Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

Wow, a non-X-Files post?

I walked out of the new Batman movie with a furrowed brow. The movie was a great roller-coaster ride. It had spectacular shots and lots of amazing action. I also really enjoyed seeing Chicago barely changed for the movie.

But the last voiceover. It disturbed me.

The plot is pretty complicated for a summer blockbuster so I hope my shorthand is going to make sense. There are two targeted villains in the movie: the mob and the Joker. Through a long-term sting operation, the forces of law are about to bring down the mobsters by taking away their money.

So if the mobsters are villains who still operate by a code and within certain rules, they are the state actors (North Korea, Iran, etc.). By denying them their money (economic sanctions), the good guys (U.S. and its allies) are able to curtail their behaviors. Despots can be dealt with because they have one main directive—to stay in power.

The Joker doesn’t care about money. He doesn’t have a code or behave according to a set of rules. There’s nothing that anyone can do to him through the proper channels to dissuade him from pursuing his primary objective—to destroy the order and stability of his targeted society. As Scully said in the first X-Files movie (I can’t just quit cold turkey can I?), “The rational object of terrorism is to promote terror.” So the Joker is the non-state actor (Al-Qaeda) that just wants to watch the world burn.

Harvey Dent, the best of us all, the one who wields the weapons of light and right, stood up courageously to the mobsters and was about to win. But he was destroyed, twisted, by the Joker.

Without the white knight, the voiceover said, we need the dark one. Oh, we’ll disavow the vigilante. We’ll hunt him. We’ll curse his disregard of civil rights, but this jurisdiction-less hero who operates in secrecy and beyond the law, he is just what we need.

Batman sacrifices his reputation and becomes the outcast. He’s willing to take the slings and arrows if it means that society can still go forward with faith and hope. For Batman, his great hope is that one day, the world won’t need him anymore.

I’m thinking that if there hasn’t been one yet, a White House screening is going to go over big.

Tags: Governance, Movie by M
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I can’t believe the cover of The New Yorker’s July issue is still generating controversy. How many people who do not get it read or pay attention to The New Yorker? I understand the point that once a thought is out there and reinforced, the idea becomes an entity in and of itself. But it’s hardly The New Yorker’s role to mitigate that since one of the goals of the magazine is to help form ideas and direct conversations.

Many summers ago, I visited the National Museum of American History, a museum within the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. There was a section on World War II propaganda posters, and I remember scoffing at the innocence of the “simple working folk” back then because they couldn’t understand this poster.

Instead of understanding that the message went along the lines of “Loose lips sink ships,” enough factory workers thought the message was that their bosses were spying on them for the poster makers to pull it. Now, I know that the time period is really an insignificant factor. Many Americans are just going to be stupid—regardless of their birth years.

Tags: Politics by M
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Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms, regardless of whether or not a militia is involved. This is a very important ruling.

My current beliefs about the matter were buried in a Battlestar Galactica post:

People are often surprised that I am very pro-Second Amendment. No, I’m not a member of the NRA, but I do believe in a (potentially) armed citizenry.

I think the idea of revolution is very important. A people have the right to overthrow a nonresponsive and illegitimate government, by violent action if necessary. The point is always made—What hope does a civilian movement have of winning against the military technologies of today? And I agree. But I still believe in the strong symbolism of a people able to come together and form a well-regulated militia to secure their own states of freedom. This reading is more based on the “right of revolution” discussed by Thomas Jefferson, among others, than actual constitutional law. But there it is.

So now, it is constitutional law. Viva Liberty!

Tags: Governance by M
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