It’s a bad movie, a very bad movie, and bad in a way that only a movie made in 1985 can be bad. If you’ll recall, Rocky ends up in Russia to fight Ivan Drago, the invincible Soviet super villain played by Dolph Lundgren.
Various dramatic things happen and Rocky wins, as he does pretty much every second movie. What’s striking about it, beyond how awful, cliched and child-like it is, is how vivid and oppressive the American propaganda is.
America has never been particularly subtle about propaganda, and this movie is no exception. It’s an Us Vs. Them proposition, the Soviets are all passionless robots and functionaries living under a cruel and despotic regime, and the Americans, well, they have heart, man, they’re real!
About five years after this movie was made the Soviet Union collapsed beneath it’s own rotting weight. This meant that The Cold War was over, and once again all that was good and free and just and true had won. However Operation Desert Storm, in which the US invaded Iraq, immediately commenced, and ever since, the Middle East (in one form or another) has been the enemy of the West.
After seeing Rocky IV, it struck me that America was always at war, it was as if they HAD to be at war, as if it was a necessary and functioning part of the system. “The Military Industrial Complex,” as it is conspiratorially called, is a huge business in the US, accounting for hundreds of billions dollars. It is a primary economic driver, one from which so much else flows, and it surely looks like it now exists as an essential part of the economy than some subordinate wing of government used to defend abstract principles like justice.
Recently, on December the 2nd there was another mass shooting in the United States, this time in San Bernardino. It was the 355th of the year.
As the news broke, politicians assigned some assistant take to their Twitter accounts and Tweet out their feelings. The event, immediately politicized, had one flavour of politician crying out for gun control, while the other flavour of politician offered “thoughts and prayers.” It turns out that the “thoughts and prayer” crowd had all accepted donations from the NRA.
Granted, this is no scientific study, but it seems to confirm something that we already knew.
On the face of it, the NRA and the on-going weapon crisis is utterly mysterious. Why only in America? Why haven’t they done anything to try to solve this problem? I mean, from 2004 to 2013, there were 316,000 firearm deaths in the US set against 313 deaths from terrorism, but the resources are where?
In the US, politicians and thus policy, are bought.
That’s the way the system works.
War, be it with the Communists or the Terrorists, is very profitable, as is the production and sale of guns. It’s the sort of thing that should actually be put in the Constitution, just so everybody is clear about profit, rather than freedom, being the guiding light of the nation.
Until the anti-gun lobby starts to give representatives money commiserate with what the NRA does, then we are going to have to expect these trends, and all these deaths, to continue.
This inhibits his writing, and in an effort to figure out young people and how they work, he recently fostered an 11 year-old Iraqi orphan named Naseefa for three months. Franzen insisted that Naseefa keep a journal, and what follows are excerpts from that journal.
Day 15:
It is morning and I had just woken from another nightmare full of the bombs and the screaming of the torn and dead. As I open my eyes I see Master Franzen staring down intently upon me. He has been watching me in my terror, he says. “Naseefa, what were you thinking as you slept?! Tell me!!” I say to him that I do not know how to put my thoughts into english words and Master grows frustrated. He hits at things in his apartment, saying bad words, and then he runs off and begins to type.
Day 18:
Today Master took me to Fantasy Forest amusement park. “Go,” he said, “act naturally.” Master then bought a hotdog, arguing briefly with the vendor about technology, and then sat on a bench with his notebook. I went on the Merry-Go-Round and as it was just starting up Master ran to me, “Little boy,” he yelled, “why did you choose this horse? It’s missing a hoof, does it remind you of the carnage of war? Does it summon memories of a family member having an amputation? Why not the lion, does it frighten you because it summons images of your abusive uncle having sex with your mother while your father worked?!”
I did not know what to say so I began to cry. Master Franzen scribbled in his notebook and then started to argue with the hotdog vendor about technology again.
Day 19:
Master seemed depressed today, spending hours in front of the mirror rearranging his hair.
Day 24:
Today Master forced me to open a Twitter account. He wanted to observe as I interacted with the outside world through the use of technology. However he keeps interfering, insisting that every hour I Tweet something about his new book Purity. Without saying a word, he hands me a little piece of paper with the words I must Tweet.
“Franzen is a giant who looms over the American landscape.”
“Purity is a complex and beautiful meditation on what it means to be alive.”
“We are blessed that not only is Franzen the greatest living writer in America, but that his best novels promise to be before him.”
“Just saw an interview with Jonathan Franzen! Not only is he brilliant, but sexy, too!”
Day 38:
Lasagna for dinner again. Master said that his fans worship him and make food for him all the time, and then he laughed a dry, mean laugh.
I am frightened in America.
Day 43:
Master returned to the apartment in a bad mood today, as his tennis lessons did not go well. “The backhand bedevils me!” he exclaimed, before throwing his racket at his transistor radio.
He stared at the broken pieces on the floor for a long time and then suddenly he spun around and shouted at me, “What are you thinking?!”
]]>For the vast majority of my life I believed in the general sincerity of our governance. I mean, I didn’t accept everything that they said, I knew that they’d obfuscate to suit their own political agendas, but on the big stuff, when push came to shove, I trusted that we were led by people who would not directly lie while looking you in the eyes.
Now, I don’t want to suggest that I believed in a rigid, black and white Cold War dichotomy.
I understood that there were nuances and that the truth was round, rather than two-sided, but I did think that Western Democracies abided by some immutable principles and were to the best of their ability, “good.”
Well, when the US government cynically lied to it’s own people about Iraq having Weapons of Mass Destruction, and then went ahead and invaded the nation, resulting in the death of perhaps one million Iraqis, all the while knowing that Saudi Arabia was actually the country that nurtured the 9/11 terrorists, my child-like faith was forever shattered.
It was simply astounding to me that something so calculated, something so evil, could take place, and take place without a revolution of protest erupting in our streets.
I now view authority with a level of skepticism that I did not before, understanding that those in power always have more to protect and gain by lying than those outside of power. And so it was that I went to see the documentary Citizenfour last week.
It’s actually more of a living historical document than it is a movie, I think, as it’s a real time presentation of Edward Snowden, over an eight-day period, as he leaked NSA documents to some journalists and the film-maker in a hotel room.
It’s a startlingly media-savvy and perhaps unprecedented way to conduct a leak, and that alone gave the movie a surreal, kind of theatrical feeling. Snowden was very consciously “presenting” himself and his motives to the world. He was, in a sense, acting and this struck me as odd.
Snowden always seemed to be suppressing a small, self-satisfied smile, as if trying to conceal his delight in being a gravitational figure that was setting a great narrative into motion, and I was astounded by how articulate he was, speaking in unbroken, virtually literary paragraphs when describing his intent and circumstances.
Isolated, without legal counsel and unsure of what was to happen to him and everybody he loved, he did not betray any anxiety, but seemed, calm, confident and even rehearsed in his manner.
Now when I see such a thing, I don’t suspect Snowden of fabricating the leaks, which essentially reveal to the public that the NSA is an omnipotent entity that has access to absolutely all our communications and actions, I suspect the NSA of fabricating Snowden. He was a CIA agent, after all, and what’s the use of a grand surveillance apparatus unless the people beneath it are conscious of it and feel its weight pressing down upon them daily?
I don’t have an opinion on the matter at this point, and there’s no way I can gather enough information to make a lucid and truly informed judgment, but my faith in our institutions is at such a low, that like a mad man in an alley, I find myself given to question everything that they prepare for my consumption, and you know, it doesn’t feel very good.
]]>The first image that I saw from the hostage crisis in Sydney was this:
My eye was immediately drawn to the lovely, young woman on the left, her eyes closed as if she could not bear to watch the nightmare she was now living. Softly, it seemed, as if growing faint with disbelief, she and another woman were forced to place the gunman’s sign up in the coffee shop window– just above a cheerful and familiar stencil of Merry Christmas— for the entire world to see. Something very different and beyond our comprehension was replacing the world we knew and loved, and it didn’t matter whether the white Arabic lettering on an ominous black background (making it look like some sort of pirate flag) was authentic ISIS or not, it felt like ISIS and that was sufficient.
To me, this photograph could only mean one thing, and that was that something beautiful and loved was going to be slaughtered before our eyes. Somebody’s perfect child, somebody who was falling in love and building a life, was about to die in the name of a politics few could truly understand. This young woman immediately became a stand-in for every high school girl I had ever known, every waitress or barista I had a secret crush on, in short, every glowing and ascendant person who made my day, or even just the idea of my day, a little brighter.
Halfway around the world in Pennsylvania, another tragedy, one much less publicized, but also containing a thread linking it back to the Middle East, was unfolding. Brad Stone, a marine who had been deployed in Iraq but was now walking with a cane and suffering PTS, was murdering his family. He killed 6 people and seriously wounded another before stabbing himself to death in the nearby woods.
Man Haron Monis, the deeply trouble Iranian-born refugee who caused so much havoc and fear in Sydney, appears to have been so completely deranged as to be almost divorced from politics, but whatever madness possessed him drew him to adopt radical and violent ideologies. Stone, who had fought in Iraq, returned damaged, beyond the nation’s capacity or willingness to salvage. Both of these men proved to be murderous examples of the collateral damage associated with whatever Orwellian title you want to give the ongoing conflicts (War on Terror, Clash of Civilization, Oil Wars) in the Middle East.
Such violent, tragic outbursts are not political statements against policy, but are the vivid, real life consequences of the policy. If a land is bombed and destroyed by an invading nation, both those that do the invading and those that suffer at their hands are damaged in irreparable and unimaginable ways—the experience poisons the soul. There is no winner in such a war, except for the economic machinery that profits from it. The rage, pain and loss of those on the ground can never be measured or contained, and will forever bleed back into the world, manifesting as a furious, sucking whirlpool of such force that everybody is affected.
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(As of this writing there have been 1,901 gun deaths in the US since the Sandy Hook killings.)
Given the revolutionary context from which the United States was forged, the 2nd Amendment makes some sense. As a hedge against despotic governance, the populace must be permitted the opportunity to defend itself, to be playing on a relatively even playing field so to speak.
Fair enough.
However, this right was enshrined nearly a quarter of a millennia ago, and the world, America in particular, has changed in unfathomable ways since then, whereas the 2nd Amendment has not. Then, a musket (firearm) was a realistic way in which to do battle with evil overlords, who were similarly bound by the technology of single loading weaponry.
Now, of course, the difference between the technology owned by the government and that of its citizens has widened to unimaginable proportions. The US military, widely recognized to be the most awesome martial presence in history, spends more than the next 13 nations behind it combined.
If the 2nd Amendment were to have kept the people and the Government at commiserate technological levels, it would have had to be amended every generation so that the people had not just the right, but were enabled to have jet fighters hidden under tarps in their corn fields. As it is now, with the American government having a mighty arsenal of firepower that includes the media, lasers from space, drones and aircraft carriers, to name just a few, the 2nd Amendment enthusiasts are little more than Stone Age tribesmen running out of the jungle and shooting arrows at the mysterious airplanes screaming above. Telling the people that they have the right to bear arms is like telling an impoverished and over-taxed populace that they have the right to buy lottery tickets.
It seems to me that the 2nd Amendment exists as a symbol now, a vestigial relic of a political principle. It’s abstract, really, but it has concrete and ruinous effects on the society at large. (For instance, statistics suggest that a young, black man has a greater chance of being shot and killed in Philadelphia than if he were serving in the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan.) In a sense, the gun owner in the States is making a moral decision that his right to feel secure by owning a weapon is more important or valid than your right to feel secure in knowing that he doesn’t own a weapon.
It’s a fuck-you, kind of thing.
If the American people need some “hammer” with which to strike back at a tyrannical governing force, then they should be demanding that education is constitutionally enshrined. For surely, it will not be survivalists rising up from the misty hills of West Pennsylvania that saves America from herself, but an informed populace and people living in the 21st century, people who can hack computers, shut-down operating systems and disseminate information.
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