Tempest in a Teacup

My opinion on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy is that it's a complete waste of my time, and I doubt anybody outside the insular media community even cares about it. People like William Kristol, whose column today was focused on Obama and race, desperately want to find a "Gotcha!" for Barack Obama, and it's telling that this is the best they can do.

These are the problems I have with the reportage:

1) Why should I care that Obama belongs to a congregation led by a somewhat militant black preacher? It is fatuous to suggest that Obama bears any responsibility for the opinions of his minister, no matter how long he's been a member of the congregation. I myself was for the first 18 years of my life a member of religious flocks, the leaders of which held opinions wildly at variance to my own--disbelief in the theory of natural selection, fear and hatred of homosexuals, etc. etc. I'm no more obligated to defend or deny these beliefs than Obama is.

2) There is a towering double standard at work here. The close association between the Republican Party and its religious allies, many of whom are apt to make statements far more anti-American than Rev. Wright's, is not questioned with nearly this much vigor.

3) There is an important element to the argument against Rev. Wright's statements, never spoken, but always implicit. It is the belief that Wright doesn't have the right to be so angry about the status of African Americans in the country today. Kristol accuses Wright of "using his pulpit to propagate racial resentment", and frankly this is a ridiculous accusation. The racial resentment exists all by itself, because after 140 years of promises, African American communities still have not got their fair share. People like Kristol apparently believe that there isn't anything wrong, and it's just a few agitators like Wright stirring things up. I am mystified at how ignorant and brain-dead someone can be, and still get a slick job writing columns for the New York Times. Kristol insists in his column that we're making racial progress, we don't need a new racial dialog, and in fact it would be counter-productive. If we just keep our heads down, eyes forward, and don't talk about it, everything will be fine.

He even has the temerity to quote Pat Moynihan, a Nixon adviser who in 1969 said that America needed to ignore the race issue for a while and just let "Negro progress" continue on its own. Kristol claims that racial progress "has in fact continued in America" (not bothering to support this assertion with anything, but who cares, it's only journalism) and happily slides past the fact that he was just talking about an adviser to Nixon, the king of the Southern Strategy. I take back what I said about Kristol being better than David Brooks--this column was such a complete lemon that I really feel sorry for whoever has been duped into signing Willy's checks.

Mea Culpa

A person of whom I am fond pointed out to me that I once said this:

My money is on Romney. He is made of plastic, has no actual positions or beliefs, and if you squint hard enough in low-light conditions he kind of looks like Ronald Reagan. He also has the support of the party elite, which counts for everything in the GOP, probably to the extent of making his coronation a near inevitability.

If my money was on Romney, all that money is lost now, because I was wrong and dead wrong about him. Silly me.

John McCain, eight years too late, has secured the nomination from the Grand Old Party and run Romney right out of town. It remains to be soon who Johnny will choose as his running mate. But, dammit, I'm not afraid to make assertions based on my own analysis and gut impulses, and I'm not afraid to later admit that I was quite completely wrong, as I was about Romney and I was about Thompson. In both cases I was bamboozled. So what? I'm going to say right now that... I have not the least idea who will be the second half of the Republican ticket. Probably some odious mound of flesh to balance McCain's ticket without being able to demand too much on the platform. McCain isn't one to share the power or the limelight. Perhaps he will be some creature belonging to Mike Huckabee, to draw the evangelical vote. Perhaps he will come from the Romney end of things, the better to pull in money. In any case there are holes in McCain's appeal. He is strong among moderates, but I think that when Obama takes the Democratic nomination, Barack will stomp his ugly old-man Naval aviator guts out in that section of the electorate.

In my admittedly poorly founded opinion (see the above for some errors I have made!) I think Obama is a super candidate the likes of which America has not seen in a long time. He is charismatic, a superb speaker, and I think behind his facade of the "last honest politician" there lurks a very canny and very dangerous street-fighter. I think Barack Obama is my generation's Bobby Kennedy, only this time he's going to make it through alive. I think (and this is the time on my blog when I begin to use weasel words!) that he is going to win the Democratic nomination. After all, it is now virtually a mathematical impossibility for Hillary Clinton to catch up to him in either delegates or the popular vote, and I hope to Jeezis that I won't be proved wrong this time. But I think that, when it comes down to Barack Obama and John McCain, Barack will turn poor Johnny into hamburger. All you need to do is watch any of Obama's appearances, and then imagine the gloves coming off, as they would against a member of the other party. The old man hasn't got a chance, frankly. He's weak everywhere Obama is strong, and Obama isn't really that weak anywhere. Barack will eat him. I look forward to it.

Additionally, I've always wondered why the Republican Party is called the "Grand Old Party." The Democratic Party, as it is descended directly from Thomas Jefferson's Anti-Federalists, is something like 70 years older. This does not make sense to me. Then again, the actual structure of parties is meaningless, as their standing changes fluidly. For a long time the Democrats were the conservative party that dominated the South, and the Republicans had a stranglehold on the African American vote. Things are always changing.

McCain has the Experience

File this one under s**t I knew in 2004 but an experienced public servant like John McCain still hasn't caught up with.

Briefly, John McCain alleged that Iran was supplying Al Qaeda in Iraq with weapons and training. Unless you're a high-ranking member of the Republican Party, you've probably heard that Al Qaeda is a fundamentalist Sunni organization, and Iran is a fundamentalist Shi'ite state. Barring any Bushism queries like "There's more'n one kinda Mooslam?", you should also know that these two kinds of people have a hard time getting along. To whit, Iran backs Shi'ite groups like Hezbollah and, in Iraq, the Mahdi Army. Al Qaeda, by contrast, likes to blow up Shi'ites. Now, you could say that this was a slip of the tongue, but when somebody makes the same statement repeatedly during an appearance in the Middle East designed to promote his foreign policy expertise, it's hard to justify that excuse.

And of course Lieberman is there for the save:

A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."

I like that Roy Cohn thing he's doing there, whispering in the Man's ear to keep him from stumbling. Maybe if the Democrats win a comfortable senate majority in the upcoming, they'll strike him from the records and leave him to languish on his own--no loyalty = no committee positions for the new Zell Miller.

Hey What?

Okay, this is a practice which I have well established for myself, but might well be unfamiliar with people who I know: I like to imbibe alcohol and then watch action movies. I think that, even given the fact that I am consuming alcohol alone and in isolation from others, the fact that I make a ritual of it with involvement in film, this helps to some extent. Sometimes a person has to consume chemical poisons. This is truth, it is fully legal, I am of age, etc., etc., and so on. I have partaken of alcohol and watched Die Hard, and found it good. The action is very well staged, and I respect the acting of Bruce Willis. My one concern is that Die Hard has locked him into a practice of action movie heroism which has obfuscated and even annihilated his comedic talents. I was far too young, at the time Die Hard was made, to be familiar with his comedic work, but it is my understanding that prior to Die Hard Willis was a sit-com actor. Die Hard did away with this. Bruce Willis cannot now be filmed, except as a killing machine.

(Also, it should be noted that at the precise moment I am writing this, I am listening to a false and manufactured Symphonic Metal album created in direct relation to a cartoon series on the Cartoon Network: The Dethalbum, as birthed by the nonexistent and fictional Metal Band Dethklok. I recommend it highly, as I do recommend the film Die Hard. Especially when one has been influenced by chemicals.

There was a time, when I was younger, when I believed that behavior-modifying chemicals were something bad. I had contempt for alcohol, and marijuana, and hallucinogens, and so forth. But in light of experience I must recognize that that the mind itself builds barriers between the emotional self and the conscious self, which can't be broken down, except with the assistance of chemicals. After all, it makes little sense for me to believe that things like lithium et al., can improve the mental perceptions of people by modifying them chemically, and then to disbelieve the efficacy of alcohol and THC, and so forth. Not to say that I have ever done anything illegal in my entire life. I never drank before I was 21, and I have merely observed the effects of illegal narcotics. Seriously. I am a paragon of lawfulness.)

But yes, by God, I have spent time today with my friends, seen how they were doing, and when they departed, drank distilled spirits with the express purpose of watching a ridiculous action movie and then blogging about it. I won't waste anybody's time by trying to describe the gyrations that John McClane puts himself through, in pursuit of Justice. He is a man governed by naught but his own physical powers and the rule of Nemesis, Ancient Greek goddess of retribution. Nemesis was the goddess of "to give what is due." I have been familiar with Greek myth for a long time, since I was a young lad in elementary school, in the system that the state of Iowa calls "Talented and Gifted" or "TAG". I built a diorama. Do not question it. I consider Nemesis the greatest of the pantheon, because where other gods and goddesses bring their own ideas and prejudices, Nemesis gives only what one has earned. This is the greatest justice; each man receives a reward or punishment appropriate to his crimes and virtues.

Thus there is something elemental about the Die Hard series, that exceeds the power of normal action movies. I think there is a part of the population which disregards this kind of film, because it is stupid, because it is not self-aware or reflective--it worships violence, force, and power, and is fundamentally against reason and is (at least it could so be characterized) fascist in sympathy. But it appeals to something in human nature that cannot be denied. John McClane is active, not passive, and he dispenses that final justice which cannot be obtained in real life. Though his world is naive, he represents an idea that will not be denied. Justice, in the form of his Beretta pistol, awaits those who believe themselves above justice.

Whoa Depressing

For one of my classes I read a German children's book called Pünktchen und Anton by Erich Kästner, which was published in 1933. It was a pretty cute book about a couple of kids living in Berlin at around that time, having kid adventures. Kästner is the guy who wrote the book on which Disney based "The Parent Trap", by the way.

I was just now writing a 3 page paper (in German, mind you--I have mad skills!) and I was thinking about it, and I realized that all kinds of totally horrible things probably happened to Pünktchen and Anton during their 20s... during WWII, I mean. Like, given his age, physical fitness, and like course of education, Anton would almost certainly serve in some military capacity, with a high likelihood of death or maiming. Pünktchen, living in Berlin, would have her own problems to worry about.

Aw man, the book is semi-ruined for me now.

William Kristol is a Fool and Mountebank

Right Wing Editorial Troll William Kristol wrote an opinion piece for today's NYT which caught my eye because it referenced my hero, George Orwell. A lot of people have a lot of admiration for Ol' George, often including the last people you'd expect, such as rightist pundits and power-worshippers like Kristol. True, Orwell had some positions that they would have liked (he didn't shirk from the use of force against tyranny, which would score him some Neo-Conservative credentials) but a huge load of ideas that they would have had very little time for (such as his socialism and his frank contempt for conservative political thought). I think he's a confusing person for them, because he was virulently anti-Soviet and highly critical of some socialists--i.e. sandal-wearing vegetarians and others he considered embarrassing to the movement--which is something they like, so they just mentally breeze past the fact that he made all those criticisms pursuant to strengthening the socialist movement in the hopes of putting an end to capitalism and people like Kristol.

Anyway, to the editorial. Kristol begins his argument from something Orwell wrote about Rudyard Kipling, which was that Kipling was in one light disgusting because he toadied to the ruling class and supported their positions, but from another angle was admirable, because serving the rulers imbues one with a more concrete sense of what is desirable and responsible in governing. Being a member of the permanent opposition erases one's responsibility for coming up with serious ideas, as one merely needs to oppose, not actually govern. Orwell's criticism was once again very specific to his own context; he is aiming this barb at the people in his own movement who were intellectually sympathetic to Socialism but too doctrinaire or too eccentric to do much.

Kristol says, "aha! I have discovered that the Democrats are the irresponsible party of opposition and the Republicans are the practical, serious-minded governing party!"

There are a few problems with applying this to the American political scene, as Kristol tries to do:
1) There isn't really a "ruling party" in American politics. In the American system, unlike Parliamentary systems like that in Britain, it is possible for one party to control the executive and another to control the legislature. In this case one can consider the party in control of the executive the "governing party" but in practice it isn't quite so. This has been a fairly common situation in American politics, prevailing through the substantial part of the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton administrations.

2) I wouldn't trust the Republican party to run a lemonade stand and neither should you. Suggesting that the Republican Party is somehow more "responsible" than the Democratic Party is specious. Both Reagan and G.W. Bush dramatically increased expenditures while reducing tax revenue, with the effect that this two administrations caused a hugely disproportionate share of the national debt. Moreover, the Bush administration has proven itself utterly irresponsible many times in the past seven years (e.g., our disastrous war of choice in Iraq, widespread appointment of incompetent cronies as in the Katrina disaster, forgetting about the war in Afghanistan, squandering all of our diplomatic capital, taking zero action on critical issues like infrastructure, alternative energy, and global warming, etc. etc.).

3) Support for the Iraq war != Responsibility. One of Kristol's main points in how the Democrats are irresponsible is that they have failed to adapt to a changing situation "on the ground" in Iraq. (As a rhetorical sidenote, I am amazed at all the things going on "on the ground" in Iraq. With all the suicide bombings, corner-turning, adapting to win, listening to the generals "on the ground", I wonder how they have any room at all. Maybe that's why all of their intellectuals are doing their best to flee the country--lack of space.) Implicit in this argument is that things actually have changed substantially enough to require a real reassessment of our aims... which it hasn't. Violence has been reduced overall due to the overwhelming presence after the "surge", but there's no sign of political rapprochement and no reason to believe that violence will not resume just as before the moment our troop levels drop. Moreover, less people getting blown up each day is only one measure of progress, and other key indices (like oil production, employment, electricity, potable water access, and so on) haven't really improved.

Finally, and painfully, the Iraq responsibility argument has to go back to basics. George W. Bush and his Republican party aggressively sold the American people and Congress on an invasion of a country which was no threat to the USA, using deception and fear-mongering to obscure their real reasons. While Kristol (who has always been a big support of the Iraq War) no doubt still feels that it was the height of responsibility to go into Iraq, 64% of Americans now feel otherwise and, to avoid suggestion of argumentum ad populum, basically it's indisputable that we originally went in to find WMDs and depose a dictator, and we have found that there were no WMDs and the removal of Saddam hasn't really improved things very much at all.

4) Support for Warrantless Wiretapping and Telecom Immunity != Responsibility. Kristol also suggests that House Democrats are irresponsible because they failed to pass Bush's wishlist of wiretapping and immunity for the Telecom industry and so endangered America. I'll make no bones about this one--this makes William Kristol him a lying asshole. America is not in any more danger now, because we have simply defaulted to the old rules on FISA, which offer more than adequate freedom to our intelligence agencies and allows them to just wiretap the shit out of anybody they want... as long as they get FISA court approval for tapping calls within the United States (always speedily granted, in point of fact). This is the real rub for Bush and crypto-Fascists like Kristol; they want to be tapping people without any oversight or review whatsoever. The standard FISA rules would pretty much allow them to tap the same lines just as quickly (a FISA warrant can be acquired after surveillance has already begun), but it would leave a paper trail and record of what is going on. This is good for the protection of our freedoms but bad for limitless executive power, so as far as Kristol (and Bush) is concerned it has to go.

The second element is telecom amnesty. This is a long story which I'll briefly summarize (more information on it can be found on the internet, naturally). The NSA and other intelligence agencies approached telecommunications firms like AT&T and Verizon and asked them to help the government engage in activities which both parties knew to be totally illegal and grounds for everybody to get in big goddamn trouble if the story came out. Some telecoms refused, but others (like Verizon and AT&T) smelled huge profits and agreed. Later, as should have been predictable, they all got caught and they are now in big goddamn trouble, of the kind that has multi-billion dollar class action lawsuits attached. The Telecoms have replied to this by salting away large amounts of money to congresspeople in the hopes of getting something rather unprecedented: retroactive immunity. This would mean that, even though the telecoms knowingly and intentionally broke the law, a later action of congress will decide that it doesn't matter and they get away with it (additionally meaning that they will have no motivation to assist further investigation of the lawbreaking they colluded in, meaning that their co-conspirators in the government will also effectively get away with it).

Now, some people (lying assholes, as I said before) have suggested that we need to give this unprecedented, colossal giveaway to the telecoms for any number of reasons. Like if we don't, there'll be a chilling effect and they'll refuse to help future, legal requests from government agencies (bzzt, wrong, telecoms are legally obligated to comply with requests from the government, as long as the attorney general has certified the legality of the request--they can't refuse).

So what I'm saying is that William Kristol is a dishonest neo-authoritarian apologist for the worst presidential administration in American history, and that far from "preserving" anything, the bill that the House rejected was explicitly designed to prevent telecoms from being punished for their indisputable wrongdoing and to prevent the American people from finding out about future government aggression against their privacy rights. How did this happen here, I wonder? I mean, the government and the telecoms get caught breaking the law, and the response is to change the law retroactively to make their activities not illegal, and prevent people from finding out about the next time they choose to go all Stasi on us? Is this really America?

As a note, I find that I like William Kristol as a NYT featured conservative columnist a lot more than David Brooks, because he has some manner of intellectual gravity and can write in the English language. It's hard to get a good head of steam up talking about David Brooks, first because his writing is intellectually impoverished and has no depth to examine, and second because I simply find his lack of facility with writing bewildering.

Fanboy

Today I saw "There Will be Blood" with some friends, and I have to say that I enjoyed the film a great deal, but on further examination of my reasons for liking the film, I have to question my response to it. It is effectively a tour de force from Daniel Day-Lewis. He comes on the screen, dominates each scene, casts a tall and dark shadow over the rest of the cast (which the manic efforts of Paul Dano just barely manage to keep up with), and generally wows the hell out of the audience. At my viewing the audience gasped in unison at DDL's performance.

I also respect the movie for its rejection of the traditional narrative structure. There is not really rising action to climax followed by a falling action to epilogue. The plot actually manages to resemble a human being's life, with a series of significant events, horror, victory, ignominy, and a lesson that can be accepted or rejected as one pleases. I would call it a very good movie.

However, I have to admit that a certain amount of my enjoyment of this film derived directly from my love for Daniel Day-Lewis. I have seen him in multiple movies and he is among the ranks of the performers who I always enjoy. Daniel Day-Lewis, Edward Norton, Christopher Walken, and Johnny Depp are all actors who I can watch no matter what role they are playing. I am a fanboy for these Hollywood personalities. I would probably watch any movie they made. Edward Norton recently made a film, "The Painted Vail," which was given poor reviews and called a vanity project. I will see this movie eventually, purely on the basis of his involvement in it. I saw "The Score", starring Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, and Edward Norton--purely on the basis of Norton's appearance. I couldn't have cared less about the two giants of cinema being present on the screen. He was all I came for.

Day-Lewis is the single actor whom I most respect for the force of performance and his craft. He is a powerhouse. The Tom Hanks vehicle "Castaway" struck me as an unforgivably stupid concept--much as I like Tom Hanks, my interest in two hours of nothing but him and a volleyball is slight. But I would watch three hours of nothing but Daniel Day-Lewis. Thinking on "The Gangs of New York" I realized that Scorsese had made something that was not actually a good film. The plot is a little contrived; I feel that it leads inexorably, rather than logically to the climax. Some of the key performances are stale (Cameron Diaz and DiCaprio are both miscast). But all of this is made up for, and more, by DDL as Bill the Butcher. He grabs both of your eyes every time he appears. His every movement dominates your attention. You can scarcely see anything but him.

So what does this say about me, with regard to films? I would like even a terrible movie on the basis of one my favorites appearing in it. This is provable by example--I greatly enjoy "The Rundown", a rather odious Dwayne Johnson vehicle which happens to feature Christopher Walken. So is "There Will be Blood" actually a good movie? Probably. I think it is. So does the Academy, but hell, what do they know about anything? These people gave Halle Berry an Oscar the year before she was the Bond Girl in one of the worst films in the series. They stole Denzel's Oscar for "Malcolm X" and gave it over to Al Pacino's scenery-chewing blind-man romp, and didn't make up the error for nine whole years. So you can't trust them.

As a side note, I am hotly anticipating the coming "Incredible Hulk" movie, featuring Edward Norton in the starring role with a screenplay credit to boot. I would eat any poison pill if it had the right kind of sugar on it!