Oahu, Hawaii - New Years Eve 2018
The above posted YouTube video of someone driving down the freeway while filming the skies gives a good snapshot of just how widespread the people of Hawaii defy the law on an annual basis. In every town and every district on the island of Oahu, from about 8pm on December 31 til 1:00am January 1st, the skies light up like a virtual war zone, as the majority of residents celebrate in solidarity to practice a cultural tradition that authorities have sought to end by decree for the past three decades and counting. It's a perfect demonstration of just how much THE LAW is respected, revered and obeyed by the general populace here!
As a young boy growing up in Hawaii, I distinctly remember the day it was announced that the mayor of Honolulu had signed off on the law that made the sale, possession and use of aerial fireworks illegal. That was in 1984, and if memory serves me correctly, that mayor's decision ended her first term and she lost re-election the following year to the former mayor she defeated in the previous election, in a landslide.
There are no official sources I can cite with regards to this, but I remember all of the adults in my life discussing the first (and only) female mayor in Honolulu's history who had previously won election by a 70% landslide, getting basically thrown out of office by the electorate for daring to outlaw one of Hawaii's most popular New Years Eve traditions. She was fortunate that the custom of tar and feathers for unpopular politicians was no longer practiced.
Despite such an overwhelming display of displeasure by the electorate, the ban on aerial fireworks in the City and County of Honolulu has never been overturned. The establishment that runs this town has seen fit to keep that aerial fireworks ban in place and our media and politicians see fit to issue dire warnings and proclamations every year about the illegality of selling, owning and using aerial fireworks. The occasional house fire or mishap that results in injuries and lost fingers are highlighted by the
What is the State to do to get we the sheeple to comply?
As it stands, only licensed, accredited and regulated firework companies are allowed to acquire permits to legally set off aerial fireworks in the City and County of Honolulu. And every year, a handful of Waikiki hotels and other resorts around the island hire these legal companies to put on their licit firework shows. But these legal shows are dwarfed in comparison by the number of illegal fireworks that light up the sky all over the island on New Years Eve.
Year after year for as far as I can remember, the majority of the people of Hawaii have participated vigorously and enthusiastically in flouting the ban on aerial fireworks by spending millions of dollars on the black market annually to acquire the contraband and set them all off every New Years Eve. Cops, firemen, politicians, lawyers, union workers, government employees....nearly all would have to admit to being a scofflaw at least once in the past if they were born and raised here.
Most people from all walks of life in this State will fondly discuss our prohibited New Years tradition of recreational aerial bombardments, while State officials and our controlled media continually push the narrative that most people of Hawaii are opposed to this annual tradition, and only a minority of criminals and scofflaws are ruining the peace, quiet and air quality for the rest of us.
It is to laugh.
Despite the overwhelming statement made every year in the skies of the Pacific as to what the obvious will of the people is in our State, our rulers persist in declaring it prohibited activity so as to continually push the agenda to over-regulate and criminalizes all sorts of behavior to create a society in which any citizen anywhere can be arrested and charged with a crime at any time. As Stalin's head of the NKVD secret police Beria infamously quipped, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."
In the article for Reason magazine, We're All Felons, Now, Radley Balko cites what I think is a relevant quote by Ayn Rand:
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."Riffing off of Rand's quote, Balko concludes:
"Whatever one may think of Ayn Rand's political philosophy or ethics, her criminal justice prophecy has proven unsettlingly accurate: In our continuing eagerness to purge American society of crime, we've allowed the government to make us all into criminals."
I'm sure this no doubt plays a part in the continued prohibition of one of Hawaii's favorite cultural traditions. Every New Years Eve, we the people of Hawaii come together in solidarity and express our criminalized consensus in the sky for all to see, regarding the sanctity of the rule of Law in this, the 50th franchise of USA Inc. If we truly were a "Democracy," ruled by the consent of the masses, the prohibition would have never happened. I'd love to see Hawaii get the chance to vote on a ballot referendum regarding the legality of aerial fireworks. I'd bet everything I had on the particular outcome of that one.
Happy New Year!