# ideology and harry bosch > this is my war > ~ harry bosch (bosch legacy season 1) **+** as someone who thinks the tv series bosch is awesome and that titus welliver is an excellent actor i'm also painfully aware of what i have to give up critically (philosophically) in order to be in the presence of it's painfully exuberant and celebratory copaganda; stories - convenient myths - that uncritically advance the public image of the police and help undermine reform efforts. that i know i shouldn't watch it because it's simply full of prideful self-righteous nonsense is a real enough problem **+** in uk terms the onomatopoeia 'bosch' indicates 'a hard wallop to the face' in other words a heavy punch; bosch is really just a psychotic mercenary killer for-hire in the thin disguise of a regular l.a homicide detective **+** spec-ops shmeck-ops: harry's thoroughly militarized past exists to show nothing but the fact that 'this is a man not to be messed with' - which apparently (despite his training in the dark arts of systemic organized mass murder) he gets to feel moody silent and sensitive about whenever it's brought up - as though standing over a dead suspect while saying "look i now i just headshotted you from thirty foot away but please don't bring up my malignantly squared-away oorah leatherneck past because it's a *brief sob* touchy subject with me." a shorter tom selleck just with better tattoos **+** can you even imagine just how many actual living apparently thinking officers and detectives harry bosch has influenced? one shudders to think - the slow way he walks his sloped shoulders his slow deadpan demeanor - deputy dog with a kimber custom tle ii (i didn't know what he carries and don't care but had to look that up on the flan wiki) **+** just because he lives alone in a swanky 'postmodern dead-tech bullshit' hollywood hills home with great views 'vibes' has a black police partner he refers to as 'brother' listens to cool jazz and gets to stare out moodily at the city of angels at night in smart-casual menswear and a jameson as if deeply pondering what-it-all-means _doesn't_ make him one iota less of a mere hired meathead killer with an even tan and neat sideburns. yet just like his house harry's moral foundations rest on nothing remotely substantial or lasting **+** despite what he says and how he acts harry's morals are in fact non-existent / morally indefensible bullshit; just because he was an system-abused foster kid his mother was murdered and he's an ex spec-ops military killer _does not mean_ he gets to be an emotionally-withdrawn-psycho-as-fashion-statement; some kind of laughably stoic lone-wolf figurine unceasingly working the eye-rollingly 'grey' side of the thin blue line (ie between 'breaking the law' and 'the law as merely a series of rough guidelines') **+** what is it with that gross and sickly cliche that a character is a _perfectly_ capable captain badass - smoking bad guys left and right - yet is simultaneously the most (apparently) self-reflective and oh-so-sensitive 'modern man' who *sob* 'deals with the heavy shit as best he can' - gtfoh with that shit **+** according to the lyrics of the opening title what precisely one wonders is the 'feeling that harry can't let go'? one might make a guess and suggest that it's _he alone_ that keeps the city from falling into chaos - oh the heavy burden of responsibility! (must be useful to know one's fellow big boys club in blue have your back and are prepared to shred vital evidence to secure convictions) **+** harry's apparent fairness - his nonsense personal code of 'everybody counts or nobody counts' - is horse shit in the extreme; it's utterly meaningless. how exactly does some vague personal 'line i will never cross' remotely match up with 'cold steel justice repeatedly served from the business end of my long manly barrel'? **+** basically harry's whole internal life is little but private (violent) delusion writ large on the streets of an anonymous city - that one is supposed to read that 'harry cares - even if nobody else does' is so _not_ the point; the point that for harry being an officer of the law is nothing but the thinnest excuse to deliver his personal brand of oh-so-reasonable-and-fair violent justice (aka 'your getting it because you deserve it - and i'm here to gladly - yet sensitively - deliver it to you') **+** one would have previously and naively imagined that the law exists so that when people break the common law they become criminals who can then be found guilty under those laws using evidence; yet in harry bosch's little universe it's really all about apparently privately punishing _innate criminality_ according to one's personal moral bullshit inner code ('the code of the streets'?) bosch is really just the punisher frank 'psychoboy' castle - using his *cough* unique skills to not just 'occasionally color outside of the (thin blue) lines' but paint the insides of your entire skull over the wall should you cross him or try to hurt his dysfunctional family **+** the real and only reason harry's fish-lipped wife died is because it was not only inevitable but _necessary_; americans are neck deep in their psychotic culture of guns violence cheap murder and retribution and loving it: 'flock with mine and get yours'. the more harry witnesses and causes death the more entrenched he is in the evil and stupid illusion that the way he deals with all this awful heavy american-death-culture shit is simply by a) looking moody and cool and b) continuing to book time down at the firing range to keep his death-skills sharp **+** enough of that forever-inwardly-brooding lone-wolf dragnet-era 'just the facts mam' bullshit please; harry's true blue right down the middle and his ultra-conservative regan-era politics shine like the badge he wears with pride **+** in 'bosch legacy' threatens to torture a bad-guy(tm) he needs information from - despite just having a flashback back to his specops days in afghanistan in which he says it's no use sine people will tell you anything they think you want to know and that 'bad info gets people killed'; thing is harry merely _threatening_ to torture people makes you a sick sadistic sonofabitch - luckily the bad-guy is thoroughly unlikable and it's 'for the greater good'(tm) as he's doing it to 'protect the innocent' (and also probably to 'uphold the law' and 'serve the public trust ala robofascist) **+** yeesh here comes a new series 'ballard' and it's exactly the same character just female. imagine continually being _that_ in control; in control of one's life - one's fate - one's dick gun - in control of the life of suspects. bizarrely all-too ready to 'make the tough call'. pa-leeze; it's all just one big white male circle jerk power fantasy. consider the lapd mere one of the world's largest violent street gangs **example links** **+** the dark side of american history part 5: police brutality in los angeles 1950s to 1990s - https://asalerno.substack.com/p/the-dark-side-of-american-history-714 **+** no matter how different the movements were the lapd targeted every one of them: https://jacobin.com/2020/05/mike-davis-jon-wiener-los-angeles-1960s // republic of bob