content/trigger warning for drug use and very graphic descriptions of child abuse and murder.

i am going to continue where i left off on my last post on programming, but feeling the need to write this has been prompted by another sort i have subjected myself to, that being the first season of True Detective. it’s become interesting to me because of what the writers have obviously pulled from real world tragedy and events. there are so many layers to the types of crimes the detectives are investigating that one needs to have read years of research to keep up with it in a way that does any amount of justice to the victims who are now being used for production value, caught in webs of criminality that explicitly work from the top of the rungs on down. so, ~spoiler alert~ too, which is the least of my concerns, but there ya go. i have waded in and out of investigating ritualistic abuse and murder for the last couple of years, but i still feel woefully undereducated to take in the full scope of what this series is putting out there.

in the last episode i watched, Rust was pushing Marty on why he had quit the force. Marty took a while in explaining himself throughout when he had been asked about it, but finally spit it out to Rust: he worked a scene where a baby had been horrifically, literally blown up in one of the most disgusting ways the average person could imagine. the father of the baby, a “tweaker” (presumably a meth user), had attempted to “dry the baby out” in the microwave. as Marty explained it to Rust, we are given a flash back to him staring at a blackened piece of skull still in the microwave at the scene.

now i’ve seen a lot of bullshit on twitter as far as how one should “correctly” view crystal meth users. it’s fucking insane to me. “this is a working class drug, and its users should not be looked down upon.” what a dumb fucking way to tack on class without looking at class at all. all shit, terrible drugs are pushed on the oppressed and exploited working classes. this is how US intel operated and managed drug trade works.

meth is terrible terrible shit. and i come from a place that could very possibly be ground zero. one of the counties where i lived in Kansas was known as the “meth capital of the world”. i am not sure how accurate that is, but many people i knew placed their understanding of this on the amount of police activity that ensued in certain areas where the users were forced into: they were urban and rural ghettos, sometimes in between the two, that didn’t always start that way, but as business was drawn away from their communities and opportunities dried up, so too did their gums as the rest of their physical presence turned husk like. from the highways one could see the rotting buildings that still housed people with the sporadic billboard advertising dentures from competing dentists in the area, somewhere between $250 – $400.

policing, of course, never follows drug use. they are a needed force with varying levels in each department, of goons and intel, to distribute the drugs in the first place. Doug Valentine has discussed in interviews when he first realized cooperation of organized crime and policing, though it took years for it to really sink in for him. i have had similar experiences — drugs in the small town i lived in during my teenage years were freely traded between the sheriff’s office and my high school friends. powders and pot. of course it wasn’t just any kid they went to, and members of organized crime don’t all wear suits and have stakes in waste management systems — often the people who distribute don’t realize the higher levels they are somehow connected to, either. need to know is something one needs to know in order to truly appreciate this functioning in its totality.

one of the kids my age, i’ll call him C, could usually call up the police chief and score meth, or if the department had a good run on some poor sucker, terribly cut coke that really wasn’t any better would be available. said chief would look the other way if they had ripped off alcohol from the “wrong” minor carrying for C in particular, if C just happened into his cruiser when they would stop on the main drag to have a chat. C would really play this relationship up to the rest of us — hey guys, we just gotta do this or that over here, stay away from over there, if we want to be left alone.

anyway, C could be a real violent dick if you crossed him. naturally, he joined the army, and for the family he came from mired in dealing to support addictions, this was doing “well”. he had two other brothers, one sister, and half a dozen or more half- and step-siblings. those closest to C and his mother were all, just really really fucked from the start with relatives and a police department puffing up their self-worth for the entirely wrong reasons. C’s brothers, both younger, are going to be addicts for life relying on petty crime and any connections they still might have with the local and county police departments.

well, that is, if C’s youngest brother, H, is ever released from prison. i am not sure how long a sentence he is serving for mutilating his 18 month old son along with his girlfriend, who was also convicted. the child was unrecognizable when found a few years ago. all that other kin knew before he was found was that he was missing. they had pulled out his teeth and fingernails using pliers. both his arms were broken, and his head was beaten in. deserted by those whom the public at large would like to believe have the ability to understand their responsibility in caring for, whose minds were hollowed out for the betterment of “respectable” institutions. like the microwaved baby, there was no worth given to his life by people who most likely didn’t have the mental ability to understand their roles in the first place. ticking bombs wound up early, never treated as fully human beings, working on only what they needed to know for those who never cared about them.

there is no silver lining for anyone involved, i don’t have any success stories to share from all of this like some movie of the week special. i have brought this up before without as much detail in some of my other writing because there are certain opinion havers out there who keep telling me and everyone else these sorts of things happen because the world is a mysterious place where things like this are unpredictable and unconnected to imperial rule. things do happen for a reason, but they aren’t divine decrees. they are knowable, and i’m sick of knowing them without the blame pinned on the correct individuals. rarely does the “systems not individuals” narrative work unless it’s aimed at the most vulnerable that makes for good television.