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This was a "tense and unexpected victory." How could any actual Democrat be opposed to it? 
It's a good rant. Actually, it deserves more of a thoughtful response than I can get into right now, so I'll just say this and get to the rest later: I'm not as adamantly or reflexively anti-TPP as a lot of people. I realize this may get me kicked out of the Sanders club. My wariness around the thing has to do with things like the intellectual property stuff, or grumblings Ive heard around pharma patents, that kind of business. And when the EFF is opposed to something I pay attention.
But I dont think "free trade" or globalization can be stopped, in this day and age- and I think what many people are really upset and angry about is the changing landscape of the world due to technology - and how that has affected and will continue to affect jobs. Understandable, and I dont know exactly how we as a society should address that through public policy- nevertheless, I dont think protectionism will fix it.
My other problem with the TPP is the lack of transparency. We should be allowed to read it, I think.
The rest of it- it's a really good post and deserves an attentive reply. I'll get there.
I mean, the West Coast benefits significantly from Pacific Trade, so as a principle I support it. And I don't think somehow we're magically going to start making all the stuff we buy domestically again.
I had a conversation here the other week about the whole "where is technology leading us" question, and yeah, all of us who have been reading science fiction and futurists for decades are like, "duh" around these questions. I mean, some folks have been telling us about automation, robots and the leisure economy since the 70s. (I'm a big Robert Anton Wilson fan, if you hadn't figured that out yet) ... the question of course is, do we end up with a dystopian future of gated off elites versus starving masses, or do we somehow share the benefits of the tech with all? Basic income, exactly.
On the rest of what you wrote- my attitude about drugs is, as a philosophical baseline sort of concept I truly believe people; consenting adults that is- deserve and need and shouldn't even have to ask for the right to make their own decisions about what to do with their own bodies, period, end of story, full stop. If our bodies don't belong to ourselves, who do they belong to? We went off the rails, I think, when we started declaring people the property of "God" and later, by extension, the state. I mean, if you get behind the wheel and endanger others, steal stuff, neglect your kids, etc. then you are crossing the line into making your business someone else's problem.. but the government shouldn't be in the business of outlawing what people do with their own bodies, bloodstreams, and nervous systems.
And this feeds into all kinds of stuff, not just the drug war, but also the right of terminally ill people to make their own end-of-life choices, reproductive freedom obviously, even the right of citizens to engage in consenting adult sex with other consenting adults of, say, the same gender- something which we kind of take for granted now, but was still illegal in places like Texas until the Lawrence decision. "My Body, My Business", that kind of thing.
So there's that. At the same time I admit I have trouble envisioning meth being sold at the 7-11. Like the current occupant of the oval office, I fucked around with all kinds of chemicals in my wayward youth, so I think I'm pretty objective about both the potential benefits and pitfalls of many of them. As a public policy matter there are two overriding primary things I think we need to do (after, of course, legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana, which being so far towards the benign and beneficial side of the substance spectrum it's a no-brainer) one is, we need to stop imagining "drugs" are a monolith and treating them as such- two, we need to stop treating the arguably more dangerous ones as a law enforcement matter. Addiction- distinct from use, and people can be addicted to a lot of things, alcohol of course being one of the biggest and worst- is a public health matter. Treatment should be available on demand (and not limited to one-size-fits-all faith based 12 step approaches, but that's a separate rant)
If you took the tremendous profit potential out of something like cocaine, I have to believe that the violence associated with the trade would diminish. And the high prices are driven by prohibition. The substance itself is not that expensive to produce AFAIUI. At the same time, I have been paying attention long enough to know that a lot of the people who did large amts. of cocaine back in the day usually seem to end up with things like heart problems later in life. That scares me. But throwing people in prison for it isn't helping.
Psychedelics... Honestly, I think that some of those substances hold incredible promise not just for research and therapy for individuals, but contain inherent growth potential for society as a whole itself. 
I actually think this process has been going on for a few decades, certainly you see the influence of psychedelics in all kinds of industries, not the least of which being Silicon Valley, which was in many ways started by acidhead hippies in garages in the South Bay. (Where do you think Bill Gates got the windowpane logo in the first place? I'm kidding, except not totally)
To get sort of Joseph Campbell for a moment, I think one of the things our culture is lacking, or hasn't figured out how to incorporate into modern life fully yet, is a process -common in many earlier societies- whereby young people undergo a sort of initiation ritual via which they pass through to adulthood, imprint their identity and correlate their internal narrative with a larger narrative for the society/world and their place within it. I went through something like this process, I firmly believe, trekking around the country after the Grateful Dead years ago. A lot of fundamental personal growth happened during those times.
So I don't know, but I do believe that collectively we are growing up a great deal right now, and being more openminded and tolerant around everything from different lifestyles to the fact that some people can smoke pot on the weekends just like other people can have a few glasses of wine, and the sky is not going to fall--- this is sort of our societal overmind moving (finally, and with the inevitable fits and starts and backtracking) into the 21st century.
I do believe there has been great progress made in many areas, and I also think Obama has been an extremely transformative- sometimes in subtle, below the surface ways- president. Probably the best POTUS of my lifetime, in my opinion.
