We've all seen the show or movie in which there is a love triangle. Two men are fighting over a women, show themselves to be complete and total jerks, and she finally gets between them and says, "You're both idiots, I don't like either of you" and then walks out.
I feel kinda like that right now when it comes to both left and right. I used to be a solid conservative, but my years of studying the Bible showed me that Kingdom of God was not, in fact, a desperate cry from Jesus to lower taxes on the wealthy or build up our military infrastructure around the world. Yet the liberal perspective, which in practice seems primarily a cash grab in order to fund do-gooder projects of dubious worth, have never seemed a worthy alternative. While today I probably sympathize more with the Left than the Right, partly because the Right has moved so far into crazytown that it's impossible to at all accept it, I don't feel home in either ideology or either dominant political party.
The first week and a half of the current Trump administration has not made me feel any better. Trump...crap. What an idiot. Whether it's appointing cabinet ministers who are designed to placate the billionaire class or continue repeating many of our foreign policy adventures of the past half-century, or whether it's Trump himself overreaching to drive away every ounce of goodwill or common sense that may have existed, I'm convinced that ending his reign cannot come soon enough. Even Mike Pence would be a welcome change at this point...maybe not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I do think he has principles.
But some of the liberal response has, to me, been lacking. Yes, I am glad that there are protests. But I'm sometimes worried that their actions fall short. I wonder how many of the good-hearted liberals speaking of how we should not close our borders to refugees are willing to sponsor those same refugees. And many of those who are speaking up are doing so in such a crude manner that one can't tell the difference in style between them and Trump.
I'm not happy, and my patient waiting for the center to arise and put away this imbicility is starting to wane. It's not getting any better anytime soon, and I'm tired with the idiots on both side. Thankfully the 21st century is the best time in history to engage in some media escapism.
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Monday, January 23, 2017
Dystopia then and now
dys·to·pi·an
disˈtōpēən/
adjective
1. relating to or denoting an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.
One of the earliest movie memories I have was Logan's Run. Mid-70s, probably a TV edit (and thus taking out a lot of the sex and language). People are raised in a hedonistic city and live to a point of time and are conditioned from birth to believe in a process in which they might be able to live forever, but instead are inevitably blown up on their climb to utopia. A few people try to escape the process and are chased down and killed by 'Sandmen'. Yet two survive and get out and find the remains of Washington DC and some old people and realize that they had believed a lie. They come back, destroy their ideal world, and the movie ends with everybody leaving and wondering how to live the rest of their lives.
Dystopia in those days and through much of the next few decades was about a future world that was unpleasant. Blade Runner. Terminator. Death Race 2000. Mad Max. The list goes on, and the worlds created are scary but basically similar. Nobody was well off but only trying to survive in a world gone crazy.
Yet somewhere along the way the Dystopian world of the future started to change. Instead of a place in which everything was bad, dystopia became a place in which everything was bad except for a privileged few.
Perhaps it has always been this way. The world of Planet of the Apes wasn't so bad, if you were an ape. More and more things started to evolve until we came to the Hunger Games series. In it, there are the districts in which people survive, and the capitol, Panem, in which people live for bread and circuses as they are surrounded by and aspire towards luxury. Many other shows and movies have carried on this theme; I am currently watching a Brazilian import called The 3% in which people aspire to move from the slums to the 'Offshore', a place in which life is luxurious and healthy.
So, why has dystopia changed so much? Why is that inequality seems to be a greater form of injustice and misery than equality in which all are in the same crappy boat? Perhaps the answer lies in our world today. Deep down we cannot really imagine a world in which life is lived on the edge of survival, where day-to-day existence seems impossible. But we can imagine a world in which there is great inequality. We just elected a billionaire president who is appointing his billionaire friends to cabinet posts. We look around and the tax policy and priority of much of the ruling class is geared towards taking the 'burden' off of the rich and shifting it towards the poor and middle-class. All around us it seems like we are already moving towards a world in which the 3% is the aspiration, and only people like Donald Trump can enable that to happen.
What does this say about now? Conservatives might say that much of this comes because of the sin of envy...we want what other people have and do not want to have to work for it. Strive to make yourself better and you will receive it, if you only work hard enough. Liberals would point out how upward mobility seems to be increasingly impossible today, and how many barriers there are to it. What's the point of hard work when your options are limited by a system designed to keep the rich and powerful in their place?
Maybe dystopia is so popular not because it expresses some of our greatest fears, but because it hints at our current reality. Our reality-TV president could tomorrow announce that the Purge (or Running Man, or the Hunger Games with urban ghettos filling in for the 12 districts) will be coming to a TV near us, and we honestly might not be surprised. Professional sports remind us that people can be easily replaced, and the political situation today gives support to the class of undesirables striving to be accepted by the MadeIt culture.
Dystopia will continue to remain a real part of our entertainment, if not the year-round horror show we are warned about.
disˈtōpēən/
adjective
1. relating to or denoting an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.
One of the earliest movie memories I have was Logan's Run. Mid-70s, probably a TV edit (and thus taking out a lot of the sex and language). People are raised in a hedonistic city and live to a point of time and are conditioned from birth to believe in a process in which they might be able to live forever, but instead are inevitably blown up on their climb to utopia. A few people try to escape the process and are chased down and killed by 'Sandmen'. Yet two survive and get out and find the remains of Washington DC and some old people and realize that they had believed a lie. They come back, destroy their ideal world, and the movie ends with everybody leaving and wondering how to live the rest of their lives.
Dystopia in those days and through much of the next few decades was about a future world that was unpleasant. Blade Runner. Terminator. Death Race 2000. Mad Max. The list goes on, and the worlds created are scary but basically similar. Nobody was well off but only trying to survive in a world gone crazy.
Yet somewhere along the way the Dystopian world of the future started to change. Instead of a place in which everything was bad, dystopia became a place in which everything was bad except for a privileged few.
Perhaps it has always been this way. The world of Planet of the Apes wasn't so bad, if you were an ape. More and more things started to evolve until we came to the Hunger Games series. In it, there are the districts in which people survive, and the capitol, Panem, in which people live for bread and circuses as they are surrounded by and aspire towards luxury. Many other shows and movies have carried on this theme; I am currently watching a Brazilian import called The 3% in which people aspire to move from the slums to the 'Offshore', a place in which life is luxurious and healthy.
So, why has dystopia changed so much? Why is that inequality seems to be a greater form of injustice and misery than equality in which all are in the same crappy boat? Perhaps the answer lies in our world today. Deep down we cannot really imagine a world in which life is lived on the edge of survival, where day-to-day existence seems impossible. But we can imagine a world in which there is great inequality. We just elected a billionaire president who is appointing his billionaire friends to cabinet posts. We look around and the tax policy and priority of much of the ruling class is geared towards taking the 'burden' off of the rich and shifting it towards the poor and middle-class. All around us it seems like we are already moving towards a world in which the 3% is the aspiration, and only people like Donald Trump can enable that to happen.
What does this say about now? Conservatives might say that much of this comes because of the sin of envy...we want what other people have and do not want to have to work for it. Strive to make yourself better and you will receive it, if you only work hard enough. Liberals would point out how upward mobility seems to be increasingly impossible today, and how many barriers there are to it. What's the point of hard work when your options are limited by a system designed to keep the rich and powerful in their place?
Maybe dystopia is so popular not because it expresses some of our greatest fears, but because it hints at our current reality. Our reality-TV president could tomorrow announce that the Purge (or Running Man, or the Hunger Games with urban ghettos filling in for the 12 districts) will be coming to a TV near us, and we honestly might not be surprised. Professional sports remind us that people can be easily replaced, and the political situation today gives support to the class of undesirables striving to be accepted by the MadeIt culture.
Dystopia will continue to remain a real part of our entertainment, if not the year-round horror show we are warned about.
Friday, January 20, 2017
Inauguration Day
Today Donald Trump becomes the 45th president of the United States. Many people are thrilled. Many other people are horrified. I am neither, just resigned to the fact that we elected this man. Well, a minority of people hated Hillary Clinton enough to hold their nose and elect this man who won because of the strangeness of the Electoral College...but that's irrelevant at this point. He is our president, I and many others will pray for him, and while we may secretly hope that he has the long reign similar to William Henry Harrison (look it up), he and his minions are here and we have to get used to it.
So, do we expect from a Trump administration? I think there's about 4 real possibilities of what may happen.
1)5% chance: Trump will surprise us and become a great president. As somebody who truly thinks far outside the box, he will govern in a way that will be surprisingly effective. He will make deals that were impossible under the old way of doing things. He will restore our national pride, cut government to make it efficient, put more money into the pockets of all, and America will truly be great again.
2)12% chance: Trump will be president for about six weeks when he realize how big of a mistake he has made, how much he hates being trapped in a job he can't do, and he will start making plans to resign. Mike Pence will become the 46th president of the United States no later than the middle of 2018, and the ongoing war of attrition between left and right will continue.
3)21% chance: Trump will surprise only a few and be a truly horrendous president, but his ego and arrogance will combine with his minions telling him how great of a job he is doing and make him ever more steadfast in his plans. However, a large percentage of Americans will see the damage he and his cabinet are doing and see how badly they have been hoodwinked. The working class will recognize that he appointed a labor secretary that is pro-business and anti-labor. Parents will see how he has appointed an education secretary who hates public schools and is doing nothing but making them worse. Patriots will see how he appointed a Russian-leaning business executive to lead the state department and how America's stock and influence in the world has continued to be compromised. The presidency of Donald Trump will effectively destroy the Republican party as we know it, much as as the Hoover administration and the Great Depression led to a generation of Democratic control and influence. People will see that the 'right wing way' does not work, and look for something better.
4)62% chance: Trump will be a terrible president, but half the country will continue to believe that he is a great president because this is what Faux News and the rest of the right-wing media in this country tells them to think. The many, many problems of his policy will be blamed on Obama, the Clintons, liberals, and the Mainstream Media. The Democrats will be the ineffectual voice of opposition, protests from the left will continue to come and go to little effect, and in the end the poor and middle class will be poorer, there will be many more (and new) threats come from terrible foreign policy decisions that come from Trump and his team, and American will enter into an ongoing spiral downward. In mid-term elections the Democrats will pick up a few seats, though not enough to gain a majority because of the many gerrymandered districts. In 2020 they will run yet another ineffective candidate who may or may not win, but who will be attacked mercilessly in the same way the Clintons and the Obamas were. The Supreme Court, shored up with Trump appointees, will move decidedly right to the consternation of many, though its effects will not be nearly as day-to-day changing of American virtue as some on the right think. Some old-time manufacturing jobs will be saved because of Trump's protectionist rhetoric, but trade wars will become commonplace and the American consumer will suffer as low-cost necessities will go up in price. America will get involved in more petty and unwinnable wars, destroys cultures and structures in those nations in the name of 'freedom', and then walk away and claim victory even as those nations are still in turmoil. Christianity will continue to be increasingly ignored (or even openly resisted) by a growing number of young people as they move into middle age, as they reject the hypocrisy by those claiming to practice a heretical right-wing form of it. Family values, as reflected in the family of the new president, will continue to be shameful. Many of the dire warnings predicted will begin coming to pass, but the effects of the Trump policies will be felt for generations and often blamed not on Trump but future leaders of both parties.
I really hope I am wrong. But today is going to suck, and I need to pray more for myself and for the many who are about to have the worst president of my and any lifetime. God help us.
So, do we expect from a Trump administration? I think there's about 4 real possibilities of what may happen.
1)5% chance: Trump will surprise us and become a great president. As somebody who truly thinks far outside the box, he will govern in a way that will be surprisingly effective. He will make deals that were impossible under the old way of doing things. He will restore our national pride, cut government to make it efficient, put more money into the pockets of all, and America will truly be great again.
2)12% chance: Trump will be president for about six weeks when he realize how big of a mistake he has made, how much he hates being trapped in a job he can't do, and he will start making plans to resign. Mike Pence will become the 46th president of the United States no later than the middle of 2018, and the ongoing war of attrition between left and right will continue.
3)21% chance: Trump will surprise only a few and be a truly horrendous president, but his ego and arrogance will combine with his minions telling him how great of a job he is doing and make him ever more steadfast in his plans. However, a large percentage of Americans will see the damage he and his cabinet are doing and see how badly they have been hoodwinked. The working class will recognize that he appointed a labor secretary that is pro-business and anti-labor. Parents will see how he has appointed an education secretary who hates public schools and is doing nothing but making them worse. Patriots will see how he appointed a Russian-leaning business executive to lead the state department and how America's stock and influence in the world has continued to be compromised. The presidency of Donald Trump will effectively destroy the Republican party as we know it, much as as the Hoover administration and the Great Depression led to a generation of Democratic control and influence. People will see that the 'right wing way' does not work, and look for something better.
4)62% chance: Trump will be a terrible president, but half the country will continue to believe that he is a great president because this is what Faux News and the rest of the right-wing media in this country tells them to think. The many, many problems of his policy will be blamed on Obama, the Clintons, liberals, and the Mainstream Media. The Democrats will be the ineffectual voice of opposition, protests from the left will continue to come and go to little effect, and in the end the poor and middle class will be poorer, there will be many more (and new) threats come from terrible foreign policy decisions that come from Trump and his team, and American will enter into an ongoing spiral downward. In mid-term elections the Democrats will pick up a few seats, though not enough to gain a majority because of the many gerrymandered districts. In 2020 they will run yet another ineffective candidate who may or may not win, but who will be attacked mercilessly in the same way the Clintons and the Obamas were. The Supreme Court, shored up with Trump appointees, will move decidedly right to the consternation of many, though its effects will not be nearly as day-to-day changing of American virtue as some on the right think. Some old-time manufacturing jobs will be saved because of Trump's protectionist rhetoric, but trade wars will become commonplace and the American consumer will suffer as low-cost necessities will go up in price. America will get involved in more petty and unwinnable wars, destroys cultures and structures in those nations in the name of 'freedom', and then walk away and claim victory even as those nations are still in turmoil. Christianity will continue to be increasingly ignored (or even openly resisted) by a growing number of young people as they move into middle age, as they reject the hypocrisy by those claiming to practice a heretical right-wing form of it. Family values, as reflected in the family of the new president, will continue to be shameful. Many of the dire warnings predicted will begin coming to pass, but the effects of the Trump policies will be felt for generations and often blamed not on Trump but future leaders of both parties.
I really hope I am wrong. But today is going to suck, and I need to pray more for myself and for the many who are about to have the worst president of my and any lifetime. God help us.
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