"Wars end"

I'm watching a tv series (on DVD from the library, if any of you think I've joined the 21st century and have Netflix or something) called "The Wire".  It's a creation of David Simon who had a hand in the great series from long ago called "Homicide: Life on the Street" which I watched while I was pregnant with Anthony.  I wonder if it had any effect on Anthony's personality -- it was a very gritty and hard-hitting show with great characters and writing, but very bleak.  And Anthony does have a very serious side.

"The Wire" is also gritty, in the extreme, and is set in Baltimore, just like "Homicide" was.  The actors are terrific.  Jimmy McNulty, played by British actor Dominic West (flawlessly -- you would think he was born and raised in Baltimore), is the protagonist, I guess and he is one of these very troubled cops (how could you be a cop in a place like this and not be troubled) who wants to do the right thing and ends up alienating all the big shots in the police department.  But all the performances are outstanding.  The drug dealers especially -- Wallace (played by Michael B. Jordan) and D'Angelo Barksdale (Larry Gilliard Jr.) -- really stick with you.  It is written and performed so well, that you feel like the characters are real people.  This morning, I watched the second to the last episode from the first season and it was so gripping that I was shaking and clenching my fists.

It makes you realize that there are other worlds within our world.  I try to emphasize to my children that we are so rich (even though we worry about money all the time) compared with most people in the world.  Drive a half an hour away and you reach the Downtown Eastside, which is something like "the Pit" in "The Wire".  My sister points out that there are these great quirky novels by Anne Tyler, also set in Baltimore, but it is a completely different Baltimore than the one we see in "The Wire".

The quote I used as a title is from "The Wire".  There are two rough and ready cops (Herc and Carver) and they're talking about how the politicians have labelled the campaign against the sale of illegal drugs the "war on drugs".  Carver says, "you can't call this a war."  Herc asks him why.  Carver tells him, "wars end".  What a great analysis.  When you see the pain and suffering caused by addiction, not just in this show, but in the world, you wonder what the answer is.  One of the worst offenders in the drug world, of course, is alcohol.  What a scourge it is.  Most of us can have a glass of wine with dinner and that's it, but what about the poor folks who can never get enough?  It didn't help to legalize alcohol, but then it didn't seem to help when it was prohibited either.  Is the problem poverty?  Despair?