Addict Nation (23 page)

Pretend Violence Is Real Violence

If you’ve ever watched a movie about serial killers and then lay paranoid in your dark bedroom hoping you’ve locked every window, or seen a kid run out of a movie theater yelling a mighty battle cry and throwing karate chops after seeing a film about war, you know that watching violent programming can make some people more fearful, while others become more aggressive. But can a movie that might simply scare the average viewer lead a mentally unstable person to commit a real assault or murder? We really cannot say that watching violence is harmless. Our life experience tells us it is not. Put another way, there is the possibility of a karmic kickback to watching violence. The subconscious mind can’t be counted on to distinguish between pretend violence and real violence. We react physically to a scary movie by gasping or jumping in our seats because our psyche is processing the violence as if it were real. So, if we’re indulging in violent movies, it’s almost like we’re subsidizing violence itself.

The Pushers

Violence is an easy fix for Hollywood. In order to cover their enormous production costs, producers need to make movies that appeal to a world market. Violent movies are the genre of choice because they’re easily translated and crosscultural. After all, brutality requires no subtitles. In fact, the more violent the movie, the easier it is to repackage to a global audience. Sadly, most of these types of movies are stamped “Made in the U.S.A.”

Television is no better. Despite a decades-long national debate, the level of televised violence just keeps accelerating. An average American child will see 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on TV by age eighteen.
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The last two or three generations are the first in the history of humankind to be exposed to so many images of sadism and carnage.

A good way to end the insanity is to stop subsidizing the images of violence against us. We can say “enough” to movies and TV shows that equate masculinity with aggression and create a hunter-prey relationship between men and women.

If you don’t believe women are victimized more than men—by men—in the movies and in everyday life, try this test: Ask a man if he would be afraid to go alone to a bar or camping or hitchhiking or hiking or walking at night. The answer is probably no. Women, on the other hand, would be considered foolish to do such a thing. They would be putting themselves in almost certain danger. The question then, is,
Why do we accept this violence against women?
Perhaps it is because we are desensitized to it by television and film, and unscrupulous filmmakers are counting on us to continue financing that process.

“Our surveys tell us that the more television people watch, the more they are likely to be afraid to go out on the street in their own community, especially at night. They are afraid of strangers and meeting other people. A hallmark of civilization, which is kindness to strangers, has been lost.”

—George Gerbner, author of
Reclaiming Our Cultural Mythology
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Choose What World You Want

Where does this all end? We currently tolerate the killing of about eight women each day in the United States.
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Is that enough? The FBI says there are 89,000 rapes per year. And that’s just those that are reported.
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If things continue to get worse, will women need escorts or buddies for everyday errands like grocery shopping, going to the mall, or getting the mail? Will professional wrestling and bloody “extreme fighting” overtake traditional sports like tennis, skiing, and baseball as the new national pastime? Will our society be completely monitored by surveillance cameras? Do we want a high-tech “dark ages”?

We Can Evolve Beyond Crime

Imagine a world without crime. There is no fear of being raped and murdered. Kids race through their neighborhoods with abandon, their parents secure in the knowledge that they are not going to end up in the car of a stranger with a sick obsession. It is safe to accept the help of a stranger. People stop locking their doors and stop stockpiling weapons. Money used to fight crime and treat the injured is freed up for discretionary spending by individuals who’ve seen their tax bills plummet.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it! It’s a terrible comment on our state of affairs that even the suggestion of a peaceful and serene world sounds ridiculously naïve. If we lack the imagination to even envision a peaceful world, how the hell are we actually going to get there? Someone said to me, “Hey, in two thousand years there will probably still be murders, prisons, and prisoners.” Perhaps, but we must aim for something better.

Question Crime Assumptions

Addiction is so overpowering that it leads to inertia. All available energy must be summoned to satisfy the insatiable craving, which leaves little energy for anything else. This is why the addictive mindset is so often fatalistic:
What will be, will be!
This is clearly seen in our addictive relationship with crime. The assumption is: evil is out there, and therefore tragedy is inevitable. This is how we rationalize our inaction. But the truth is that much of the horrible tragedy I report on night after night is completely preventable and avoidable.

Just as the alcoholic irrationally fears life without booze will be a mind-numbingly dull affair, so the crime addict subconsciously rationalizes that brutality is inevitable because he fears that life would be drab without the drama of violence, whether in real life or on the screen. After all, that would leave us watching “chick flicks” —a genre so named because of its themes around love, affection, and romance. But if we kicked the crime habit, we would see that— just as the newly sober alcoholic finds new interests and challenges— we, too, would find healthy substitutes for violence.

We need to bring matriarchal values to our national debate on crime, teaching nonviolence and conflict resolution in schools and developing early interventions and therapeutic techniques that break the cycle of violence from being handed down to the next generation. And, when someone does cross the line into assault on an innocent woman or child, they need to remain behind bars as long as there’s any hint that they’re capable of striking again. If they do ever get out, they need to be rigorously tracked with lifetime GPS.

What is the opposite of violence? It’s peace. If we are to evolve beyond violence, we must completely overhaul our government institutions to direct them toward peaceful alternatives, like prevention and genuine rehabilitation. And you and I must practice peace ourselves, in every choice we make.

The famous serenity prayer says:
Grant me the serenity to accept the
things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom
to know the difference.
I do not serenely accept that crime in the United States must remain the way it is now because I really believe we can change it. Now we just need the courage to change.

Chapter Seven
THE PUNISHERS:Addicted to Incarceration

S
itting in prison, right now as you read this, is a man in his late twenties who will be behind bars until his forties. He didn’t kill anybody. He didn’t injure anyone. His story is typical. DeJarion was born and raised in Texas. Except for one incident of youthful theft, he stayed out of trouble. He graduated from high school with high hopes. As a star athlete, he was thrilled to find out he made a college football team, but then learned they didn’t offer full athletic scholarships. Desperate for money to get into school and unable to find a job, DeJarion decided to make some quick cash by selling crack.

He had been selling crack for less than six months when his name surfaced as a drug dealer and his home was raided. Cops found 44 grams of crack cocaine and an unloaded rifle under his bed, along with about six thousand dollars in cash. At the age of twenty-three, DeJarion was sentenced to twenty years in prison. He will be a middle-aged man before he sees the outside of a jail cell again.

At the sentencing, the judge himself seemed revolted at the penalty he was legally required to impose because of mandatory drug-sentencing laws, lamenting, “This is one of those situations where I’d like to see a Congressman sitting before me.” DeJarion left behind a fiancé and two young daughters, who will be all grown up before their daddy finishes living out the prime of his life in a cage. DeJarion is African-American and low income.
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Fair? Well, let’s see.

Lindsay Lohan was arrested in 2007. After an argument at a party in Malibu, witnesses claim the troubled movie star commandeered someone else’s SUV. A young man claimed to TMZ that Lindsay ran over his foot with the vehicle before going on a high-speed chase down the Pacific Coast Highway.
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Two other young men complained on camera to the website that they just happened to be sitting inside the SUV when the starlet jumped into the driver’s seat and raced off. They say they found themselves terrified but unable to stop Lindsay. They claim she reached speeds of 100 miles an hour while boasting, “I can’t get in trouble. I’m a celebrity. I can do whatever the fuck I want.”
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Turns out she was right! Lindsay allegedly chased after a woman who was so frightened she called 911 and drove straight to the Santa Monica police station, with Lindsay on her tail. When caught, cops say Lindsay had cocaine on her.

Lindsay already had a history of drunk driving. “What Miss Lohan did that night was extremely dangerous and reprehensible,” said the woman who filed a lawsuit against Lohan over the incident. “Someone could easily have been killed or seriously hurt because of her irresponsible decisions that evening.”
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Despite all this, Lindsay Lohan was only charged with a handful of misdemeanors, including DUI and reckless driving, and got probation.
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Might someone else less powerful have been charged with kidnapping, vehicular assault, or even carjacking? You betcha! Lindsay then proceeds to violate the terms of her probation and misses a crucial court date while off in France. Finally, she is sent to the slammer. She is released in less than two weeks. Lindsay, as we all know, is white, famous, and has made millions.

Then there’s Cameron Douglas. The troubled son of movie star Michael Douglas was busted in a pricy Manhattan hotel for dealing drugs. Cops say Cameron played the middleman in a deal involving a half a pound of crystal meth. Initially, Cameron was allowed to remain under house arrest at his mother’s multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartment while monitored by a private security company. Then, cops say, his girlfriend was caught trying to smuggle heroin past the guards to Cameron in an electric toothbrush.
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Cameron had previous drug arrests and has had a serious drug problem since he was thirteen years old.
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Hoping to influence Cameron’s sentencing, his famous father wrote an impassioned letter to the federal judge. So did actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, the suspect’s superstar stepmother. Another letter came from the suspect’s grandfather Kirk Douglas of
Spartacus
fame. Yet another missive came from legendary basketball coach Pat Riley. It was a campaign for leniency, carried out by heavy hitters, and it worked. Cameron was sentenced to just five years in prison when he could have gotten a decade. With time served and credit for in-prison programs, he could be out in three years.

As part of the deal, reports claim Cameron ratted out a couple of his drug suppliers, a pair of Latino brothers who were arrested on trafficking charges and could face life in prison.
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If you’re noticing a certain disparity here, you’re not imagining things. Hundreds of thousands of poor minorities are serving sadistically long terms in prison for low-level, nonviolent drug crimes. Whites are less likely to be arrested and much more likely to get either no prison time or a much shorter sentence. Our society evidently suffers from a bad case of selective indignation.

There are a few reasons for this. For decades, the laws on the books have been much harsher for crack cocaine, which is more likely to be used by blacks than powder cocaine, which is more likely to be used by affluent whites. In the summer of 2010, the Fair Sentencing Act was finally signed into law by President Obama.
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It goes a long way toward closing the gap between sentences for crack versus sentences for powder cocaine. But it only applies to people convicted in federal courts. And, if you’re already in the slammer, sorry, but it doesn’t apply to you. Imagine how that feels.
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“One of the things that we know is that we over-police urban areas. When you put more police in an area, you naturally find more crime. We focus on a particular population and that population ends up incarcerated.”

—Donna Selman, author of
Punishment for Sale

One big reason a disproportionate number of low-income African-Americans are in prison is attitude. There is a culture of indifference in our criminal justice system toward Americans who are poor and powerless, and those individuals are primarily low-income blacks and Hispanics. In my thirty years as a reporter, I’ve seen the inconsistency play out again and again, and I would be willing to testify there’s a cultural compulsion to incarcerate the underclass!

Don’t get me wrong. Prisons have an important place . . . for murderers, rapists, armed robbers, child molesters, and the like. But today in America, we are locking up so many petty, nonviolent offenders that, ironically, we often have no room for the genuinely dangerous predator . . . who gets released from prison in order to relieve overcrowding.

As discussed earlier, John Gardner served only five years for admittedly beating and fondling a young girl. After his release, he repeatedly violated the terms of his parole but was still not arrested because—said a parole official—doing so would “overwhelm” the system due to prison overcrowding. Remaining free, John Gardner went on to sexually assault and murder two beautiful teenage girls in Southern California, Amber DuBois and Chelsea King. Meanwhile, minorities serving mandatory sentences for nonviolent crimes are doing twenty years for being caught with some crack under their bed.