mash, the house i live in, american vertigo

Mash last night. will Altman be the next retrospective that shows me a director is not as good as i thought? it begins this way, though i'm sure i'll still love Popeye,  Three Women, and, maybe, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.  at home i saw The House I Live In. if only altman had leavened that, but altman wasn't funny. House was much better but horrific. the upshot of that film is America loves to incarcerate the poor and unwanted, and exploit them to sell drugs and then seize their property and money, but like most schemes, see the terror war, it only benefits the rich. and the only change to the evil will be when it is shown that the deficits outweigh the profits of the capitalists. which is the only hopeful indication in the film: though they have built more and more prisons, they are still stacking prisoners in tiers in enormous rooms,  and still not turning enough profit. the police are encouraged to scoop up people and take their stuff rather than solve crimes, and the prison industry fuels this, they need bodies for profit.

in the war on drugs, the home front of the terror war on the poor, the modus operandi is racial and economic control. each drug that gets added to the list increases the prison population, the prison industry. there are more blacks in prison now than there were slaves in 1850. they can randomly stop you on the road, steal your car and your cash and send you to prison for life for a few ounces of whatever drug they deem a fulcrum for denial of human rights. though the war on drugs only increases production and use of drugs, it enriches law enforcement coffers and can be deemed a success and a boom industry. like the terror war, it's a grand success for the war profiteers and the dirty energy companies. the war on the poor is on all fronts a grand success, a boom industry.

after slavery when blacks joined the work force they put them in ghettos with no economic viability besides drugs. they maintained the flow of drugs into the ghettos and scooped up the profits cycling dealers and users through the prisons. there are always more minions for the drug trade when it's the only game.

one of the investigative journalists interviewed  called it a slow motion holocaust.

then i started peter pan, then i started American Vertigo, an update by a french philosopher of Democracy in America, which studies five american prisons including Guantanamo.  i hope i can stay with this one, and make a cogent response, unlike this.

you may have gathered i am feeling a tad grim. the weather is grim, my clothes are lies and leak, the world leaks, the world cries. while copp loves all weather sometimes i cannot get free to join him. plus he ate something evil and his after-walk kiss smelled of death.

my next report will contain at least a hint of sun.