No one should take for granted that I would agree to participate in some brewery project. I resent being offered a job in an industry that is of no interest to me. Why would I go to all that work to concoct some fermented juice that smells horrible and tastes probably worse, not that I would know anything about that. Words fail to explain how such a bitter bucket of grog would complicate my life in miserable ways, all the parties that I would have to endure pretending to enjoy the company of these duplicitously sipping hypocrites while at the same time enduring exclusion from the prim and proper circles from which I would be excluded if they thought I was on the other side. And besides all that cruel drama, the personal feeling of having betrayed the Lord Himself would manifest in enduring guilt. You see, we are instructed to follow the example of Christ, who said at the Last Supper that he would not drink of the fruit of the vine until the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, which is not yet. That does not happen until after the saints are gathered home to heaven. If a sipper has already passed from this life, then what is there left for them to do on this earth? They could die immediately and yet it could be some time more before they actually get there. There is nothing left but to harvest them. Of course, we could always rationalize that it tasted a lot like cough syrup. We are trained to mindlessly eat and drink whatever the host wants to put before us, as if it were rude and unfashionable to say no, even if it is poison. But we get no benefit for doing so. The money is taken by a Caribbean government that does not govern the United States and is not looking out for our interests, obviously. And what do we care about a pirates' grog? Their lives were short and miserable. Someone really ought to explain why someone so eagerly wants us to drink ourselves into condemnation even when we really don't want to.
Not that I ever set foot in Puerto Rico, a territorial backwater of no interest to me. I somehow doubt that any of these island territories could be classified as "dry" states, so wet is the surf along their shores.
