Hal Brown's Substack (fomerly Hal Brown's Blog): 9/7/25

September 8, 2025

DC's disposable detritus: It is heartless how homeless humans are being treated, By Hal M. Brown - A photo essay

The crackdown on homeless humans in DC was in the news this morning:

In 2009 we took AmTrak to Washington, DC to do the usual tourist thing and visit my neice who worked there as a lawyer for the USDA.

I took a lot of touristy photos, but, struck by the number of homeless people, I also took photos of some of them. My belief, as a street photographer who tries to capture candid photos of interesting people in ways that tell a story is that sometimes sharing an important message transcends someone’s privacy. I had no plan to do anything with these photos. They were a part of the trip I wanted to memoralize for myself.

The ethics of taking candid photos of people in public places is an ongoing debate with a case to be made on both sides. Consider this:

“The ethics of street photography involve balancing the legal right to take photos in public with the moral responsibility to respect individuals' privacy and feelings. Photographers should consider the impact of their work on subjects and strive to approach their craft with empathy and respect.” (Reference 1, Reference 2)

Now it is 16 years later and finally I believe I have a story to tell worth using the photos I took.

My intention is to show that the people Trump is treating as less than human are in fact living, breathing human beings. They have life stories. They have feelings.

I took several photos of the man shown above in Union Station, but the one that I captured serendipitously conveyed something I think is important. Here it is again:

There are two people in the photo. One is the homeless man and the other a woman walking by. As is typical in such situations, the passerby doesn’t look at the homeless person. They are non—people to so many. By chance I had my camera set on a slow speed so, because she is moving, instead of freezing her image, she is seen as blurred. I think this is what makes this photo compelling.

Below are the rest of photos I took of homeless people. As I said above, each of them has a life story, a journey, that led them to being homeless. That there are so many heartless people who want to treat them as disposable items to be trucked away so they are out of sight and out of mind is one of the saddest aspects of what this country, this so-called Christian nation, has become.

You can click the images below to enlarge them. You can tell by the marble in the background that some of them were taken in front of Union Station.

This post is public so feel free to share it.

September 7, 2025

Col. Kilgore and Donald Trump, By Hal M. Brown

By now you’ve read about the reaction to Trump’s posting the “Chipocalapse Now” image of himself as Col. Kilgore with an under attack Chicago burning in the background (see HUFFPOST article). Here’s how Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, reacted:

Aside from uttering one of the two most memorable lines in “Apocolapse Now,” “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” (the other being Col. Kutz’s “the horror, the horror”) it is instructive to consider the character of the character.

The following (from the FanDom website) should suffice as a “nuff said” when trying to explain why Trump admires him so much he liked his own face being superimposed over Kilgore’s in the now infamous Truth Social post. Bold emphasis mine:

Lieutenant Colonel William "Bill" Kilgore is the secondary antagonist of the 1979 film Apocalypse Now. He is an amoral warmonger who actually enjoys the war and calls it home.
He is introduced in the movie when Willard and his allies ask him for help in getting up to the Nùng. Kilgore scoffs but befriends Lance after discovering his surfing experience and agrees to escort them through the Nùng's Viet Cong–held coastal mouth. They successfully raid at dawn, with Kilgore ordering a napalm sortie on the local cadres. He and his men then proceed to mercilessly kill, shoot and blow up numerous innocent civilians, showing a complete and utter disregard for civilian and human life, and showing Kilgore as what he is, a bloodthirsty, sadistic and amoral warmonger. This arguably makes him eviler than the film's main antagonist, Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, as he is willing to involve innocent civilians in his reign of mass murder and destruction, and shows no guilt for his deeds.

This is in stark contrast to Col. Kutz who when, as he was dying, uttered “the horror, the horror.” He was reflecting on the darkness and brutality of the war and humanity in general.

We also have stories about waging war on Venezuela and articles like “Trump’s Venezuela gunboat diplomacy: sabre-rattling or prelude to invasion?”

It is only a bit of my being lazy that I won’t expand on what makes Trump admire the Kilgore character. Hopefully it is obvious that Trump is one very sick excuse for a human being.