Stop This Crazy Thing! (Existential Violence, part three)

Let's go back for a moment, one more time, to my first post on this:
Part of the problem with the midlife crisis of motorcycle dude was that it wasn't sustainable. I don't think these kinds of things ever are. As I said, the wife who worked in the flower shop didn't work there, initially, because she needed to: It was just an avenue for social interaction for her. However, one of the things she frequently talked about was her fear that her job would actually become necessary due to all of the money her husband was spending on his reckless behavior. She didn't handle the money beyond what she made in the flower shop, so she didn't even know how he was doing things like buying little red sports cars and street-racing motorcycles at the drop of a hat. Not to mention the various medical bills they'd incurred due to his injuries from his... activities.

Unfortunately (for you), I don't know how all of that worked out. Summer came to an end, and I went back to school. I've never really even thought about it again until recently. My question, now, is whether she ever got to a point where she said, "Enough is enough. Stop this shit now." Or did he kill himself? Or did he work through his issues without killing himself before she got to that point? Since it was only his own life he was endangering (well, except for some other people who were endangering their lives in the same way as he was), did she even have a right to tell him to stop?

This is where everything gets complicated.

But let's look at things another way:

When I was a sophomore in college, I was coming back from some place or other with a friend in his car. We got into one of those deep philosophical questions that college students are apt to get into:
If the speed limit is 65mph, why does the speedometer go all the way up to 120mph? Does the car really go that fast, or is it just to make you think that the car could go that fast? I suppose this was an important question to us, but, for me, it was just an abstract one... until we started talking about how fast we'd ever driven.

Now, as I mentioned last post, I had a Hyundai. The speedometer in it only went up to 100mph, but I liked to joke that the car wouldn't even fall that fast, and the fastest I'd driven it was in the 75mph range, and that was more a function of the fact that I was listening to music and kind of just going along with the traffic... until I looked down and saw how fast I was going and slowed back down to the speed limit. Yes, even at 20, I wasn't a speeder. At least not on purpose.

My friend, though, was one of those people who didn't believe in going under the speed limit and, even as we were discussing all of this, we were zipping along in the 75 range. He admitted to having gone 90 on multiple occasions, then began to lament how he'd never gone up to 100. This while in the midst of the discussion of why his speedometer went to 120. At which point he did something that I was adamantly not okay with: He said, "Let's find out," and, as the saying goes, put the pedal to the metal.

I'm going to say three things about this:
At 100mph, you are no longer really driving a car, at least not a car that's not made for those kinds of speeds with the kinds of tires designed to allow you to keep control of your car. I wasn't driving, but I could still feel that the car was doing something more akin to gliding, like a toboggan going down a snowy slope. We were fortunate that the road was fairly straight where we were in East Texas at that point.
However, hills, even smalls ones, are not your friend at those kinds of speeds.
After going 100, 70 feels slow.

Also, I never got back into a car with him again with him as the driver.

The problem here is that I was a nonconsensual partner in what he was doing, and it was life-threatening. We were lucky. Fortunately, once he got above 100 and felt like he couldn't make the car go any faster without burning up the engine, he took his foot off the gas and let it slow back down. However, I protested the whole thing the whole time it was happening; it's not like I was a silent partner in the whole business, and he ignored what I was saying until he'd done what he wanted to do.

And this is how I feel, kind of all the time, in the U.S. right now. Like I'm stuck in a car with some dude in the midst of midlife crisis who is doing his best to get his car up to 120mph, and I have no way to make him stop. Or stick more closely to the analogy, I'm hanging on for dear life to some guy on a dirt bike while he speeds along one of those dirt bike tracks with all the hills and stuff and my options are to keep holding on until he crashes or to let go and hope the fall doesn't kill me.

Which makes me wonder if there was a part of motorcycle dude's brain screaming to be let off during his whole breakdown with reality.

But I kind of doubt it, because when you're in a state like that, you are left without any ability to reason. Like about 1/3 of the country, right now, driving us down the freeway at top speed with no intent to slow down. And they can't see the danger or, even, comprehend that there might be danger. And they don't really care, because  they think they have it all under control.

Anyway... I had intended this to only be three parts, but this post is getting long, so it looks like I'm going to have to do one more.

Hanging Chad

I was thinking today about how, sometimes, the course of history seems to bend around seemingly inconsequential moments. Moments that might even seem consequential at the time but only in the way that a kid thinks any given Christmas is consequential but, then, easily forgotten. So the moments, no matter how anticipated they were, fade into inconsequentialness, and we never think of them again even though they turn out to be pivot points of history.

So... here we are on the brink of environmental devastation... the end of life on Earth in its current incarnation... and I was wondering how we got here.

It's not like this was all of a sudden and we couldn't have made plans long ago about how to deal with it. It's been more like a gas gauge in a car, and we've been choosing to bypass all of the gas stations along the freeway telling ourselves we'll be fine even though the gas stations have been fewer and fewer along our drive...

Have you ever driven through west Texas? I have. Granted, it's been a while, but I can't imagine it's changed much. When you drive through west Texas, which is vast, there are signs along the freeway that say things like "Next gas station 48 miles," which may not seem like much, but it's a long way when your gas gauge is riding the empty line.

We're in a car running on fumes and about 20 miles into that 48 mile trip to the next station.

You do the math.

The thing is that the driver of the car has been choosing to drive past gas stations for hundreds of miles. We, as passengers, haven't been paying attention, but the driver has known all along.

See, it's a metaphor.

Scientists and politicians and corporations have known about climate change for decades. It's just the public that hasn't been very aware, and that was all the better for politicians and corporations. Still, with things like acid rain in the 70s and 80s, scientists almost convinced politicians and corporations to do something about the looming threat of environmental catastrophe all the way back in the 80s. Almost. Until corporations really looked into the cost and profit loss of fixing the planet, and they made the decision to fuck the planet and rape it for all it was worth on its way to ruin. By the early 90s, Republicans had us firmly on the path of unnatural disaster and did it gleefully.

But there was still a pivotal moment, a moment that probably seems inconsequential to most of us, right now, but that's only because we're not looking at it through the correct lens.

That moment was Al Gore's loss to Bush for the Presidency in 2000. We could even point, more specifically, to the hanging chad controversy in Florida and the subsequent Supreme Court case that handed the Presidency to Bush in a 5-4 decision. That one moment changed everything and sent us on a path to destruction that we seem unwilling to stop.

Hey, I get it. I was no fan of Gore at the time. He seemed like milk toast to me. And I never liked Bubba Clinton (still don't like him, though I'm a huge fan of his wife). Then, when 9/11 happened, I thought how fortunate we were to have Bush instead of Gore. Yeah, I was young and stupid, and, hey, I grew up in the South and still had some of that stupidity running around in my head.

Let's go back and look at that moment, though, that moment that gave us Bush, and wonder what things would be like if Gore, who WON THE POPULAR VOTE (sound familiar?), had become the President instead.

• Gore was (and is) extremely environmentally minded. He would have put us on a path of environmental reconstruction more than a decade before Obama began making the attempts. (Attempts that Trump (#fakepresident) has completely reversed making things worse than ever.)
• Gore would not have involved us in all of the wars that Cheney put us in. Wars motivated by profit and oil, not delivering democracy or freedom to people.
• I'm just gonna go ahead and say that we would not have suffered the financial crash of 2008 if Gore had been in office. Much of what allowed that to happen can be traced specifically to, well, not exactly Bush, because Bush was too stupid, but to Cheney and his people. Profit at all costs and all of that bullshit.
• Trump (#fakepresident) would not be driving our country and the world out into the middle of the desert right now in a car with no fuel.

I'm not saying everything today would be all sunshine and roses if Gore had been President; after all, there would still have been the scum-of-the-Earth Republicans (especially Newt and Mitch) doing all they can to destroy us all. But I do think things would be... better. And we would at least be on a path of environmental protection rather than one of environmental destruction. And, maybe, yes, MAYBE, the Middle East wouldn't hate us quite as much, because I'm pretty sure Gore's response to 9/11 would have been much more measured than the "bomb the shit out of them" approach the Republicans took.

It's all just something to think about. Hindsight and all of that.

It's also something to think about because I believe we're just a few weeks away from another of those pivot points in history. And, yes, we do see this one coming up as consequential, and that's because IT IS. We can't allow the Boomers another win in November. If they consolidate their power with this upcoming election, that will be the end. Authoritarianism will have taken root firmly in American soil, and there will never be another fair election in the United States again. Not without a rebellion. But, more importantly, it will spell the final doom for the Earth.

Sure, you go on and say that I'm being extreme, but, then, you go read the UN climate report and tell me if you still think that. If you do, you're one of the people in the car running on fumes, passing the last gas station while telling yourself, "We'll be okay." We're not gonna "be okay" folks. It's time to turn this thing around and start fixing the damage that's been done.

The Weekly Pep Rally: Churches Without a god

Being someone who grew up in the church and who, then, worked in churches for about two decades, I know what church is like. Or, well, I know what church is supposed to be like. Church used to be a place of moral authority, which is what it's supposed to be like, sort of, but, these days, it's become more of a... slot machine. It's a change largely instituted by Boomers through their wholehearted embrace of the prosperity doctrine and the idea they've pushed that church should be FUN! WooHoo!

And I'm not saying necessarily that church shouldn't be fun, but it shouldn't be about being fun. Of course, the whole fun thing is really only about making money.

And I'm also not saying that those morals in the "moral authority" were correct, but, at least, the people who attended paid some semblance of respect to those morals and tried to live lives that matched.

Without going through the history of the decline of the church in the United States, it abandoned any pretense of moral authority with its embrace of Trump (#fakepresident). You can't tell people they shouldn't commit adultery while supporting a man who views adultery as a victory. You can't tell people to "love your neighbor" while supporting a man who abuses his neighbors of other skin tones. You can't tell people to "love God" when you support a man who only loves himself.

I could go on...

Church is no longer about "being good" or "bringing people to Christ" or helping the needy. In fact, "christianity" is no longer about following Jesus at all. "christianity" has become a political position, and church is nothing more than a weekly Right-wing pep rally.

Which, you know, was a very eye-opening thought. It explains why a fairly small minority of the population is able to stay so organized and retain so much power.

Lookit, "the moral majority" Right-wing fundamentalist fascist fuckheads makeup, at best, about 30% of the population, and, yet, they have been able to stay in control of the reins of power for far too long because they are able to stay focused on a small number of issues. It keeps them motivated, and it's why they turn out for all of the elections.

It's like this:
A "friend" of mine from Texas with whom I went to college told me he "literally would have voted for the Devil rather than vote for Clinton." He used abortion as the excuse for his stance (though it sounded more to me like it was about having a woman in charge because "christians" hate women in power). Another "friend" (also from Texas and also from college) quickly echoed the sentiment. Having their votes be about an issue also allowed them to be able to doublethink (look it up if you don't know), "Sure I voted for Trump, but I'm not a Trump supporter."

But let's not go down all of those rabbit trails, as appealing as they are. Or not appealing.
Tempting?
Anyway...

All of that to say that I think those of us on the Left could probably benefit from some kind of similar weekly pep rally that would help us to stay focused on particular issues and motivated about getting out to vote. We could call it Church of the Godless, which would not be substantially different from "christian" churches, but it would be more honest.
But, then, it is rigid fundamentalists who are the ones more prone to hypocrisy. It must hurt to have so many planks in one's eyes.

What I've Learned from Politics

I've learned that I'm tired of politics. Seriously, I'm not really a political person anyway. Yeah, I see you laughing there, but you should go check this post to understand what I'm talking about.

I've learned that I really liked it when I didn't have to pay attention to the political realm EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY. I think this must be what it's like to live with an abusive alcoholic. You have to always be on guard, always on watch, always paying attention. God, it's tiring. If nothing else, Obama gave us a kind of stability that allowed us to pursue our own lives but, now, every day there is something new and every week, seemingly, some new catastrophe. Because if there's one thing you can count on is that Trump #fakepresident will get drunk every weekend and go on some kind of twitter-rage so that each week begins with some kind of horrible drama.

I've learned that one man can make a difference, but it's not a good one. Political stress is everywhere, not just here but all across the world, and a great deal of it is being caused by ONE FUCKING ASSHOLE with the power to wage nuclear war #fakepresident, and I don't mean the chubby baby in North Korea. The whole world is on edge because of the toddler the US put in the highest office in the world.

I've learned that some people I thought once were pretty decent people have been vile undercover racists and worse all along. I've learned that people who, at this point, are still supporting Trump #fakepresident have no redemption in store for them. If you support a racist, fascist, Nazi-lover; you are a racist, fascist, Nazi-lover. Sorry, you don't get to be a Trump #fakepresident supporter and also try to claim that you're not racist. Not anymore. Not ever, really, but certainly not after Charlottesville and Trump's #fakepresident refusal to condemn the Nazi-instigated violence.

I mean, fuck, even some of the worst Republicans out there, real assholes themselves (Rubio, Hatch), immediately condemned the acts of the Nazis. How hard is it to condemn Nazis? Too hard for Trump #fakepresident and Sessions. So, yeah, Sessions called it domestic terrorism, but it was obvious that he was forced into that position with his whole, "it meets the legal definition" bullshit.

I've learned that the GOP are even bigger assholes than I thought. And complete cowards.

I've learned that talking politics is good for blog traffic, which isn't something I considered when I started doing political posts.

I've also learned that the increased traffic does not lead to more comments or book sales. Which, admittedly, was not a motivation for making the political posts (again, see the link provided above), but it would have been nice. Would be nice.

I've learned to not respond to people who say things like "prove it." It doesn't matter what data or evidence you show them, they will continually tell you that that data and evidence are fake, something they've learned from their Russian-Nazi master #fakepresident.

I've learned that Texas is the hand basket. Except for Austin. Texas has politicians as bad as #fakepresident. It makes me ashamed to have been there and so glad to be away from there.

I've learned that Nazis don't give up. David Duke is still around and pushing his racist KKK agenda decades after trying to be governor of Louisiana. Louisiana is probably the handle of the hand basket.

I've learned that books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 never quit being relevant.

I've learned that intolerance is a thing that can't be tolerated. At all. If it could be tolerated at all, we wouldn't have Nazis inciting violence again and heading us toward a New Civil War. Also, you can see this post where I first talked about that.

I've learned that it's never too late to punch a Nazi in the face.

Dream a Little Dream... Or a Big One

Do you have a "dream"?
Do you even know what that is or what it means?
Is it a dream or a fantasy?
Yeah, I want to make a difference between those things.

But first:

I've been doing this a while, now, the whole author thing and, with it, the blog thing. I've changed the way I blog since way back in the beginning when I used a lot of my time to go and search out other blogs and be very interactive in the whole blogging process. It's time consuming, and I got to a point where I had to ask the question about what my dream was: Was it to write or was it to blog? But that's beside the point, though worth noting. The short of that was that I changed the way I blog, and I no longer go out searching for new blogs by other authors to get involved with.

The point of me telling you that is that I want to note how few blogs show up in my blog feed each day, now. Back when I was being heavily involved in blogging, there would be dozens of blog posts in my feed each day. It was seriously difficult to keep up with. When I changed the way I blogged, I didn't stop following people (even if I did stop visiting all of them), so all of those posts still showed up in my feed each day. Now, though, today, there were only two new posts in my feed. Monday, the heaviest day of the week, there were only eight, and there were none from Saturday and Sunday. [All of these numbers are as I write this on Tuesday, August 16.] Days without posts used to never happen. Never.

Sure, some of the missing people moved onto other platforms (InstaTwitter or whatever), but many of them just gave up on writing. Probably most of them. Okay, actually very certainly most of them. If I go down my list of people who no longer blog, most of them no longer do anything. They just quit.

And that is because of the difference between a dream and a fantasy.

For our purposes, we're going to call a "dream" something you yourself can accomplish.
We're going to call a "fantasy" something that happens to you.

So you can have a dream of buying lottery tickets, but any thoughts of winning the lottery are fantasies. Winning the lottery is not something you can achieve; it can only happen to you. Likewise, you can have a dream of being a writer (because you can sit down and do that), but you can only have a fantasy about being a rich and famous writer. You can be the best writer in the world and never become rich and famous because, as with the lottery, that is mostly luck. Maybe completely.

The problem is that it's easy to subvert your dream with the fantasy. Those things can be easy to confuse. When you believe your dream is the fantasy, you can become disillusioned. I know of several writers who quit, just gave up on it, because, after publishing a couple of things, they didn't become household names. It was crushing to them, and they just quit writing. They had a fantasy of becoming rich and famous and allowed it to take the place  of their dream. That's a dangerous thing, allowing your fantasy to squash your dreams.

How do you deal with that kind of thing?

Well, the first way is to identify your dream and recognize the fantasy for what it is.

However, it is perfectly reasonable to have a dream of being "rich," but you need to identify that as your dream. Your actual dream. If that is your dream, you need to choose a path that enables you to work toward that as a dream and, let me just say, writing is a poor path to riches. Pun totally intended. You could even choose fame as a dream, I suppose, although fame is a very elusive thing, and you need to find avenues that lead to that more readily than writing. I would suggest giving Will Smith a call. Evidently, he followed a very specific plan to get to where he was in the 90s.

Now, I want to take all of this back a step farther: What is your real dream? I mean, writing is my dream, but there is a deeper dream, Let's call the dream the "deep magic," but there is a "deeper magic," the thing that supports the dream. That dream for me is the dream of leaving something behind. Something lasting. Something for my kids but also something that goes beyond just them and, in one way or another, everything I have done in my life has worked toward that.

Let me put it another way:

My grandfather was a great man. I'm going to go into why that is because 1. it would take too long and 2. it's unnecessary to what I'm going to say. He was a great man but, once I and the rest of his grandchildren are dead, there will be nothing left of him. Nothing beyond a notation in a genealogy file somewhere. And a birth certificate. Nothing that anyone will ever take note of in the future. Even the farm he poured his sweat into and the house he helped build are all gone now, burned to nothing in the wild fires that swept through East Texas a few years ago.

I don't know what kinds of dreams my grandfather had; he was more than a little laconic. But it makes me sad that he will be forgotten one day. I want to leave something behind, and my writing serves that dream.

It's not that I have a dream of being the Shakespeare of the age. Or, even, the Tolkien. Or, even, the Lewis. But I would be more than happy with being a MacDonald. See, you people don't even know who that is, do you? Here, I'll help: George MacDonald. See, it doesn't matter how unheard of he is for the most part, because his books are still out there and he still influences people. Probably in more ways than we can even imagine.

So, yeah, I choose the dream of writing to fulfill the dream of leaving something behind that lasts. And, well, if fame and riches follow, well, that's a nice fantasy, but it has nothing to do with my dream.

So what is your dream? Is it small or is it big? And can you separate it from fantasy?




"'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.

"Barachiel" Revised (or Done Or Raw)

I mentioned recently that I lost a computer. As in, it passed away. It gave up the ghost. Well, if computers have ghosts to give. It kicked the bucket. Or whatever passes for a bucket. It went to the light. I know, because it quit making any of its own. It gave its last gasp. Which I actually heard. It's in cold storage, now. Literally. The hard drive is. It's in my freezer, kind of like Walt Disney, waiting for a day when it can be resurrected. Or, at least, have its data carefully removed like donated organs. I just can't afford that transfer, right now, because all of the "normal" means of data retrieval didn't work.

But this post isn't about that. Go back and read the other post if you want to know more about all of that.

I spent most of July restoring documents from other sources. That's an adventure, let me tell you. [Okay, it's not, really. It's like the complete opposite of an adventure.] One of the things I could not just restore from another source was "Barachiel." I actually had to buy "Barachiel" and re-type it from my Kindle. Which is the point of all of this...

There's a reason authors (and other artist types, I would assume) declare things to be finished. It's not because they are finished, not necessarily, but because there's a point when you have to decide to quit working on something because you are no longer making any notable changes to the piece, whatever kind of thing that is, from a painting, mural, short story, or novel. As my wife would say, "Done or raw, do the chaw."

Supposedly, that saying comes from Texas and passed down to her from her grandmother who grew up there. I, too, grew up in and around Texas, though, and I never heard that saying until my wife said it. I still think it's kind of weird. And, yes, Texas is a big place, and her grandmother grew up in a different part of Texas than I did. But I digress...

"Barachiel" is a good example of all of this, because, as soon as I started re-typing it, I started fiddling with it. Not that there was anything wrong with it, because there wasn't -- okay, actually, I caught two errors: one missing space (after a comma) and one missing letter (leaving only an "a," which can be a difficult error to catch, sometimes) -- but, now, even just a few months after writing it originally, there were phrases that, I suppose, I wouldn't say quite the same way. Evidently, that's true, because I changed some. And I added in a few things here and there. Why? Because I was looking at it again, and I couldn't help it!

That's why we declare projects finished and we don't go back to them!

Seriously, I couldn't help tweaking! [Tweaking! I said tweaking!]

It was right there in front of me, and it just happened.

If I picked it up two weeks from now, I'm sure it would be the same. And again two weeks after that.
Why?
Because we always change, and the phrases and words change, too.

So, no, there is nothing significantly different about the revised edition of "Barachiel," but, just because, I'm going to make it FREE! for a couple of days. If you've already read it, you can get the new version and compare and, if you haven't read it, here's your chance to get the ever so slightly improved version. For FREE!

So, yeah, go pick up your copy of "Barachiel" today!
And, as always, please leave a review!

Growing Up In the Race Divide (part 8)

One thing I've come to know is that you can't say you're from the South without automatically being linked to racism. It's a thing I hate, and it's, unfortunately, a thing that is almost completely legitimate. And it's not just racism, it's like all the "-ism"s. Or "-ist"s. And I don't want to switch this topic to sexual orientation, but I just want to point out that virtually all of the places that are acting like petulant children in regards to marriage equality are in the South.

Before I get to the issue of the Confederate flag, let's talk about why we're even talking about the Confederate flag: Dylann Roof.

Generally, I would not be one to talk about someone who has not been convicted of a crime as if he is guilty of the crime, but I think it's pretty safe to say that Roof is guilty of the nine murders at the church in Charleston, South Carolina. Actually, it's not even Roof I want to talk about. Roof stated quite plainly that he wanted to kill some black people, that he felt like it was up to him to do something about "it," whatever "it" was, and he went and did that. Even if they were so nice and welcoming to him that he almost changed his mind.

That Roof is a white supremacist and racist isn't in question.

What is in question is the racist tendencies of many people (Republican Presidential candidates) who responded to the attack by trying to call it something than what it actually was (a racially motivated mass shooting). So let's look at that:

Rick Perry, former governor of Texas and a Republican, called the shootings an "accident" and blamed the incident on drugs.

Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and a Republican, basically blamed the victims and said the incident could have been prevented if only they had been armed. Because, yes, the answer is always more guns.

Rick Santorum, another Republican presidential hopeful, called the attack an attack against freedom of religion and Christianity and not motivated by anything to do with race. He's not the only conservative to espouse this view and to call for more pastors to arm themselves for the coming war against religious freedom.

Rand Paul, another Republican hoping to become President, also blames religion, but he blames it on a lack of religion. If only we, as a nation, weren't so heathen and doing things like having children out of wedlock, then poor Roof wouldn't have done what he did. He fails to mention racial issues at all and conveniently overlooks that it's in religion and church that we retain the greatest segregation in America. In other words, churches are the greatest breeding places of racial hatred in the US.

Lindsey Graham, another Republican presidential hopeful (does this sound familiar yet?), seemed to echo Santorum's theory by saying that Roof was just out to kill Christians. It was just coincidence that he happened to kill black ones. [BULLSHIT]

I could go on but, really, what's the point? It's all more of the same and all Republicans trying to divert the issue.
Why?
That's actually a good question that boils down to only one real answer: They are okay with the status quo.

Now, there could be any number of reasons they're okay with the status quo. For instance, maybe they think racism is too big of an issue, too hard to deal with, and, so, they would rather pretend that everything is okay than to look at the issue. Looking at the issue means you have to do something about it. Or, maybe, they're okay with it for no better reason than that they are okay with it. As in, nothing needs to be better because there shouldn't be racial equality to begin with.

I don't know these guys personally, so I'm not going to try to guess. However, when someone is running a white supremacist website, professes a dislike for black people, and states his intent to kill some, then, when he does that, it's almost certainly (you know, like 99.99%) a racially motivated crime. Occam's Razor and all of that. To try and change the dialogue afterward is, at best, irresponsible.

All of which brings us to the issue of the Confederate flag.

Look, I am all for the 1st Amendment. Seriously. I will defend your right to be a racist asshole and spew racist assholery as quickly as I will defend my right to call you a racist asshole for saying racist assholery, that includes your right to have your own Confederate flag on your own property. However, I cannot be behind a state government being allowed to fly a symbol of racist assholery over a state capitol building. There is no "heritage" that excuses the government for making any kind of statement that supports racial hatred, and, I'm sorry, but the Confederate flag is a symbol of racial hatred. Just ask the neo-Nazi movement in Germany, who use the Confederate flag as their symbol because Nazi symbology is illegal.

Somewhere in my schooling, I picked up that the Confederate flag is a bad thing. Being schooled in the South, I'm not quite sure where I picked that up. It certainly wasn't a thing they tried to teach us. If it was, the Confederate flag wouldn't be so prevalent. And, yes, I did grow up watching The Dukes of Hazard, but that's as close as I got to any ties to that flag (and I'm sorry John Schneider -- I know it cuts into your income stream -- but I agree with the pulling of your show from TV).

One of my cousins (on my dad's side) and I, during high school, had frequent arguments about the Civil War. He hated Lincoln and the "war of Northern aggression." That's what he always called it and tried to make it about "states' rights," but the only "right" that was in question was the "right" to have slaves. Point being? We went to school in the same city and we both came through it with radically divergent views.

It's time to move past the Confederate flag. Or, to put it another way, it's time to lay the Confederate flag to rest. It's time for the government, including each individual state government, to get behind "all men are created equal." We can never expect the citizens to start believing in that while the leaders are still claiming racial hatred, through flying the Confederate flag, as a "heritage."

American Sniper (a movie review post)

One thing I've learned in the past few weeks is that you shouldn't say anything bad about American Sniper. Well, unless you want to be vilified, that is. The thing is, none of the negative comments I've heard about Sniper are actually incorrect. Setting that aside for the moment, though, Sniper is a fine film. Predictable. Contrived. It's a solid piece of movie making, as you would expect from Clint Eastwood. And Bradley Cooper is good. Not great. Not best actor worthy, but he is good.

The film, as a film, is also not "best" worthy. It doesn't stand out as a movie at all. The thing that sets it apart is that it is a "true" story, so, because of its nomination, it's impossible to look at Sniper as just a movie other than to say that if it was fiction (which it is), no one would care about this movie. It is not powerful in any way other than the tragedy of the life it was based on.

And, by all accounts, that life was a tragedy. Chris Kyle was not a "good" guy. He was an asshole who liked to get into fights, who looked for any excuse to get into a fight, you know, to prove how much of a man he was or whatever. In that, he was the essence of the modern "cowboy" they played him off to be at the beginning of the movie. He was a braggart who let everyone know just how much of a "legend" he was and who exaggerated about how many men he'd killed, even making up stories about men he didn't kill just to make himself look... I don't know, even more "manly" or badass.

Of course, I didn't know Kyle, but those are the kinds of things he said, and those are the kinds of things people who knew him said about him. At least, that's the kind of stuff that was said about him before he was murdered. I don't know if he was turning his life around those last couple of years or not. What I do know is that he proclaimed that all proceeds from his book were being donated to veterans' groups, something which was completely not true. In reality, only about 2% of what was made was donated.

So, in respect to all of that, the movie does seem like a piece of propaganda to me, but a piece of propaganda about Chris Kyle more than anything else. See, in the movie he is this humble guy who doesn't like the reputation he's earned and doesn't like to talk about how many people he's killed. In fact, they play it off as if he doesn't even really know. He's just trying to protect people and the numbers don't matter. Because Kyle is being held up as "true American hero," it's like they needed to re-write his life to make him out to be a nice guy. A nice guy who does his job like any good American would; it's just that his job happens to be killing people. Something he's very humble about.

In the movie, that is. I need to stress that. Because his personality is completely the opposite in the movie to what he was supposed to be like.

Not mention all of the other things they made up for the movie. For instance, Kyle had no sniper nemesis. The whole showdown at the end of the movie was completely made up. He was much younger in life when he joined the military than he was in the movie. Why make him older? That doesn't make any sense at all. Basically, the only things they got right were the very broad strokes. There was a guy named Chris Kyle from Texas who was a SEAL and a sniper who spent time in Iraq. And he had a wife named Taya.

What all of this comes down to for me is one question: What makes a someone a hero? Why are we, as a culture, holding Kyle up as this great hero? I mean, he has his own day, now, in Texas. Is it because he killed a bunch of people? Is that what makes someone a hero? Is it because he risked his life for his country? Because lots of people do that, and we don't consider them heroes. Is it because, at the end of it all, he was murdered while trying to help someone?

I think, certainly, that the movie version of Kyle has been molded into someone whom we would call a hero. Just a humble guy doing his best to serve God, serve his country, and, mostly, sacrificing his family to do it... because family comes third after God and country. But, once home, he is going about repairing the damage he did by being away. He's become a good husband and a good dad and he's still out trying to help people. It makes the tragedy of his death that much worse.

But that's movie Kyle. Of course, that's the Kyle that most of us are going to remember. Now, it is, at any rate. I'm not so sure real life Kyle would meet those heroic standards. Maybe that's not important? Maybe the current cultural need for a "real hero" outweighs the reality of the person. I don't really know.

None of which answers the question about whether you should see this movie. I suppose it depends upon whether you want to see a very black and white (as in there are no foreigners depicted in the movie who are good; they are all savages and none of them can be trusted) representation of a fantastical hero figure who was given a gift by God to shoot people. There are no questions in this movie: We are good. Chris Kyle is good. They are bad, Period.

As a side note, I found it very interesting that The Punisher (from Marvel Comics) was so pervasive in the movie. It is certainly symbolic of the mindset (whether that was based on a fact or not). I would point out that The Punisher is only considered a hero in that he is an anti-hero. He does bad things, evil things sometimes, to bad people because no one else will. He is the only one who decides who deserves those things to happen to them. Is that the "hero" we want America to be equated with? I hope not. If we're going to aspire to a national hero, I'd much prefer Captain America. Maybe we would have done a better job over in Iraq if Cap had been our goal.

Boyhood (a movie review post)

I think it's probably safe to say that there has never been any other movie quite like this one. Ambitious is an understatement; risky comes closer to the truth. If you don't know the idea, Richard Linklater, the writer/director, took a group of actors, two of them kids, and followed them for 12 years (not constantly: that would be insane) in order to show the life of a boy from 5 to 18. Every year or so, he would gather the primary actors and whatever extras he needed and film a few scenes for the movie. That way, we saw the same boy (Ellar Coltrane) as Mason and watched him grow up through the process of making the movie rather than seeing a bunch of different actors playing the same kid.

I've given it several days, and I'm still ambivalent as to how I feel about the movie. The best thing I can say is that it's very interesting. It really is. But it's not captivating, so there's no place it couldn't have stopped where you would want to know what's going to happen next. I say that because the movie is also long, nearly three hours, and it felt it. I was ready for it to end well before it got to the end, if you can even call it that, because, really, it just stops. But more on that in a moment.

One of the risks involved with shooting a movie like this is that you end up with kids who can't act, and you certainly see some of this in the film. In fact, Linklater's daughter, Lorelei, plays Mason's older sister, and there are definitely scenes in which she is only capable of nervous laughter. She sort of falls out of the movie as the kids get older, and I have to wonder if part of that is not because she couldn't actually do the acting. Many of the scenes involving Mason as a pre-teen and teen are rather flat due to the lack of ability on the part of the other child actors involved. It's just reciting lines and rather awkward. Fortunately, some of it can be awkward because kids can be really awkward, so it doesn't completely fail.

Patricia Arquette is pretty decent as Mason's mom. She's believable, which I guess is what's important. However, she is also central to my major issue with the movie. Not her, the character. The actual story arc of the movie is hers; Mason just sort of dangles from it. Not to be spoilery (because, really, there's nothing to spoil in this movie even if I told you everything that happened), but the great emotional climax of the movie is her moment at the end when Mason is moving out to go to college and she declares that, with him leaving, all of the great moments of her life are over. All of them except death. You grow up, you get married, you have kids, you get divorced, you raise the kids, and, then, they leave. After that, only death awaits. Mason does not take the moment of his departure seriously enough for her. He does not understand its weight.

But Mason does leave and arrives at college to meet his roommate and the movie ends as they and a couple of girls skip out on freshman orientation. It's not that Mason doesn't change in the movie, because, of course, he grows up, but, really, it is just growing up. There is nothing extraordinary about his life other than the fact that he's the artsy kid from a liberal family growing up in south Texas. I get the feeling that the real purpose of the movie is that Linklater wants us to see how he grew up. That he was that liberal, artsy kid growing up in south Texas, because he did grow up in south Texas. It didn't feel eye-opening or revelatory to me. My wife says it's because I was that same kid (without the experimental earring) growing up in the South. However, I felt no connecting or empathy with the character.

Mason's mostly absent father is played by Ethan Hawke. Now, I am not a fan of Hawke. As far as I'm concerned, he should have stopped acting after Dead Poets Society. In effect, every role he's had since then has been based off of Todd Anderson. Not one time did Hawke give in to that signature deer-caught-in-headlights look in this movie. And he was really good. I mean, he was really good. Maybe, Hawke needs to be allowed to improvise more of his roles, because that's how I understand this movie to have been made: through improvisation. Basically, Linklater gave them a scene and told them to do it. No scripts. Whatever they did, it really worked for Hawke. He was easily the best part of the movie.

So this is one of those situations where most of what I have done is point out the weaknesses in the movie, but, despite those, or, maybe, because of  those, I did actually like the movie. As I said, it's interesting. I don't have a desire to see it again, but I am certainly glad I saw it this one time. However, it's not the kind of movie you need to see in the theater. It's not going to lose anything by waiting to see it on DVD.

I do think it gives a mostly accurate representation of what it's like to be a boy in American society, right now. Young Mason really has no ambitions. He wants to play video games, and he gets in trouble a lot for things that look like he's being destructive but are really just because he's curious, like trying to sharpen rocks in the pencil sharpener. His sister, on the other hand, is very driven, at one point expressing her disappointment in only having gotten an A on something rather than an A+. There is a wide divide between the girls and the boys in that way. Mason's mother has gone back to school (and eventually becomes a college professor) so that she can better their lives; his father has gone off to Alaska and spends his 20s chasing his dream of becoming a musician. Mason, by the time he's leaving for college, wants to be a photographer.

All of which brings me back to being ambivalent over the film. I think what Linklater has done here is pretty darn impressive despite the lack of a real story arc or message. Which is not to say that the movie doesn't say anything. I think it says a lot of things, but it doesn't really have an actual point or message to it other than, "Here it is. Here is boyhood." And maybe that's all it's supposed to be, after all. But, then, I did experience that for myself (minus the spray paint, the underage drinking, and the drugs), so it wasn't particularly enlightening for me. In that respect, maybe it's a film that women need to see. My wife certainly got more out of it than I did.

How To Be... a Race Car Driver

I had no particular interest in learning to drive when I was a teenager. My mom had made it pretty that once I got my license, it was going to be put to use fetching things from the store for her, and I just wasn't motivated to became the driving errand boy. Plus, non-seniors weren't allowed to drive to school, and my school, because parking was fairly limited, was pretty a strong enforcer of that policy. I had many, many friends who had their cars towed because they figured they could get away with it. Basically, I didn't see anything in it for me in the whole driver's license thing, so opted out as long as possible.

That all changed during the summer after my junior year. We were leaving The Farm, which was in an area in Texas where you could drive unlicensed (at least, at the time), and my mom said something like, "We need to look into getting driving lessons for you."
"I don't need them, Mom."
"Sure, you do. Everyone needs them."
"Why? I already know how to drive. Why would you need lessons for something you can already do?"
"Oh, you do not know how to drive, either."
"Yes, I do."
There was one of those back-and-forth arguments here that finally ended in my mom saying, "Well, prove it."
So I did.
And then followed another argument about who taught me how to drive and what was I doing out driving without telling her and all of that, except that no one had taught me, and I'd never been behind the wheel before. Eventually, I guess, she believed me. I did not taking driving lessons, and I had my license before the end of the year, so in the fall of my senior year of high school.

As it turned out, I really loved driving. And I was good at it. Not that I was reckless or anything, but I was really good at moving through the traffic and timing things so that I made lights and all of that. I even got a... um... darn, I can't remember what it was called, but it was a license so that I could drive a van full of people, and I drove for my church. I had that "trucker" tan where my left arm was, well, not tan, because I don't, but a darker pink than my right arm.

But I never wanted to be a race car driver. That may be because the thing I liked most about watching races when I was a kid was the crashes, so I was hyper-aware of the fact that there were crashes. That and I thought racing, like NASCAR, was boring. I mean, come on, it's just going around and around in a circle, and how fun is that? However, if we still had racing like they did when auto racing first started, back around 1900 when it was city-to-city racing, I would be all over that. Or I would have been back when I was 20.

But how do you actually become a race car driver today?

Well, the first thing, really, is to be a good driver. Or racer. Or whatever you want to call it. To some extent, you need to know about the other aspects of racing, such as how to fix your car. You have to decide on what kind of racing you want to do, because there are a lot of options: formula, touring, stock car, drag, off road, and more. Once you know what you want to do, learn about it. Attend a racing school. You may not need it as far as the driving goes, like I didn't need driving lessons, BUT there are school racing circuits you can get into, and that's an easier place to get in than trying to get straight into the professional circuit. It will also give you a chance to gain sponsors if you can't afford your own car.

And that's the big thing, the car. Because it doesn't matter how good you are if you have a piece of crap car that you're racing in. Not that the car makes the racer, but it is a combined effort. In the end, it's one of those professions were some innate skill and a lot of practice really make the difference. It's not like you can go get a degree in race care driving, although that might be kind of cool to have hanging on your wall.