It’s interesting the ways that people will try to avoid the arguments for gun control. One argument that’s been circulating tries to blame the media for mass shootings. It argues that shooters do what they do in order to become famous. Because the media devote so much attention to these shootings, it makes other people want to become shooters themselves. (This argument is made in a quote circulating on the Internet that has been falsely attributed to Morgan Freeman.) With regard to Adam Lanza, this idea is pure speculation. We simply don’t know what he was thinking when he went to that school or even when he shot his mother. He left no notes (or none that have been found so far). He didn’t say anything to anyone. All we know for certain is that Nancy Lanza purchased semiautomatic weapons that her son later used to kill people. It was the availability of weapons that made the shootings possible. That is all we know so far.
More Thoughts on the Connecticut Shootings
December 17, 2012The Connecticut Shootings
December 15, 2012The school shooting in Newtown, CT is one of 61 mass shootings that have occurred in the U.S. since 1999. The U.S. is not the only country that has had this type of shooting, but it has them more often than any other country. (The Washington Post offers some interesting statistics on this. You can find them here. This reasons for this are probably complex, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that the U.S.’s shredded social safety net and lax gun control are factors in this. We live in a country where a man who was obviously schizophrenic, Jared Loughner, was able to purchase a Glock 19 without any trouble.
I come out of a political tradition that opposes gun control on the grounds that it disarms the working class. This argument might have some traction if there were workers’ militias in this country, but there aren’t. (The militias that do exist all have reactionary politics.) It was the George W. Bush Administration that allowed the ban on assault rifles to expire. You know that they didn’t do this so that oppressed minorities could fight the police. I think it significant that the people who most strongly oppose gun control laws also support “Stand Your Ground” laws, which are effectively an invitation to vigilantism. The Right wants people to live in an atmosphere of fear and violence. In such a society, people are more easily manipulated, and they are more deferential to authority.
Marmoulak (Lizard)
December 14, 2012
Marmalouk is a 2004 Iranian film directed by Kamal Tabrizi. The Iranian government banned it after a two-week run. Nevertheless, it is the successful Iranian film ever.
Reza (Parviz Parastui) is a thief who has the nickname, Marmoulak (Lizard), because of his uncanny ability to climb walls. He is caught, and he spends some time in prison, but he manages to escape by disguising himself as a mullah. He goes in search of a man who will help him escape across the border. On the way, he stops in a village where the people mistake him for the new mullah for their mosque. Reza pretends to be their mullah during the day, but at night he goes looking for the man who is supposed to help him cross the border. The villagers notice his night-time excursions, and they mistakenly believe that he is doing charitable works. Reza acquires a reputation as a saint, and people begin flocking to his sermons.
The film is implicitly critical of the Iranian clergy. It seems to suggest that they are out of touch of the people. The clergy apparently decided to prove this popular film’s point by banning it. Yet Marmoulak is not an attack on religion. Quite the contrary, it is actually very respectful towards Islam. It ends on a highly spiritual note. It is also quite funny. The characters are interesting, and it gives us a glimpse into Iranian society. It can be found on Youtube.
Libertarianism: A Trojan Horse
December 11, 2012Timothy P. Carney recetnly wrote in the Washington Examiner regarding the retiring senator, Jim DeMint:
- For libertarians, Christian conservative pro-lifer Jim DeMint was the best thing to come through the Senate in decades. DeMint, quitting early to run the conservative Heritage Foundation, embodied an underappreciated fact of life in Washington: The politicians who most consistently defend economic liberty are the cultural conservatives.
This is further proof of what I’ve always argued: that libertarianism is a Trojan Horse for the far right. Naive young people are attracted to libertarianism because of its position on decriminalizing drugs as well as its opposition to foreign wars. Yet when election time rolls around, libertarians start arguing to support socially conservative, pro-war Republicans. DeMint supported the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Honduras. He wants mandatory prayer in public schools, and he wants to outlaw abortion, including in cases of rape and incest. Yet Carney admires him for his support for “economic liberty”, meaning the right of corporations to screw us over.
Some on the left have been lulled by Ron Paul because of his criticism of U.S. foreign policy, ignoring his history of making racist statements. In his farewell speech to Congress, Paul denounced “pure democracy”, saying that it results in people demanding things from the government. An argument that echoes the racist comments made by Bill O’Reilly after Obama’s re-election.
The pupose of libertarianism is to steer people into the Republican Party. We should have no illusions about this.
Griffith Park
December 8, 2012I don’t have much to say right now, so I decided to post some pictures I took during a recent walk through L.A.’s Griffith Park, my favorite park.
A stature of Griffith J. Griffith, who donated the land that became the park. Griffith was a Welsh immigrant. (Only a Welshman would have the same first and last name.) Griffith served as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War. Although Griffith was a generous philanthropist, he was not a good person. He once shot his wife, severely injuring her.
A miniature railway line. I remember riding on this when I was a kid.
The engineer (standing to the right) was a very nice person. He waited for me while I went to get a ticket. (It was the last ride of the day.) I wonder how you get a job like this.
Many old Westerns and science fiction B-movies were shot in Griffith Park, which perhaps explains why I always get a feeling of deja vu when I come here.
The Verdugo Mountains
Which way did they go?
Downtown Los Angeles at sunset.
From the top of Mount Hollywood looking towards the Sand Fernando Vally.
Starting back down from the top.
On the way down, I saw a coyote. (Alas, it was too dark to photograph him.) He and I looked at each other for about thiry seconds, then he trotted away.
I came out of the park a few miles from where I entered. I had a long walk home, but it was worth it.
Lincoln
November 30, 2012
Last night I went to Spielberg’s and Kushner’s Lincoln, after having been apprised of the historical and political limitations of the film. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed. The writing, acting, and direction were all splendidly done. Some moments were a bit schmaltzy, but not too much so. It was very restrained for a Steven Spielberg film. This film instilled in me a greater respect for Lincoln and for Thaddeus Stevens.
There has bee a lot of sniping at the film from some left-wing websites. It seems to me that what has provoked them is not so much the film itself, but the liberal politics of Kushner and Spielberg. In interviews, Kushner has compared Obama to Lincoln. Eve worse, he has taken a reactionary view of Reconstruction, claiming that
- The inability to forgive and to reconcile with the South in a really decent and humane way, without any question, was one of the causes of the kind of resentment and perpetuation of alienation and bitterness that led to the quote-unquote ‘noble cause,’ and the rise of the Klan and Southern self-protection societies.
What’s interesting to me is that Kushner’s own screenplay contradicts his arguments. In it, Lincoln is not a cautious compromiser like Obama. In fact, he never really compromises at all. Instead, he uses various methods, some of them quite ruthless, to pass the 13th Amendment, which abolishes slavery. The closest he ever comes to compromise is when he agrees to meet with a Confederate “peace” delegation, in order to get conservative Republicans to back the Amendment. Yet he delays meeting with the delegates, fearing that if the war ends, Congress won’t pass the Amendment. When he finally does meet with them, after the Amendment has been ratified, he finds that they are unrepentant slave-owners who want to preserve slavery. “Slavery is done,” he tells them, ending the negotiations.
I don’t know how Kushner came to his views on Reconstruction, but his idea that Obama is somehow like Lincoln is common among liberals. Obama has done nothing to earn this comparison, just as he did nothing to earn the Nobel Peace Prize. The only thing he has in common with Lincoln is that both men are hated by Southern racists. When I lived in Eugene, Oregon; there was a restaurant there that had on one of its wall a drawing of Obama with a stovepipe hat and a Lincolnesque beard. The image was so large that it was almost impossible to ignore it. There is something about this sort of thing that is almost akin to the worship of the Kim family in North Korea. All right, that may be going a little far, but you have to admit that there is the same desire for a hero in each.
One of the things I liked about this film is its sympathetic portrayal of Thaddeus Stevens (brilliantly played by Tommy Lee Jones). Perhaps this film will reawaken an interest in Stevens. In addition to his opposition to slavery, this was a man who championed the rights of women, of Native Americans, of Chinese immigrants, and of Jews. He was a seminal figure in the forgotten history of American radicalism.
More Thoughts on Black Friday
November 25, 2012
Black Friday has come and gone, and what everyone expected to happen happened. There were near riots at Wal-Marts across the country, as people scrambled for limited amounts of discounted items. However, nobody was killed this year (although two people were shot), so perhaps that’s progress of sorts. No doubt the executives at Wal-Mart and other department store chains were happy with this. They got to watch poor people scramble for a few crumbs. I’m sure they found this highly entertaining. These are the sort of people rail against government programs and “entitlements”, while relying on food stamps to keep their workers from starving.
Black Friday videos have been posted all over the Internet. One can only wonder what impression this gives people in foreign countries about Americans. Republicans claim to be concerned about the U.S.’s image around the world, yet they are silent about Black Friday. Nor has the Obama Administration complained about it. As I’ve said before, the only people who have tried to do anything about this
According to PRWEB, Black Friday doesn’t even offer the best deals. According to them:
- Data from Decide.com over the last two years reveals that Black Friday is not the best time to purchase most items. Nine of the 11 major consumer product categories averaged a lower price leading up to Black Friday, the week after Black Friday or the week before the Christmas holiday. Overall, shoppers save a substantial amount of money on popular products by skipping Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
So the whole thing is just a scam. Welcome to capitalism in the twenty-first century.
Black Friday
November 21, 2012
It’s perhaps an indication of how corrupt our society has become that giant retail store chains are being allowed to effectively destroy a national holiday. Black Friday used to start at 9 AM on the Friday following Thanksgiving. Then they moved it up to 6 AM and then 5 AM. Last year it started at 10 PM on Thanksgiving evening. This year it’s going to start at 8PM on Thanksgiving. Black Friday is like the giant chicken heart in that famous radio play by Arch Oboler: it just keeps growing and growing until it starts crushing everything around it.
The only resistance that’s being offered to this hypertrophying monstrosity comes from the workers at Wal-Mart. They are rightly angry that their holiday has been taken away from them. Retail workers get paid low wages, and they usually get little or no benefits. Now they don’t even get Thanksgiving.
I suspect that one reason that this has been allowed to happen is that Thanksgiving isn’t as important to people as it once was. The purpose of Thanksgiving, we are told, is so we can give thanks for what we have. Since wages have been declining for decades, and millions of Americans are currently without jobs, it has become increasingly unclear to people what it is that they are supposed to be grateful for.
Nevertheless, we should support the Wal-Mart workers. And we should support all retail workers by sitting out this Black Friday madness.
Even Dwarfs Started Small
November 19, 2012
- I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony; but chaos, hostility and murder.
– Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog’s 1970 film, Even Dwarfs Started Small (Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen). This film was shot with a cast consisting entirely of dwarfs. According to Herzog, he did this to show that “the world is created in a way that is not theirs”. The objects around them are designed for full-sized people. In one scene, for example, Hombre (Helmut Döring) tries unsuccessfully to climb onto a bed. “The dwarves in the film are not freaks,” Herzog says; rather, “[they are] well proportioned, charming, and beautiful people.” It is the world around them that is freakish. The film is a critique of our consumer culture. The characters are surrounded by over-sized chairs, motorcycles, cars, and other objects that they can’t really use. When this film was released, it was banned in Germany for being “anarchistic and blasphemous”. Some claimed the film was meant to ridicule the student movement of that time. Herzog certainly was not sympathetic to the movement. He once said:
- Contrary to most of my peers, I had already been much further out into the world. I had traveled, I had made films, I had already taken on responsibilities that very few people my age had. For me, this very rudimentary analysis that Germany was a fascist and repressive prison state, which had to be overpowered by a socialist utopian revolution, seemed quite wrong. I knew the revolution would not succeed because it was rooted in such an inadequate analysis of what was really going on, so I did not participate.
The characters in this film certainly don’t have any analysis of their situation. They seem to act purely on impulse, which eventually becomes a form of nihilism.
The film is set in an institution whose purpose is never made clear. One day the inmates rise up and take over the place. The director (Paul Glauer) is holed up in his office. He has taken one of the inmates, Pepe (Gerd Gickel), hostage. The inmates amuse themselves by playing games, which are fairly innocent at first, but which gradually become destructive. They kill a pig, pull down a palm tree and set fire to flowers. They torment two blind inmates. In a scene that is clearly meant to be sacrilegious, they “crucify” a monkey by tying him to a cross, which they then parade around the yard. (No doubt it was this scene that got the film banned in Germany.) The director eventually goes mad and runs away. In the last scene, we see Hombre laughing stupidly while a camel kneels in front of him and defecates.
This film is disturbing to watch, yet there are moments that are actually funny in a dark sort of way. Herzog has alternately called this film “darkest of comedies you can imagine” and “a very profound…collective nightmare”. In Herzog’s comedy and horror are never far apart. There are even funny moments in Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Violence and megalomania are appalling and yet grotesquely humorous.
During the filming of Even Dwarfs Started Small, one of the actors suffered a mild injury. Herzog promised the cast that if they made it through the rest of the filming without any more injuries, he would jump into a large cactus plant. He later kept his promise. Incidents such as this have made Herzog an almost mythical figure in contemporary cinema. The 2004 mockumentary, Incident at Loch Ness seeks to exploit this. It is purportedly a documentary about Herzog making a documentary about the Loch Ness monster. Although it has amusing moments, it feels a bit familiar. It’s only been twenty-eight years since the making of This is Spinal Tap, yet already the mockumentary is becoming cliché. How about a mockumentary about the making of a mockumentary?
The War in Gaza
November 17, 2012- I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let’s talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was.
– Moshe Dayan
Those who support Barack Obama should ask themselves what he has done about the current war in Gaza that Romney would not have done. The Obama Administration has endorsed this act of sheer insanity by the Israeli government. According to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, the Hamas Leader, Jabari, had been working on a ceasefire with Israel when he was asassinated. Clearly, the Israeli government does not want peace. And since Obama has endorsed this, he clearly does not want peace either. We are in the age of endless war. We have drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. The Obama Administration is angling to find some way to keep at least some troops in Afghanistan after 2014. It gives the government officials an excuse to give money to their friends in the defense industry while cutting social spending. It gives them an excuse to spy on their own citizens and to meddle in other country’s affairs.
Randolph Bourne once said, “War is the health of the state.” For Israel, and increasingly for the U.S., it is becoming the state’s whole raison d’etre.
The Spanish Prisoner 