Category: World in the Satin Bag

Pentagon Shootings: A Quick Thought On “Crazy”

(If you don’t know what is going on, here’s the quick version: John Patrick Bedell showed up at the Pentagon with guns and opened fire on security at the security checkpoint prior to entry. Recent news indicates that he held particularly negative views of the U.S. government, to the point of questioning whether the Government was involved in 9/11. That’s the story reduced even more so than the media is reducing it. The aforementioned most recent news is what I’d like to discuss briefly here.) Here’s my problem with the whole Pentagon ordeal:As much as it is desirable to reduce every domestic terrorist and political dissenter (violent or otherwise) in this country to being “quacks” or “downright insane,” doing so is not only adding legitimacy to a belief system desperately craving it, but also doing the opposite of what any civilized country should be doing. Bedell is one of a minority of people who believe something is true based on a handful of legitimate inaccuracies. It makes little sense to reduce the movement to insanity without doing the necessary empirical work to ascertain whether there is a modicum of truth to what they worry about day in and day out. His writing speaks for itself, actually: This organization, like so many murderous governments throughout history, would see the sacrifice of thousands of its citizens, in an event such as the September 11 attacks, as a small cost in order to perpetuate its barbaric control The question to be asked is: What if he’s right? His dismissal as domestic lune is an attempt to circumvent the hard work needed to be done. The problem with America, to me, is that it is so unwilling to consider that the “American Dream” is a facade; we can’t fathom it precisely because the idea of imagining this country (and our reality) as imperfect, perhaps even violently so, is not in the country’s best interest (and certainly not in the best interest of anyone who might be responsible for the manipulations, lies, and violence that do exist (without any doubt)). Fear has become a crutch, in a way. We’re conditioned to avoid that which is imparted on us as fearful. Thus, we avoid things like Marxism and Socialism and any ideas expressed therein precisely because of the fear conditioning associated with those things (never mind that we’re practically a socialist nation already, what with all our much-loved social programs funded entirely by tax dollars roaming around out there). In this case, we’re being conditioned to fear an unfavorable idea, precisely because of its new association with violence and anger. The conditioning may not be obvious (and it may even be fairly light), but instead of trying to understand why Bedell did what he did, we’re shoving him off as the lune. His unfavorable ideas are not worth considering, even if he shares them with many others who are not violent. Why are we so afraid to find the truth? Likewise, why do we fear thinking for ourselves? Acceptance of something should come after careful research. Otherwise, we’re part and parcel of a process of elimination by dogma–the unfavorable ideas are dismissed, while the ideas that sit in line with our core beliefs are applauded for their audacity to exist. Something is wrong here (in society and in the Pentagon shootings). Am I the only one that is bothered by the immediate assignation of a negative descriptor (not associated with action) to a man who has committed horrible crimes (for a good cause, in his assessment)? I want your opinions on this in the comments section. To clarify: I am not suggesting that Mr. Bedell’s actions are somehow justified, but it goes without saying that instead of reducing dissenters and violent people like Bedell as nuts simply because they believe in conspiracy theories, we should be trying to understand why they believe what they do and either address its empirical reality in a positive or negative light as necessary (i.e. if a legitimate concern is given, maybe we should address it culturally or governmentally; right now it seems like we’re simply affirming what Bedell has said about the government in reducing him to the lune).

Question For Readers: Audio Rants — Yay or Nay?

I was thinking about this earlier today in response to a book I received in the mail (a good response), and I want to test the waters by asking all of you how interested you would be in the following venture: The occasional rant in audio form, followed by a question. I would say that these would be focused to literature (specifically, science fiction and fantasy), but there may be topics that come up that deserve rant treatment. The runtime would be well under 10 minutes (most likely under five). Think of them as a podcast, but super short and without much in terms of catchy jingles and the like (not that there’s something wrong with catchy jingles). Thoughs? Opinions?

Anticipating Disaster: Our Obsession With Impending Doom

What draws us to the doom yet to arrive? CNN, pre-tsunami (in Hawaii), donates its screen time not to the already devastated areas of Chile (and elsewhere), but to the image of Hawaii’s beaches, from a distance, untouched, near-pristine. That’s the image that stays on the screen, the reporters anticipating–and building anticipation for us–the disaster waiting to happen. There’s a reason they show us this; if there wasn’t, they’d move on to something else, like Chile, where the proverbial shit has already hit the fan, or even New Zealand, where tsunami conditions have already arrived (and gone by the time this post hits the Inter-waves–pun intended). I suspect that our obsession with impending doom in the news is intricately linked with our love of dystopia in film and literature. The connection, I think, lies in our unwillingness to deal with reality–not in an absolute sense, but in a more immediate sense. Dystopias offer a way for us to see doom without facing it here on Earth, and without dealing with the immediacy of the doom that has already arrived. It is, perhaps, “safer” for our identities as human beings to imagine the end than to witness it firsthand. That’s not to say that we aren’t interested in the end, per se; we are, and, in fact, I imagine right now CNN is flooded with images of what may very well be the disaster of the week. But, our interest in disaster is not in the disaster itself, but in the leading up to it. The aftermath is an afterthought. There’s a hole in the argument, though. After all, we did focus so much attention on Haiti, where disaster had already struck before any focus was paid upon it. But this doesn’t apply for two reasons: 1. The disaster had already struck; there was no possibility for anticipation. 2. The disaster has slowly become less about the disaster itself and more about how the disaster can/could be turned into salvation. The controversial statement made by the unrepentant racist Pat Robertson (that this is a blessing in disguise) is, perhaps, not terribly far from the truth. Prior to the disaster, the international community had, largely speaking, paid little attention to Haiti, at least not in the capacity that it deserved. Yes, Haiti’s poverty was never a secret. Yes, there were organizations who put money and labor into helping Haiti prior to the disaster. But only after the disaster has Haiti received any considerable amount of attention and finances (and the promise thereof) to be used towards rebuilding the country. Yes, that very thought is a sick and disturbing one: that only after disaster do we provide legitimacy to the impoverished conditions of a nation that has been suffering the aftershocks of colonialism for centuries. The obsession continues, though. Whether or not Hawaii will (has) witnessed disaster, we are (were) fixated on our screens, witnessing the anticipatory moment, and in our free time, when we are/were not fixated, we pour(ed) our souls into the dystopic (not necessarily science fiction, but certainly dystopia in its non-speculative forms–what we might call “depressing” fiction). No wonder our ability to address the human issue at hand is deficient.

How (Really) Thinking About Star Wars Can Make You Feel Uncomfortable (i.e. Terrorists!)

How do you feel about terrorism? You don’t like it very much, do you? Most of us don’t, and for good reason. It’s bad, right? No matter what! Damn those evil terrorists! On the opposite end of things, there’s Star Wars. Most of us like that, right? Well, at least the originals. The prequels have really divided us Star Wars geeks… Now, what if I was to tell you that your hatred of terrorists is directly contradicted by your love of Star Wars? Stay with me. You see, Star Wars (the movies only) is basically a giant high five to domestic terrorism. You’d never know it if you didn’t dig in and think deep (the show, after all, does such a fine job painting the Rebels as the good guys). Think of Star Wars in terms of its internal biases: The Rebels are the focus characters. With the exception of Darth Vader, there are few, if any, Imperial focal points throughout the series. Figures like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, etc. are our heroes, and unabashedly so — watch the first movie again and tell me they’re not unreserved heroes. The Light Side of the Force is pitted against the Dark Side, and, thus, the good side is pitted against the evil side. We’re told that the Empire is evil. Sometimes we see it commit evil, but the assumption left to be made by us is that they are only capable of evil. What isn’t shown is actually quite shocking: infrastructure, culture, etc. The Imperial culture is militaristic, with an Emperor at the head giving all the major orders. But what about the normal folks living in the Empire? Again, we’re left with a biased view, because those planets we are shown tend to be outer world, low-resource, or near-inhospitable places where outlaws have lived pre- and post-Empire, and where we see the failures of colonialism most pronounced. What of the inner planets like Coruscant, etc.? In the prequels we have a good idea that these places are technologically advanced, culturally driven, and prosperous. If you really think about what is shown to us, you have to wonder how much of that is truly the mark of an evil “nation” or “empire,” and how much of it is simply an “empire” gone somewhat awry, but still a few shades short of the extreme evil that we are told it represents. Inevitably, as I briefly touched on above, there is a lot left out of Star Wars in terms of what it doesn’t tell us or intentional leads us to avoid thinking about. Such as: The Rebels are terrorists. They periodically infiltrate the Empire with spies, attack convoys, invade Imperial prisons to liberate criminals against the Empire (yes, Princess Leia is a criminal), etc. The fact that the Rebels almost immediately resort to violence (albeit in a seemingly toxic political environment) is rather telling here. Am I suggesting that violence against the Empire is inherently bad? No, but the problem is that the visual given to us doesn’t provide context to understand the motivations, at least not on a comprehensive level (superficially we are conditioned to hate the Empire). As I mentioned above, and what is relevant to the point preceded this one, the complete lack of Imperial culture within the films essentially leaves an entire side of the coin unseen. This leads us to the following point. Because we only see the militaristic sides of both the Rebels and the Empire (the prequels only show us a pre-Empire galaxy), we have no idea how these two groups are seen in the context of society. Are the Rebels viewed as a good thing, even secretly, among the citizens of the Empire? What about the Empire? While it is certainly relevant to recognize the impetus behind the Rebels’ actions, it doesn’t hide the fact that whatever good intentions there may be, they are still engaging in what we would call terrorism today. Think of it this way: to the people who support Al Qaeda, they are doing a good thing; likewise, to the people who support the Rebels, they are also doing a good thing. It comes down to perspective, and when you are on the outside, as we are, you can think objectively about the reality that Star Wars proposes. That reality is one where terrorism is something to root for, where good and evil are clearly defined, and where, inevitably, the folks we think are the good guys always win. While the Al Qaeda analogy might not hold up for most, it functions well enough to demonstrate how good and evil are defined by both context and perspective, both of which we cannot ignore here, even if the movies want us to for the sake of its internal logic. But ask yourself this the next time you watch the original Star Wars movies: are the militaristic and “evil” elements of the Empire the only things severely damaged by the end of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi? Or is it possible that the collateral damage from everything the Rebels have done is in fact far more devastating than leaving the Empire in control in the first place?