Congress just looked into the fiscal responsibility (or lack thereof) of the United States Military. For those of you who don't know, the U.S. carries a big stick. According to the latest information I could get from Wikipedia, America spent 489.20 billion U.S. dollars on its military or better yet $489,200,000,000. The United Kingdom, number two in Nato, spent 38.4 billion U.S. dollars on its military. France came in at 29.5 billion U.S. dollars.
I don't mind my government taxing me. I don't even mind it being a little higher than it already is. I just like for people to use the same responsibility they'd use for themselves. For instance we wouldn't blindly spend $320,000 per laborer when we don't even know what they do. We wouldn't fork over five million dollars for special vehicle training when we don't even know what the company is doing period. The New York Times wrote all of this in their most recent article.
In short, I would like to know that the technocrats and bureaucrats are putting in an honest days work for an honest day's wages. The libertarians are all wet if they believe we need a smaller government, we need a more streamlined government. One where money is as intelligently used as if it were the person's own bank account.
Which leads me to my biggest problem. We aren't even that good at managing our money. According to spurious information from that oracle known as the internet, 80% of Americans are two missed paychecks away from disaster; and about 40% spend 110% of their paycheck. (For those of us who aren't math majors, I can assure you that 100% is an amount that you can get from a paycheck, and the extra 10% probably comes from fairy land or China.) I tend to look down on these people who spend so foolishly, until I look at my credit card bills and realize I am darn close to being one of them.
It is very humbling to realize that something like thriftiness, which you have prided yourself on, isn't necessarily the whole truth about yourself. How easy it is to live a blind life free of worry about who we are. In some ways I could justify my faults saying things like, "while I was in college and high school I couldn't buy all the stuff I wanted" or "I know I'll use this doohickey and it won't be on sale for very long."
It is funny how much we live a bifurcated life with a clear line of demarcation for God's plan for our lives and our plan for our lives. And it is amazing that such a lie as a private life apart from God, a room of our own as it were, was something that we would enjoy, let alone have at all.
So in the end, for me it is back to savings accounts, Roth IRAs, and not buying every electronic gizmo that is advertised. It is about not eating out so much, conserving my gasoline, and learning to be happy with what I have. I suppose that if I could do this, I would be a better individual not just financially, but holistically. Perhaps our technocrats could learn this lesson. But not from me, I'm still learning it.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Googling the Language of Hypocrisy
It is impossible for any organization or corporation or even an individual to make it to the top without some bit of tarnish being applied to his, her, or it's reputation. Google is no exception. In many ways they have been a paragon of virtue in an otherwise less than virtuous area, namely business. Google has done a great many things of which to be proud. They have been incredibly innovative what with the more efficient search engine, Google Maps, the open source Android mobile phone operating system, and the backing of cloud technology*. The motto of the company is: Don't be evil.
However, YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, has allowed Islamist videos to be posted on their web site. This has earned them the ire of Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He says it is "offensive." For it's part YouTube took down several of the worst videos, but kept others up stating that it "encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view."
What is freedom anyway? Webster's dictionary puts it this way: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action and Oxford says freedom is: the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Both are completely right, but who would want to live in a world like that? Absolute freedom is, as Hobbes would no doubt say, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." It is a very nasty world to say the least.
Yet, we don't talk about about freedom that way. Instead we use some sort of vague and undefined feeling to describe freedom. In this way freedom can be whatever we want it to be. Although human beings love order, we want to control that order and thus in rides the ill-defined freedom.
However, as George W. Forell points out in his commentary on the Augsburg Confession, "Many people believe that order is the mortal enemy of freedom, and that those who advocate freedom must of necessity oppose order of any kind." He goes on to state that we all live in order and find disorder (i.e. absolute freedom) appalling or dangerous. Using the example of a family he puts it this way. "Only if a family operates according to some generally observed rules are the individual members free to eat and sleep, to work and play. A totally chaotic family would mean that the children starve, the father loses his job, and the mother her mind. You have observed such families in operation, but they hardly strike you as examples of freedom."
The aspect of freedom that YouTube and Google are talking about is free speech. Free Speech is an amazing privilege and responsibility. It is not a right though. The U.S. Constitution doesn't list freedom of speech as a right per se. We have it as a right in so far as we use it responsibly. The examples of taking free speech too far in the areas of yelling fire in a crowded theater or libeling someone in a news article are freedoms of speech, but in an irresponsible manner.
Furthermore, we find that even this criteria is wanting. Words are powerful. In fact words are so powerful that the Bible describes Jesus, part of the triune God, as The Word. Philosophers talk about words all the time. Descartes said, "I think therefore I am." This fundamental knowledge is manifestly about words for he cannot even declare anything without them. Ludwig Wittgenstein puts it this way, "The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for."
Language and words are terribly important. In post modern society, however, there is a rebellion against what is known as the Numinous. (That is something that cannot be described but exists none the less.) There are reasons why we have abandoned the Numinous and there are excuses as well. (It would take far too long to enumerate them here and now.) However, it is a safe assumption that it was a very poor mistake. For the truly dangerous and powerful people in the world are those who don't understand the thoughts behind the words, but can manipulate the rules. The truly great men and women are those who approach language with fear and trembling.
The vast majority of us though don't have respect for what we have here. Language comforted America in a cemetery in Gettysburg. Language drove a country to soar to the moon. Language inspired a country at war with itself that it could believe in a dream that would allow us all to sing "in the words of the old Negro Spiritual: Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last!" Words lead to freedom, freedom does not lead to words.
I have also heard language misused and misshaped. It can cause pain between loved ones and rend nations apart. Language carries ideas, and ideas always have consequences. No word is unimportant. As Wittgenstein put it, "a new word is like a seed."
But, back to Google and YouTube. It is doubtful that the Islamists will get any recruits from showing pictures of downed U.S. planes and speeches in Arabic by it's so-called "leaders." It is also dubious whether or not it is transferring any information this way.
The thing that is certain is this, it serves no good purpose. What could possibly be the positive outcome of showing these images or allowing these images to be shown. The Islamists are seen as freedom fighters who are fighting against American Imperialism. We also fear the loss of loved ones fighting over there, but not because of rational and logical reasons, but simply because of fear itself. We allow vile and ludicrous ideas to enter into America and around the world. Freedom requires responsibility to lead people to make choices that are correct.
YouTube may advocate that a large town hall breeds a symphony, but we know what history has taught us. Disparate voices of hatred and bigotry lead to a cacophony that swallows up what is good and right and happy. Some ideas can be discussed, but we can all agree that the wanton killing of people who are trying to rebuilt a broken country (and yes a country that was broken by those people) is wrong. We can ask ourselves which is a better country, a country built of freedom tempered by order or a country built on order tempered by fear. We know we prefer a country where people are judged not by their race or family or tribe or religion but by the contents of their message is far superior to a country ruled by cliques and power grabs.
However, even ignoring these common pleas for decency, I charge Google with hypocrisy of the highest degree. As I have said, freedom must come with order. However, order without freedom is just as dangerous. Google has a completely different way of speaking to China. China has put blockers on certain Google searches. The average Chinese person cannot access the great documents of the founding fathers or indeed any other documents that pertain to Western Free Order. The powers and culture that allowed Google to exist are ignored and scrapped when it comes to Chinese dogma.
So Google is speaking out of both sides of its mouth. It gives lip service to "Freedom" while ignoring it in China. It talks of not being evil and yet allows those who do it day in and day out to broadcast what they have done. It is driven by the benefits of a free and yet orderly culture, but doesn't have the faintest clue of the history of the culture which gave birth to it. All things end up with a little dirt after the fall, but we are fools to think that wallowing in the mud will make us clean.
* These are web based applications that have their storage on a site outside of the computer. For instance, Google docs is a word processing application that runs off of a website and saves the information to that web site.
However, YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, has allowed Islamist videos to be posted on their web site. This has earned them the ire of Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He says it is "offensive." For it's part YouTube took down several of the worst videos, but kept others up stating that it "encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view."
What is freedom anyway? Webster's dictionary puts it this way: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action and Oxford says freedom is: the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Both are completely right, but who would want to live in a world like that? Absolute freedom is, as Hobbes would no doubt say, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." It is a very nasty world to say the least.
Yet, we don't talk about about freedom that way. Instead we use some sort of vague and undefined feeling to describe freedom. In this way freedom can be whatever we want it to be. Although human beings love order, we want to control that order and thus in rides the ill-defined freedom.
However, as George W. Forell points out in his commentary on the Augsburg Confession, "Many people believe that order is the mortal enemy of freedom, and that those who advocate freedom must of necessity oppose order of any kind." He goes on to state that we all live in order and find disorder (i.e. absolute freedom) appalling or dangerous. Using the example of a family he puts it this way. "Only if a family operates according to some generally observed rules are the individual members free to eat and sleep, to work and play. A totally chaotic family would mean that the children starve, the father loses his job, and the mother her mind. You have observed such families in operation, but they hardly strike you as examples of freedom."
The aspect of freedom that YouTube and Google are talking about is free speech. Free Speech is an amazing privilege and responsibility. It is not a right though. The U.S. Constitution doesn't list freedom of speech as a right per se. We have it as a right in so far as we use it responsibly. The examples of taking free speech too far in the areas of yelling fire in a crowded theater or libeling someone in a news article are freedoms of speech, but in an irresponsible manner.
Furthermore, we find that even this criteria is wanting. Words are powerful. In fact words are so powerful that the Bible describes Jesus, part of the triune God, as The Word. Philosophers talk about words all the time. Descartes said, "I think therefore I am." This fundamental knowledge is manifestly about words for he cannot even declare anything without them. Ludwig Wittgenstein puts it this way, "The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for."
Language and words are terribly important. In post modern society, however, there is a rebellion against what is known as the Numinous. (That is something that cannot be described but exists none the less.) There are reasons why we have abandoned the Numinous and there are excuses as well. (It would take far too long to enumerate them here and now.) However, it is a safe assumption that it was a very poor mistake. For the truly dangerous and powerful people in the world are those who don't understand the thoughts behind the words, but can manipulate the rules. The truly great men and women are those who approach language with fear and trembling.
The vast majority of us though don't have respect for what we have here. Language comforted America in a cemetery in Gettysburg. Language drove a country to soar to the moon. Language inspired a country at war with itself that it could believe in a dream that would allow us all to sing "in the words of the old Negro Spiritual: Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last!" Words lead to freedom, freedom does not lead to words.
I have also heard language misused and misshaped. It can cause pain between loved ones and rend nations apart. Language carries ideas, and ideas always have consequences. No word is unimportant. As Wittgenstein put it, "a new word is like a seed."
But, back to Google and YouTube. It is doubtful that the Islamists will get any recruits from showing pictures of downed U.S. planes and speeches in Arabic by it's so-called "leaders." It is also dubious whether or not it is transferring any information this way.
The thing that is certain is this, it serves no good purpose. What could possibly be the positive outcome of showing these images or allowing these images to be shown. The Islamists are seen as freedom fighters who are fighting against American Imperialism. We also fear the loss of loved ones fighting over there, but not because of rational and logical reasons, but simply because of fear itself. We allow vile and ludicrous ideas to enter into America and around the world. Freedom requires responsibility to lead people to make choices that are correct.
YouTube may advocate that a large town hall breeds a symphony, but we know what history has taught us. Disparate voices of hatred and bigotry lead to a cacophony that swallows up what is good and right and happy. Some ideas can be discussed, but we can all agree that the wanton killing of people who are trying to rebuilt a broken country (and yes a country that was broken by those people) is wrong. We can ask ourselves which is a better country, a country built of freedom tempered by order or a country built on order tempered by fear. We know we prefer a country where people are judged not by their race or family or tribe or religion but by the contents of their message is far superior to a country ruled by cliques and power grabs.
However, even ignoring these common pleas for decency, I charge Google with hypocrisy of the highest degree. As I have said, freedom must come with order. However, order without freedom is just as dangerous. Google has a completely different way of speaking to China. China has put blockers on certain Google searches. The average Chinese person cannot access the great documents of the founding fathers or indeed any other documents that pertain to Western Free Order. The powers and culture that allowed Google to exist are ignored and scrapped when it comes to Chinese dogma.
So Google is speaking out of both sides of its mouth. It gives lip service to "Freedom" while ignoring it in China. It talks of not being evil and yet allows those who do it day in and day out to broadcast what they have done. It is driven by the benefits of a free and yet orderly culture, but doesn't have the faintest clue of the history of the culture which gave birth to it. All things end up with a little dirt after the fall, but we are fools to think that wallowing in the mud will make us clean.
* These are web based applications that have their storage on a site outside of the computer. For instance, Google docs is a word processing application that runs off of a website and saves the information to that web site.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Dismantling the Party for a Victory
Today, I had a revelation. Hillary Clinton wants to go to the primaries. I tried desperately to figure out why this would be. I mean honestly, she cannot win. It would take a miracle and a super strong swing from her party to actually accomplish this goal. Mr. Obama has the nomination in hand. So why go all the way? It will only hurt her because the Democrats would blame any loss in November on her.
That is when it dawned on me. Democrats are Americans, and Americans have notoriously short memories. Indeed much like goldfish. Okay, here's what will happen. Clinton will face off against Obama. She is going to push him further and further into the left. She will do this by painting him as a lefty and also trying to "out-left" him. Like a game of chicken, both are going to be hurtling and hurtling closer to a precipice of left-ism.* The reason for this is that both candidates need to have the approval of their party's base. Left by himself several months ago Mr. Obama could've gotten both the base and the vast American moderates handily. It is now up in the air. Mr. Obama will have to swerve, after Ms. Clinton's inevitable exit, back towards moderatism in order to win the general election.
It is hard to know if this will be possible since Clinton has wrapped herself in a mantle of populism. (And not the good kind from the turn of the century, the one that panders to the average person whispering honeyed words into his or her ear.) She has deprived Mr. Obama of a very crucial group of people especially, namely, the Reagan Democrats. She has divided the party between what she erroneously portrays as his Harvard snobbery and her down-home charm. It is really sickening. It is like how Alexander Hamilton was portrayed as an elitist and Thomas Jefferson as a man of the people. When in reality Mr. Hamilton was a person who tried to elevate his fellow countrymen, just as he had elevated himself from poverty and obscurity; while Jefferson rested upon, not his laurels, but the laurels of greater people in his feudal estate of Monticello.
Mr. Obama has worked with the poor in intercity Chicago; while Hillary has been married to a president. If we were a developing South American quasi-dictatorship, than I would say this is to be expected, but unfortunately we are the greatest nation in the world with the richest history of democracy.
So what, she can't win the nomination. Obama will go into the election without the support that we would expect the Democrats to have. And that is where Clinton has laid the trap. It is a win-win for her. If Obama wins in November, then all is well. The Democratic party will completely ignore what happened all through the summer. No big deal. However, if Obama loses, then she will be able to say "I told you so" to all her doubters and to the Democratic party. She is creating a myth (just as she has about all her victories this primary season). She will then be able to be a stronger candidate the next time around.
This is possible because the Democratic leadership is extraordinarily weak. (Just look at how the super-delegates haven't backed candidates en mass. Even as things look inevitable, they do not dare risk looking like failures.) It is also a weak confederation rather than a strong coalition like the Republican party.
In four years' time, if Obama doesn't win the election, Clinton will create a myth that the Democrats lost their way and backed Obama when they should've backed the heir apparent, namely, Hillary R. Clinton. And that is what this is all about for Ms. Clinton: entitlement. Her precious nomination was challenged by another person. So, she cried in New Hampshire because it was all slipping away from her. And the women thought she was crying because the "big bad men" had ganged up on her. So she ran with it, pushing forward on the worse parts of human nature: victimhood, solidarity with a group, and a touch of racism.
So with Mr. McCain gobbling up the independents and even Reagan Democrats, Mr. Obama is fighting a two-front war. On top of that he is having to placate his own party, a job he should not have to do at all. He has to babysit the Democratic elite and keep the far left happy, while Clinton carves out his voting blocs and delivers the nomination to McCain, knowing that he will not be strong enough in four more years. Then she will have neutralized threats like the upstart Obama and the Republican party. After this, she will cobble together a coalition through empty promises and half-truths and dub it "the third way."
I am not a conspiratorial person, but I know what I have seen from Mr. Clinton. I know she is of the same ilk. I also know her promises are not legit. I know her half truths and lies to get her out of trouble. Revelations, however, are usually not some fitful dream, but based on facts and past observations.
* Do not assume that because I talk about "left-ism" or absolute "left-ism" I do not have certain left leaning feelings. I am for a lot of the policies on the left. However, they are trying to be cartoon versions of their party and not real live human beings. That is what the Clintons always have been though.
That is when it dawned on me. Democrats are Americans, and Americans have notoriously short memories. Indeed much like goldfish. Okay, here's what will happen. Clinton will face off against Obama. She is going to push him further and further into the left. She will do this by painting him as a lefty and also trying to "out-left" him. Like a game of chicken, both are going to be hurtling and hurtling closer to a precipice of left-ism.* The reason for this is that both candidates need to have the approval of their party's base. Left by himself several months ago Mr. Obama could've gotten both the base and the vast American moderates handily. It is now up in the air. Mr. Obama will have to swerve, after Ms. Clinton's inevitable exit, back towards moderatism in order to win the general election.
It is hard to know if this will be possible since Clinton has wrapped herself in a mantle of populism. (And not the good kind from the turn of the century, the one that panders to the average person whispering honeyed words into his or her ear.) She has deprived Mr. Obama of a very crucial group of people especially, namely, the Reagan Democrats. She has divided the party between what she erroneously portrays as his Harvard snobbery and her down-home charm. It is really sickening. It is like how Alexander Hamilton was portrayed as an elitist and Thomas Jefferson as a man of the people. When in reality Mr. Hamilton was a person who tried to elevate his fellow countrymen, just as he had elevated himself from poverty and obscurity; while Jefferson rested upon, not his laurels, but the laurels of greater people in his feudal estate of Monticello.
Mr. Obama has worked with the poor in intercity Chicago; while Hillary has been married to a president. If we were a developing South American quasi-dictatorship, than I would say this is to be expected, but unfortunately we are the greatest nation in the world with the richest history of democracy.
So what, she can't win the nomination. Obama will go into the election without the support that we would expect the Democrats to have. And that is where Clinton has laid the trap. It is a win-win for her. If Obama wins in November, then all is well. The Democratic party will completely ignore what happened all through the summer. No big deal. However, if Obama loses, then she will be able to say "I told you so" to all her doubters and to the Democratic party. She is creating a myth (just as she has about all her victories this primary season). She will then be able to be a stronger candidate the next time around.
This is possible because the Democratic leadership is extraordinarily weak. (Just look at how the super-delegates haven't backed candidates en mass. Even as things look inevitable, they do not dare risk looking like failures.) It is also a weak confederation rather than a strong coalition like the Republican party.
In four years' time, if Obama doesn't win the election, Clinton will create a myth that the Democrats lost their way and backed Obama when they should've backed the heir apparent, namely, Hillary R. Clinton. And that is what this is all about for Ms. Clinton: entitlement. Her precious nomination was challenged by another person. So, she cried in New Hampshire because it was all slipping away from her. And the women thought she was crying because the "big bad men" had ganged up on her. So she ran with it, pushing forward on the worse parts of human nature: victimhood, solidarity with a group, and a touch of racism.
So with Mr. McCain gobbling up the independents and even Reagan Democrats, Mr. Obama is fighting a two-front war. On top of that he is having to placate his own party, a job he should not have to do at all. He has to babysit the Democratic elite and keep the far left happy, while Clinton carves out his voting blocs and delivers the nomination to McCain, knowing that he will not be strong enough in four more years. Then she will have neutralized threats like the upstart Obama and the Republican party. After this, she will cobble together a coalition through empty promises and half-truths and dub it "the third way."
I am not a conspiratorial person, but I know what I have seen from Mr. Clinton. I know she is of the same ilk. I also know her promises are not legit. I know her half truths and lies to get her out of trouble. Revelations, however, are usually not some fitful dream, but based on facts and past observations.
* Do not assume that because I talk about "left-ism" or absolute "left-ism" I do not have certain left leaning feelings. I am for a lot of the policies on the left. However, they are trying to be cartoon versions of their party and not real live human beings. That is what the Clintons always have been though.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
A Review of the Movie "Crash".
Disclaimer: I am tired and may not have written too coherently.
I have not been having too much luck with movies this year. I tried to watch "300" and turned it off after the rather risqué scene in the Persian Headquarters. Tonight I attempted to watch "Crash." For those of you who don't know, "Crash" was the Oscar winner of a few years back. I remember there was big stink because everyone thought it would be "Brokeback Mountain," but it was "Crash" which is just as awful I can assume.*
The forty minutes I saw of "Crash" (and I know it was forty minutes because watching my DVD player's numbers tick up was more enjoyable than the movie on the screen) were filled with the un-artful dialogue I had grown accustomed to hearing while I was working as a ramp agent for the airlines. The main difference was that there was more cohesion in the sentence structure of people who had never graduated from college than there was in this script from allegedly educated people.
Anyway, ignoring dialogue (the apparently lost art of screenwriting), "Crash" follows the exploits of a city of angry stupid people. They say angry stupid things, get into angry stupid fights, and in the end it is a dystopian "Pay It Forward." The problem with many such dystopian ideas is that they can have very flat characters in the face of such an horrendous monolithic evil. It can sometimes work. But, it especially won't work if you take dystopian characters and put them in the middle of a freakin' character driven movie. That is just asking for trouble.
The movie was also filled with the characters that Hollywood considers avant-garde, but the rest of the United States calls cliché. You have the racist little trophy wife, the African American thugs, the racist cops, the good black man, and a myriad of other characters who are defined by the color of their skin first and their character second. I understand that Paul Haggis was attempting to show us how racism exists in all of us and we must something something something. You know how if you hear something enough times, it becomes just background noise. Yeah, that is "Crash" for you.
We hear the same shrill pseudo-psychology that passes for great insight in Tinsel Town. Nothing changes here in America, no one learns anything, and we all go home and feel better about ourselves for watching a movie about racism. (Guilt atoned by a few dollars at the movie store.)
It is a movie of the typical formulaic anger put forth as genius by Hollywood. Many movies in Hollywood work of a perverse interpretation of postmodern existentialism (trust me I have studied real postmodern existentialism for my major in philosophy). Here is how it goes, your subconscious is your real self. Your desires and appetites are what make you who you are, and your poor little beaten up rational self is just cleaning up after it all day long.
This of course is what Hollywood wants you to believe so that you will do things based on emotion (i.e. buy stuff you don't need). However, if we have learned anything from history people rise above their surroundings usually because of rationally pursuing an intellectual course of action. The lies we tell others are many times more real than the person we are. We just don't tell lies to fit in or not to be thought bigots. Many good people tell lies because they know the lie they are telling is more true than what they believe. They want to believe in what they do not believe because they know it is true.
We all have bad experiences with certain groups. A man may have a bad relationship with a woman. A person of one religious persuasion may have have a bad incident with another. Perhaps we have dealt with one person from a certain race that didn't treat us well. It doesn't matter. We have to keep certain things secret and we have to believe what is beyond our own experience, because we believe that there are deeper truths than our own experience leads us to believe. And human beings are not strong enough to believe right off the bat, but rather have to believe things that they don't understand by themselves. In other words, people have to fake 'til they make it.
Hollywood has a nasty habit of being self-congradulatory. It talks about how it has been edgy and forward thinking, but it can do this because it is also the industry that controls the information of its own history.
Watching this movie reminded me of a quote my parents are fond of repeating, "There is nothing worse than a stupid mean person." If that is true, than perhaps the only possible thing worse than that, is a movie of a bunch of stupid mean people.
* I should say that I never saw Brokeback Mountain. It just didn't appeal to me to watch it.
I have not been having too much luck with movies this year. I tried to watch "300" and turned it off after the rather risqué scene in the Persian Headquarters. Tonight I attempted to watch "Crash." For those of you who don't know, "Crash" was the Oscar winner of a few years back. I remember there was big stink because everyone thought it would be "Brokeback Mountain," but it was "Crash" which is just as awful I can assume.*
The forty minutes I saw of "Crash" (and I know it was forty minutes because watching my DVD player's numbers tick up was more enjoyable than the movie on the screen) were filled with the un-artful dialogue I had grown accustomed to hearing while I was working as a ramp agent for the airlines. The main difference was that there was more cohesion in the sentence structure of people who had never graduated from college than there was in this script from allegedly educated people.
Anyway, ignoring dialogue (the apparently lost art of screenwriting), "Crash" follows the exploits of a city of angry stupid people. They say angry stupid things, get into angry stupid fights, and in the end it is a dystopian "Pay It Forward." The problem with many such dystopian ideas is that they can have very flat characters in the face of such an horrendous monolithic evil. It can sometimes work. But, it especially won't work if you take dystopian characters and put them in the middle of a freakin' character driven movie. That is just asking for trouble.
The movie was also filled with the characters that Hollywood considers avant-garde, but the rest of the United States calls cliché. You have the racist little trophy wife, the African American thugs, the racist cops, the good black man, and a myriad of other characters who are defined by the color of their skin first and their character second. I understand that Paul Haggis was attempting to show us how racism exists in all of us and we must something something something. You know how if you hear something enough times, it becomes just background noise. Yeah, that is "Crash" for you.
We hear the same shrill pseudo-psychology that passes for great insight in Tinsel Town. Nothing changes here in America, no one learns anything, and we all go home and feel better about ourselves for watching a movie about racism. (Guilt atoned by a few dollars at the movie store.)
It is a movie of the typical formulaic anger put forth as genius by Hollywood. Many movies in Hollywood work of a perverse interpretation of postmodern existentialism (trust me I have studied real postmodern existentialism for my major in philosophy). Here is how it goes, your subconscious is your real self. Your desires and appetites are what make you who you are, and your poor little beaten up rational self is just cleaning up after it all day long.
This of course is what Hollywood wants you to believe so that you will do things based on emotion (i.e. buy stuff you don't need). However, if we have learned anything from history people rise above their surroundings usually because of rationally pursuing an intellectual course of action. The lies we tell others are many times more real than the person we are. We just don't tell lies to fit in or not to be thought bigots. Many good people tell lies because they know the lie they are telling is more true than what they believe. They want to believe in what they do not believe because they know it is true.
We all have bad experiences with certain groups. A man may have a bad relationship with a woman. A person of one religious persuasion may have have a bad incident with another. Perhaps we have dealt with one person from a certain race that didn't treat us well. It doesn't matter. We have to keep certain things secret and we have to believe what is beyond our own experience, because we believe that there are deeper truths than our own experience leads us to believe. And human beings are not strong enough to believe right off the bat, but rather have to believe things that they don't understand by themselves. In other words, people have to fake 'til they make it.
Hollywood has a nasty habit of being self-congradulatory. It talks about how it has been edgy and forward thinking, but it can do this because it is also the industry that controls the information of its own history.
Watching this movie reminded me of a quote my parents are fond of repeating, "There is nothing worse than a stupid mean person." If that is true, than perhaps the only possible thing worse than that, is a movie of a bunch of stupid mean people.
* I should say that I never saw Brokeback Mountain. It just didn't appeal to me to watch it.
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