‘The Road’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbLgszfXTAY) is a difficult film. Difficult to watch and fearful to contemplate. After my single viewing, I arrived at the conventional interpretation: an american post apocalypse. But, this is wrong. A more careful 'reading' of the film shows that the film is not so much, post apocalypse, but ‘apocalypse now’! Consider: there is no pre-apocalyptic world depicted and there is no reason given for the apocalypse that is shown and the whole world, as suggested by the father when asked by his son if there was something different on the other side of the ocean, is as it is in the story before the viewer.
The Road is now. What blinds most of us from seeing it is our cupidity. Our homeless are on The Road now. Our sick without insurance are on The Road now. Those from foreign lands who come to amerika to seek out jobs on the bottom rungs of employment are on The Road now. Our long-term unemployed will soon be on The Road.
The most striking metaphor in the film is the mansion that the father and son happen upon. That mansion is the myth of amerika. The cellar is the reality!
We are dupes of dopes. We are led by fools. The Road shows where that leadership leads. The Road also shows us what happens when we tire of that leadership and put it down like a rabid dog. The Road shows us the ending of the myth of amerikan civilization. And, to that end, The Road is a parable of justice. What a tough justice it is. But then, who said justice would be a sunny day at the beach? Unironically, The Road gives resonance to our next ‘great leader’, sarah pallin’s, remark: “We eat therefore we hunt.”
bon appétit!
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
On the Precipice of War
And so, we stand on the precipice yet again. It seems that no Democratic president can resist the bait of republicans to shed the blood of American citizens for some lost cause. Obama’s presidency will be effectively over with the committal of 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan because these troops will be quickly neutralized and some American general will call for more. Obama will not be able to resist the logic of ‘we’ve already sent in so many, that if we pull out now, all will be in vain’. Like Johnson, Obama will fear being the first president to lose a war to an ideology and like Johnson, he will find that ‘guns and butter’ don’t mix.
Obama may think that sending more troops to Afghanistan will placate the republicans, but it won’t. The minute anything goes wrong with McChrystal’s plan, the republicans will howl for Obama’s blood. And to stop them, he’ll send in more troops. History will write that Obama, as was Johnson, was once a chance for America to have advanced both domestically and in foreign policy; but he was no student of history and lost his country to a part of the world, well schooled in taking down civilizations, that had nothing to lose in spreading the fight all over the world.
So, with Israel and Iran also on the precipice of war, I welcome you to World War IV.
Obama may think that sending more troops to Afghanistan will placate the republicans, but it won’t. The minute anything goes wrong with McChrystal’s plan, the republicans will howl for Obama’s blood. And to stop them, he’ll send in more troops. History will write that Obama, as was Johnson, was once a chance for America to have advanced both domestically and in foreign policy; but he was no student of history and lost his country to a part of the world, well schooled in taking down civilizations, that had nothing to lose in spreading the fight all over the world.
So, with Israel and Iran also on the precipice of war, I welcome you to World War IV.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Open Letter to President Obama – Afghanistan
Dear Mr. President,
I hope this letter reaches you in some form or the other. It is extremely important that you not make the major mistake by which your presidency will be defined. It is extremely important that you not make the mistake Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam.
No not escalate the war in Afghanistan. Listen to your generals and then make the correct decision. Remember, generals are always generals and will opt for war in most situations because that is how they are trained to solve problems. Generals and armies are for destroying countries and their inhabitants. They are not for nation building.
The most important thing you must remember is just one thing.
No matter how long the U.S. military stays in Afghanistan, no matter how many people we kill there (unless we kill everyone), no matter who we coerce, no matter who we ‘pay off’, no matter how clean the next elections are, no matter how good a leader of Afghanistan we put in place, no matter how many Americans are killed, no matter how much money we spend on the war; at the end of the day, we will leave Afghanistan (unless you plan to make it part of the U.S. somehow)! At that point the Taliban and al-Qaeda will return. Why? Because they live there! They raise their children there. And, for every father we kill, for every mother, brother, sister, and cousin we kill; some child will swear a blood oath to take us down!
The countries we are engaged in have much less to lose in an indefinite war than we do. To win, all they have to do is survive. By surviving, they will wear our economy down to third world status, for the majority of Americans. By surviving, they will become heroes to many people at the bottom of the societies in the Islamic world. By surviving, they will become dispersed throughout the Islamic world and more sophisticated in guerrilla technique. And, with access to nuclear munitions, there is no way to estimate what they will be able to do in ten or twenty or fifty years of continuous war with us.
There is only one way out of the quagmire the republicans left for you: Apologize to the Islamic world for what we have done there for the last 50 years. Pledge to help rebuild everything the Western powers have destroyed. Take a neutral approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Remove our troops back to the states which will host them. Use current technology, special-forces, and the CIA to contain al-Qaeda as best they can. This is the optimal solution: minimize casualties and economic waste and maximize good will.
Please do not let the republicans determine your foreign policy. They are extremely bad at foreign policy! Please, do not let the three wars we are engaged in (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) consume us. We have much to do domestically to recover from the Bush recession. We cannot afford endless war in Asia.
I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors and I hope you maintain the good will of the world, expressed in your Peace Prize.
Sincerely,
jborrow33
I hope this letter reaches you in some form or the other. It is extremely important that you not make the major mistake by which your presidency will be defined. It is extremely important that you not make the mistake Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam.
No not escalate the war in Afghanistan. Listen to your generals and then make the correct decision. Remember, generals are always generals and will opt for war in most situations because that is how they are trained to solve problems. Generals and armies are for destroying countries and their inhabitants. They are not for nation building.
The most important thing you must remember is just one thing.
No matter how long the U.S. military stays in Afghanistan, no matter how many people we kill there (unless we kill everyone), no matter who we coerce, no matter who we ‘pay off’, no matter how clean the next elections are, no matter how good a leader of Afghanistan we put in place, no matter how many Americans are killed, no matter how much money we spend on the war; at the end of the day, we will leave Afghanistan (unless you plan to make it part of the U.S. somehow)! At that point the Taliban and al-Qaeda will return. Why? Because they live there! They raise their children there. And, for every father we kill, for every mother, brother, sister, and cousin we kill; some child will swear a blood oath to take us down!
The countries we are engaged in have much less to lose in an indefinite war than we do. To win, all they have to do is survive. By surviving, they will wear our economy down to third world status, for the majority of Americans. By surviving, they will become heroes to many people at the bottom of the societies in the Islamic world. By surviving, they will become dispersed throughout the Islamic world and more sophisticated in guerrilla technique. And, with access to nuclear munitions, there is no way to estimate what they will be able to do in ten or twenty or fifty years of continuous war with us.
There is only one way out of the quagmire the republicans left for you: Apologize to the Islamic world for what we have done there for the last 50 years. Pledge to help rebuild everything the Western powers have destroyed. Take a neutral approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Remove our troops back to the states which will host them. Use current technology, special-forces, and the CIA to contain al-Qaeda as best they can. This is the optimal solution: minimize casualties and economic waste and maximize good will.
Please do not let the republicans determine your foreign policy. They are extremely bad at foreign policy! Please, do not let the three wars we are engaged in (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) consume us. We have much to do domestically to recover from the Bush recession. We cannot afford endless war in Asia.
I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors and I hope you maintain the good will of the world, expressed in your Peace Prize.
Sincerely,
jborrow33
Thursday, October 15, 2009
To The White Separatist Who Called C-SPAN This Morning
this post is to the white separatist who called c-span's washington journal this morning (oct. 15, 2009) to interrupt prof. cornell west with the dumb idea of partitioning 'the country' along racial lines.
it won't work.
first: not all whites want to live in one partition. i assure you that rich white people won't want to be in a 'state' with a majority of poor uneducated white (as they've been called in the past) trash! rich white's live in their enclaves like new england, northern cali., hawaii, and parts of maryland and virginia. the only way poor uneducated whites are wanted in these areas is as a guest worker!
second: you talk about partitioning this land as if it's the white man's land to partition. well...it's not! while whites are in an ongoing process of ripping off the native americans (including native hawaiians), this land remains theirs! your treaties are either bogus or expired, which makes you merely occupiers as you are in iraq and afghanistan. now, you can try to act like colonial brits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rhodes_Colossus) and partition the land into separate little 'countries', but look what it got them then (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Anglo-Afghan_War) and look at what its got us now (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/specials/afghanistan/)!
third: there're a lot more racial/ethnic groups in america, than you probably suspect. and they will all want a chunk of 'the country' when you start dividing it up! almost every 'country' in africa and south america and asia has an immigrant minority here. i'm sure nigerian americans will want their own part of the country! and, you can forget 'drill baby drill' if you partition, because anwar will become part of inuit land, and i'm sure they're not so stupid as to let the oil companies come in and tear it up!
no...there's a much easier solution for you white separatists: go back to where ever in europe your people came from in the first place!!!!!!! (although, i doubt they'll have you, given your general financial and educational status as well as your backward politics.) we'll all be happier. (except for the euros!)
if the euros won't take you, then a better idea is a north/south split along political lines. we libs will take everything above the old 'border states' + the union territories + alaska + hawaii and you cons can have the confederacy including tennessee. you separatists can then kick anyone you want out of your 'country' across the border into mexico!
it won't work.
first: not all whites want to live in one partition. i assure you that rich white people won't want to be in a 'state' with a majority of poor uneducated white (as they've been called in the past) trash! rich white's live in their enclaves like new england, northern cali., hawaii, and parts of maryland and virginia. the only way poor uneducated whites are wanted in these areas is as a guest worker!
second: you talk about partitioning this land as if it's the white man's land to partition. well...it's not! while whites are in an ongoing process of ripping off the native americans (including native hawaiians), this land remains theirs! your treaties are either bogus or expired, which makes you merely occupiers as you are in iraq and afghanistan. now, you can try to act like colonial brits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rhodes_Colossus) and partition the land into separate little 'countries', but look what it got them then (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Anglo-Afghan_War) and look at what its got us now (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/specials/afghanistan/)!
third: there're a lot more racial/ethnic groups in america, than you probably suspect. and they will all want a chunk of 'the country' when you start dividing it up! almost every 'country' in africa and south america and asia has an immigrant minority here. i'm sure nigerian americans will want their own part of the country! and, you can forget 'drill baby drill' if you partition, because anwar will become part of inuit land, and i'm sure they're not so stupid as to let the oil companies come in and tear it up!
no...there's a much easier solution for you white separatists: go back to where ever in europe your people came from in the first place!!!!!!! (although, i doubt they'll have you, given your general financial and educational status as well as your backward politics.) we'll all be happier. (except for the euros!)
if the euros won't take you, then a better idea is a north/south split along political lines. we libs will take everything above the old 'border states' + the union territories + alaska + hawaii and you cons can have the confederacy including tennessee. you separatists can then kick anyone you want out of your 'country' across the border into mexico!
Monday, October 12, 2009
Film Review: Capitalism—A Love Story
Just viewed ‘Capitalism—A Love Story’ (http://www.capitalismalovestory.com/).
Michael Moore completes his critique of America. What more can be said. Moore clearly shows that America (i.e., the American dream of my childhood) is dead for all of us who have to work for a living at average jobs which pay average wages. Klepto-corporate Amerika (see Citigroup Oct 16, 2005 Plutonomy Report Part 1) is where we live now, and it is an obscenity! (http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Insurance/P64954.asp) American exceptionalism. America, ‘the greatest country’. America, ‘the land of the free’. All 100% US Bulls Hit! Moore shows that class warfare is real and deadly. Congress is bought and sold. Republicans and Democrats are bought and sold. The White House is nothing but a corporate outhouse. The Fed and Treasury are nothing more than boardrooms of Goldman Suchs (http://www2.goldmansachs.com/ -- oh look, some peasants!).
‘Capitalism’ shows that there are some small rays of hope in a few isolated cases of rebellion against foreclosure and a certain thieving windows company (and its bank—The Bunk Of Amerika), but for the most part, what sticks in the memory, is the face of upper class white male Wall Street indifference. Moore is quite clear in his solution: capitalism must be eliminated! We may not be able to eliminate our corrupt capitalist ruling class (without eliminating ourselves—the working class), but we need never hear their BS lies again.
Michael Moore completes his critique of America. What more can be said. Moore clearly shows that America (i.e., the American dream of my childhood) is dead for all of us who have to work for a living at average jobs which pay average wages. Klepto-corporate Amerika (see Citigroup Oct 16, 2005 Plutonomy Report Part 1) is where we live now, and it is an obscenity! (http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Insurance/P64954.asp) American exceptionalism. America, ‘the greatest country’. America, ‘the land of the free’. All 100% US Bulls Hit! Moore shows that class warfare is real and deadly. Congress is bought and sold. Republicans and Democrats are bought and sold. The White House is nothing but a corporate outhouse. The Fed and Treasury are nothing more than boardrooms of Goldman Suchs (http://www2.goldmansachs.com/ -- oh look, some peasants!).
‘Capitalism’ shows that there are some small rays of hope in a few isolated cases of rebellion against foreclosure and a certain thieving windows company (and its bank—The Bunk Of Amerika), but for the most part, what sticks in the memory, is the face of upper class white male Wall Street indifference. Moore is quite clear in his solution: capitalism must be eliminated! We may not be able to eliminate our corrupt capitalist ruling class (without eliminating ourselves—the working class), but we need never hear their BS lies again.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Israel vs. Palestine 2
guess i called this one right:
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced before meeting Mitchell earlier on Thursday that he would tell the envoy there was no chance of a peace deal for many years.
"There are many conflicts in the world that haven't reached a comprehensive solution and people learned to live with it," Lieberman, a hawk in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-leaning coalition government, told Israel Radio.
"Whoever says that it's possible to reach in the coming years a comprehensive agreement...simply doesn't understand the reality," Lieberman said. "He's spreading illusions and in the end brings disappointment."
(http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL821569720091008)
it seems to me that this is where we can 'cut em loose'. if the isies aren't going to make a deal with the pals, then the 'gig' is up and they can go their own way. we can then concentrate on that part of the, so called, middle east that is our real national interest, the oil!
shalom!
cluck, cluck, cluck
and, now for an economics lesson:
well...cluck, cluck little duck.
we'll really need a lot more oil as we "rein in spending".
the economic deficit isn't the only deficit in town!
Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate and ex-governor of Alaska, launched her dollar criticism on her Facebook page. She linked dollar weakness to U.S. dependence on foreign oil, large U.S. deficits and questions about whether the dollar deserves to retain its vaunted status of reserve currency.(http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN0854512520091008)
"We can see the effect of this in the price of gold, which hit a record high today in response to fears about the weakened dollar," Palin wrote on Facebook this week.
"All of this is a result of our out-of-control debt. This is why we need to rein in spending, and this is also why we need energy independence."
well...cluck, cluck little duck.
we'll really need a lot more oil as we "rein in spending".
the economic deficit isn't the only deficit in town!
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