10-15-02 - 1

10-15-02

NYPD Blue, and most TV "Cop Dramas", glorify police brutality. Then again, so do most "ra ra" war movies, etc.. This fiction of the out-of-control authority figure who doesn't play by the rules and takes justic into his own hands is some kind of sexy idol. I think it's disgusting. In the real world these guys are cowboys who usually don't know what the hell they're doing and just go around showing their dick to the world by slapping people around. These cop shows need to show a lot more cases of cops beating people up who did nothing wrong.

10-12-02 - 1

10-12-02

The profusion of medical drugs for afflictions of the mind is really disturbing to me. The idea of treating the populace at large for minor problems in their mental state is based on the underlying assumption that the doctors can define a "normal" mind state, and that it's inherently good to have a mind which is more "normal". Now, certainly I agree that there are people like manic-depressives and schizophrenics who have serious chemical problems in their brains and who can really benefit from treatment. But, millions of americans with depression? "bipolar disorder"? "anxiety disorder"? "panic disorder"? "social phobia"? People are not perfect, we all have strange little behaviors that we're not always happy about. We're shy, insecure, stressed, pushy, selfish, hyperactive, etc. etc. at what point is this just "you" vs. "a problem"?

The obvious next step is that in order to increase sales of pharmaceuticals, more and more mundane behavior will be treated. Did you miss the bus and feel upset? Pop a pill. Did you spill wine on your shirt? You may have critical embarrasment disorder, pop a pill. Do you stand at the side of the room in dance clubs, ashamed to shake your booty? You have booty-shake phobia, pop a pill. Are you a bit of a bastard? You may have not-very-nice disorder. Pop a pill.

What scares me even more is when parents drug their children. I've seen many of my own friends in high school put on Prozac. Sure, they were a little depressed - but that was probably because their parents were divorced, their dad treated them like shit, and their mom slept around. The parents surely complained to the doctor about their "hard to manage little brat", and the doctor suggested Prozac. I've seem little kids on Ritalin being fed bowls of Frosted Flakes and drinking Coke. This shit really pisses me off, because these psychotropic drugs are not well understood, the brain is not well understood, and childhood is a critical development time - these children are quite possibly being permanently damaged.

There are tons of web pages on this stuff, search "psychotropic" on google.