Notes on my weekend television viewing

I don't watch much of it - don't have cable, and I stick mainly to Netflix - but I admit yesterday evening I had something of a TV blowout.

First I saw a SoCal man get pinched in a new episode of "Cops". He was already out on probation, and somebody'd phoned in a tip. So the police were free to come round to the guy's place at their leisure and roust him, which didn't take much effort because the man bolted off across his yard the moment he saw them, and unsuccessfully tried to chuck a baggie of meth out of view before they tackled him. We have seen this scene in every episode of "Cops" in existence.

Anyway, it was a "strike three" for the man, so his possession of this drug spells life imprisonment.

Then I saw the first bit of "America's Most Wanted". I was shown the recreation of an incident where a Louisiana rapist, released from Angola after fulfilling a 25-year sentence, gained the trust of a woman whom he then drove out to a bog, raped, and tried to murder. By a miracle she got away and swam to freedom with her hands tied behind her back. Swam, with her hands tied behind her back. No joke.

Now - without exactly coming out yay-rah methamphetamine here, I must say that seeing these two things in sequence really stunned me. First I was stunned with amazement, then with quiver-jawed rage. Naturally much of this rage is directed against the rapist. None of it, really, is directed against the meth guy, whom I just feel terrifically bad for. And therefore the rest of the rage is directed at our national drug laws.

The fact that as a society we should put anything like an equivalency of effort into capturing and punishing these two men: I hope you'll excuse me for saying that's a god-damnable outrage. After all, one of these two felons is hurting people. The other one is getting high. Is it socially responsible to get high? Is it good for his marriage or for his kids? No. But neither is his going off to prison for the rest of his life, duh.

Here's a simple question. Which man would you prefer having as a neighbor, the meth guy or the rape guy? You know the answer. You're not insane. You know the answer. Yes, I know, you don't want the meth guy as a neighbor either. Good on that. But you know the answer.

How can it possibly, possibly be necessary for me to say this - the social offenses of the drug-user and the rapist are not equal? But yet their jail terms are. People, let us please all think.

Alcohol and drugs can do all sorts of terrible things: we know this. And there are plenty of circumstances where the case is clear-cut that a compelling social interest exists to control how these chemicals are used. When people are at work, or driving cars, or simply raising children. But the very suggestion that the ingestion of euphoric drugs is a social problem of such magnitude that not only may the State dictate to private citizens what they are and are not allowed to do with their own bodies anymore; but also that in the enforcement of these restrictions, a vast national apparatus of investigators, informants, and lifelong imprisonment must be maintained with our tax dollars - this suggestion, I say, is so screamingly idiotic, so vile, so indefensible, that the national imagination simply appears to close down around the whole thing and accept it as reasonable. "Wellp, I guess that's just what we've gotta do. What, do you expect me to defend using methamphetamine?"

Nope, nobody expects anybody to defend using methamphetamine. Nobody expects anybody to defend schizophrenia, either. But the thought that anyone should spend so much as an hour in jail for being under the influence of either one of them: this is absurd.

[Note, added later: I'm obviously not talking about this kind of thing. Schizophrenia and extraordinarily acute drug use have in common that they can cause people to go delusional and become a serious risk to innocent people. As a society, we have every reason to press sanctions (incarceration) against this, and to work to prevent it. This is an observation I would count as self-evident... but when it comes to the hysteria surrounding the drugs debate, and the constant magnification of rare and shocking anecdotes into the perceived norm, I guess it never hurts to spell out the self-evident.]

I know I take an unusual view here. Even most folks who believe in decriminalization are at least careful to confine their talking points to marijuana, since every sane person alive knows marijuana is harmless (well, it makes you incredibly stupid, but who are we to deny stoners the right to be incredibly stupid if they insist?). No, not many would come out swinging like I do, using meth in their examples.

Although JFK seemed to tolerate the stuff well enough. Yep, JFK: daily amphetamine user. (Plus every soldier on every side of World War II. And several million regular folks throughout the fifties and sixties, who could readily pick up pills from their doctors, or inhalers OTC.) And Hitler, too - well, amphetamines may have made him a little battier than he already was.

Now you're defending Hitler. Nope, not defending Hitler, nor drugs. But I thought if I was going to trot out one famous amphetamine user who managed to come out not too much the worse for it - JFK - then I should be fair and toss in another one I know of off the top of my head who makes for a less heartening example.

Anyway, using an extreme drug in my discussion here is rather the point, since for me the matter is pretty absolute. There is no compelling state interest in regulating what I do and don't put into my own body, period, full stop, the end, boom, simple as that. One calls this idea freedom. And wouldn't it be a relief if we free adult Americans were treated as such and extended the freedom that we are told, on paper, we inalienably enjoy?

[The big exception I can see is antibiotics. There is a compelling social need to regulate the use of these drugs, since their private abuse leads to their general inefficacy. But since we're squirting a hundred billion liters of the stuff into caged pigs daily, I'm not sure what difference this even makes anymore. That genie may be leaving the bottle.]

And, why, as free Americans, we could then all take responsibility for how we treat our own selves. Because Christ knows half the stuff available in the snacks aisle at Kroger is more dangerous than any schedule II narcotic in the first place. Just slap some labels on the cocaine vials with descriptions of the side effects, the long-term risks, and the addictive potential: the same sort of stuff we informed consumers have learned to expect from our manufacturers of cigarettes, echinacea, homeopathic tar-water, dietary supplements, and all our other cherished placebos and bunkum.

(Nyaa nyaa - for ten years now I knew "Airborne" doesn't work, folks. Know how I knew? Because it calls itself an herbal remedy.)

Now, would it be the end of civilization if cocaine - which, after all, is not an herbal remedy, and therefore works - could be bought from off the shelf? No, it would not. How do I know this? Because it did not end civilization the last time it was the case, right here in the good old U. S. of A. Our great-grandparents barely had any OTC medicines available except as contained either cocaine or heroin or marijuana. You mind if I repeat that? Cocaine and heroin and marijuana were readily-available over-the-counter drugs 100 years ago. I know the paternalistic Republican Daddy-State, those lovers of personal choice, would blow a gasket contemplating this degree of personal choice: but to give a short answer to the question - no, it would not be the end of the world if free adult Americans could go to their local drug stores and buy drugs there.

I don't get any nobility points for stating these things, to be sure. Nobody sounds noble saying that hey, maybe we're overreacting to our nation's drug problem. And so nothing changes in our justice system's ongoing crisis, except inasmuch as that, perhaps, it keeps getting worse. Tough drug laws - presumably affecting only poor people and pariahs, since rich people don't get arrested for these things - have long been a political winner (a) for the notoriously pro-rich Republicans, whose campaign contributors can go get a scrip for the analog of any illegal street drug they like (see Limbaugh, Rush); as well as (b) for the Democrats, who find being anti-drug such a safe message that it's a perennially reliable place to go prove how frigging "tough" they are in contraposition to all their softy stances in areas like welfare. Thus we end up with two parties spending decades out-"tough"ing one another. Meanwhile poor people and pariahs everywhere are having their lives heinously wrecked, at our nation's general tax expense.

Has anyone noticed what it is that our two parties are being so tough about? Nothing. This is 100% Rod-Serling-The-Monsters-Are-Due-on-Maple-Street nothing. We are tearing our own selves apart in reaction to a problem infinitesimally less damaging than the response.

Because what's that problem again? Oh yes, getting high: a social indiscretion, an addictive disease for many, a potential destroyer of families, and a thing to treat clinically to be sure; but something as reasonable to "punish" as the average mood disorder. Not only are we talking about a sustained and systemic human rights atrocity here, but this is also the quickest and easiest way to eliminate "wasteful government spending" that I have ever heard of. Yes, foreign war included. Because hell, sometimes foreign wars are necessary. This never is.

Because you do know that all the crime surrounding drugs is because of their illegality, yes? The gangs and the Al-Pacino-in-Scarface stuff? We had gangs like that, not to mention the original Scarface, back when we misguidedly illegalized liquor. When we re-legalized it, those gangs went away, poof, overnight, gone. And a huge boon of government tax revenue came back into play. There is every... as well as every... reason to believe the same would happen with the legalization of these other substances. Not to mention that drugs would also cease being a funding source for the Taliban.

So, why are drugs illegal? It'll sound like common wisdom to some, but for many I think it would come as a surprise if you could boil it down to discover how much institutionalized racism lay at the heart of the thing. Not that our drug laws are a cleverly-crafted racist cabal: I don't believe that at all. What I mean is that if this "war" were taking out white kids at anything like the rate it's hitting our pigment-enhanced brethren, a truce would be called post haste.

The drug laws originally came online for all your typical corporate-lobbyist-type reasons. Patents, drug companies, market share. The 1937 Marihuana Tax Act was pushed along partly by William Randolph Hearst, who was concerned that paper and newsprint might be manufactured not through business with his timber holdings, but instead more cheaply (and cleanly and efficiently) from hemp. Not that there wasn't a racial concern in tandem with the corporate one - attitudes toward marijuana had been darkening as its use became more popular among blacks and America-dwelling Mexicans in the first decades of the 20th century. Ditto for opium and its derivates, except that their unpopularity had stemmed from the (wholly legitimate, no doubt) fear of white women becoming enslaved to creepy, mustachioed orientals in their subterranean pipe-smoking dens.

And today I would say there is a lingering sort of muddle-headed, nonconscious racism to our attitudes about the penalties attached to drug crimes. Because the crushing wheels of justice are always, you know, "out there". Happening to somebody else. Why don't "those people" just stop taking those terrible drugs? For goodness' sake, they know how severe the penalties are! ...And then, when Junior gets picked up holding a dimebag, Miffy and I hire the necessary legal counsel to make that embarrassment go away. And then duly chunk the kid's ass down into rehab. But prison time? Lord no.

Well. There will surely be no end to this nonsense while I'm alive - politically, it's a total dog. No one will champion the elimination of this evil, and expensive, and ineffectual social injustice. But if the war on drugs ever were to go away, my friends, I think the best result of all would be that we could finally devote our police budgets entirely to the pursuit and curtailment of, ahem, crime. You know - crime. By which I mean rapists, Enron executives, and government employees who wiretap the entire nation's telephone/internet system, or smuggle people to Bulgaria on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations in order to torture them.

Because drugs aren't crime. You mind if I say that again? Drugs are not crime. I know I sound like a froth-mouthed lunatic saying so. A hundred thousand indignant parents and loved ones might want to raise their voices in anger to me for saying something so flippant, and to tell me the story of someone close to them who ruined his or her life, or died, from drugs. I don't deny that any of that happens. I would just say this:

There is nothing bad about drugs that our drug laws aren't making much, much worse.


[Parting note: If you haven't already, and if you don't mind getting wildly infuriated, read Eric Schlosser's Reefer Madness. The non-drug part of the book, about pornography laws, is somewhat less infuriating, but equally fascinating.]


***


Next, I watched Rambo III. I've been waiting quite awhile for this one: what with the new Rambo movie coming out last month, III was actually held up quite awhile in my Netflix queue.

I was a little disappointed - I'd hoped it would be funnier. Granted, when Rambo and Trautman face off at the end of the movie four-handed against the entire Soviet army in Afghanistan... and actually start trying to fight that army, the two of them alone... but are saved at the last minute by a grand cavalry of Afghan Mujahandeen who come riding round from behind a mountain to save the day; well, then I laughed. Oh, I laughed. One of these saviors even bore a striking resemblance to Ayman al-Zawahiri (bin Laden must have been back at the cave getting his dialysis).

And the closing title was a real marvel: "This film is dedicated to the gallant fighting men of Afghanistan." Or words to the effect, but gallant was definitely one of those words. None of the words was repressive, fundamentalist, Taliban, or burqa.

This film makes an excellent companion volume to Charlie Wilson's War, by the way. The premise of Rambo III is that ever since the Afghan Mujahadeen began receiving Stinger anti-aircraft missiles (sent, as everyone knows, by Tom Hanks), they have been making substantial progress in their fight against their Soviet occupiers: except in one sector of the country, where an especially brutal Soviet commander has been assaulting civilian populations and suppressing the flow of these much-needed Stingers. Trautman - an over-the-hill Special Ops Colonel who should clearly be behind a desk somewhere - goes into Afghanistan by himself to investigate things and hopefully loosen up the supply channel. He is captured by the Soviets within ten minutes. Rambo, working now as an odd-jobs man at a Thai Buddhist monastery, goes in (also alone) to save his erstwhile mentor. Hilarity ensues in the form of 70-plus pyrotechnic events, and the on-screen killings of more than 200 people (if imdb is to be believed). Yet somehow the whole thing unfolds rather boringly.

***

Then, Saturday Night Live. The cold open was fine but after three months' writers' strike I'd dared hope for a little more. I don't mind confessing to the world that I have a desperate but harmless crush on Tina Fey; her snip of monologue about Hillary was great. And other stuff. And other stuff.

***

Man, I basically slept through the Sunday shows. I hate when I do that. But Nader announced on MTP that he's going to run, eh? Is that supposed to matter? He's been chasing after some diminishing returns these past few elections: this one will clearly fall into that pattern.

Rove v. Crow

My friend Jim sends this:

wow... this is something I'd never imagine...

Sheryl Crow is saying she suspects Karl Rove spread the "toilet paper conservation" story to make her look silly. Geez, that Karl Rove sure gets around !

--link--

...To which I said:

Karl Rove couldn't possibly have enough hours in the day to dream up smears of rock musicians. The very idea is sketch-comedy-worthy. Rove in his office, chomping on a cigar, chuckling devilishly: "I've got it! We'll win the midterms decisively... by making the nation believe Sheryl Crow wants everyone to use one square of toilet paper per bathroom trip!"

Also, Sheryl Crow was going around publicly at that point saying, "People should use one square of toilet paper per bathroom trip." I read a blog post she put up at the Huffington Post saying as much. Karl Rove did not make her do any of this. Sure, in context she was obviously speaking in jest. But with a little trim of Occam's razor we scarcely need bring Karl Rove into the picture to explain how that got misinterpreted....

(This reminds me of Al Gore's troubles in 2000. No, not Florida - before that. I mean back when everybody said he said he'd invented the internet, and was the star of Love Story and of Love Canal and etc. So many false, boasty claims that if fact-checked were actually true, and not even very boasty? Karl Rove didn't sit around crafting weird campaigns of misinformation like this, which were entirely dependent on the amplification within the echo chamber of a hungry news hole 0f misstated facts from lazy initial reports. We know Rove didn't do this, because (a) only the news media itself can be responsible for lazy initial reports and their later amplification, and (b) this sort of misinformation is too weird to make up on purpose.)

In short: the phrase "Karl Rove" is liberalspeak for "the way right-wingers think". And the danger is in considering one-off news items and self-organizing opinion trends as the results of a conscious, evil plot.