James,
Check out Mr. Dinh. Comments are well worth it too.
Take Care,
Nero the Pict
Linh Dinh has crafted a heart-wrenching account of everywhere U.S.A.
I live on the upper end of White Avenue, one of the better streets in the Northeast Baltimore neighborhood of Hamilton.
Two doors down to my right a man deals crack out of an apartment.
Five doors down to my left a halfway house hosts a dozen young fellows at any time, mostly whites in court-ordered rehab.
Three doors down to my right, across the street, is a halfway house for older addicts and drunks, which coughs up a body annually.
I do not know the workings of this massive web of drug addiction, which employs cops, doctors, churches and lawyers in profitable enterprise. But the grotesque bones of its machinery break through the thin veneer of dissipating civilization like the rusted rebar bursting from the eroding concrete of this engineered meat-pen.
As an enemy of both the State and Materialism, I find myself wondering, "Is this leviathan of addiction, fed and groomed by its master the State simply the worship of material forms via the sacrifice of drugged souls, an expression of the drive to erasure masculinity, or is it a concerted effort to break the will of the American as was once done to the Chinese targets of the British Opium Wars?"
Narco Night Train Kindle Edition
Pretty close. Way pretty close, in fact, you may have captured it. Hand shake.
When looking at soul-crushing and financially horrible addictions sanctioned and in fact abetted by the State, don't forget good old Lotto.
Like alcohol or dope, harmless good fun for a few. But for the most, it's an addiction that they can't break. Trustworthy ladies that are the Treasurer for the local Volunteer Fire Department will embezzle hundreds of thousands to play.
On Fridays, I watch the crew cab construction trucks pull up at the local Fair-Way Market, and guys who haven't paid the rent or bought the groceries or the kid's shoes since they cashed their little paycheck 10 minutes ago start shucking bundles of $20s across the counter, and frantically scratching and folding and fondling and dreaming about their Lotto Retirement Plan.
And the Lottery Department? "It's for The Kids! It all goes to Education!"
Such bullshit. It's just another bureau of the Welfare Plantation, another shack of overseers.