Traffic, jam.
The 2000 movie Traffic, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Michael Douglas, made its point impressively: addictive drugs are so ubiquitous that any so-called "War on Drugs" is futile hypocrisy. It suggests, moreover, that addicts can only be rescued from self-destruction one at a time and through heroic interventions by people who love them. The rescue requires one-on-one confrontations with the ghoulish parasites who cultivate and profit from the self-destructive addictions of their "clients."
I know a 19-year-old, let's call him G, and his mother, let's call her M. G came home at 5:30 this morning so incapacitated that he could not pass the threshold of his own front door without falling twice. M asked where he had been and how he had gotten home. G said he was drunk, and that he was sorry. Notice that G never ever admits to being drunk, not even when lying on the floor drooling. So this admission was intended to preempt discovery that he was more than drunk, way out past drunk. When repeatedly pressed, he said that Abdul had dropped him off, and that he hadn't been in anyone's house but had just been in Abdul's car all night.
I'm thinking that Abdul knows that G has a job now, and also knows when payday is. I'm thinking that Abdul calls G on payday and says to him "G, my man! Where you been? I been tryin to chill with you! I'll come pick you up after work!" I'm thinking that Abdul lays it on thick and flatters G, whose self-esteem responds to this fraudulent campaign. I'm thinking that Abdul is looking to help G graduate to greater thrills, greater debts, and greater dependency on Abdul.
Abdul lives on Voorhees Avenue in Buffalo. If any of you know him, tell him M is looking for him. And looking for his mother. And tell the bitch she needs to watch herself. Abdul's phone number is (716) 949-5046.
Last week, Adam S. woke M up when he called G's cell phone at 4:00 am and then came to the house and began vociferously demanding money. M summoned G and told him that Adam S. was not ever welcome in the house and that he had to leave. G denied that there had been a conversation about money, but M knows what she heard. Adam S. lives in the 300 block of Capen Boulevard in Amherst, the safest town in America . His mom is a bigwig at a local school -- in the very school system which convinced G that he was a loser. But winners that they all are, even the S family is living on borrowed time.
We all know the figures for the economic impact of this university or that hospital or the prized local industry on their host economies. I would like the winners to tell me what is the economic impact of the addictive drug trade on our local and national economy, and in particular, what part of their retirement portfolio is derived from this industry. I would like the winners to observe that the gateway to addictive drugs is not the demon pot, but rather cigarettes and beer, in which they own stock. I would like to see the entertainment industry take note that addictive drugs are so essential to our economic survival that to indulge in them is not to revolt against society, but rather to become a substantial contributor to the capitalist system. I would like the winners to grasp that to enable their success, the capitalist system enslaves the big losers to back-breaking and stultifying jobs, makes them vulnerable to the seductions of shrewdly calculated advertising, and exploits this vulnerability by charging usurious credit card interest rates. Best of all, the winners own and profit from the very gesture of defiance of the enslaved, who imagine that they are stickin it to the man by smokin pot on the job or getting dead drunk every night. To portray these lapses as funky counter-cultural is an unconscionable marketing ploy. You are not stickin it to the man. The man makes more from your drinking and smoking than he does from your labor in his sweatshop.
Whatever enhancement to their sound system these entrepreneurs have "earned" at G's expense, Abdul and Adam S. are merely expendable cogs in this vast hideous machinery. They too are trapped. And the more they succeed by victimizing kids like G, the more precarious their own existence becomes. They too succumbed to someone older and smoother who made them feel important. But that being said, M will not be thinking political philosophy when next she sees them. If it is a question of her son's well-being or theirs, she is unlikely to hesitate.
I know a 19-year-old, let's call him G, and his mother, let's call her M. G came home at 5:30 this morning so incapacitated that he could not pass the threshold of his own front door without falling twice. M asked where he had been and how he had gotten home. G said he was drunk, and that he was sorry. Notice that G never ever admits to being drunk, not even when lying on the floor drooling. So this admission was intended to preempt discovery that he was more than drunk, way out past drunk. When repeatedly pressed, he said that Abdul had dropped him off, and that he hadn't been in anyone's house but had just been in Abdul's car all night.
I'm thinking that Abdul knows that G has a job now, and also knows when payday is. I'm thinking that Abdul calls G on payday and says to him "G, my man! Where you been? I been tryin to chill with you! I'll come pick you up after work!" I'm thinking that Abdul lays it on thick and flatters G, whose self-esteem responds to this fraudulent campaign. I'm thinking that Abdul is looking to help G graduate to greater thrills, greater debts, and greater dependency on Abdul.
Abdul lives on Voorhees Avenue in Buffalo. If any of you know him, tell him M is looking for him. And looking for his mother. And tell the bitch she needs to watch herself. Abdul's phone number is (716) 949-5046.
Last week, Adam S. woke M up when he called G's cell phone at 4:00 am and then came to the house and began vociferously demanding money. M summoned G and told him that Adam S. was not ever welcome in the house and that he had to leave. G denied that there had been a conversation about money, but M knows what she heard. Adam S. lives in the 300 block of Capen Boulevard in Amherst, the safest town in America . His mom is a bigwig at a local school -- in the very school system which convinced G that he was a loser. But winners that they all are, even the S family is living on borrowed time.
We all know the figures for the economic impact of this university or that hospital or the prized local industry on their host economies. I would like the winners to tell me what is the economic impact of the addictive drug trade on our local and national economy, and in particular, what part of their retirement portfolio is derived from this industry. I would like the winners to observe that the gateway to addictive drugs is not the demon pot, but rather cigarettes and beer, in which they own stock. I would like to see the entertainment industry take note that addictive drugs are so essential to our economic survival that to indulge in them is not to revolt against society, but rather to become a substantial contributor to the capitalist system. I would like the winners to grasp that to enable their success, the capitalist system enslaves the big losers to back-breaking and stultifying jobs, makes them vulnerable to the seductions of shrewdly calculated advertising, and exploits this vulnerability by charging usurious credit card interest rates. Best of all, the winners own and profit from the very gesture of defiance of the enslaved, who imagine that they are stickin it to the man by smokin pot on the job or getting dead drunk every night. To portray these lapses as funky counter-cultural is an unconscionable marketing ploy. You are not stickin it to the man. The man makes more from your drinking and smoking than he does from your labor in his sweatshop.
Whatever enhancement to their sound system these entrepreneurs have "earned" at G's expense, Abdul and Adam S. are merely expendable cogs in this vast hideous machinery. They too are trapped. And the more they succeed by victimizing kids like G, the more precarious their own existence becomes. They too succumbed to someone older and smoother who made them feel important. But that being said, M will not be thinking political philosophy when next she sees them. If it is a question of her son's well-being or theirs, she is unlikely to hesitate.
posted by amerune at 8:47 AM
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