The Wire: The Rewatch... and all the pieces matter.

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > The Wire: The Rewatch... and all the pieces matter.

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

Anyone know which cemetery McNulty meets up with Omar at? I'm trying to find the clip on youtube for reference but no luck so far.

Also, watching Stringer play businessman is hilarious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGgRtiCVo2w
I'm pretty sure that's still season 1 but I could be wrong, it's been awhile.

e:g

GreenCard78 fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jan 21, 2013

# ¿ Jan 21, 2013 16:01

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 20:43

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

Ah well, been awhile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hor_gOBU_GU

Have some Wallace action and be sad.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2013 16:50

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkLuncXw-P4

Listen to Stringer play wall street.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2013 17:56

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

The beginning is great and the parts leading up or following

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSxwtXUxBrI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYj7q_by_2E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_zJDJGJ82M

# ¿ Jan 23, 2013 06:15

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

Probably just to make it easier on the viewer. Most people probably didn't even think about that, I know I didn't.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2013 09:01

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

Unzip and Attack posted:

I love speculating about the futures of the characters of this show. I know it's not the most practical thing to do given that the writers have said everything they want to say about them, but I can't help not imagining what McNulty or Michael do following the last credits. Perhaps the most interesting to speculate on is Marlo though - the guy has millions of dollars of clean money. Enough to get out of the game for good and live a pretty lavish lifestyle if he wants it. But all he cares about is his rep, as he shows in his last scene. I like to think that without Chris and Snoop backing him, Marlo attempts to get back in the game and gets taken out by Michael. Maybe too Hollywood I know, but that would have been a fierce showdown.

EDIT - I love "you're a soldier Boadie". You can tell McNulty actually has a lot of respect for Boadie, but it's laced with a bit of sadness too. Great line that really sums up a relationship between two compelling characters.

Michael doesn't last long in the game. He uproots and moves to Beverly Hills to attend high school.

Speculating about The Wire is always fun, though. I like to think if another season had been around it would have been about crime moving to the edges of the city and certain sections of the county, where it does go in real life. The neighborhoods The Wire plays out in had been bad for decades and the characters were born into an already hosed up environment. It would be interesting to see neighborhoods in transition and what happens when the old generation when faced with a new generation of people.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2013 02:30

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

Glynn Turman is Don Cheadle's father in House of Lies. I hope they expand on his character in that show because so far it's been somewhat lackluster.

cargo cult posted:

E: So apparently youtube comments are actually quite on point when it comes to discussing the wire and I just re-watched this scene. The two guys on the block are swapping tall tales about Omar, like "so Omar had an AK and was surrounded by nine guys," when Marlo walks up and asks, "do you know who I am?" He's literally walking away from a legitimate path out of the game, to look for the respect on the streets which is instantly thrown back in his face. good stuff, i've only watched the show once.

This is one of the few times you can feel for the guy. He just wants to be known. Money is cool and all but so many of his men failed him by never telling him "let Marlo know who is loving with him!" Omar definitely wanted that known and it didn't get through but I think there were a few other characters, too.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2013 07:46

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

That, too ^^^

Parachute Underwear posted:

I always figured it was just a minor detail that never got more attention because it doesn't change anything to the story except for adding some sad irony to some of his comments.

That said, I've always wondered if underneath the macho hardass lies a nice, wonderful gay man in the same way that under the dismissive, statistics-obsessed Major lies a pretty effective street detective.

He could also be a macho hardass gay dude. Just cause he was gay/bisexual doesn't make him wonderful.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2013 00:46

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

The Rawls gay thing makes me think of a dude I grew up with's dad. He wasn't a cop but he was a real tough dude, made the boys do manly stuff and work out at a young age, taught them to fight, didn't take any poo poo but turned out to be seeing dudes on the side.

I kind of wish they followed through on that. Maybe it was an idea for a subplot that just never came around? There is plenty of poo poo that viewers wish they expanded on but for whatever reason they didn't.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2013 01:49

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

I just wanted to pointed out people come in all shapes and types.

Kima's backstory could have been interesting. There's a disproportionate number of black women who are lesbians in the Baltimore area. Any of the local sociology stuff I've seen done it usually relate it to a lack of men in the community and the much, much larger than average male:female ratio in the area as a whole which is primarily focused in the large black population in the area.

They hit the head on the nail with many of these characters stories.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2013 02:46

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

Michael K Williams is an entertaining dude, even as ODB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQq72MK93e0

# ¿ Feb 1, 2013 23:10

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

A bunch of them were smart for poo poo that mattered to them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRDxDvz0bd4

# ¿ Feb 2, 2013 21:09

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

MC Fruit Stripe posted:

I'm not trying to be a dick but being able to do the same math that everyone else in class can do doesn't make you smart, it's more of a "not stupid" - even Wallace wasn't particularly bright.

I can't think of a single individual in the Barksdale organization that strikes me as particularly smart, there are just people we sympathize with more than others but that doesn't make them smart.

They don't need to be geniuses to be smart, capable people in their own right.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2013 08:21

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

MC Fruit Stripe posted:

See, I'm . . . obtuse

The show wouldn't be realistic, entertaining or nearly as good if they had people who made perfect decisions ever time. Maybe your definition of smart is closer to "highly intelligent, not often fallible" or something but they were still capable people in their own right. As a result of their environment, they were all flawed.

In this light, Wallace should have left everything he had ever known for some goal he knew existed but no one showed him and he had no real concept of. Right. "This right here is me, yo"

D should give up years of conditioning on a whim almost instantly and block everyone he knows out.

Bodie should keep his opinions to himself and accept his role as a pawn even further when he knows its a bullshit place to be more than ever.

They don't have to be perfect to be smart. All of them showed they could have done better with their lives in they had grown up in an environment where academics, work, positive attitudes were encouraged instead of selling drugs.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2013 16:03

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

Well, since the other thread has kinda dropped off, I'll say it here. I met Maria Broom, the actress that plays Marla Daniels. She's a 180 from her character, total hippie, and was at a community center lighting incense with kids, dancing, and singing songs about doing positive things. :3:

# ¿ Apr 17, 2013 16:09

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

BattleCake posted:

You'll notice that Cheese's assistant (forgot his name) washes his dog with milk before the fight, which google seems to indicate is to neutralize things such as spicy stuff that might discourage the enemy dog from biting your dog (presumably this is a rule of the dogfight). As he does this, he spots the other people rubbing their hands on a blue towel first before rubbing the dog, implying that they're putting something on the dog that they shouldn't be.

It's common to trade dogs between each side to wash them before he fight to prevent anything bad being on their coat that might affect the other dog when biting. The milk washes it off, I guess, I don't know that much about it. A carpet cleaner guy once told me he'd been places he was pretty sure dog fights had happened and saw signs of whatever chemicals they use.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2013 14:40

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

ally_1986 posted:

Some really great moments from this episode. Great write up

One question I have always had being a Scot some of the lingo goes over my head. What does go-go mean in the stringer conversation, the general music scene, a specific band a type of music???

I know this is late and has been answered but beat your feet, son.

In this case, it's just a friendly city rivalry commentary.

# ¿ May 4, 2013 05:10

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

Bulls Hit posted:

Solid response to my question, really narrowed down my options there.

This is the best advice and you're being stupid. Stop being needy (I don't like waiting for DVDs by mail), watch The Wire, and then come back to the thread. You don't want it spoiled for you.

Slo-Tek posted:

This is probably a generational thing. "It makes me sick, motherfucker, to see how far we done fell" sort of stuff.

I like that there are principled positions taken that are not white liberal college egghead approved positions. So, while legalization plays well to me, and probably to you, to show that it doesn't play well to people who we see as smart and committed to the community, I think is a nice layer of complexity and acknowledgement of reality in a bit of a fantasy scenario.

This is a good post.

You wouldn't find the "user's utopia" (I don't know what else to call it) in Baltimore because it doesn't reflect their values, even those that dislike drugs but know the war on them is stupid and not winnable. When you see ideas like this or with the schools in season four, it's generally outsiders. You get people from Hopkins who are likely not Baltimore natives or the psychologist (social worker? I forget) in season four who gets cited as being from Montgomery County.

As outsiders looking in, we get the sense "no, you guys should do it like this!" which in my opinion, may create its own set of problems.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2013 19:06

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

You ever know a heroin addict or an addict of anything? Not all of them are interested in getting clean.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2013 06:51

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

the black husserl posted:

Actually I kinda hate the NA narrative that you have to "want" to get clean, I dont think drug addiction has anything to do with desire or willpower. I believe that drug use is the adaptive response of a human being who lives in poo poo conditions. The rich medicate their depression/anxiety with alcohol and pills, the poor medicate with crack and heroin. You can't "want" your way out of mental illness and the subsequent self medication.

Have you read the Corner? Gary actually succeeds in kicking heroin pretty good one time, except that when he does he finds himself with a much worse problem: clinical depression. Which turns out to be more debilitating than heroin addiction, since at least as an addict he could maintain a steady job.

"Want" may not be the best term but it isn't just "the NA narrative."

I have not read The Corner, I've only seen an episode or two a few years ago. You didn't answer saying you know any addicts so I'll guess not. What I am trying to get at is in more broad context than a book or a television series. I do know some addicts (some in Baltimore, no less!) and I'm sure many posters here know some, too. They are their own people with their own personalities, some of whom are not interested in getting clean, whatever their definition of getting clean is. See the other poster who chimed in with an addiction experience. Johnny isn't interested in getting clean. For now, he's content with his lifestyle and doesn't struggle with it like Bubbles does.

Skeesix posted:

While we're talking about the Wire's non-liberal stances, I'm currently watching the HBO special on the Cheshire killings, where the perpetrators are portrayed as the "Poster Children for the Death Penalty." Let's talk about the Wire's supportive stance on the death penalty. The Wire portrays the Death Penalty as a wrench to obtain confessions from hardened killers who can't be reached any other way. Essentially, it portrays the death penalty as necessary. Weebay confesses to avoid the death penalty. Although much of what he confesses to is bullshit, he leads the police to information which makes the case. The entire port case is made off of Sergei trying to avoid the death penalty.

I'm personally anti-death penalty, but to what extent do people agree with the Wire's portrayal?

Continuing with non-liberal stances but not the death penalty, The Wire shows Hamsterdam, a solution (for better or worse) for the drug problem in Baltimore that was created by the people themselves. You've got the deacon who condemns Hamsterdam. It's surprising to even see Royce giving it some thought to allow its existence. The deacon represents Baltimore in a broader sense, you wouldn't see anyone being truly ok with it. At best, they'd just be glad that it was gone from their streets but not being ok with drugs. You've got some aid workers who come down to help the addicts and the idea proposed that they could set up clinics, job programs, whatever. But that's all going to be done by outsiders coming in. You can see this behavior repeated in many forms, people from outside coming in to not only help a community but to tell that community how they need to be helped. It isn't the people themselves doing these programs. Again, it goes back to college educated liberal white ideas.

the black husserl posted:

I'm proposing an adaptive model of addiction rather than an exposure model (giving someone addictive drug = addiction) or a virtue model (addictive character = addiction).

Here's a paper that explains in more detail: http://www.360translations.com/educ533/empirical_and_theoretical_bases_.htm

This is what AA claims, but the Recidivism rates in AA are horrendous. If a treatment method can be said to be "giving up on people", it's AA. You basically save ten percent and condemn the rest to "not wanting it enough". gently caress that attitude.

You should grow past NA/AA and realize that that isn't just an NA/AA idea.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2013 00:24

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

cletepurcel posted:

Regarding Kenard, I interpret the character as literally a young psychopath. Before he goes to kill Omar, he's about to light a cat on fire (animal torture/killing is one of the trademarks of psychopathy in the young).

Ainsley McTree posted:

I never noticed the cats before. Do you suppose they included them on purpose, or are they just random strays that happened to be moving around during filming?

Cats are everywhere in the city and many places outside of it. Ignore the symbolism of what the stray cat might mean and it would still be strange to have so much on screen time of urban areas of Baltimore without seeing cats. They're as much of the scenery as anything else.

Don't google for news stories about animal cruelty in Baltimore.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2013 06:56

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:

gently caress the loving numbers already! The loving numbers destroyed this loving department! Oh wait, it's not purely a product of a fictional representation of the Baltimore PD? I'm not shocked

Baltimore publishes their data on this website which I turn into maps. I always have to wonder what's valid and what's not. :tinfoil:

# ¿ Nov 27, 2013 02:58

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

I'm pretty sure that is not what 3Romeo meant.

Yes, The Greek is from somewhere else (dude always seemed from Yugoslavia or something to me) but the writers chose for him to be The Greek, rather than The Russian, the Turk, the whatever, because Greece came up with what would become our modern day democracy.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2013 22:32

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

mrg220t posted:

And the best part is the other gangsters don't care except for his part of the share.

The gently caress did you do that for?

# ¿ Dec 2, 2013 14:45

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

Stan Valcheck? (sp) Who would Slim Charles want to take down just cause? He avoids stepping on toes whereas the stained glass issue is all about toe stepping and being petty.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2013 00:34

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

cletepurcel posted:

Had the sudden urge to watch the last few episodes of the series again, which I think, despite all the flaws of season 5, are in the same tier as the climactic episodes in every other season. (From 'Clarifications' to -30-, everything outside of the newsroom is fantastic.)

I should probably save this for when Jerusalem reviews the episode, but I noticed something in Late Editions (like I say, on par with every other penultimate episode) that makes it even more heartbreaking than before. there seems to be a parallel between Bubbles' tearjerker speech at the NA meeting and the tearjerker final scene between Dukie and Michael. Bubs recalls how in his "youth", he used to love to hang out in the park during summertime, smoking pot, drinking beer and watching the girls go by, and how this ALMOST caused him to get high the other night, only he overcame the urge when he thought of Sherrod. Similarly, when Michael drops off Dukie at the arabbers, Dukie tries to get him to remember the piss balloon adventure from the previous summer, which Michael cannot remember. Maybe I'm reading too much into it but the parallel memories are devastating to me, particularly since Dukie becomes the "new Bubbles."

The biggest :smith:

Bubbles was probably too nice of a guy or just not cut out for all the bullshit he had to put up with and like Dukie, resorted to getting high.

E: Well, maybe not resorted to getting high but took more comfort in getting high than other characters who have been shown getting high.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 18:53

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 20:43

GreenCard78: Apr 25, 2005; It's all in the game, yo.

My school's web page posted an article by David Simon:

http://usdemocrazy.net/harsh-words-from-creator-of-the-wire/

Actual article:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx-two-americas-wire

David Simon posted:

America is a country that is now utterly divided when it comes to its society, its economy, its politics. There are definitely two Americas. I live in one, on one block in Baltimore that is part of the viable America, the America that is connected to its own economy, where there is a plausible future for the people born into it. About 20 blocks away is another America entirely. It's astonishing how little we have to do with each other, and yet we are living in such proximity.

There's no barbed wire around West Baltimore or around East Baltimore, around Pimlico, the areas in my city that have been utterly divorced from the American experience that I know. But there might as well be. We've somehow managed to march on to two separate futures and I think you're seeing this more and more in the west. I don't think it's unique to America.

I think we've perfected a lot of the tragedy and we're getting there faster than a lot of other places that may be a little more reasoned, but my dangerous idea kind of involves this fellow who got left by the wayside in the 20th century and seemed to be almost the butt end of the joke of the 20th century; a fellow named Karl Marx.

I'm not a Marxist in the sense that I don't think Marxism has a very specific clinical answer to what ails us economically. I think Marx was a much better diagnostician than he was a clinician. He was good at figuring out what was wrong or what could be wrong with capitalism if it wasn't attended to and much less credible when it comes to how you might solve that.

You know if you've read Capital or if you've got the Cliff Notes, you know that his imaginings of how classical Marxism � of how his logic would work when applied � kind of devolve into such nonsense as the withering away of the state and platitudes like that. But he was really sharp about what goes wrong when capital wins unequivocally, when it gets everything it asks for.

That may be the ultimate tragedy of capitalism in our time, that it has achieved its dominance without regard to a social compact, without being connected to any other metric for human progress.

We understand profit. In my country we measure things by profit. We listen to the Wall Street analysts. They tell us what we're supposed to do every quarter. The quarterly report is God. Turn to face God. Turn to face Mecca, you know. Did you make your number? Did you not make your number? Do you want your bonus? Do you not want your bonus?

And that notion that capital is the metric, that profit is the metric by which we're going to measure the health of our society is one of the fundamental mistakes of the last 30 years. I would date it in my country to about 1980 exactly, and it has triumphed.

Capitalism stomped the hell out of Marxism by the end of the 20th century and was predominant in all respects, but the great irony of it is that the only thing that actually works is not ideological, it is impure, has elements of both arguments and never actually achieves any kind of partisan or philosophical perfection.

It's pragmatic, it includes the best aspects of socialistic thought and of free-market capitalism and it works because we don't let it work entirely. And that's a hard idea to think � that there isn't one single silver bullet that gets us out of the mess we've dug for ourselves. But man, we've dug a mess.

After the second world war, the west emerged with the American economy coming out of its wartime extravagance, emerging as the best product. It was the best product. It worked the best. It was demonstrating its might not only in terms of what it did during the war but in terms of just how facile it was in creating mass wealth.

Plus, it provided a lot more freedom and was doing the one thing that guaranteed that the 20th century was going to be � and forgive the jingoistic sound of this � the American century.

It took a working class that had no discretionary income at the beginning of the century, which was working on subsistence wages. It turned it into a consumer class that not only had money to buy all the stuff that they needed to live but enough to buy a bunch of poo poo that they wanted but didn't need, and that was the engine that drove us.

It wasn't just that we could supply stuff, or that we had the factories or know-how or capital, it was that we created our own demand and started exporting that demand throughout the west. And the standard of living made it possible to manufacture stuff at an incredible rate and sell it.

And how did we do that? We did that by not giving in to either side. That was the new deal. That was the great society. That was all of that argument about collective bargaining and union wages and it was an argument that meant neither side gets to win.

Labour doesn't get to win all its arguments, capital doesn't get to. But it's in the tension, it's in the actual fight between the two, that capitalism actually becomes functional, that it becomes something that every stratum in society has a stake in, that they all share.

The unions actually mattered. The unions were part of the equation. It didn't matter that they won all the time, it didn't matter that they lost all the time, it just mattered that they had to win some of the time and they had to put up a fight and they had to argue for the demand and the equation and for the idea that workers were not worth less, they were worth more.

Ultimately we abandoned that and believed in the idea of trickle-down and the idea of the market economy and the market knows best, to the point where now libertarianism in my country is actually being taken seriously as an intelligent mode of political thought. It's astonishing to me. But it is. People are saying I don't need anything but my own ability to earn a profit. I'm not connected to society. I don't care how the road got built, I don't care where the firefighter comes from, I don't care who educates the kids other than my kids. I am me. It's the triumph of the self. I am me, hear me roar.

That we've gotten to this point is astonishing to me because basically in winning its victory, in seeing that Wall come down and seeing the former Stalinist state's journey towards our way of thinking in terms of markets or being vulnerable, you would have thought that we would have learned what works. Instead we've descended into what can only be described as greed. This is just greed. This is an inability to see that we're all connected, that the idea of two Americas is implausible, or two Australias, or two Spains or two Frances.

Societies are exactly what they sound like. If everybody is invested and if everyone just believes that they have "some", it doesn't mean that everybody's going to get the same amount. It doesn't mean there aren't going to be people who are the venture capitalists who stand to make the most. It's not each according to their needs or anything that is purely Marxist, but it is that everybody feels as if, if the society succeeds, I succeed, I don't get left behind. And there isn't a society in the west now, right now, that is able to sustain that for all of its population.

And so in my country you're seeing a horror show. You're seeing a retrenchment in terms of family income, you're seeing the abandonment of basic services, such as public education, functional public education. You're seeing the underclass hunted through an alleged war on dangerous drugs that is in fact merely a war on the poor and has turned us into the most incarcerative state in the history of mankind, in terms of the sheer numbers of people we've put in American prisons and the percentage of Americans we put into prisons. No other country on the face of the Earth jails people at the number and rate that we are.

We have become something other than what we claim for the American dream and all because of our inability to basically share, to even contemplate a socialist impulse.

Socialism is a dirty word in my country. I have to give that disclaimer at the beginning of every speech, "Oh by the way I'm not a Marxist you know". I lived through the 20th century. I don't believe that a state-run economy can be as viable as market capitalism in producing mass wealth. I don't.

I'm utterly committed to the idea that capitalism has to be the way we generate mass wealth in the coming century. That argument's over. But the idea that it's not going to be married to a social compact, that how you distribute the benefits of capitalism isn't going to include everyone in the society to a reasonable extent, that's astonishing to me.

And so capitalism is about to seize defeat from the jaws of victory all by its own hand. That's the astonishing end of this story, unless we reverse course. Unless we take into consideration, if not the remedies of Marx then the diagnosis, because he saw what would happen if capital triumphed unequivocally, if it got everything it wanted.

And one of the things that capital would want unequivocally and for certain is the diminishment of labour. They would want labour to be diminished because labour's a cost. And if labour is diminished, let's translate that: in human terms, it means human beings are worth less.

From this moment forward unless we reverse course, the average human being is worth less on planet Earth. Unless we take stock of the fact that maybe socialism and the socialist impulse has to be addressed again; it has to be married as it was married in the 1930s, the 1940s and even into the 1950s, to the engine that is capitalism.

Mistaking capitalism for a blueprint as to how to build a society strikes me as a really dangerous idea in a bad way. Capitalism is a remarkable engine again for producing wealth. It's a great tool to have in your toolbox if you're trying to build a society and have that society advance. You wouldn't want to go forward at this point without it. But it's not a blueprint for how to build the just society. There are other metrics besides that quarterly profit report.

The idea that the market will solve such things as environmental concerns, as our racial divides, as our class distinctions, our problems with educating and incorporating one generation of workers into the economy after the other when that economy is changing; the idea that the market is going to heed all of the human concerns and still maximise profit is juvenile. It's a juvenile notion and it's still being argued in my country passionately and we're going down the tubes. And it terrifies me because I'm astonished at how comfortable we are in absolving ourselves of what is basically a moral choice. Are we all in this together or are we all not?

If you watched the debacle that was, and is, the fight over something as basic as public health policy in my country over the last couple of years, imagine the ineffectiveness that Americans are going to offer the world when it comes to something really complicated like global warming. We can't even get healthcare for our citizens on a basic level. And the argument comes down to: "Goddamn this socialist president. Does he think I'm going to pay to keep other people healthy? It's socialism, motherfucker."

What do you think group health insurance is? You know you ask these guys, "Do you have group health insurance where you �?" "Oh yeah, I get �" you know, "my law firm �" So when you get sick you're able to afford the treatment.

The treatment comes because you have enough people in your law firm so you're able to get health insurance enough for them to stay healthy. So the actuarial tables work and all of you, when you do get sick, are able to have the resources there to get better because you're relying on the idea of the group. Yeah. And they nod their heads, and you go "Brother, that's socialism. You know it is."

And ... you know when you say, OK, we're going to do what we're doing for your law firm but we're going to do it for 300 million Americans and we're going to make it affordable for everybody that way. And yes, it means that you're going to be paying for the other guys in the society, the same way you pay for the other guys in the law firm � Their eyes glaze. You know they don't want to hear it. It's too much. Too much to contemplate the idea that the whole country might be actually connected.

So I'm astonished that at this late date I'm standing here and saying we might want to go back for this guy Marx that we were laughing at, if not for his prescriptions, then at least for his depiction of what is possible if you don't mitigate the authority of capitalism, if you don't embrace some other values for human endeavour.

And that's what The Wire was about basically, it was about people who were worth less and who were no longer necessary, as maybe 10 or 15% of my country is no longer necessary to the operation of the economy. It was about them trying to solve, for lack of a better term, an existential crisis. In their irrelevance, their economic irrelevance, they were nonetheless still on the ground occupying this place called Baltimore and they were going to have to endure somehow.

That's the great horror show. What are we going to do with all these people that we've managed to marginalise? It was kind of interesting when it was only race, when you could do this on the basis of people's racial fears and it was just the black and brown people in American cities who had the higher rates of unemployment and the higher rates of addiction and were marginalised and had the lovely school systems and the lack of opportunity.

And kind of interesting in this last recession to see the economy shrug and start to throw white middle-class people into the same boat, so that they became vulnerable to the drug war, say from methamphetamine, or they became unable to qualify for college loans. And all of a sudden a certain faith in the economic engine and the economic authority of Wall Street and market logic started to fall away from people. And they realised it's not just about race, it's about something even more terrifying. It's about class. Are you at the top of the wave or are you at the bottom?

So how does it get better? In 1932, it got better because they dealt the cards again and there was a communal logic that said nobody's going to get left behind. We're going to figure this out. We're going to get the banks open. From the depths of that depression a social compact was made between worker, between labour and capital that actually allowed people to have some hope.

We're either going to do that in some practical way when things get bad enough or we're going to keep going the way we're going, at which point there's going to be enough people standing on the outside of this mess that somebody's going to pick up a brick, because you know when people get to the end there's always the brick. I hope we go for the first option but I'm losing faith.

The other thing that was there in 1932 that isn't there now is that some element of the popular will could be expressed through the electoral process in my country.

The last job of capitalism � having won all the battles against labour, having acquired the ultimate authority, almost the ultimate moral authority over what's a good idea or what's not, or what's valued and what's not � the last journey for capital in my country has been to buy the electoral process, the one venue for reform that remained to Americans.

Right now capital has effectively purchased the government, and you witnessed it again with the healthcare debacle in terms of the $450m that was heaved into Congress, the most broken part of my government, in order that the popular will never actually emerged in any of that legislative process.

So I don't know what we do if we can't actually control the representative government that we claim will manifest the popular will. Even if we all start having the same sentiments that I'm arguing for now, I'm not sure we can effect them any more in the same way that we could at the rise of the Great Depression, so maybe it will be the brick. But I hope not.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2013 17:26

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > The Wire: The Rewatch... and all the pieces matter.