[Disclaimer: A friend approached me and reminded me that many of my generation were dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. While I believe the war in Iraq is an inexcusable quagmire and that some people have discredited our military by their conduct over there; I have been more than impressed by the zeal shown by those fighting for a democracy and working to rebuild a very broken country. I believe the lion's share of soldiers are good and honorable people who more than anything believe in the ideas behind this country. They are the good thing about this war and one of the few glimmers of hope to be found in such a regrettable mess. It is because of them that this war has not been a complete loss and they have proven that victory can sometimes be seen even in the darkness of defeat. I hope that their example will be the starting point for a deeper understanding of what once was great about this nation and could be great yet again.]
"So, why do people fight anyway? Perhaps the meaning of human existence lies within their will to fight. People feel a sense of accomplishment through battle. And its also a fact that the ones actually fighting are never perceived as being tainted."
- Katsuyuki Sumizawa
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Translation: Who watches the watchmen?
- Juvenal
In Plato's Republic, Socrates is asked who should lead his shining new Republic. Socrates answers that the Republic should be led by philosopher kings whose rule is enforced by soldiers to ensure that the people live happy, prosperous, and orderly lives. The philosopher kings are the men of gold. The soldiers are the men of silver, and the average people are the men of bronze.
First off, as a philosopher myself I can assure that nothing would be worse for a country than to be led by philosophers. When we are not lost in thought and undecided on an issue, we are ideologues arguing the most curious things with a frightful zeal. I suppose that it would be best to have people of wisdom and moral courage ruling, but this is a given for what all societies truly want deep in their heart of hearts. America is a country ruled where the leaders are chosen by the people and there is a strong blend of all these classes. The people try to elect those who will be the wisest.
However, what are we to do with the soldiers? In our current society we seem to have a perverse view of the military. We civilians lust for the destruction of enemies and see them as nothing more than objects. We have objectified the enemy so much that now we can no longer talk to them, but rather we look at them as obstacles in our way to victory.
The great shame is that we view our soldiers in such an horrible way as well. They are the flip side of this. Trained to be weapons, they must be stripped of pity for the people against whom they fight. When a war is just, this is a sad sacrifice to ask anyone to make. When a war is unjust, it is damnable act by those who lead. In essence, war is state sanctioned murder. Murder is wrong, accept when worse things can arise from it's going unpunished. Even the just wars (World War II or the reprisal to attacks from Afghanistan) leave us with the ultimate horror of asking young men and women to commit murder so as to protect others.
The shabby treatment of soldiers in this country is inexcusable. Our country has failed our military in three very large ways. First, we have allowed war profiteers to gain large sums of money for doing virtually nothing. Secondly, we have not worked hard enough to promote peace throughout the world so as to end the threat of war. Third, and most shamefully, we have cried crocodile tears and talked a great deal about the sacrifice of veterans; while turning a blind eye to what we can really do to show our gratitude.
If we really mean to look out for our citizens who are willing to fight for us, we should make sure that they are best equipped for wars which we pray will never happen. We don't do this though. And when they return, they are never thanked by people who see them in uniform.
Instead we are fortunate enough to turn them into objects. (Perhaps living in this age of materialism has made everything and everyone an object.) However, a soldier is viewed to be a tool of war like a tank or a plane. They are the "smart chip" in the machines or infantry; and not an human being. That is how we get to sleep at night. That is how we are able to deal with all those parts of the statistic. The people dying in wars are nothing more to us than the scrap metal of an incinerated humvee or apache helicopter or any other war machine. God help us when enemy and protector are nothing more than a tally for how a war is progressing.
So what is a soldier's duty. A soldier is a person who must only be called upon when the country is in its darkest hour. They must prepare for a job that they should never ever have to perform; while in the meantime working to prevent the ultimate horror from occurring. They should be asked, as they have so often in the past, to built the infrastructure of this country and the rest of the world. They should trade in their precious time for the promise of this country to give them a solid education. They should receive loyalty from those who lead them and are protected by them (namely the United States people and its government).
It is a testament to how fortunate we are, that we have never seriously contemplated a military coup. It seems the most ludicrous notion in the world that the military would overthrow our government, and yet most of the world is used to this kind of behavior.* When one really thinks about this, one is amazed with the loyalty that is found in those who serve; and dismayed by the lack of loyalty found in the body public with regards to its military.
Let me be honest. I am not a jingoist who believes in the unsullied purity of the American soldier; but I am a realist who knows that as long as there are evil people willing to perpetrate evil wars, it is best that we have a strong protection against them. Those who fight for what is good deserve to be encouraged for and in their endeavors. They are fulfilling a dangerous job and it is up to us assist them as best we can.
*This of course was another precedent set by the first president. When military officials were preparing to establish General Washington as the military dictator of America; he cooly stared them down and we have been without such a threat ever since.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Notes upon the first few minutes of a movie I turned off.
No one needs to tell history majors of the inanity of war or its tremendous influence on human affairs. We know. We've studied them. Most wars are shallow, pointless, and stupid. People justify them then and later generations will justify them. In my opinion World War I, the Spanish American War, the War in Vietnam, and a myriad of other wars did nothing but spill a lot of human blood in the name of high ideals while in reality it was mere blood-letting of some anger and hostility. War is usually pointless and it is a rare and very fine leader who can keep the general banality of human nature from indulging in a base desire on par with denying poor food or the helpless assistance.
That being said, sometimes war is necessary. It is a nasty and abysmal thing, but still a necessary evil. It is not my desire to here-in discuss when war is justified and when it is not. Rather, I wish to discuss something I recently watched.
I had heard good things about Flags of Our Fathers. I had really wanted to see it when it was released. I had thought the movie would be a good study on guilt as one group goes home at the price of others who really did the deed. I will not by any means discredit Mr. Eastwood's ability as a director. I will lay siege to this movie.
Flags of Our Fathers, or atleast the bit I saw, is a jumbled mess. It starts in the dreams of an old man, and yo-yos between past and present to a degree that hardly lets one have grasp of anything. In fact that would be the main point of the movie. One feels as if nothing is real. There is no right and no wrong. The soldiers fight and die on the beach for nothing. The heads of state want to win a war just to win a war. There were no concentration camps, there were no brutal Japanese, there were no real points to this war. It was just some foolish old men sending men to die needlessly.
My generation applauds this kind of talk. It is not because of some noble enlightenment about the nature of war and its cost. (To believe that is such damned nonsense if you just look at the practical lust we have about mutilations and cruelty in our films.) Rather it is that my generation wishes to see itself as the best generation. We would rather tear down the edifices of our grandparents so we did not have to look at them. We have accomplished nothing in our lifetime except the acceleration of the destruction of the environment, the continuation of the banality of our culture, and the destabilization of world order. That is just to name a few things. When did my generation sacrifice? When did my generation give? When did my generation really practice costly grace?
It doesn't matter though because revisionist historians tell us that our grandparents were just as banal as we were. This war they fought in the forties didn't really mean anything. You see they were either saps or scoundrels. The former believed all that nonsense about ridding the world of tyranny and the latter was just in it for all they could get.
I cannot respond to such a world-view because it falls so far out beyond the pale of reality as to be considered in the realm of Lewis Carroll. We have seen the Japanese catching babies upon bayonets and holding our soldiers in zoos or working them to beyond the point of death. We know of Germans leading people to incinerators or perpetrating horrible "experiments" upon them. We had tried to appease these monsters and they forced us to have to launch a crusade upon the darkness. If there had been another way, we would have done it; but there was no other way except brute force.
Were there evils on our side? Of course there were. The internment of American citizens who happened to be of Japanese origins is a deep blemish on our country's honor. Our treatment of African American service men was bad enough, even without the stark contrast with the German soldiers we sent back to be "prisoners" in the South. That is what makes America such a unique country. We freely admit where our mistakes were. However, it also invites countries with less developed senses of "guilt" and notions of "atonement" to label us as just as vile.
But let us Americans be perfectly honest. We live in the greatest country in the world and we are inheritors of an honorable legacy. It is a legacy of ideas and ideals. A country were imperfections were written down right beside achievements; and this is where I find fault with Flags of Our Fathers.
It is a film glorifying nihilism. Nobody really believed anything. The soldiers really didn't believe in the war. They didn't believe in right and wrong in essence. They were just along for the ride history was giving them. Do me a favor, talk to a veteran from that war and ask them if that is what they really believed. Perhaps you could read some history and find the truth of the matter.
This was a war that had to be fought. It was a war that could have no appeasement save total victory by the allies. There would be other wars where the two sides could compromise, but this was a war between absolute good being represented by flawed human beings and absolute evil being represented by flawed human beings. This film would be wise to take heed of such truths and not trade the heritage of a nation for a cheap forgiveness of my current pathetic generation.
That being said, sometimes war is necessary. It is a nasty and abysmal thing, but still a necessary evil. It is not my desire to here-in discuss when war is justified and when it is not. Rather, I wish to discuss something I recently watched.
I had heard good things about Flags of Our Fathers. I had really wanted to see it when it was released. I had thought the movie would be a good study on guilt as one group goes home at the price of others who really did the deed. I will not by any means discredit Mr. Eastwood's ability as a director. I will lay siege to this movie.
Flags of Our Fathers, or atleast the bit I saw, is a jumbled mess. It starts in the dreams of an old man, and yo-yos between past and present to a degree that hardly lets one have grasp of anything. In fact that would be the main point of the movie. One feels as if nothing is real. There is no right and no wrong. The soldiers fight and die on the beach for nothing. The heads of state want to win a war just to win a war. There were no concentration camps, there were no brutal Japanese, there were no real points to this war. It was just some foolish old men sending men to die needlessly.
My generation applauds this kind of talk. It is not because of some noble enlightenment about the nature of war and its cost. (To believe that is such damned nonsense if you just look at the practical lust we have about mutilations and cruelty in our films.) Rather it is that my generation wishes to see itself as the best generation. We would rather tear down the edifices of our grandparents so we did not have to look at them. We have accomplished nothing in our lifetime except the acceleration of the destruction of the environment, the continuation of the banality of our culture, and the destabilization of world order. That is just to name a few things. When did my generation sacrifice? When did my generation give? When did my generation really practice costly grace?
It doesn't matter though because revisionist historians tell us that our grandparents were just as banal as we were. This war they fought in the forties didn't really mean anything. You see they were either saps or scoundrels. The former believed all that nonsense about ridding the world of tyranny and the latter was just in it for all they could get.
I cannot respond to such a world-view because it falls so far out beyond the pale of reality as to be considered in the realm of Lewis Carroll. We have seen the Japanese catching babies upon bayonets and holding our soldiers in zoos or working them to beyond the point of death. We know of Germans leading people to incinerators or perpetrating horrible "experiments" upon them. We had tried to appease these monsters and they forced us to have to launch a crusade upon the darkness. If there had been another way, we would have done it; but there was no other way except brute force.
Were there evils on our side? Of course there were. The internment of American citizens who happened to be of Japanese origins is a deep blemish on our country's honor. Our treatment of African American service men was bad enough, even without the stark contrast with the German soldiers we sent back to be "prisoners" in the South. That is what makes America such a unique country. We freely admit where our mistakes were. However, it also invites countries with less developed senses of "guilt" and notions of "atonement" to label us as just as vile.
But let us Americans be perfectly honest. We live in the greatest country in the world and we are inheritors of an honorable legacy. It is a legacy of ideas and ideals. A country were imperfections were written down right beside achievements; and this is where I find fault with Flags of Our Fathers.
It is a film glorifying nihilism. Nobody really believed anything. The soldiers really didn't believe in the war. They didn't believe in right and wrong in essence. They were just along for the ride history was giving them. Do me a favor, talk to a veteran from that war and ask them if that is what they really believed. Perhaps you could read some history and find the truth of the matter.
This was a war that had to be fought. It was a war that could have no appeasement save total victory by the allies. There would be other wars where the two sides could compromise, but this was a war between absolute good being represented by flawed human beings and absolute evil being represented by flawed human beings. This film would be wise to take heed of such truths and not trade the heritage of a nation for a cheap forgiveness of my current pathetic generation.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Clinton’s Magical Fairyland of Doom
I wasn't going to write this blog. I was going to calmly let all this pass, but given the fact that I have no women who regularly read my blog, I guess I am safe to say what I am about to say. I am rather disheartened by the support that some women are giving Hillary Clinton, despite her clear self-centered nature.
Men do a lot of stupid stuff, that is true. We can get very enamored with large televisions and the newest gadgetry. We have been known to continue down roads without asking for directions. The stereotypical male is pretty awful.
Fortunately we don't live in the land of stereotypes. The world isn't written by a cosmic sit-com author, based on ingrained biases handed down in some dusty book.* We live a life filled with lots of people who do things outside of what they are supposed to be doing. We have democrats who are gun activists. We have Republicans who are working feverishly to save the environment. I have known responsible corporate leaders, honest politicians, and one or two math majors who didn't bore me to tears.
Women have a lot of stereotypes too. Turn on the television and see if you can find them. There is the "angel of the household" stereotype where mom has to look after everyone in the family. (Dad is relegated to the biggest child status.) We have the double standard motif where a guy is allowed to be promiscuous, but not a girl. (It still exists.)
To be honest, the stereotypes women have are probably a lot more intrusive than the one's that men feel. Men are regarded as uncouth idiots, but it really doesn't effect our jobs or our leisure. Women have had a tradition of really having to work hard to get where they are. The generations of suffragettes and female workers who tirelessly fought to gain equality under the law of nations and law of economics is truly a triumph for all of humanity. It does not belong to females alone, but to all people.
That is why it sickens me to see a snake-oil salesmen come in and usurp history.** I would vote for a myriad of other women before I would vote for Ms. Clinton and the women of this nation should too. She is not a populist and she doesn't care about the needs of women. And even if she did care about these things, it would not qualify her one bit to be president of the United States of America. Pandering to the public with a platform of bread and circuses is neither helpful or safe; and unless I missed my guess the president is supposed to be the president of all Americans, not just people of his or her own cliche.
It is also disgraceful the way Clinton has insinuated, and her followers have out and out said, that Barack Obama is ahead because he is a man. (He won, but you will never hear a Clintonite or Clintonian or whatever they are say he's won.) That is the most utter nonsense I have ever heard in my life. If that was the case, the democrats wouldn't allow a black man to be the nominee either. They would've picked someone smarmy like Jon Edwards or someone crazy like Denis Kucinich because they are white. The democrats had a lot of white guys to choose from this year. If it comes to elections being about picking people like us, the democrats decided to be a little on the brave side. (It is a pity that they weren't more brave in actually backing their nominee.)
For all her faults and flaws, Ms. Clinton seems to have served her constituency quite admirably. I suppose she will be a fine legislator. Her problem is that she doesn't want to be a legislator, but rather she wants to have power. She has lied about her credentials, her record, and her rival. I suppose if they had been very good lies, she might make a decent president, but the lies haven't even been that good.
The thrust of my blog post is this, stereotypes are fine as rubric. They help create a sort of order to our lives and allow us to organize things, but when we ignore facts in order to adhere to our stereotypes than we are living in a fantasy world and a dangerous one at that. Ms. Clinton is doing just this. She is reinforcing the stereotypes that men are evil and out to get her, you cannot trust Mr. Obama because of his race, and that the people of money only got that way by screwing everyone else out of their money. Such broad stereotypes are not believed by the Clintons, but they are used to manipulate those who WANT to believe in these nefarious cabals. It would be wise of Clinton supporters to trade in what they want to believe for what they need to believe.
* We must ban together and find the actual stereotypical sit-com book. My bet is that it is in the L.A. public library and has its own private group of librarians who take calls from stymied second-rate authors about how to get a character in and out of trouble. "Oh, he's a man," one declares, "have you had him burn down the house while trying to cook dinner?" Another says, "well, she is a blonde and we all know that means she's a ditz, so have her mispronounce some words and do a few cheers." When we find this book we must destroy it. We will have to go without television for a few weeks, but it will be worth it. Then again, the stupider parts of society will probably not know how to behave without the "sit-com reference"
** I am not going to write "herstory" because history and his are based off of two different linguistic branches. "His" is an old english word and "history" is from Latin, no doubt brought over by the Norman French. So once again, blame the French.
Men do a lot of stupid stuff, that is true. We can get very enamored with large televisions and the newest gadgetry. We have been known to continue down roads without asking for directions. The stereotypical male is pretty awful.
Fortunately we don't live in the land of stereotypes. The world isn't written by a cosmic sit-com author, based on ingrained biases handed down in some dusty book.* We live a life filled with lots of people who do things outside of what they are supposed to be doing. We have democrats who are gun activists. We have Republicans who are working feverishly to save the environment. I have known responsible corporate leaders, honest politicians, and one or two math majors who didn't bore me to tears.
Women have a lot of stereotypes too. Turn on the television and see if you can find them. There is the "angel of the household" stereotype where mom has to look after everyone in the family. (Dad is relegated to the biggest child status.) We have the double standard motif where a guy is allowed to be promiscuous, but not a girl. (It still exists.)
To be honest, the stereotypes women have are probably a lot more intrusive than the one's that men feel. Men are regarded as uncouth idiots, but it really doesn't effect our jobs or our leisure. Women have had a tradition of really having to work hard to get where they are. The generations of suffragettes and female workers who tirelessly fought to gain equality under the law of nations and law of economics is truly a triumph for all of humanity. It does not belong to females alone, but to all people.
That is why it sickens me to see a snake-oil salesmen come in and usurp history.** I would vote for a myriad of other women before I would vote for Ms. Clinton and the women of this nation should too. She is not a populist and she doesn't care about the needs of women. And even if she did care about these things, it would not qualify her one bit to be president of the United States of America. Pandering to the public with a platform of bread and circuses is neither helpful or safe; and unless I missed my guess the president is supposed to be the president of all Americans, not just people of his or her own cliche.
It is also disgraceful the way Clinton has insinuated, and her followers have out and out said, that Barack Obama is ahead because he is a man. (He won, but you will never hear a Clintonite or Clintonian or whatever they are say he's won.) That is the most utter nonsense I have ever heard in my life. If that was the case, the democrats wouldn't allow a black man to be the nominee either. They would've picked someone smarmy like Jon Edwards or someone crazy like Denis Kucinich because they are white. The democrats had a lot of white guys to choose from this year. If it comes to elections being about picking people like us, the democrats decided to be a little on the brave side. (It is a pity that they weren't more brave in actually backing their nominee.)
For all her faults and flaws, Ms. Clinton seems to have served her constituency quite admirably. I suppose she will be a fine legislator. Her problem is that she doesn't want to be a legislator, but rather she wants to have power. She has lied about her credentials, her record, and her rival. I suppose if they had been very good lies, she might make a decent president, but the lies haven't even been that good.
The thrust of my blog post is this, stereotypes are fine as rubric. They help create a sort of order to our lives and allow us to organize things, but when we ignore facts in order to adhere to our stereotypes than we are living in a fantasy world and a dangerous one at that. Ms. Clinton is doing just this. She is reinforcing the stereotypes that men are evil and out to get her, you cannot trust Mr. Obama because of his race, and that the people of money only got that way by screwing everyone else out of their money. Such broad stereotypes are not believed by the Clintons, but they are used to manipulate those who WANT to believe in these nefarious cabals. It would be wise of Clinton supporters to trade in what they want to believe for what they need to believe.
* We must ban together and find the actual stereotypical sit-com book. My bet is that it is in the L.A. public library and has its own private group of librarians who take calls from stymied second-rate authors about how to get a character in and out of trouble. "Oh, he's a man," one declares, "have you had him burn down the house while trying to cook dinner?" Another says, "well, she is a blonde and we all know that means she's a ditz, so have her mispronounce some words and do a few cheers." When we find this book we must destroy it. We will have to go without television for a few weeks, but it will be worth it. Then again, the stupider parts of society will probably not know how to behave without the "sit-com reference"
** I am not going to write "herstory" because history and his are based off of two different linguistic branches. "His" is an old english word and "history" is from Latin, no doubt brought over by the Norman French. So once again, blame the French.
Friday, May 30, 2008
My Great Big Freakin' Mistake.
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.
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.
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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