Tag Archives: Culture

A Surprisingly Poignant Song from Weird Al

Now, this song is a cut from an album a few years back but I only recently got around to getting a copy for myself. Weird Al has had a terrific run as a humorist. His skills are so much more than ‘filking’ popular songs as a profession. He’s a writer, a director, and a man with a sharp eye for what the culture is up to at any particular moment.

This song. Skipper Dan has a pathos to it that just tugs at my heart. It isn’t a funny song, though it’s performed in that same style he will use for his fake love songs, but rather captures in just a few minutes the pain of a dreams that refuse to realize.

For all the dreamers that life has rolled under its’ impersonal tires, I give you Skipper Dan.

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We Need a Strong National I.D.

First I am sorry that my weekday posts dropped off a bit over the end of last week and some of this week. My desktop computer had been throwing off issues and that consumed far more time than could be pleasantly endured. Things seem to be better now.

 

America is fairly special in the developed world in that as a major power it has no real form of national identification card or paper. The Social Security numbers, developed during the Great Depression, was never intended for that purpose and does that job particularly poorly. SSNs made people vulnerable to identity theft were fairly easy to forge, and their use as a default identification has imperiled millions. Until this year a person’s Medicare claim number was their SSN with an additional letter or letters tacked on to the front or the end as huge gaping security hole. (New Medicare ID numbers are rolling out now but it will take years for the industry to switch over.)

Our country needs a national identification system that secure, strong, and flexible. There is even at least one person running for congress advocating using public key encryption for a national ID card, not a bad idea at all.

There are a number of benefits that we would gain from a good national ID system.

1) It could Curtail Identity theft.

2016 saw 13 million people suffer some form of Identity theft with a cost to our economy of nearly 16 billion dollars.

2) It could curtail illegal immigration and illegal work practices.

Unauthorized border crossing are at a near all time low but even so it is in the public’s interest to keep all employment legal and by the regulations. Instead of focusing on the workers it would be a better use of the government’s resources to go after employers and executive skirting workplace laws and regulations.

3) It could help secure our elections.

In personal voting fraud is nearly non-existent but our national voting system is vulnerable to attack, as we have seen, and securing it can raise public confidence helping drive higher turn out and rob demagogues of one of their divisive tactics.

4) It could help better track ‘prohibited person’ and keep them from obtaining firearms.

A number of mass shootings and other maniacal events with guns have been perpetrated by persons who legally could not have purchased their weapons but we have a leaky system for tracking such people and a strong national ID could address that.

5) It could curtail Fraud and Waste

Government benefits, medical and otherwise, are prime targets for criminals seeking to bilk the public coffers. A strong national ID would make such fraud much easier to detect.

 

These benefits are only the ones off the top of my head. It is clear to me that a 21st century world power needs a 21st century system of identification.

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No Honest Critique…

… Can be wrong.

This is something I say quite often at the writers group that I attend and I fully believe that. Of course one of the key aspects is that it must be an honest critique, but that is neither here nor there for today’s essay. What does it mean when a critique or interpretation seems so very at odds with a common view of the work?

For example that was an on-line dust up some time back over the SF/Horror film They Live. Quite a few Alt-Right types were very adamant that the aliens in the movie were a metaphor for a world wide Jewish conspiracy and that the story in fact validated the alt-right and other anti-Semites terrible worldview. John Carpenter, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film, insisted that the metaphor was for capitalism, conservatism, and specifically Ronald Reagan’s brand of political thought. In the on-line postings we have clear authorial intent but presuming the Alt-Right and other are not lying, how can I suggest that their interpretation is correct?

The key to understanding this is that communication is never as simple as one agent creates a message and transmits it to another agent who then receives that intended message. The process is more like the sending agent encodes a message, transmits it, the receiver decodes the message and then looks to understand it, that encoding/decoding transformation it critical in how a message is interpreted.

In the case of They Live, Carpenter used alien to encode his metaphor but in the decoding process everyone uses their own set of symbols and lived experiences, including everything that they have been taught or believe to be true, as a lens to color the transmission. For the Alt-Right types that can include the anti-Semitic garbage in their own operating system, hence they decoded a message that was anti-capitalist and anti-conservative into a narrative palatable to their own prejudices. Their critique and analysis, if honest, is correct for them but only because their decoding process seriously distorts reality.

So when there is an interpretation of a work that is significantly out of step with both authorial intent, when it is know, and the general interpretation that outliers conclusions says much more about the filters and lens of the critiquing agency than it does about the work itself.

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The Need Argument

Often when there is a debate about prohibiting, restricting, or permitting an object or service someone will make what I call the ‘need argument.’ It is very simple, they will point out that the person against the new restriction doesn’t really need whatever it is that the proponent is calling to ban or restrict.

It is an insidious tactic that has as its base assumption that the person proposing the restriction has already determined the ‘need’ and found it wanting. I reject the need argument nearly categorically. It is an argument designed to trap the person debating for access into a box where they must attempt to meet an ill-defined criteria held by the proponent or surrender and since the criteria is not something mutually agreed to but is instead always defined by the proponent it is something that cannot be met.

The call comes over and over, it comes in taxations, ‘they don’t need that money,’ it comes in healthcare ‘they don’t need that transition,’ it comes in legalities ‘they don’t need that marriage,’ it comes in the arts and entertainment, ‘they don’t need that filth or that violent game.’

It does not matter where it raises its head the ‘need argument’ is always an attempt to impose the concept, I don’t want that thing so you do not get it either.

If you are going to push for prohibitions or confiscations get a better argument, and there are always better arguments.

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It’s Not Just the Person in Charge

I have finished watching the 10 episode documentary Hitler’s Circle of Evil and it was truly a fascinating journey. So interesting in fact that I look forward to seeing every episode again as I re-watch them with friends equally interested in history.

One of the aspects of the entire Nazi Germany history that this series had laid out in a clear manner is how important the people surrounding Hitler were to what happened.

From the very start of the movement through its transformation into a personality cult and onwards into a juggernaut of evil it was more than the hateful evil fuck Hitler responsible. Throughout the process he was surrounded by people who performed critical roles that shaped the ideology, energized the members, and brought the murderous cult to power.

What truly jumped out at me was how few of the people that held these powerful positions had any real competence or qualifications for their posts. To the man each chased individual ambitions, some petty and prosaic such as Goring’s looting of artistic treasures for his homes while others pursued their conspiratorial feats into mass murder. What not one of these men seemed to possess was a sense to duty to the country. Oh, they all professed a great love for their country, but their actions time and time again demonstrated their base, selfish, and evil objectives.

The fish rots from the head and Hitler was the center of the corruption. The inner circle was one of his own making and one that reflected his twisted views and hate filled perspective. For the members of the inner circle power flowed from their direct and personal relationship to Hitler, as those relationships waxed and waned so did their influence. I find it curious that these vicious, scheming, and treacherous men who moved so confidently against one another were simultaneously craven ‘yes men’ unable to tell their adored and feared leader ‘no.’

It is that relationship, cruel men who cower and bootlick; paying the source of their power for false flattery that fascinates me. It is the system that provided a platform for genocide and wars of aggression not simply the product of one madman’s maniacal delusion. Had there been strong institutions staffed by people not driven by personal, petty, purposes the entire Nazi government would have been impossible. Of course the Weimer Republic never had the chance to develop those deep institutional cultures and in the collapse of the German Empire the vacuum was filled with men and parties intent on power and money.

As a writer of fiction and a student of history the lesson that it is never just one man is a terribly important one. When I create worlds for my stories or when I look at governments around the world it will be important to keep it mind it is never just one person it equally vital to know who they surround themselves with, who is in their inner circle.

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The Austin Bombings Appear to be Over

Over the past month Austin Texas has been subject to six bombings, killing and injuring several people. This morning news is reporting that the man responsible has died in an explosion as law enforcement closed in on him.

People in the area are warned to remain vigilant as the last couple of bombs had been sent via delivery companies and it is unknown if there are bombs currently in transit. The investigation is still on going and at this time there is no discernable motive.

Whenever these sort of random murders occur there is usually talk of mental illness but that is a conversation that starts in error and only progresses to greater and greater failures.

It is an understandable error. After all for most people conceiving the motive to lash out and kill strangers is incomprehensible and when we run into an incomprehensible act most people’s first impulse if to label the perpetrators as ‘mad.’

However they are not usually suffering from a mental illness, at least as defined by the current standard of the profession.

Motive is usually there but its incomprehensibility is usually a factor of the acts being several stages removed from the reasons. Like the mass shootings ultimately I think these things are reflections of a societal issues and how some individuals are finding it impossible to cope with our rapidly changing society.

That is not to say we should stop the changes in our society, even if such a thing were in out power. Standing athwart history and shouting stop doesn’t halt history it only gets you run over by it.

We may never understand the why and we do need to come to term with the limits of our understanding.

 

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Further Thoughts on Mass Shootings

This will not go too deeply into the weeds but I wanted to commit to a post a least a surface level analysis of what I have been thinking.

A basic assumption I am working with is that the mass shootings are a sociological phenomena reflecting a deeper and more troubling issues with how come people, primarily young males, are unable to cope with a culture that is changing. Going forward I see four major paths that can be taken.

 

1) Resolve the root cause, sociologically, that is producing people so hurt, so angry, that they lash out to kill indiscriminately often at the cost of their own lives.

2) Remove the implements by which they commit these acts.

3) Remove access to these implements by those likely to commit these acts.

4) Do nothing.

 

Route 1

In my opinion this is the best course but may simply be impossible. We may not have enough knowledge and skill to identify and repair the maladjustment. In addition there are an unknown number of persons for whom the damage has already been done and simply have yet to act upon this reasonless hate and anger.

 

Route 2

There are several problems with this course. The principal ones being that at heart prohibition is about punishing everyone for the misdeeds of a few. What are the criminal penalties for owning the banned items? How aggressively are these prohibitions enforced? If you are enforcing them then the millions that already in circulation remain, illegally, with in the population and undoubtedly some will find their way into the wrong hands. If you push to hunt down all of the banned items, then that requires a massive escalation of policing powers and activity and we already have serious issue with police powers. Some will point to countries like Australia but Americans are not Aussies and our population has already shown a rebellious streak when it comes to enforced prohibition. With million in circulation even discounting the afore mentioned issues more mass murder will occur as some will slip through the system.

 

Route 3

Again we run into practical application issues. To be as through as possible would require a massive amount of data on every person be at the government’s fingertips. This would probably best be achieved through a strong form of government ID, which would have all sorts of benefits beyond this issue, but used to track people’s purchases within the regulated sphere. This could be cross-referenced with now indicators, such as violence, spousal abuse, and psychological aberrations to deny access to these implements. The system would not work perfectly. There are those who would be false positives, denied access when they are no threat and there will be those who are not identified before their mass murder.

 

Route 4

This is the one we are following now. We do nothing of substance and the murders continue. There are some who feel ‘optimistic’ that nothing is the best course and that access to firearms will because easier over time. I do not agree. I feel, but cannot prove, that eventually there will come a breaking point and then something will happen.

 

There are no magic spells that will prevent these terrible murders. We are deep into a sociological sickness but that does not mean there is nothing we can do to lessen the trouble. What is important is that no matter what course you think is best remember that it is a first step not a solution and you must always ask, ‘what happens next?’ If you pass a law you must enforce it that means police must investigate, courts must prosecute, and prisons must be filled. And that’s for those who have not yet committed mass murder. There is no easy cost free solution to the troubles. If you want to ban thing, then you will have to chase down those items, enforce the ban, and punished those who refuse to obey. If you restrict access you have to track people, define the conditions that make them prohibited, and understand this will inflict upon the guilty and the innocent.

In both cases no process will be perfect and these terrible events will continue, but perhaps not as often.

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No, Mr. Shapiro, Get Out is not racist

Recently a friend commented that he agreed with the conservative Youtube pundit Ben Shapiro that the film Get Out was racist. I had not heard Shapiro’s arguments and did not voice my disagreement. Now I have listened to Shapiro’s comments and I find them way off the mark and the error springs from mistaking a personal interpretation as authorial intent. Before I get into Shapiro’s comments I want to use a couple of well know films to illustrate what I mean by personal interpretation versus authorial intent.

1986’s Robocop is an amazing film, in many ways an early modern superhero movie, albeit one that gory, violent, and earned its R rating from the MPAA. In a scene where the audience is getting exposition about the character Robocop it is explained that he eats a rudimentary past to support his remaining biological systems. Johnson, one of the executive behind the project that turned a dead cop into a company owned cyborg, dips his finger into the paste, tastes it and pronounces it ‘baby food.’ His boss Jones, advises Johnson to ‘knock himself out.’ When I watched this scene in the theater I though it was clear symbolism that these men manipulating with lives were in fact children playing with th9ings that they did not understand. Later in the film when Robocop is recalibrating his targeting system and uses jars of baby food that his partner Ann Lewis had brought as target again I assumed the symbolism was clear, he would destroy the company that did this to him. Years later with the DVD I learned that the director had meant nothing of the sort. Paul Verhoeven revealed no underlying symbolism to the first scene and in the second the jars of baby food symbolized the children Lewis and Robocop could never have. Since there are no romantic elements in their relationship that intent took me by surprise.

My second example come from 1994’s The Lion King. A wonderful movie of old school cell animation The Lion King is about a lion cub, Simba that must overthrow his Uncle Scar who had usurped the throne. When Scar is assembling his plan and his minions, a pack of hyenas, to plot the murder of the King and his son, he sings a delightful song Be Prepared. In this fantasy world, unlike real life ecology where lions often steal hyena kills, hyenas are scavengers living off the scraps left over by the lions. Scar gets their loyalty by promising that they, the hyenas, will never go hungry again. When he overthrows the ‘natural order’ and makes himself king, he brings in the hyenas and the entire system collapses, plunging the kingdom into ruin and starvation for all until Simba defeats Scar and restores the balance, the circle of life.

Instantly it flashed to me that on interpretation, and this time not one I thought for a moment the producers intended, was that by bringing in the non-producers, the takers, Scar had overtaxed the makers and destroyed the economy. In effect this entire film could be taken as a subtle attack on liberalism and social safety nets. Hardly the sort of political message I would have expected and perhaps the reason the rumors are that the live action version will omit the song Be Prepared.

With those examples in place let’s return Get Out and Shapiro’s interpretation.

In Shapiro’s view the movie is about ‘black people who associate with white people eventually are drawn into white lifestyles and they become stereotypical white people.’

I have no doubt that this is Shapiro’s actual interpretation of the movie’s themes, but that is not the same as authorial intent. Just as with my take on the baby food in Robocop, Shapiro’s take is his own and not own that has been voiced by the film’s writer/director. Shapiro offers no support for this view that Get Out is ‘supremely racist’ than his own interpretation of the movie. An interpretation not supported by any textual analysis of the script or film. In the words of Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer ‘a radical reinterpretation of the text.’ I have heard, read, and seen many interviews with Jordan Peele’s, Get Out’s creator and nothing the man has said lends any credence to Shapiro’s view. Just as Verhoeven’s intent is starkly different than my take, Peele’s intended message and theme is very much at odds with Shapiro’s views. I find it interesting that in those four minutes where Shapiro talk about the movie he emphasizes how funny the film is without ever touching on the fact that Get Out is a horror film. Yes, there is humor but the driving tone is one of dread, danger, and doom. It is fascinating that aspect of the movie seemingly has slipped Shapiro’s notice.

At meetings of my writers’ group I often comment that no honest critique can be wrong and for Mr. Shapiro I guess the movie is racist, but this speaks less about Jordan Peele’s and his script than it does about the lens though which Shapiro viewed the material.

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Critiquing the Unseen

So The Shape of Water at this year’s Oscars took not only Best Picture but Best Director as well. I saw the film, enjoyed it, but frankly I think Get Out was a stronger film and should have taken statue over The Shape of Water. (But what do I know I still think that L.A. Confidential was robbed when Titanic won that year.)

What has spurred this particular post is watch some of the reaction to The Shape of Water’s win and the similar reaction that has caused me to remember.

Over at the American Conservative, columnist Rod Dreher titles his piece about the movie Triumph of the Freaks. Dreher is one of those conservative who sees the downfall of Western Civilization and a coming dark age due to the recognition of such ‘unnatural’ and or sinful aspects of humanity such as transgender, homosexuality, and other non-traditional sexual mores. In the column Dreher admits that he has not seen the film and based his entire reaction on what he has heard and reading the Wikipedia synopsis. I always find it astounding that people, usually paid content creators, are so willing to elaborate opinions and dissect pieces that they have not personally seen. For Shape it is clear that the romantic story between Elisa, a mute cleaning woman in a secret government facility, and that facility’s latest ‘acquisition’ and amphibian humanoid. (We can’t call him a gill-man without incurring the wrath of Universal.) For Dreher this relationship is pure and simple bestiality. That the Amphibian is a thinking, feeling creature, capable of language and emotion is meaningless, it is not human and therefore the relationship is unnatural and sinful. Apparently even in such a fictional setting only humans are ‘people.’ However if you have seen the movie — and you need to stop reading if you fear spoilers — then you know that his basic facts are wrong. Either the Wikipedia synopsis omits crucial plot twists, albeit one I foresaw quite early in the film but that’s a danger of plotting your own stories, you can see the magician palming the card, or he failed to understand how revelation destroyed his entire argument.

It reminds of another conservative columnist, Michelle Malkin, and her reaction to the film Death of a President.

Released in 2006 Death of a President deals with the fallout produced by a fictional assassination of George W. Bush. The film used actual news footage as part of the flashback to the assassination in an attempt to create a sense of reality. At the time of its release there was quite a stir in the conservative media about the subject matter with perhaps the most strident voice belonging to Michelle Malkin. She referred to the movie as ‘assassination chic’ and felt that the movie revealed the desires for Bush’s murder by people on ‘the left.’ (Side note; I am always suspicious whenever motivation is describe for a third party without any supporting evidence or citation.)

As with Dreher and The Shape of Water it seems clear to me that Ms. Malkin never actually watched the film she criticized. In the movie’s narrative the assassination has taken place years earlier and the country now labors under the heavy authoritarian hand of President Dick Cheney. There is mass round-up of ethnic minorities and other police-state tactics, hardly the sort of dream world envisioned by ‘the left.’ The film itself is rather pedantic, predicable, and ultimately boring. I know this because, unlike Malkin, I actually watched it on DVD. It hardly revels in the murder of a conservative president, but acknowledging that would destroy her entire thesis about ‘the left.’

I believe that it is vitally important that people actually watch the media that they critique. You cannot rely upon synopsis, second hand accounts, or skimming to arrive at a fair judgment. It is also equally important to set aside personal bias and pre-conceived notions, otherwise all you will end up with if a big fat case of conformational bias.

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Black Panther and Wakanda’s Reality

Marvel Studios’ latest superhero movie Black Panther is proving to be a box office beast, pulling in audiences and on a trajectory to become the number 2 or 3 performing movie. (With dethroning Marvel’s: The Avengers not outside the realm of possibility.)

In addition to having a great script, sharp characters, exciting actions, and powerful performances, Black Panther had grabbed people by the heart with its vision of Wakanda, a fictional nation in the heart of Africa untouched by colonialism. For people of the African Diaspora the notion of a nation like Wakanda has proven to be powerful and liberating, but there have been people, such as Ben Shapiro, who have dismissed the emotional connection with a patronizing “Wakanda is not real.”

Of course Wakanda is not real.

Do you know what else isn’t real?

Camelot is not real.

Hercules is not real.

Paris, Helen, Achilles and Odysseus are not real.

The power of myth is not that it is real, that is history’s job, but rather myth informs us of who we are and more importantly who we want to be. Through myth people speak about the values that matter and the aspirations worth struggles and sacrifice.

Wakanda is a modern myth for people bereft of their own. For far far too many people of the African Diaspora genealogy is an impossibly, the Atlantic slave trade obliterated their history and their connection to myth. Make no mistake the attraction to Wakanda is not about the comic-book technology, the fictional metals, but rather about a culture that had flourished as its own culture, that celebrates its own people, that inspires without hand me downs from alien lands.
Something as simple has hair is fraught with the influences of colonialism and the horrors of the past. I can’t imagine enforcing a rule that expels students for natural hair and yet today such practices are too common, so a place where hair that has not been straightened and made to appear European is powerful symbol. The Wakanda myth runs far deeper than hair and appearance but it is not my myth and much of symbolism can only be an intellectual exercise for me, and one of empathy as I try to understand my fellow human beings and the world as they experience it.

I will close out this short essay with one more reference to someone who is not real.

Captain America is not real. Captain America does not represent the slaughter of native, he does not represent slavery, or Jim Crow, or any number of other ills that our country has participated in, but rather he is what we hope we can be, what our ideals demand of us. If people like Ben Shapiro cannot see that Wakanda and Captain America are really the same thing for different peoples it displays their terrible inability to see the world in any way other than their own.

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