Judgement

So I saw this article over at the most popular blog in the world. My initial reaction was to mentally groan "Noooooooo", and I had to stop myself. This is interesting, bear with me.

Come November it'll be three years since I was discharged. That's a year shy of the length of my enlistment, har har. It surprises me when I catch how much my worldview is still shaped by that experience. Like the idea of Carl Sagan baked out of his mind staring through a telescope and jotting down whatever came into his head.
What's so wrong with that?

Of course, in the military, drug use is strictly verboten with extreme prejudice. Popping positive on a pee test is liable enough to land you in brig, which is to say prison - military style. Despite its posturing, the US military is about as socially progressive as the Puritans who landed on Plymouth Rock. But I lived under this kind of absolute black and white for a long time. We all became the silent judges when someone in the platoon or company or battalion was found guilty of the egregious sin of trying to find a momentary escape from the monotonous horror of day to day existence then. We all judged, and we all forgot ourselves.