Liberal Culture

Ya know I’m watching the slowly evolving psychotic episode going about “the timmy” in regards to the Vacancy of Sandra Day O’Connor. And I realized that I could make some of this other blog post I spent time writing at work into a post that is politically hot. NOW, NARAL, ACLU, and the usual alphabet soup of suspects are talking about how if the president nominates a strict constructionist the moon will turn red and all the first born will die. This is a load of malarkey.

We have some good round ups of the Insanity on Ankle Bitting Pundits here, here, here, and here.

I had intended to start this post out talking about The 4400 on USA and War of the Worlds as how some people are choosing to culturally express the September 11th attacks in a message of our media. But I see the almost psychotic rage as part of the same difference in vision that now has so many people setting up the barricades in the senate floor and readying themselves for war.

The 4400 and War of the Worlds are both an attempt to express in cinema some views about September 11th and the world it has left us with. In the 4400 the great event which has marked a new epoch in the lives of the people is the return of 4400 individuals abducted from all different points in time to our world and far different then when they left.

Fear mongering of the 4400 occurs as well as hate mongering and domestic terrorism occurs as well. We see a government take very much police state tactics to react to the 4400. While there is an overwhelming positive message in their return, the focus is on the huge negative disturbance they have brought onto society and how any attempt they make to strike out is –to some degree- justifiable.

In War of the Worlds from the reviews I have read steven spielberg paints a picture of terror, of utter death and destruction, of man becoming utterly insignifigant in the face of an overwhelming force. While our hero teaches his son that resistance is wrong. While this movie may have a more satisfying answer to it ... it like the 4400 lacks something critical I had in my 9-11 experience.

To me 9-11 was a shocking event. Buildings don't just come down like that. You don't watch people doomed in a fashion like that. But to me the events of that september day were a call, one the president later put into words what I was feeling in my heart, to service and duty. Its part of why I am seeking the educational track I am right now. To me while their is tragedy the words "Lets Roll" fit far more what I take from the experience. I take it as a sign of a new direction that needs to be taken.

But apperently folks like Stephen Spielberg don't seem to in their attempts to turn 9-11 into influences in our popular culture agree with me. To them it is about the horror, and about what we are willing to become to defend ourselves. To them fighting, struggling seems to largely be pointless. While in 2002 they may not have held that view, they do now. Whereas i view September 11th as an epoch in our history. When everything became different.

They view the world through Malthusian shades and see us as walking the planet to a slow death. Malthus was wrong in his time, and every time his prophecy of doom has returned to fashion it has been proven to be as silly then as it is now. As we speak Oil Shale and Oil Sands are finally being processed for oil. Because it is now cost effective for it to happen. It will take a while for this to make a major impact, but it has happened now because of issues outside the realm of enviromental doom.

I am a former Libertarian.. and i know entering into the dawning of a new Supreme Court Justice what i believe in will get screwed over. But i don't see it as a metaphysical dread because i know even if some one in the ilk and mold of Ruth "Bad Girl" Ginsberg gets on the court this country will endure and we will move on.

The Wingnut left see's a time of great tragedy and turns inward. I experience a time of great tragedy and think outward. They believe that our planet is doomed to our folly, when the jury is still far from making that call. They believe that this is the worst of all possible worlds, whereas I believe in the American system that we are always fairly close to the best outcome possible. We may need to tweak it a little here or there but we can get it done.

As Stephen Speilberg focuses on death, I focus on life. This is why I am again laughing at the moonbat left and wondering how they became the forces that dictate and govern much of our culture