agitprop version 2.0

Are War Supporters In Their Last Throes?

I don't want to get too optimistic here but this is where we stand as of mid-September 2005: 

• 67% believe that the President is mishandling the war in Iraq
• 65% believe that the U.S. is spending too much on Iraq
• 63% believe that the U.S. should either "withdraw some" or "withdraw all" troops
• 59% believe that the war was a mistake  (poll sources)

War supporters are truly getting desperate. As they frantically cling their chickenhawk claws to their cherished war, they know deep down that the tide is turning against their favor. Thousands of people are expected to attend this Saturday's anti-war marches in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. The anti-war movement, or peace movement depending on your persuasion, needs every single body it can find in order to make a showing of massive dissent. The larger it is, the greater the impact. (That's if the MSM even bothers to cover it).

To prove my theory that war supporters are in their last throes I turn to prominent phone-sex enthusiast and chickenhawk pundit Bill O'Reilly. He prides himself on being a tough-talking, no-nonsense patriot. He lambastes people as cowards who won't come on his show--they aren't "man enough" to face the raw power of the Factor. Well, it turns out that he is the real coward--a scaramouche--to use his own language.

Crooks & Liars has a must-see clip of Phil Donahue vs. Bill O'Reilly. Phil gave Falafel boy a firm ass-whooping yesterday and nearly made O'Reilly's head explode on his own show.  Donahue kept his cool despite Mr. Falafel's ranting and raving.

On a related note, the troubles of Iraq and Katrina may have pushed President Bush so far over the edge that he has returned to the bottle. The National Enquirer (yeah I don't know how valid the story is) asserts that when the levees broke in New Orleans, Bush took a Texas-sized whiskey shot. Oddly enough, Shakespeare's Sister notes that the National Enquirer has been right on the money in its uncovering of political scandals.

If there was ever a moment for George to start drinking again, now is the time.

Wisdom From Kurt Vonnegut

The aged author said this on the Daily Show last night:

The dumbest man at the top of our government is the Secretary of Defense. He is so dumb--he's--he is so dumb. He thought he could take over a country and its oil, population, ah, 27 million I believe--Muslim. He thought he could take it over and the oil, which is what he was after, with a whole bunch of big bangs you know. And then 200,000 American soldiers who didn't even know how to say "hello" in Arabic?!

video of the interview at onegoodmove

I need to read some of his work. I actually have Slaughterhouse Five but have never touched it. Damn, I'm so behind on literature.

Surprise! You've Just Been Swift-Boated!

Frank Rich describes the attempted right-wing Swift-Boating of Cindy Sheehan:

True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a "crackpot" by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Rush Limbaugh went so far as to declare that Ms. Sheehan's "story is nothing more than forged documents - there's nothing about it that's real." But this time the Swift Boating failed, utterly, and that failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse of political support for the Iraq war.

He continues by identifying the anatomy of a smear:

When the Bush mob attacks critics like Ms. Sheehan, its highest priority is to change the subject. If we talk about Richard Clarke's character, then we stop talking about the administration's pre-9/11 inattentiveness to terrorism. If Thomas Wilson is trashed as an insubordinate plant of the "liberal media," we forget the Pentagon's abysmal failure to give our troops adequate armor (a failure that persists today, eight months after he spoke up). If we focus on Joseph Wilson's wife, we lose the big picture of how the administration twisted intelligence to gin up the threat of Saddam's nonexistent W.M.D.'s.

The hope this time was that we'd change the subject to Cindy Sheehan's "wacko" rhetoric and the opportunistic left-wing groups that have attached themselves to her like barnacles. That way we would forget about her dead son. But if much of the 24/7 media has taken the bait, much of the public has not.    

                        

Cindy Sheehan has galvanized the anti-war movement like no one has done before. At this crucial moment when public support for the president and his war are waning, she has arrived like a clear voice in the night, speaking simply and clearly, standing strong against the tide of war, injustice and imperial brutality. Her brave actions have spawned a faithful group of followers at Camp Casey.

These heroic actions have hit a nerve deep within the right-wing leviathan. They must truly feel threatened by this peace mom if they cast her as a traitor and spew their wicked slime across her noble name. These chickenhawk pundits appear to be in the last throes of a desperate insurgency. Why else would they denounce her so vehemently?

Perhaps America is slowly waking up from its long slumber . . .

Related: [Interracial Falafel Sex on the Factor]  [Rush Limbaugh in his Last Throes]

cindy sheehan politics war

In Case of Low Poll Numbers Go On Month-Long Vacation

USA Today provides further proof that freedom fear is on the march:

WASHINGTON — American attitudes toward the war in Iraq continue to sour in the wake of last week's surge in U.S. troop deaths, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows. (Related: Poll results). An unprecedented 57% majority say the war has made the USA more vulnerable to terrorism. A new low, 34%, say it has made the country safer. The question is critical because the Bush administration has long argued that the invasion of Iraq was undertaken to make the USA safer from terrorism.

Well, at least we're making progress towards something, even if it is instability and insecurity. The public's attitudes toward the president's job performance aren't any kinder either. Maybe that explains why Bush ran off to Crawford to clear brush and watch Barney chase the armadillos. According to this graph of historical Bush approval ratings, we are due for another war or terrorist attack anytime now.

The Culture of Sadism

Are we a sadistic culture or what? Check out Yahoo's Most Viewed Photo and Most Emailed Photo from yesterday:   

               

Now that's gotta hurt. As Jen said at The Heretik's last night: "It's got everything, hot girl getting hurt. Our society laps that up." Here's more in the series. Bring on the blood!

               

I think we, as a society in general, secretly enjoy watching others get hurt. Think of America's Funniest Home Videos. The most hilarious clips are the ones in which some dumb-ass falls off a ladder or a kid walks into screen door. Then there are countless reality shows like Fear Factor which force people into dangerous challenges and stunts.

               

Poor girl. What's worse is that so many people got off watching her bleed.

USA's Chelsea Davis hits her head on the board during a preliminary round in the women's three-meter springboard diving competition at the World Aquatics Championships Friday, July 22, 2005 in Montreal. Davis required stitches after hitting her head. (AP Photo/Ryan Remiorz)

Sex, Lies, and Videotape

I'm getting sick of hearing about celebrities and their sexual antics caught on tape. The latest star to join the public sex-tape club is none other than People's Sexiest Man Alive  Colin Farrell:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Actor Colin Farrell is suing a woman for allegedly trying to distribute and profit from a sex tape he says the two recorded with the agreement it would never be made public.

The lawsuit filed Monday seeks monetary damages as well as a temporary restraining order and injunction prohibiting the sale or other use of the videotape.

Farrell, 29, accuses Nicole Narain of trying to distribute the tape through an intermediary. The two had an intimate relationship 2 1/2 years ago and both agreed that the 15-minute tape that shows the couple having sex would be jointly owned by them and would remain private, according to the suit.

I have no problem with people doing the nasty on camera. Go for it. Knock yourself out, provided that the acts you engage in are not illegal (I'm talking about you R. Kelly). But if these celebrities expect the tape to remain private they must be smoking crack. Hollywood is all about opportunism, no matter what the price. There will always be some scum-sucker ready and willing to sell their soul to get their fifteen minutes of fame.

As for Colin Farrell, I would rate him Most Likely To Be Caught in a Bar-Room Brawl Bashing a Pool Queue Over Some Bloke's Head. I watched him in Alexander--the longest, most god-awful film of 2004.  Angelina Jolie, playing Alexander's over-bearing mother, sounded like a Transylvanian vampire. Although I must admit I learned quite a bit about Alexander the historical figure despite Oliver Stone's historical revisionism.

Technorati:  colin farrell

Postmodern Attitudes Toward Life, Part 2

I wish to continue on some of the topics I raised during Part One of Postmodern Attitudes Toward Life. I started this discussion as a jumping off point from Deepak Chopra's post on "Acceptable Slaughter". I wanted to analyze how the state takes hypocritical stances towards human life. Upon further inspection, "attitudes toward life" could be broken down into two manifestations: the citizen and the state. Citizens hold varying personal views on what life is and when it is acceptable to end it. The state defines legitimacy and creates reality, thus influencing the views of the citizenry. Most citizens of a state are deemed worthy of protection by the state, while others (typically part of the out-group) are forced to fall victim to capital punishment, war and genocide.

The Citizen: Buffet-Style Ideology and Collective Punishment 

I never intended to tackle personal issues like abortion and where that fits into "attitudes toward life" in this series. However, I mentioned it in the exposition piece when talking about life issues. I believe it is fair to mention it because it is present in the overly-simplistic Left-Right spectrum of American political discourse. Kate at Broken Windows made this important point regarding this subject:

I think because so many years have past since the days of back-alley abortions that people forget that abortion rights was and continues to be a pro-life issue, the life here being that of the woman. Since today women can have a safe abortion, administered by a doctor, the debate has been refocused onto the fetus. I think this is a shame. If we lose the legal right to have safe abortions, then women will once again die. Will "pro-life" liberals really be "pro-life" then, or will they join their right-wing friends who think the woman's life is worth less than the fetus's? The argument to make abortion illegal is a pro-death argument, which, sadly, fits in with the right's ideology. I guess they're not hypocrites after all!

This issue proves how the simple definition of "life" can lead to all sorts of intellectual quagmires. Conservatives who are "pro-life" (i.e. want to outlaw abortion) would rather see a woman die than legally allow her to have a safe medical procedure. Therefore, they could be labeled "pro-death" if they succeeded in banning abortion. On a side note, a Portuguese court acquitted two women charged with having illegal abortions. Did you know that abortion was illegal in Portugal? I sure didn't. Bottom line: I believe it is fair to discuss abortion because it is a hot political issue, but, it is not the issue I wish to discuss here in this series.

Americans like the buffet. It is distinctive of our overfed, overstuffed culture. We have no qualms about our military dropping bombs in a heavily urban area and killing innocent civilians as long as the innocent civilians are poor, brown and don't speak English. But a terrorist bombing in an industrialized English-speaking country? That's downright heinous!

Public acceptance of collective punishment typically depends on whether or not one views "the other" as human or not. When speaking of "attitudes towards life" I am focusing on American political attitudes towards life and death--not in the metaphysical sense, but when it is acceptable for a society to willfully end the life of another. If murder and killing is wrong (which I believe to be so), then why not stand against all instances of killing, no matter who the victims are. Since the state is the authority in all matters, it always has the last word in deciding who lives and who dies.

Redrum: The State and Acceptable Slaughter

In an excellent post, Phila at Bouphonia describes how government authority shapes these public attitudes:

I've been thinking a lot lately about Walter Benjamin's assertion that the "state of emergency" decreed by government is not the exception, but the rule. Giorgio Agamben sees the state of exception as a "threshold of indeterminacy between democracy and absolutism," and views it as characteristic of modern government.

It's the claim that a state of exception exists that leads us to accept the loss of privacy, and the suspicion of guilt, that panoptic mass surveillance represents. It also leads us to accept that there are certain people who represent "life unworthy of life," who can be killed at will, and who can paradoxically be made entirely subject to the law without having any recourse to it (cf. Guantanamo).

Life unworthy of life. Sub-human individuals that can be exterminated like cockroaches. Criminals on death row. Terra-ists.

It seems that the difference between calculated murder and collateral damage depends on the state. If an individual actor or actors not sanctioned by the state commits murder, then it is deemed wrong. But if the state willingly sanctions murder, and uses the military to do its bidding, then it is acceptable.

Chopra continues in Part Two of his post:

While on the road, I have been reading all of the responses to my last post and am very appreciative of the discussion taking place. This morning I recalled a quote that I recently came across from a Nicaraguan poet by name Ruben Dario: "There is no truth, there are no lies, everything is according to the color of the crystal before your eyes."

The following is an AFP News item: "The Afghan Government has launched an investigation into a US air raid in which the US military has confirmed civilians were killed. On Tuesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he was 'saddened and distressed' by the deaths of up to 17 people in the US air strike."

There are estimates of over 100,000 deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the war. There are no reliable numbers on the amount of civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

The terrorists bomb civilians in London and New York, and the "military" bomb civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. They all claim "self" defense. We are all caught up in this tangled web. Both sides seek revenge and retribution and call it justice.

The fundamental question of inseparability and interdependent co- arising of events goes unaddressed.

The cycle of revenge is madness. But I admit that I see no way out of it. All I can do is sit here and watch it unfold. Maybe it's human nature to respond to violence with more violence? In this postmodern era, where inconsistency is king, maybe we are drifting back to barbarism.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. -- George Orwell

Postmodern Attitudes Toward Life

People have very different attitudes toward life. Many conservatives believe that abortion and physician-assisted suicide is murder yet they support the killing of convicted criminals (death penalty) and support war which kills thousands of innocent bystanders. On the other hand, some liberals support physician-assisted suicide and abortion rights yet condemn capital punishment and war. I see much hypocrisy when it comes to this topic of life--both what it is, and when it is acceptable to end it.

Can we have a consistent pro-life ethic as opposed to this buffet version that American culture currently subscribes to? Deepak Chopra offers up these thought-provoking questions in a post on the Huffington Post:

The first step could be to begin questioning our ideas about acceptable slaughter by any side. Is a bombing raid on a city where the majority of the dead turn out to be innocent women and children -- otherwise called "collateral damage" -- acceptable killing?

Is a beheading less acceptable?

Why is killing a person in uniform more acceptable than a person in civilian clothing?

Who makes the rules about "civilized vs. uncivilized" killing? Can we begin to question these rules?

I think most people would give answers that expose an underlying bias. This is the bias that of course "we" are good and mostly right while "they" are bad and mostly wrong. It's on that basis that unacceptable slaughter continues on all sides.

The killing of poor civilians has become perfectly acceptable when we are fighting a war. Those three letters W-A-R seem to justify the deaths of innocents. Warped fundamentalist interpretations of religion are also to blame. Take the Islamic jihadists who last year beheaded Nicolas Berg while screaming "God is great".

It's difficult for me to accept any rational justification for murdering someone whether it be for national security, religion or politics. I am reminded of Gandhi's promotion of non-violence:

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Yes I admit that this one of those silly idealistic posts in which I wonder if humans could ever abondon violence and work towards global peace. However, I grow more cynical by the day. I am coming to believe that the natural state of humankind is war à la Thomas Hobbes.

I apologize for the heavy nature of the topic this Saturday morning, but it is an important one that deserves some thought. Matt at Tattered Coat also offers up some interesting reflections on this matter.

Can I Be a Hilton Too?

Just when I thought television could not get any worse, NBC (General Electric Co.) has decided to fling more excrement in our faces by launching their new summer reality show I Want to be a Hilton.

Everyone's heard of the Hiltons, especially socialites Paris and Nicky, but what would it take to actually live like them? Kathy Hilton (mom to Paris and Nicky) hosts this engaging and humorous series that follows 14 eccentric young contestants as they vie for the opportunity to live the glamorous lifestyle of high society. Kathy Hilton guides the contestants through a variety of weekly challenges set in glamorous Manhattan and ranging from art and culture to beauty and fashion. Each week Kathy eliminates those who "didn't make the list." The finalist will win an extravagant prize package including a $200,000 trust fund!

Do I want to be a Hilton? No. I want to rip my eyes out of my freakin' skull. I can just imagine the show with ha-ha scenes of desperate rednecks trying to decide which spoon to use on the fifth course of their seven course dinner. I bet David "Bobo" Brooks would love using this show to further explain his quasi-sociological theory that rich cultured elitists are oppressing the common man with their knowledge of fine wine and good manners. Echidne of the Snakes has a great post  dissecting Brooks' latest column in which he turns Marx on his head to explain how the working class is being oppressed by latte-drinking liberals.

Has our culture become so sadistic and voyeuristic that people want to watch contestants eat piles of live worms and marry unknown people in front of millions of viewers? The other problem with "reality television" is that it is simply not real. One of my friends who went to UC Santa Barbara said that the party-loving campus is filled with reality-show producers trying to recruit contestants. The directors of these shows instruct the participants what to do and how to act in order to achieve the vision that the producers have in mind.

Welcome to America! Sell your soul to Hollywood for a chance to win $200,000!

Sith Happens!

George Lucas' Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is being released at a peculiar time in American political and cultural history. Our legislature is ripe with corruption and political squabble. The republic is crumbling amidst imperial wars and draconian power-grabs by the executive branch. We are on the verge of a showdown in the Senate over the filibuster which may alter the course of our political history.

Revenge of the Sith describes a fictional world not too far from our present reality minus the light-sabers, star-ships and space aliens. Written in the 1970s, the backdrop for Lucas' story is the collapse of a republic and the rise of an empire. He touches on some timeless political themes in Revenge of the Sith:

In ancient Rome, "why did the senate, after killing Caesar, turn around and give the government to his nephew?" Lucas said. "Why did France, after they got rid of the king and that whole system, turn around and give it to Napoleon? It's the same thing with Germany and Hitler.

"You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody's squabbling, there's corruption."

The most coincidental dialog occurs when Anakin Skywalker (soon to be Darth Vader) utters the following line to former friend and mentor Obi Wan Kenobi:

"If you're not with me, then you're my enemy"

Hmm, that reminds me of something our president said right after 9/11:

"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

Yowza! I'm excited to see the film although I found Episode I and II highly lacking in substance. I am intrigued by the intense political and historical themes layered within the film. The Heretik, who has enjoyed milking Star Wars imagery for political purposes as have I, poses the following conundrum: The Dark Side, Not to Go There Too Much, But Are You Going to Go There Again?

I've been there and back again a few times myself.