A telling phenomenon: the absent outrage over Phillip Seymour Hoffman's criminality [View all]

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Sun Feb 2, 2014, 07:29 PM - Edit history (1)

This OP is about weird rifts and cognitive dissonance and hypocrisies in how we, as a nation, think and act about drugs. It is inspired by the way Hoffman's death is being discussed on television and other media. Media reaction is cultural PHENOMENON separate from the underlying events of Hoffman's death. And for anyone who thinks talking about social issues tangential to a tragic event is "too soon," don't read the piece.

I love Phillip Seymour Hoffman and am sad at his death. A real loss. I will have less enjoyment of drama as a result. Worst loss since Phil Hartman for me.

And everyone loves him. I have seldom seen such positive coverage of anyone.

Now, consider this... When he died, Hoffman was in (or had recently been in) possession of a lot of "street" heroin. (10+ individual bags and thus, despite not being a lot of weight, probably good for 'intent to distribute' in some places for some defendents.)

Somewhere a person in possession of a bunch of heroin is being arrested and sent to for-real prison.

So we know that our society believes (as expressed through our laws) that people in possession of heroin are wicked. They are BAD people... some sort of imminent menace to society who should be put in cages to be raped and murdered and such. (That is how we punish crimes here, you know. Rape and violence.)

If we did not, as a society, believe that people with many bags of heroin are evil then we wouldn't have these laws. Right?

But nobody, and I mean NOBODY on TV or anywhere outside some crackpot RW haven somewhere has or will say that Hoffman was evil because they don't think he was evil.

And they shouldn't. I cannot stress this enough. They shouldn't. We shouldn't. I like Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Everybody does.

But when someone we don't know is busted or dies, is some TV statistic, we (nationally) obviously tend to say, "Fuck'em... drugs are bad." Otherwise we think like that as a nation or we wouldn't have the laws we have, would we?

It appears that we have laws to F'ing destroy people for doing things that are not indicative of them being bad.

What's up with that?

Well, we (as a nation) do think a LOT of people are bad for using drugs. Black people, Hispanic people and white people in trailer parks. But we, as a society, obviously do not think this is a real intrinsic evil because it isn't evil when sympathetic people do it.

I do not think Obama's drug early use is any kind of a problem. Not. A. Problem.

But if it isn't a problem then why do we wreck people for doing this thing that obviously nobody cares much about? If it isn't even disqualifying for being President, a singularly high character and public safety threshold since the President has to be trusted to, for instance, not get high and blow up the entire planet, it can't sensibly be bad enough to destroy people's lives over.

We elected a guy twice who did stuff that can carry the same penalty as, say, beating his spouse. So we think this is as seriously bad stuff, right?

But on the other hand, we don't think it is as bad. If Obama admitted to beating his girlfriends in High School he would not be President.

Plus, Obama had the blessing of God because he didn't get caught. If he had gotten caught back in the day for exactly the same behavior he couldn't be president. But he didn't get caught so he is one of the good guys.

Does anyone think that Phillip Seymour Hoffman never had a bag of heroin on him in a drug-free school zone? (It would be quite a challenge to walk around the Village in NY with coming within however may yards of a school. It's a super dense residential neighborhood.)

If he had been randomly stop-and-frisked (I know, I know... but maybe he was wearing dark make-up for a part or something) and been charged with possession of heroin in a school zone there would have been a Daily Hate about it and won't someone think of the children, etc.. But he didn't get caught doing that, so it's fine.

Again, I am not attacking Hoffman, who I adore. I am commenting on the hypocrisy of this neurotic national game of lottery-style justice.

Why is society so pathologically hypocritical about drugs? I suggest two reasons:

1) Because drug laws are an indispensable law enforcement and public policy tool to target certain classes, races, neighborhoods.

2) Because we are a bunch of authoritarian assholes who, in our arrogance and hubris cannot handle the idea of not controlling everything, or really, cannot get over our need for the illusion of total control.

If it is BAD then we must have a law against it. (That is already and insane point of view, of course.) And if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. So if we fail to have criminal laws against X then we are saying X is good. Right?

So if you don't favor criminalizing drugs then you favor drugs, right?

The preceding is an illustration of a scary authoritarian mind-set that confuses personal super-ego with the government, then confuses Government with God, and grooves on the kind of God that throws lightning bolts at people.


And we are addicted to drug laws. We know how crazy they are, but we cannot give them up and will rationalize like an addict to cling to them.