violence

The Sad Colossus

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An unprecedented number of undocumented Indian immigrants are crossing U.S. borders on foot, according to new data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. What has been a years-long increase in migration has now developed into a dramatic spike.

From October 2022 to this September, the 2023 fiscal year, there were 96,917 Indians encountered — apprehended, expelled or denied entry — having entered the U.S. without papers. It marks a fivefold increase from the same period from 2019 to 2020, when there were just 19,883.

What’s behind the rise in undocumented Indian immigrants crossing U.S. borders on foot, NBC News, November 14, 2023

Maybe it’s my First World (Are we still allowed to show regard for numbered worlds? Correct me if I’m wrong, but First World used to identify the United States and countries aligned with it, Second World identified the Soviet Union and countries aligned with it, and Third World identified countries not aligned with either the United States and the USSR. Of course, with the demise of the USSR, there was a Second World no more, and with ideological alignment no longer a factor as it once was, the Third World came to be a term that referred to non-industrialized, poverty-stricken countries; consequently, First World came to refer to the opposite. So… I guess writing it out like that has helped me to answer my own question: In this stressful day and age where sensibilities are quite frayed and sensitive, I would have to say the answer is… I guess the answer depends on the audience. I guess some would say hell no numbered worlds can no longer be regarded, you unwoke ogre! And I guess others would say hell yes they can, you fragile little snowflake! Anyway… call me what you will, be it an unwoke ogre or a fragile snowflake, just don’t call me late to dinner.) privilege, or just plain ignorance of the global plight of others (I haven’t been to a so-called Third World country since the Nineties), but it amazes me that so many people from around the world are still risking their lives to immigrate to these less than United States…

With all its division and dysfunction…

With all its mass killings and all the other forms of unimaginable violence that one could imagine…

With all its rascist, homophobic, anti-intellect trumper cultists frothing at the mouth to turn it into their narcissistic megolomaniacal cult leader’s autocratic utopia of hateful sweeping raids, giant camps and mass deportations.

I mean, how bad must it be in a country for someone to risk their and their family’s lives to emigrate from it by any means necessary to live in another country where more and more each day everyone’s life who lives here, be they here naturally born, naturalized, documented, undocumented, is at risk just by living here.

It seems no where is safe from the hate and violence.

Sheesh, just look at today’s news with the threat of violence in the Senate and an actual physical altercation in the House…

I mean, W.T.F., over.

I use to be proud of how many all over the globe wanted to come to this country to pursue the American Dream…

Americans by choice, not by chance…

Now I’m only saddened by it.

THE NEW COLOSSUS

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

- Emma Lazarus

#icomplainbecauseicare
#godblessamerica
#andeverywhereelse

How could something so violent and callous happen?

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The details suggest that while the military put strict rules in place to protect civilians, the Special Operations task force repeatedly used other rules to skirt them. The military teams counting casualties rarely had the time, resources or incentive to do accurate work. And troops rarely faced repercussions when they caused civilian deaths, [such as the deaths of 80 Syrian women and children].

How the U.S. Hid an Airstrike That Killed Dozens of Civilians in Syria, New York Times, November 13, 2021

I mean, that there is the stuff of Clausewitz, you know, the famed military strategist also known as the God of War…

In his masterpiece, On War (1832), Clausewitz had warned against the “kind-hearted” fiction that a nation could wage a war “without too much bloodshed.” Not only was it useless, but morally reforming war could exacerbate its evil. “Mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.” Treating the carnage in war as a sin for which to atone or—worse—a blemish on the most beautiful activity in life was something like a moral error. “It would be futile—even wrong—to try to shut one’s eyes to what war really is from sheer distress at its brutality,” Clausewitz explained. Concerns about how gory and gruesome the commitments to intensity could become were petty. “The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously,” he allowed, “but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity.” As he observed, “Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.”

“I Would Not Take Prisoners.” Tolstoy’s Case Against Making War Humane, Literary Hub, September 10, 2021

Maybe such violence and callousness in the U. S. military is because its 1.3 million or so members are influenced by the violent and callous rhetoric and examples of our societal leaders just as much as anyone else…

Obviously Trump comes to mind with all his many, many examples of violent rhetoric and of his openly endorsing police brutality and of his pardoning convicted war criminals and of course of his incitement of a resurrection against our government.

But if we are going to lay blame on our political leaders for our violent and callous national temperament, then we must hold our cultural leaders equally accountable…

Obviously Travis Scott comes to mind for his incitement of fights and riots and, most recently, deadly stampedes.

Certainly, these are issues for consideration when considering the cause behind such violent and callous behavior by all spectrums of our prism-like society, but so are the violent movies and video games we watch and play, not to mention the violent books we read…

But if we are going to blame external violent and callous influences, which I’m not sure I agree we should be doing, for our violent and callous societal behavior, then where does the excuse of influence end and the responsibility for personal behavior begin?

I don’t know the answer to that, except in my mind it should begin as soon as is viably possible, focusing more on the external influences during the early development years, particularly the influences that poverty, crime, and mental health issues have on childhood development.

Nothing new there. And even if we were to raise all today’s children to be compassionate and ethical, we’re still left with the violent and callous reality of now.

When dealing with such abnormal and illegal misanthropic behavior, it’s obvious to me that our societal organizations that hold the legal monopoly on violence — our military and police forces, for example — should be held to a much higher standard of ethical behavior and face a much stiffer penalty when unethical behavior is committed.

I sure would like to take a look at what our military and police cadets are being taught today at their service schools regarding ethics and codes of conduct.

I have some idea, but it’s almost been 20 years since I was on active duty so I’m sure times have changed.

But while education in ethics and codes of conduct for our magistrates of violence is surely important and must continue, nothing in my mind is as important as the education and examples one receives in the formative childhood years.

For it is then our brains get stuffed with the stuff we base our lives on for the rest of our lives…

Such stuff as our prejudices and stereotypes and how to love and how to hate…

You know, the near indelible and indestructible stuff that one university freshman course in ethics can ne’er overcome.

Yeah…

The Known Knowns of a Known War Criminal

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It’s always magical to be able to throw an asshole’s words back in his face… especially when he is an outspoken representative of so many other assholes.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2003. Photo by Roger L. Wollenberg/UPI

While no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime,” he said. “And I don’t think there’s anyone in any of those pictures … (who wouldn’t) accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom.

Rumsfeld: Looting is transition to freedom, UPI, April 11, 2003

#GEORGEFLOYD
#BLACKLIVESMATTER
#RESIST

Sons of Anarchy: Hollywood’s Shakespearean Expression of the American Way of Life

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FILM | TELEVISION | DRAMA | ACTION
SONS OF ANARCHY
RATING: ★ ★ ★ ★

Sons Of Anarchy

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, and since I am American I must, like all Americans are doing across the nation and all over facebook, offer my thanks.

There are many things for which I am thankful: my family, my health, my freedom, football (football, the real kind, not soccer), you know, all the standard things a standard American is standardly thankful for.

But in addition to those standards, I am also thankful for the miracle of technology, for it allows me to experience right from my easy chair such wonderful, and cheap, mind melting joys like this and this and Netflix.

And I am especially thankful for Netflix, for it allows me to watch movies and television shows and documentaries and even some cartoons “on demand” (which is a very American way of putting it, no?).

And, of course I’m thankful for Hollywood, too, for without Hollywood, how else would I and the rest of the world know what it truly means to be an American?

And because of Hollywood, and Netflix, and technology, and my health (and all the free time it affords me), I just spent the past three or fours days (I’m not exactly sure how many it was because by the second day it all became a blur) watching a delightful, family show called Sons of Anarchy.

Well, it may not necessarily be a show you would want to watch as a family, but it is undeniably a show about family and the many challenges a typical — and non-typical — family faces.

Yeah, I know, as usual I’m late to the party. Four seasons late, to be exact. Season Five is already close to a wrap. Unfortunately, I will not be able to see it until sometime next year, probably right before Season Six kicks off; that is, if Netflix graciously makes it available for me to watch.

So much for “on demand” I guess.

Anyway, now, after that marathon of anarchy and mayhem I willingly subjected myself to, I can’t stop thinking, “What the hell just happened?”

You know, I’m not really sure. After four straight days of watching four straight seasons of head bangin’, rock n’ rollin’, face tattin’ motorcycle clubbin’, gun runnin’, drug slingin’, porn flickin’, bombs explodin’, race baitin’, back stabbin’ drama, I’m not sure of anything right now.

Except that the show is good.

Really good.

Once again, Hollywood did what it does best: exploiting, romanticizing, and glamorizing the most extreme of man’s deviant nature.

Hollywood did its job so well and the show is so good I gave it a Netflix rating of 4 out of 5 stars.

I briefly considered giving it 5 of 5, but it does have a few superficial flaws; however, over the entire well thought out and executed arc of the show, those flaws mostly become forgotten.

But for the curious, here are a few of the annoyances I noticed:

— A bizarre Irish Republican Army connection that put a bit of a drag on the pace and feel of the show for one of the seasons, season two, I think.

— A couple of cheezy reveals, especially at the end of season four, that pissed me off.

— Chuck Hunnam’s British accent. Mostly it goes unnoticed, but it is noticeable. It especially gets thick when he is talking with/screaming at Irish dudes.

But other than those minor flaws, the show is a masterpiece, as in Masterpiece Theatre.

Well, perhaps not but speaking of theatre — dammit, I’m American! — speaking of theater, Kurt Sutter, the show’s genius creator, is in no way shy about the show’s obvious draw off of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. For example, we have our conflicted prince (or Motor Cycle Club Vice President), we have our surrogate father king (or MC President and step-father of the VP), we have our ghost of the dead former king and father of the prince (or a manifesto written by the dead former MC President, which is found and read by the son/VP of said dead former MC President, and which conflicts said son/VP even more).

There are more parallels but I think you get the point.

Hey, if you’re gonna rip off someone’s storyline, who’s better to rip off than the Great Bard himself (who, by the way, is also accused of being a first class storyline ripper-offer in his own right).

Yeah indeed, it’s a raunchy, guns/drugs/sex-laden American version of Hamlet (heck, to make sure we slow on the uptake Americans didn’t miss the Hamlet connexion, Mr Sutter even titled the last two episodes of Season Four as “To Be – Act I” and “To Be – Act II” for us).

I haven’t watched such a deviantly fine contemporary adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s plays since My Own Private Idaho (yeah, I know — Keanu Reeves. But hey, his “style” of acting works in this flick and, besides, it also has River Phoenix (MHRIP)).

Yes sir (that would be a non-gender specific “sir”), Sons of Anarchy just about has it all; all, that is, except…anarchy.

Sure there’s all the killing and all the other subversion of societal “norms” one could imagine, but all that is done within the context of maintaining a structured and orderly, albeit somewhat illicit, motorcycle club. And clubs, especially those that are guided via vote and majority rule like the SAMCRO is (if you aren’t an SOA fan, you’re probably just as confused about the meaning of SAMCRO as I initially was when I first started watching the show…if you want to know what it means, ask Mr Google like I had to), represent anything but anarchistic ideals.

Clubs, especially those of the motorcycle variety, do not represent anarchy, they represent democracy and freedom.

And democracy and freedom, damn it, represent America!

Yes, the Sons of Anarchy, with its British leading man, and its British-owned storyline, and its Irish Republican Army and Mexican Drug Cartela dependencies and connexions–er, connections, is about as American as any television series could ever strive to be…

Or not to be.

Uhm, yeah…

Oh well, I tried.

While my dubious and corny conclusion may be in question, there is no question that, with Sons of Anarchy, Hollywood has served up yet another feast of a show for us turkeys to feed upon in our unending quest to fill our insatiable viewing appetites.

And for that, I also am thankful.

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Rating System:
★ = Unwatchable
★ ★ = Poor Show
★ ★ ★ = Average Show
★ ★ ★ ★ = Outstanding Show
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ = Exceptional Show