Tag Archives: Culture

Marines, The Taliban, and dehumanization in war

So a few days ago a video surfaced where it appeared that four U.S. marines, while be recorded possibly by a fifth Marine, urinated on the corpses of recently killed presumably Taliban fighters. The reaction to the incident has been varies and in many ways thoroughly predictable based upon the political philosophy of the reactive audience.

People have done everything from vocal support for the act to calling for it to be considered a war crime. All of that is of course absurd and nothing more in my opinion than general political tribalism.

I land somewhere in the middle, on the thin isthmus of rational ground between the extremists and partisan on either side. Continue reading

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The United States Constitution, Living Document or Fixed Meaning?

It is a constant argument, generally between the liberals and the conservatives, as to weather this U.S. Constitution is a living documents, whose meaning is open to interpretation through the filter of changing culture and societal mores, or if it has a fixed and unchanging meaning imparted by the founders. The answer in my opinion is, ‘yes.’ Continue reading

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Why I am so critical of Republicans.

Frequent visitors, who don’t avoid the political postings, will no doubt notice that I tend to more often criticize Republicans politicians over Democratic ones. Such visitor might get the impression that I am more favorably inclined towards the liberal arguments and that such criticism is mostly just attacking ‘the other team.’  This is not the case. Continue reading

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What happened? Updated

So last night I brought up the question what happened to the Republican dominance in California for Presidential elections. Brad theorized that it was a demographic change that lead to Claifornia becoming a safe state for the Democratic Party in presidential elections. I expressed some doubt, but he may be right. Be low the cut is a graph I made of the popular vote totals in California for both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. For comparison I also graphed the popular vote totals for both parties nationally.

The Democratic part has been gaining  steadily in the Golden State since about 1980, this did not translate into victories until 1992, but the trend is plain. What I found even more surprising was that the trend was mirrored, though delayed in the national vote totals. From 1952 through 2008 in general the Democratic Party has been gaining popular votes and the Republican Party has been bleeding them.

If this is demographics, then it could spell massive trouble for the Republican Party. The Tea Party revolution will be carrying the party into the wrong direction for electoral victory. Note that the Republicans did not lose votes totals, slipping behind the Democrats when the total losses became too great, but rather votes moved from the Republican ledger to the Democratic ledger. It is hardly likely that those migrating votes are of a Tea Party mentality. As such moving towards the Tea Party is unlikely to bring those votes back to the Republican party and is therefore unlikely to help in the long term electoral prospects of that party. (there may be short term swings such as 1964 or 1994 but the trend lines continue.)

Becoming a lite version of the Democratic pArty is no answer, rather the Republicans are faced with a generational challenge of finding a philosophical stance that agrees with their principles, and is flexible enough to sweep in votes from the growing Democratic wave.

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So what happened?

A friend of mine is fond of saying that his vote, nationally, doesn’t matter because he lives here in California and no matter what he thinks, wants, or votes California is going to be in the Democratic column come election night.

Today that is true, but it hasn’t always been that way.

From 1952 through 1988 California was a reliable Republican state, only once 1964 ending up in the Democratic totals during the Goldwater Disaster.  However from 1988 through the current day, five straight elections, California has gone Democratic and teh Republicab’s haven’t had a ghost of chance at the electoral college votes locked up in the Golden State. Why?

Did California turn that Liberal in 1992?

Did the Republicans move that far right in 1992?

Was it a combination of both?

 

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Sunday Night at the Theater: The Rocky Horror Show

So last night I went to the Old Globe theater in Balboa Park to watch their production of The Rocky Horror Show. Now from earlier posts you may know that I was into Rocky when I was younger and I still have many fond memories of those days and nights. (Mostly nights, mostly.) This however was the first time I have gotten to see a stage production of the play.

The photograph to your left was taken from my seat and as you can surmise it was not a particularly good seat. (I got quite spoiled when I went saw The Tempest earlier in the summer and I was front row center.) The ticket I bought by way of Groupon and while I save more than have the cost, just look at that view. LUckily not all the seats in the balcony were sold and tan Usherette named Sue was kind enough to let me switch to some better seating.

This was certainly a fun night out for myself. (MY sweetie-wife declined going as the published reviews indicated a lot of audience participation and that was an aspect she did not care for.)

The play started with a video projected on the scrim you see in the picture, a montage of shots from various low budget SF films while two characters (Usher and Usherette) sang the opening song, Science-Fiction Double Feature. Not one shot was from any of the film mentioned in the song, something I chalked up to rights issues.

The play moved along quickly, though there was little of the feared audience participation. I suspect that near the start of the run the die-hard Rocky fans were there and did their thang, but now with the run ending November 6th less enthusiastic crowds were seeing the production. There was one bit from the audience  that was rather fun.

During the play Brad Majors by way of a video screen spies his fiance Janet Weiss having sex with Rocky the creation. In this production this was accomplished by a projected video in full silhouette  of the indiscretion mentioned above. Very racy yet without showing a thing in terms of flesh. (which neatly sums up the whole production style.) Anyway, Brad, angry and hurt, switches off the video and a voice rang out from the Audience “Hey! I wast watching that!” The actor playing Brad, his back to the audience  stays that way, gripping the prop console quite firmly. It was clear he was fighting the urge to laugh. After several moments he turned around, in character but it was a good moment of humor.

There were many moments when the ‘4th wall’ was breached, usually by an ad-lib from the actor playing Frank-N-Furter.

All in all a lively and fun production.

 

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Politics and Rocky Horror PIcture Show Memories

Way back in the 1980s, when life was rough and fun at the same time, I got involved with a local Rocky Horror Picture Show group. For those not in the know The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a campy failed musical film that found a second life as a midnight movie. During the presentations fans would dress up as the characters and mime out the film in front of the screen, while the audience participated with MST3K style lines shouted back in response to dialog and events in the story. The story is one of mad science, aliens, Rock and Roll, and of course, Sex. The costumes for the film are outlandish, daring, and ignore normal gender roles. Continue reading

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