a lot of work to do to make a difference in the future we were inheriting.

here have been two developments in the past month that illustrate clearly what is wrong with the White House’s perception of America’s place in the world. Going far beyond the oft-repeated nonsense that the United States is somehow the “leader of the free world,” the Trump Administration has taken several positions that sustain the bizarre view that such leadership can only be exercised if the United States is completely dominant in all relevant areas. Beyond that, Washington is now also asserting that those who do not go along with the charade and abide by the rules laid down will be subject to punishment to force compliance.

“We offer your love to all of our children . . .” the Episcopal priest said, her eyes closed in prayer. Some 170 people were gathered around her, as she stood in a gazebo in a park in Huntsville, Ala. This was one of the 700-plus protests across the country last weekend, as Americans gathered in unity and outrage over Donald Trump’s cruel treatment of immigrants and their children at the southern border.

“Womp, womp!”

Even before the guy pulled the Glock from his waistband, wow, this was the American recipe: sarcasm and hate and racism stirred into our prayers and deepest values, into the best of who we are.

When we describe the United States in the abstract, the best of who we are prevails. Our ideals loom like mountain peaks on a picture postcard: “Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . .”

But the real America has always been parsimonious in its allotment of freedom and respect.