Category Archives: Culture

A Party of Quislings

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Saturday marked the 3rd anniversary of the violent attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 US Presidential election. For a moment, and only a fleeting moment, many elected Republicans saw clearly that their party’s leader was a criminal desperate to retain power that had been duly, legally, and properly removed from his grasp. The moment passed and now the entire rotten party is as corrupt as depraved and as unworthy of the American people as their mentally addled and emotionally stunted leader.

Of course, they do not see it that way. It has been illuminating to watch ‘conservatives’ online twist, distorted and invert the traits and characteristics of their political opponents. In their projection it is Joe Biden that is the corrupt criminal, trading political access for cash. It is Joe Biden twisted and warped with anger. It is Joe Biden that is that violates the constitution and that strips the rights away from the people. Each of these imagined ‘charges’ is of course the reality of Donald Trump but the dissonance between what they want, their own selfish policies and the vehicle that must lash themselves to in order to get it breaks their minds and forces the funhouse mirror interpretation of reality, one where all their crimes are neatly placed on the shoulders of others leaving their hands clean and their morality unblemished.

But the truth remains.

It is the Republican party that has an utter disregard for the rule of law.

It is the Republican Party that strips people of their rights.

It is the Republican Party that has contempt for our two centuries of democratic rule.

It is th Republican Party that capitulates and appeases out enemies and the enemies of freedom around the globe.

They are a party of Quislings.

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Quick Hit Review: Frybread Face and me

REI Co-Op Studios

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Currently streaming on Netflix Frybread Face and Me is a coming-of-age fil about a young Navajo boy, Bennie, (Keir Tallman) sent from his home in San Diego to live with his grandmother on the reservation for a summer as his parents address their martial troubles. At his grandmother’s home Bennie is introduced to aspect of Navajo culture that were alien to him, his extended family including his cousin Dawn (Charley Hogan) nicknamed Frybread Face.

Absent from the film is any grand climatic emotional scene but rather Bennie’s changes are built from more grounded simple elements of his life on the reservation. Executive Produced by Taika Waititi, Frybread Face and Me isn’t part of that filmmaker’s usual chaotic style but reflects writer/Director’s Billy Luther heartfelt connection with his people.

I really enjoy watching film from cultures different from my own and this one was no different. An aspect of Navajo culture that I had been unaware of that this story taught me is the ‘Baby’s first laugh’ custom. The Navajo celebrate an infant first laugh or giggle with food and gifts. Technically the baby hosts the celebration but as infant rarely have the faculties for such an endeavor at about three months old the duties are actually performed by the person who induced the laughter.

The film doesn’t shy away from the poverty faced by those living on the reservation but that aspect of life is simply that, another element of living while the focus of the story and of Bennie’s growth is the reality and love of family.

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An Unimaginable Future

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I was born in the early 1960s making be part of the tail-end of that massive generation the Baby Boomers. Bright beckoning futures such as Star Trek filled my childhood while the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation hovered over our heads. For decades the go-to and standby baddies of most fiction was the menacing duplicitous and seemingly everywhere conspiracy of International Communism as exported to ever trouble spot around the globe by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but we just called it Russia.

The United States led the ‘Free World’ against the spreading, infecting, and corrupting influence, and subversion of freedom by Russia. Our allies, while not always endeared to out ways and over-sized personalities, stood shoulder to shoulder with us in that fight, united in the belief that freedom was a universal good. Even if we, and I mean all of the allies, more often than we’d ever admit, fell short of that lofty ideal. The striving for that goal, for a more perfect realization of freedom for humanity, for the rights of self-determination, is what stood as apart from the vast police states of Russia and her brood of puppet nations.

Throughout the 1980s I had friends across the American Political spectrum and my conservative ones were steadfast in the belief that Russia posed a threat to democracy and freedom. That Russian intelligence services infiltrated and manipulated groups in our open society creating conflict and divisions that weakened the ‘free world.’ They were right. After the fall of the USSR so much came to light about their massive operations attempting to exploit both our divisions and our freedoms against us. My conservative friends crowed in being proved right.

And now I live in a future that would have been unimaginable to all of us in the 1980s. I don’t mean the power computers we carry about in our pockets like so many dimes, nor do I mean the fantastic imagery we created with keystrokes, or that we can now launch and land rockets as we envisioned in the SF movies of the 1950s.

No, I mean that those same conservatives who crowed so loudly about their correct detection of the threats to our freedoms have so willingly, so enthusiastically wedded themselves to the very same threat. That violations of the constitutional order and attempts to steal power from legitimate free and fair elections are swept away as mere distraction of ‘personality.’

Back in the 1980s a common criticism of the left from my conservative friends was that the people on the left were only voting for their own selfish interests, free food, and money from the teat of the government. It is clear now that this charge is quite accurate to the conservatives. All professed dedication to the ideals of democracy and the ‘free world’ are casually overthrown for the party that promises to keep delivering the goodies you want. Maybe those goodies are tax cuts and commerce unrestrained by the public good. Maybe it’s the power to compel people to live by your own hypocritical ethics. Or perhaps it’s the promise to not encumber your choice in firearms. Whatever the ‘goodie’ it is clear that the ideals of Freedom are disposable when weight against that selfish interest.

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The Thematic Failure of ‘The Savage Curtain’

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If you know anything of the original Star Trek series episode The Savage Curtain, it’s that it is the one with Abraham Lincoln sitting in space.

Of course, it’s not the real Lincoln but one created by aliens from Kirk vision of Lincoln. Soon Kirk, Spock, and a couple of ‘good’ historical characters are engaged fighting with ‘evil’ historical characters, some from real history as with Lincoln and some from Star Trek’s future history. The aliens are curious about ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and has created this contest to learn about these concepts. (Really, a forced pit fight is a terrible experiment, but we’ll let that slide for the moment.) After some loses Kirk and Spock win the fight and the baddies run for the hills with the aliens drawing the conclusion that ‘evil’ when forcefully confronted runs away.

Really Star Trek? That’s you conception of evil, that it is something that is cowardly at heart? Was that the result when the fascists were fought tooth and nail over every damn kilometer of Europe? That when ‘forcefully confronted’ that fled?

This is back in my head because as I am writing a novel populated with evil werewolves instead of the more popular sexy ones it has gotten me thinking about the nature of evil.

It is not that evil is more cowardly. I think one of the defining aspects of evil is that it is inherently selfish. It considers its own wants and desire above all else. it considers others as resources to be used, exploited, and discarded not as people in their own right.

In my novel this has raised its head among the pack of werewolves and it’s something to consider when viewing tragic, evil events in our all too real world.

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Season 3 Reservation Dogs & Native Media

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My sweetie-wife and I finished watching season 3 of FX’s Reservation Dogs a dramedy set on a Native American reservation in modern day rural Oklahoma as it follows s collection of teens, their less-than-legal antics, their interpersonal events, and the lives of the larger community around them. The series, a first with American television, with all the creatives coming from Native American backgrounds explores the lives of its characters while both simultaneous·ly honoring culture and religious belief and avoid the ‘noble savage’ stereotype. These characters feel real and continue to feel real even as they encounter spirits of their ancestors, vengeful mythical beings from their heritage, and possibly even extraterrestrial encounters. The mystical never comes off as either jammed in to make the story standout from wider American culture nor overly praised for being native but simply another part of the tapestry of the story’s world.

Our interest in the show when it premiered in 2021 came from the fact that Kiwi creative Taika Waititi served as the series executive producer, but the series has very little of Taika’s erratic chaotic energy and much more the product of its showrunner Sterlin Harjo, a creative whose career I shall watch closely.

There appears to be a little boomlet in Native media and it is one I welcome. In addition to Reservation Dogs there has been the excellent Predator prequel Prey set among the Comanche during the 18th century which also presented as a viewing option the ability to watch the film with an audio track entirely in the Comanche language. A sequel to Prey is already in the works,

 

 

 

The series Resident Alien about an extraterrestrial who mission to slaughter humanity is derailed by his interaction with the Earth’s population also utilizes Native Americans among it cast and world building avoiding simple tropes and cliche presenting its native characters as actual characters.

 

 

 

 

From north of the American border came Blood Quantum a Canadian zombie apocalypse movie with much of its cast and characters coming from First Nation peoples. (The Canadian equivalent to the phrase ‘native American.’)

It is quite a privilege to watch so much media that rejects the racist or adoring portrayals of native peoples in favor of more complex, emotionally interesting, and culturally engaging fare that is now finally becoming available.

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The Current War in the Middle East

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I have not a lot to say about the matter because I am fully aware of just how little I know, how little I understand, and how terribly complex the entire situation is. I have not the arrogance to presume the wisdom to proscribe solutions. I am as Theodoen when in the film he utters ‘What can men do against such reckless hate?’

To my eye there is no doubt that injustice has been perpetrated by all involved parties, and it is equally clear that not all injustices are anywhere close to equal.

Because one side in a conflict is evil or commits evil does not absolve its opponents or elevate them to be ‘good.’ Evil committed remains evil.

It does seem to me that both sides are trapped by the delusion that they can with acts of cruelty, vengeance, and malice ‘break the spirit’ or their enemies. This is such a rare occurrence as to be nearly unheard of. The Blitz did not break the British, nor did indiscriminate bombing break the Germans. Even in the face of Atomic horrors the Japanese people would have continued to fight, their spirit had not been broken, only a rational judgement by some their leaders and their Emperor summoned up the courage to surrender. Atrocities will not break the Israelis and cruelties will not break the Palestinians. We can only hope and work for the day when rational reasoned judgment finally brings a lasting peace because peace is never won by punishing vengeance.

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Nope, Not Going to See the New Exorcist Movie

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I have just read a review of The Exorcist: Believer and it confirmed precisely what I feared, and not in the good horror movie kind of way, about that sequel.

Minor Spoilers for The Exorcist: Believer

Apparently in the climatic exorcism scene the ritual to cast out the demon this time is a multi-faith exercise involving various Christian and Non-Christian faiths because as one character had stated ‘it doesn’t matter what you have faith in as long as you have faith.’

This is the sort of shit that really annoyed the fuck out of me in bad storytelling and crappy world building.

As I have said in other posts, I am not a person of faith. I do not believe that there are any supernatural beings, gods, devils, demons, or ghosts. That doesn’t preclude me from enjoying a good piece of fiction that posits the existence of any along those lines. For the sake of a good story, I can give you all sorts of impossible things. The human body is a very complex and intricate machine easily broken and turned lifeless by any number if little chemical reactions gone astray but I can much my popcorn and lose myself in a good zombie movie even while knowing that re-animated dead are an impossibility.

When a storyteller or filmmaker resorts to the ‘it’s the person’s faith’ that makes the magic and not the myth or lore of the world, the story loses its power and its meaning. If a vampire is repelled by a cross than in that world that setting I want the blood of the Christ to be what causes evil to flee and not the ego of the person wielding the religious iconography. When angels come to Earth, bringing the war in heaven here as they battle over a child’s soul, I want to answer to come from Christian myth not some misplaced ‘noble savage’ appropriation of native American faith. When Catholic priests confront a demon and with ‘the power of Christy’ compel it to leave that tells me we are in a world of Christina lore and myth. All I am saying is be true to the rules, lore, and myth you are using for your tale and do not water it down for a mass audience seeking to not offend anyone.

In the Hulu television series Reservation Dogs, the mundane world and the mythical world of the Native American co-exist. Some characters are shocked when the spirits of their ancestors appear to them and others seem to live in that liminal space between those two worlds, but throughout the series the world is simply presented as it is and as it is believed in without any muddying of the waters about ‘it doesn’t matter what you believe in as long as you believe.’

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RINO Hunting Destroyed the Conservative Ecology

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Biological ecologies are a complex web of interdependencies between their constituent elements and the same is true for political ecologies.

There was a time, not that very long ago, when the two political parties in the United States each contained divergent factions of liberals, moderate, conservatives and assorted minor ideologies. The Civil Rights movement and legislation fractured the Democratic Party as a considerable number of their ‘conservatives’ were more invested in segregation than anything else politically. After a brief turn as ‘Dixiecrats’ this faction was wooed and welcome into the Republican Party as the wedge that allow the GOP to begin winning elections in the deep South.

This additional faction swelled the GOP and ushered in the Reagan Regime that dominated American politics from 1980 until well into 1990s. However, like HYDRA with SHIELD this racist driven conservatism grew like a parasite with the Republican Party. With the power to win or cost elections it soon, welded to its fast-growing cousin the Social Conservative faction, determined the shape and course of American Conservatism, and thus began the period of ‘RINO hunting.’

RINO is a slur for member of the Republican Party not sufficiently subservient to the conservatism imported from the deep south and it stands for Republican In Name Only. The very nomenclature reveals the transformed nature of the GOP. It became a party that tolerated no dissention, no variation, and no other factions. There had become just one way to be a Republican and those who did not conform, who were not of the body, were cast out, chased out, and hounded out of the party. What had once been a collection of factions became a movement and a movement can only proceed in one direction.

Throughout the late 90s there was a giddiness every time a ‘RINO’ was defeated, resigned, and switched parties. Like a boiling solution what remained concentrated in its purity. Led and goaded by non-politicians such as Rush Limbaugh and bomb-throwing politicians such as Newt Gingrich the GOP moved more and more in lockstep to a beat that had been determine decades earlier by fleeing segregationists.

Racism has always been an American problem and both parties have a long history if welcoming it within their domains. However, once the Democratic party began moving in a direction of racial justice, awareness, and correction the racist had but one party that welcomed them. At first tacitly, then subtly, and eventually openly, the GOP.

With the RINOs, primarily the Northeastern liberal Republicans, driven out of the party, and the communists threat collapsed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the GOP turned it unified and obedient movement on American itself. It abandoned all pretense at governing or morality. A political movement that embraces torture is capable of anything.

Is it any surprise at all that such a movement, such a political ecology now deprived of any contrary thought, proved such fertile ground for a con man and a demagogue? That after decades of beating obedience into its base that it would lash itself with the fanaticism of a cult to that new leader?

No, not at all.

The GOP hunted the RINOs into extinction and without that balance dove into neo-fascism endangering us all.

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Why An Armed Society is NOT a Polite Society

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‘An Armed Society is a Polite Society’ is a phrase I first encountered in the 1948 Science-Fiction novel Beyond This Horizon by Robert A. Heinlein. In the novel a futuristic society populated by eugenically bred and genetically manipulated humans one aspect is that people routinely go about armed and that dueling is not only socially acceptable for socially valued. This society is portrayed as prosperous, civil, and peaceful.

Today American society, while heavily armed, is far from polite. Armed people often brandish and use their firearms for minor altercations and annoyances, to say nothing of the epidemic of mass murder that shows no sign of abating.

 Why is that? Why doesn’t the knowledge that others around you may be very likely carrying lethal firearms promote more caution and deference in our society.

Heinlein himself provides what I believe is the reason that his ‘armed’ society is not a polite and civil one with the quote ‘Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.’ (Tunnel in the Sky 1955)

I do not know if Heinlein ever reconciled these contradictory sentiments.

The armed society is only polite if it is rational. If the people can calmly, dispassionately recognize that in any incident of violence they are the potential losers. Perhaps only super humans, bred for exceptional intelligence and mental stability, can achieve this armed yet peaceful society.

People are rationalizing. It is rational to wear seatbelts every time to ride on a motor vehicle, but many do not because they have rationalized that they are excellent drivers and will not cause a crash. Vaccines have plenty of evidence for the effectiveness and safety, but people rationalize not getting vaccinated because they will not get sick. It won’t happen to them.

Firearms are subject to the same faulty rationalizations. The viewpoint is not that ‘they’ might use their weapons on me, but I will be safe because I will use my weapons on them. The gun makes me the dominate in the power struggle, it makes me the victor, imposing my will on the dangerous and unpredictable world.

At our hearts humans remain tribal, hierarchal, social creatures for whom social standing is a powerful motivator and the alure of firearms to ‘elevate’ one’s status to a dominate position eradicates most ability to be truly rational.

Of course the irony is that if were coolly rational not only would we not need to be armed to be polite we would no longer even be human.

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Where Barbie and Star Trek Intersect

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This post will contain spoilers for both Barbie (2023) and Star Trek: Insurrection (1998).

Paramount StudiosThe movie Star Trek: Insurrection centers on a conflict between the Ba’ku a species of alien luddites rejecting all technology and the Son’a a specie that hates and despises the Ba’ku and who have allied with Federation elements to steal the Ba’ku’s planet which bestows eternal youth and immortality. During the unfolding of the plot it is revealed that the two species are in
fact the same and that the Ba’ku faction exiled the Son’a for not sharing their luddite philosophy condemning that faction to death. The Ba’ku created their own mortal enemy and at no point in the movie is this concept acknowledged in any fashion. The filmmakers elide past the concept that it is morally acceptable to effectually sentence to death a people for the crime of not believing as you do. The Son’a campaign of revenge who not justified is understandable.

Barbie interrogates the power dynamic between men and women contrasting Barbieland a Warner Brothers Studiosfantasy domain of unquestioned matriarchy with the ‘real’ world. It should be noted that even the film’s depiction of the real world is strewn with elements that reveal it is as fantastic as Barbieland such as the view from the Mattel offices.

Ken, who has been dismissed and whose feelings have disregarded by Barbie, after visiting the ‘real’ world returns to Barbieland and transforms it into a fantastic and exaggerated version of patriarchy. In the film’s third act Barbie frees the other Barbies from the influence of the corrupted Ken but also comes to understands that her apathy towards Ken’s hurt and pain contributed to his own fall. It is important to note that Ken does not get what he wants, Barbie’s feelings towards him remain aromantic but his feelings are acknowledged he is no longer ‘just Ken.’

The writers and filmmakers of Barbie have a firmer grasp on causality and how pain transforms into anger than the people who crafted Star Trek: Insurrection. With Barbie there is understanding and even eventually empathy for how one becomes a villain where with Insurrection there is only the unrealistic view that good and evil are simplistic ideologies. What a world we live in where a film based on a toy presents a more nuanced and complex take on morality that a leading SciFi feature film.

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