Comments by "J Drake1994" (@JDrakeify) on "The Wire creator David Simon on what's behind the US war on drugs" video.

  1. Maybe thats because Marxism and Socialism are two completely seperate things? He can be a socialist without being a marxist.
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  2. i think what he could be saying is that deindustrialisation has left very few options open to make money to the urban lower  classes (a lot of whom are black) and one of the only productive and successful industry is drugs, so put in this context, it is easy to understand why so many of these people resort to selling drugs
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  3. In the following paragraph in that article he writes "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 were simply taking the small part of the article which fitted to your viewpoint, and ignoring the rest which went against it. You don't have to be a Marxist to admit that Marx was a sharp man. And your not a Marxist if you take the stance of David Simon, agreeing with his diagnosis, but not with the measures he recommends to resolve it.  Personally, I think people, especially in America, are far to quick to discount anyone who mentions that Marx made any kind of sense as a Marxist, when that simply is not the case.
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  4. oh come on, discredit a political idea as a bad idea all you like, but don't start thinking its some massive lefty conspiracy theory. Once people start doing that, you can't really take there political opinions seriously anymore
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  5. whoever thought that the wire was promoting drug violence had completely the wrong idea of it (though i'm sure some of those people do exist) and I think the government has definitely done more to promote drug violence, by, for example, ignoring the urban lower classes, and allowing poverty to exist, all problems that would have had a much better chance of being solved if they were more willing to pump money into improving the lives of their own citizens who are in poverty, instead of investing such huge amounts in areas, such as say, the armed forces
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  6. Piotr Nowacki if you're annoyed with liberal overtones, you should really go and find another show, the Wire makes no secret of propagating left wing solutions to social problems. Some people might not like that, but personally i prefer a show which is overtly political and controversial in its opinions, instead of coming to conclusions which basically everyone can agree with, like most tv shows do
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  7. so the guy makes money out of what he has done, it would be difficult not to given the fields he has been successful in. There is nothing wrong with owning money, so long as you give a bit back to those who dont have as much in one way or another, as Simon does. I'm sure anyone involved in politics who you agree with owns a lot of money too.
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  8. DrCruel but equally the same is probably true for the people at the top of the businesses as well as the ones who run the labour unions, neither can be trusted to have society's best interest at heart, which is why you need a balance between the two where neither dominates, as Simon advocates. Sure in the 30-40 years ago the balance may have tipped too far in favour of the unions (at least in Britain, i do not know if a similar thing took place in the US) but the response to that problem was to tip the balance unfairly in the other direction, so that the unions dont have enough of a say. 
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  9. i think that statement about legalised marijuana really proves that simon isnt really part of the 'limousine left' as you call it. The conventional liberal americans viewpoint on weed is that it should be legalised, and clearly that is not the case with simon. What sets him apart is that he takes more of an interest in the lives of the poor. And I think its pretty clear that he wants an end to the war on drugs, ending the war on drugs doesnt necessarily mean an end to selling drugs altogether. Surely there is no war if it is legalised?
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  10. Actually, the main people that simon has advocated giving more power to are the unions, who, whilst undoubtedly left wing, are by no means 'limousine' And if by 'demand money from owners of small businesses and the working poor' you mean taxation, then most of this money would be taken from the people in society who are rich enough not to have these sorts of problems. People below the poverty line have far bigger need of it than they do, plus, in the long term, solving this problem will reduce spending over time, as less poverty equals less people in prison who the taxpayer needs to pay for, less welfare benefits, more people in a productive workforce rather than jobless in an economy which has no use for them. And there is a definitely a correlation between government spending on welfare and the standards of living amongst the lower classes, its why the poorest in European countries tend to be better off than in America, so, like it or not, this reasoning definitely seems to work
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  11. was talking to DrCruel, not you, sorry if there was a misunderstanding, and yes, i agree completely with what you said
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  12. Piotr Nowacki im not annoyed with your personal opinion i was just making a point about what i saw the nature of the show to be. I agree that the political ideas that it seemed to be recommending were relatively uncontroversial, as ideas, but for a tv show to side so blatantly on one side of political debates is rare to see, and that is what is more controversial about it. It also alleges several other things about the bureaucracy that exists which would also be seen as controversial. 
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  13. Left wing students do not have nearly a big effect on the drug trade as you think, they might make up a a significant proportion of the people who buy weed, but the harder drugs like cocaine and heroin are overwhelmingly bought by the lower classes, its them who power the drug trade, and its the drugs they buy that end up destroying communities, not weed (although dont get me wrong it annoys me too when other left wing people devote there time to legalising weed instead of paying attention to the more pressing issues involving drugs)
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