What the US is now doing to México by way of NAFTA and the overwhelming of México’s  market by US-subsidized Agribusiness (gutting their farming-based/corn-based market and glutting it with our own products, while employing many of their citizens at substandard rates and in substandard health conditions in order to help our own economy and prepare/manufacture/sell our food) it does directly in other nations through coups and forced legislation, Nations that are further from our border, and thus beyond the radar of the average US citizen. For example, Haiti, where the US’s Wilsonian fantasies and greed and neoliberalism led long ago to the destruction of the rice farmer’s ability to sustain him/herself and are a direct prerequisite to the food crisis they are experiencing now. USGOV has long been sucking the lifeblood of much of Latin America, and in the case of Haiti, refuse to let go the neck.

We can go further and talk about the undeniable thirst for the Strategic Crescent, the oil-rich Middle East, the wars to gain footholds (bases and massive “city within a city” embassies being built in Iraq as well as Af-Pak + lest we forget the “reservoirs of oil” that Iraq is “floating” atop). The US economy is collapsing, the nation is heavily armed, but hollowed out at the heart, waving numb fingers, and with a belly soon to feel real hunger pangs. It is supporting itself by draining the lifeblood of other nations and peoples. This is happening on many levels.

The Empire, in yet another shape, sprawls and burps and bleeds and chews up humans as it moves into its final phases—the phases where it self-destructs as all Empires do, as all man-made power-suction gold-glory death machine-staircases to the halls of the Gods must always do when they forget their place in the overall family of creatures and balances. It isn’t pretty, it will get uglier, but we must be ready. Because the danger we are used to reading in books and seeing in movies, or hearing about happening in a faraway lands is crawling closer and closer to our front doors, and in more cases than many of us care to think about, has already woven its caustic threads into the tapestry of our small, ambitious lives.

Borders are illusions, and they are perhaps necessary to some degree in a world where spirit is somewhat bound by containers. But in many cases they are a deadly illusion behind which humanity chokes. The illusion is disconnection. The illusion is that our worth is greater on one side than en el otro lado. The illusion is Us and Them. The illusion is that we are in control of nature’s deepest rhythms.

How to wake ourselves up from these dreams that suffocate so many?

I GUESS THE IRONIC factoid that still stares at me from the corner is that as SOON as the World Trade Center had fallen (maybe a little after I haven’t checked my tapes but you get me) we began hearing about how we would never give up on our freedoms and rights and our way of life. Dammit, attack us as they may, the terrorists would not “win!” That was the litmus. And yet, as the reports continue to roll in, it is clear that we gave up immediately. We gave up our justice system, all the nobility hinted at or stated directly in our dearest writs, and our morality. In a heartbeat. We traded it for sheer might, terror, and force. We did not act like some wise elder intellectual/statesman with puffy sleeves and elegant quill pen, such as one would imagine signing his “John Hancock” to a momentous sheaf of papyrus. We acted like a freaked out extremist with some really bizarre ideas.

If you download and read the leaked Red Cross report report [pdf] (and I’ve only got a page or two in, don’t have the time now but it’s working on my mind let me tell you) it’s just amazing. The process we put humans through and kept secret is revolting. And clearly was implemented so damn methodically that the presentation of events feels cold to the point of habituation. The voice/tone and some words of the medical report make quite clear the Red Cross Medical faction’s concerns, and yet, the way in which the medical establishment is implicated in the ongoing catalogue of horrors is chilling. I am immediately reminded of every story I’ve heard that sought to inculcate one with the depth of horror belonging to the Nazi death camps. Nothing is “like” the Nazi death camps, of course. But one doesn’t have to reach too far to find that same alien chill, this cold, measured scientific eye cast over horrors that should immediately shock and repulse any person who has not destroyed their sensitivities; any person with a a functional conscience. I already know that fear can erase many lines within the mind. But there is no light you could shine on this that would convince me it is “American” or anything like that. Or, hey. Maybe it is. What do I know. Maybe I’m the naive one. Maybe the real Apple Pie is not taken from the oven by some beneficent smiling woman, but instead, scooped and scraped out of a diaper that you force a detainee to soil repeatedly and wear prolongedly as part of their induction into a torture factory.

Did we ever really believe in all those grand ideals that we thought we’d not “give up” no matter who hit us? I guess some of us did. And some of us never did. Some of us only really believe in a big enough gun or tall enough wall and to hell with the fancy notions like morality or humanity when it’s US vs. THEM. Is that too simplistic a conclusion for me to come to? Here’s some more stone-cold conviction, then: those who do believe in the more beautiful ideals of the USA are the ones who will chase the perpetrators who violated so much and so many, those who have shocked the national conscience with an array of sick crimes—until justice is done. And the people, pundits, and politicians who simply do lip service to a structure that can make them rich and powerful are the ones who will do all they can to avoid the truth of everything getting out. Because they don’t believe the system can handle the truth, that the People deserve to know it, or that—and here’s where the bass drum drops—it matters.

President Obama spoke in many ways of how he would bring change to our nation. He has made some bold moves and even bolder statements in this direction. Yet, the fronts on which he makes no substantial shift from Bush policy accumulate disappointingly. As much as I loathe the Right Wing maniacs like Hannity and Beck and that weird Limbo guy who do their best every day to stir up the ugliest types of opposition to Obama (and at everyone’s peril), I cannot be strong armed into defending Obama’s policies just to offer a buffer against their hate. I cannot possibly align myself, after all, with the President’s policies if he insists on aligning them with those of George W. Bush. And we can no longer ignore the war crimes that trail us like a raging family of ghosts. Either we refute and condemn them through action, or we are become them.

A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS is underway.

AMERICAN drone attacks on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, Pakistani officials claimed after a new attack yesterday killed 13 people.

The dead and injured included foreign militants, but women and children were also killed when two missiles hit a house in the village of Data Khel, near the Afghan border, according to local officials.

As many as 1m people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army. In Bajaur agency entire villages have been flattened by Pakistani troops under growing American pressure to act against Al-Qaeda militants, who have made the area their base.

Kacha Garhi is one of 11 tented camps across Pakistan’s frontier province once used by Afghan refugees and now inhabited by hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis made homeless in their own land.

—Thousands flee bomb attacks by US drones

I don’t know. What one hopes to accomplish by posting about something I’m not quite sure anymore…although by all means post, because once in a while a post changes everything, or more importantly, each one probably touches many people and a net of energy and wisdom is made possible. More accurately, I don’t know what I hope to do with it. I think I just need to get it out or think aloud a lot of times. Because if I’m going to be paying attention, it’s almost overwhelming. And you can’t just be absorbing energy. You have to kick it around, kick it out, give it back in some shape and form. Sometimes, too, I need to write just to say “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

When you did income taxes…honestly. Did you think of these unmanned drone planes? And our astronomical defense budget? And those “militants?” I end up wondering what that means. Those words. What does it take for the AP to call you a “foreign militant” whose life (obviously) is worth, perhaps, a speck of a real person’s life? What merits that precipitous demotion in worth? Does it mean you were killed with a blueprint to a bunker in your hand? That you are connected to people who knew the Saudi network who bombed us eight years ago? Does it mean you are caught with weapons and propaganda? Does it mean you are related by family to conspirators to people hostile to the US? Does it mean you met weekly with community members to stay cohesive and plan how to get through the time? Does it mean you lived in the wrong place? Is there a definition the AP is bound by? Or does the military just write “foreign militants” in their log book and the AP copies it in? Because a whole lot of mess is being dumped on a whole lot of people behind this word. You’d think someone would be policing the definition.

It feels weird to me that I can be so sensitized to a system…it is business as usual when millions of people die or are displaced by the direct and otherwise intended actions of our own “land” or governing body. Our people. Our military. And I can’t, I’m not. That’s why my psyche has emotional hiccups over and over, rejecting it. This chaos, violence, and displacement seems huge. It doesn’t seem at all a part of me. And…I must own a piece of it. I live and benefit from living in the sunny backyard of the empire.

But forget about the dead, our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are displacing massive amounts of people. I know I could google right now and find out how many displaced. I’m sort of afraid to see the number.

For what? What is going on here? Who poses such a threat to us? That we are raining down death all over the place, uprooting entire social networks and generations of families and inflicting such terror across such huge regions? Is that what it’s really all about? Terrifying the entire part of the world that we think stung us…or wants to sting us, or that it could sting us? Ugh. If so, I guess it would make a certain kind of grim sense…if all you are concerned with is a vast, dark, battlefield. But to be part of that mission would feel dreadful in the true sense of the word. A pyrrhic victory, a million pyrrhic victories paid for in full and in absentia.

When I think about all our warring in the “Middle East” in context with the creeping of the security/detention/policing industries into everyday life and mores and the economy here in the US, as well as the violence that has sprung up in the last week or so across the nation as people feel wound too tight or stretched too thin, I think to myself there’s got to be a better way. And I mean that literally. Most of us sense, think, or feel that…which is why we elected the president who felt more like change. But that symbol obviously is not the end of it.

I think about the forces coming to bear and I think that there’s got to be a good number of us willing to be part of that better way. And to know what it is and how that way might manifest. And how we can reinforce it outside of our self as well as within. I may not be able to stop drones from firing on homes in a distant part of the world, but I can think about what actions and ways of thinking in my own life and day is like an empire’s drones firing into fragile homes. And…if that makes sense to you, maybe you can be part of that way in your own way. Let the right wing fanatics and white supremacists give in to terror and violence, twice as many of us need to begin healing our culture. In little ways, in tiny ways, in nearly invisible ways, and in the biggest ways we can manage.

I SEEM TO HAVE A HABIT of getting overwhelmed by blogging and disappearing just as, or the day after, a link from a larger site brings in a huge influx of readers, at least for a day. I don’t think this is an entirely accidental habit of mine. Sometimes I feel it’s a good way to directly counter that impulse that gets you compulsively or needlessly checking stats and writing to a number, rather than to your heart and mind’s impulses. But I’m also busy right now with a few different things, so I’ve been away. I’m still busy, and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure what I could even blog right now. And I don’t mean specifically…I mean existentially. I’ll try to hit that tomorrow, because that was going to be my topic before I got busy.

For now, I’m going to post an excellent video cartoonified excerpt on American Empire from Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of American Empire.

I’ve a lot I’d love to comment on, regarding this topic. Again, though, I’m very busy for a few. Back tomorrow with that post advising you to burn down your blog to good dance music, and an announcement of a new job I have. Blogging.

ON MEXICO’S INDEPENDENCE DAY, and just as the celebration was full swing, two grenades exploded among the crowd.

The latest [violence]  during the traditional “grito,” or shout for independence, late Monday night. Michoacan Gov. Leonel Godoy had just finished shouting “Viva Mexico!” from a balcony, when the two grenades exploded simultaneously in the crowd, blocks apart.

At first, the throngs of families thought the explosions were part of the fireworks display. Then thick, black smoke rose from the crowd, people started screaming and the cathedral’s bells fell silent. As the crowd cleared, rescuers attended to the wounded and dead.

Both state emergency officials and state prosecutors said seven were killed, although there were earlier reports that the death toll had risen to eight.

Godoy, who was unhurt, said witnesses saw a heavyset man wearing black throw one of the grenades, then beg forgiveness for what he had done. But he provided no more details, and there were no immediate claims of responsibility. Authorities made no arrests.

“Without a doubt, we believe this was done by organized crime,” he said. The governor’s office later said he was traveling to Mexico City late Tuesday to meet with Calderon.

The attack targeted a cherished tradition that brings millions of Mexicans together in public plazas each year, and cast an immediate pall over Tuesday’s parades, held in cities and towns across the nation to celebrate the 1810 start of Mexico’s 10-year war of independence from Spain.

—7 killed in Mexico Independence Day grenade attack

“Without a doubt” they “believe” this was done by organized crime…and without a speck of evidence!

It’s really amazing how fast all the papers are to pin this on the Cartels. Not that both the Mexican government (another organized crime unit) and the Cartels aren’t escalating violence, ever since Calderón stole the election. But so has the Mexican Government, in its dirty refusal to heed the people and their violent rejection of the corrupt Ulises Ortiz Ruiz. They both are. But even in the first paragraph, and without ANY evidence at all, articles are pushing the government line.

So Calderón, the slimy and illegitimate president, gets his little foto op of him stroking a girl’s forehead while he orders troops into Michoacán, and puts people on a “high alert” for more violence and steps up patrols in Morelia and other municipalities such as Apatzingán, Aguililla, Tepalcatepec, Buenavista, Uruapan and Lázaro Cárdenas.

US papers make sure to remind us, or imply, immediately what is behind that violence. (My emphasis:)

MORELIA, Mexico (AP) — Assailants threw two grenades into a huge crowd of Independence Day revelers, killing seven and injuring more than 100 in a brazen attack that escalates the war between Mexico’s army and drug gangs.

—7 killed in Mexico Independence Day grenade attack

Clever, eh? But sadly, it is true that this escalates the ongoing and escalating violence, even if it is not true that the “drug gangs” caused it. Even if this was done by the CIA or related people (a very popular trick of governments not only in the USA, but recently in Oaxaca, and historically, such as in Tlatelcolco), it will (and already is) being used to justify more violence by the Mexican government, more military presence, and more repressive tactics. It ain’t no new story.

It’s alllll about this:

MORELIA, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexico’s president called for an end to a culture of “impunity and tolerance” of crime on Wednesday after suspected drug traffickers killed seven people in a grenade attack during independence day celebrations.

But not an end to tolerance of stolen elections, corrupt governors, police instigating violence to blame it on la gente, no! That crime is okay. But clearly, this is a signal that things are about to change even more for poor madre México.

As I (and many others) write often, this “GWOT” is a front for more government control and militarization of culture and more juice to the corporate forces now sucking up loot and fuel in Iraq and all over.

Aqui, they scare us with brown people from poorer nations. Alli, they use the threat of Cartels to justify more intrusive methods of control. They don’t care what the ‘reason’ is. But they respond the same. More wiretapping. More weapons. More police. More jails.

They lie about what is really going on most of the time, and if justice or truth begins to surface, then people are simply erased, kidnapped, or killed.

And all this is coming down and revving up because while you and I are busy making a living from day to day, the fat cats in the government living on our taxes and other stolen monies have the time to sit around and look ahead. And what do they see?

They see the increasing shortage of resources. This massive imbalance that fuels the illusion of this Pile we can all have a part of and in reality is but a class war cannot continue forever. They fear turmoil in their Green Zones.

They know that if they are to continue to hoard and exploit the people and the workers of the world, they need to be more violent and forceful as supplies get low, and as the People resist more and more.

They do not trust the people, they do not trust Democratic process, they fear gente who are used to standing up. They are instilling fascism in degrees, because we’ll all take that. We’ll blog about it and talk about it, but for the most part, go on with our lives.
 

They continue to to normalize increased and unwarranted police presence, they instill fear of Tasers and detainment centers by using them abusively and meting out no justice that would punish the police; they sell us fear and false flags and react against the people’s gatherings with violence; they need to make us feel we are doomed unless they are marching in the streets with weapons.

There are simple ways to end so many conflicts playing out today. Very very simple. We could take the bite out of the drug trade by being honest about it. We could make profit from the massive amounts of marijuana that people smoke and will always smoke, just like we profit from Paxil, Prozac, Ambien, Xanax, and on and on and on. We could lessen prison time for non-violent offenders, we could offer help instead of harm to people who need healing. We could stop seeking punitive and harsh measures as a way of addressing human and natural reaction to economic imbalance and hardship. We could change our fearful, reactive, greedy, other-ing philosophies.

Sure, we could do all of that. We could lessen the violence in the world and the fear in the world by focusing on helping, giving, healing, growing. Not bombing, fearing, hoarding, killing. 

But sadly, amigos, they do not want that. These government agents who profit from our pain and fear do not want a world of peace. That’s not hyperbole. They fear Peace Tshirts, they fear the talk of a “Departnment of Peace.” They fear small groups of college students who simply plan to hold signs in the streets! These goons with fecal-flecked hearts and massive bank accounts fear everything except the justice which will one day find them. And it will find them.

Meanwhile, be strong. Seek your joy today, it is a greater power than any they wield. Share some with others. And don’t believe what the TV tells you.

A note: for those in no mood to relive any memories from 9/11, better skip this one.

FROM AN OLD JOURNAL I kept, the year after I first began what would come to be known as “blogging.” And there is a point in what I’m sharing with you, so know that as you make it through some of this uncomfortable prose. Warning: I was cursing a whole lot during this time as my writing and feelings were very, very raw.

The day before:

September 10, 2001 at 10:08 AM

SO MUCH FOR ALL THAT SEEYA AROUND STUFF

i was out this morn and walking behind this fella (he was about thirty feet in front of me? forty? fifty?) and a lady right in front of him, the sun is in it’s yawning stages, the land is rufflng and turning over with strong fresh wind i am watching the silver tinted leaves ripple and endlessly bloom in the wind i am walking in the wake of these fresh showered people and i smell something very nice in the air i think it’s tommy cologne by tommy hilfiger and standing there like a surfer riding a glorious peak i realized a couple things a few things very sweet things

one, i have got to get out today at some point, two, that it is good now, i don’t know what will happen next, but i am good now, and okay and excited and three, i’ve got to pick up some tommy immediately, man.

 
the next day:

Sep. 11th, 2001 at 10:54 AM

BOOM

madness. nothing quite like the smell of burning cinderblock in the air. nothing quite like the sound of newscasters who actually don’t know what to say. people are shaken. people are snapping pictures as they weep. the city is sealed off. you can’t get in and you can’t get out.

save your pictures and posters, save that skyline. it’s been changed forever. they blew up the world trade center.

but i’m okay, in case you’re wondering. except i don’t feel very safe, somehow. shit. i wonder if aaron is allright. hold on. 

kay. cell phone is knocked out. not working. the city is a mess, of course. people are freaked out. the nation is at defcon 5. 

the funny thing is, i was completely oblivious, working on my music, working on my artwork, ha! and then i got a phone call. shit, man. this is no good. 

thousands dead. thousands.

when fucking people think they can bomb new york city, and bomb the fucking pentagon, it is time to do some shit. i don’t know what, but this is fucked up shit, man. 

this is some fucked up shit.

later

Sep. 11th, 2001 at 9:31 PM

I LOVED NEW YORK

it just doesn’t seem real somehow. this is insanity. the chief of police and his deputy and 250 firemen and 80 cops are all dead dead dead. they are shutting down the city from 14th street on down. won’t even guess how many are underneath the ash and rubble. can’t go crosstown. can’t take the subway. the mayor has asked new yorkers to stay home if possible tomorrow. i just walked down to 60th street, past the red cross where everyone is giving blood. they are asking people to come back tomorrow because “we are overwhelmed right now,” and the city turned away people who wanted to help because they had 7, 000 people show up as volunteers.                

the fucking WORLD TRADE CENTER IS GONE.

and you know what? people are out in full force, embracing life. watch in nine months, big baby boom. people out holding hands, kissing, you can sense everyone actually pulling away from all the death which is clouding the air like the ashy debris still falling from the sky, even now, at 10:29 pm.

Mood:indescribable

holeee shiiiiiiit. man.   

a fucking plane or something just flew over nyc and man. it scared the shit outta me. i’m still listening very verry carefully as it makes its tooo gradual way into the night, fading, fading….IS IT? or is it…coming back? 

i don’t think so…

ok. fuck. man. that went so damn slow. are planes back up? i guess so. 

fuck. man. i flung open my front door, as if it would be right up there, sailing out of the sky, just just just just like that one one one one plane plane plane plane on the tv the one that crashed crashed swooped smashed sailed failed freakin dropped down and sliced flew smashed smashed smashed into the side of that building smashed into the side of that building swooped into smashed into that building. that one on the tv. that one on the front page.

wait. those buildings, not the ones on the tv or on the cover of time, i mean the buildings outside, the ones downtown i mean the ones that used to be downtown the ones that used to loom high up in the air the ones that you would use to navigate your way around the financial district, seaport area. like a compass in the sky.

i flung open the door and tilted my head up to see the superquick billionpound flying box of death sail out of the sky but i couldn’t see it there couldn’t see anything but night

i can still hear it, though. damn. 

i’m afraid to sleep. what kinda shit is gonna go down while i’m asleep?

This is an important passage. And I should note here that even over a year later, I would find myself cringing when a plane flew overhead, flinging my head back to make sure it wasn’t coming down on top of me. So for me, and in a very real experiential and emotional sense, this is not an event that was over on 9/12/01. Or on 9/12/02. Or on 9/12/03.

Following this, you may be shocked by some of the content in that it may sound particularly un-Nezua-like. But that is actually the point of this post. Not just to dredge up bad memories. But to show you what I have to be grateful for; what glittering feathers have grown out of a rotted-out charcoal burn. To illustrate what the disaster of September 11th provoked in myself.

Our government may have chuckled since then, many times, thinking they had in their oily palms the perfect weapon to control us, the perfect fear-doser, the modern US Reichstag fire. But I wonder if they counted on reactions like mine. Reactions that shook me loose of a typical Murkan Mindset and set me flying, flying to read, to learn, to know more, to grow. To seek out the roots of the destruction, to suss out a path toward understanding, one that led me right back home.

This is all from my (now-private) online journal written in NYC during September, 2001.

This part was in response to a male friend in the UK who was coolly examining political angles/statements on the 11th and 12 of September that took me a couple years to get to:

 you think you’re so smart. you think you’re a big fucking deal with your anti-american statements. with your cold global anti-imperialist view or whatthefuckever. 

well. all i can say is easy to talk all kinds of bullshit when it wasn’t your back yard blown to smithereens. and it’s easy to talk all this shit when you have no empathy in your soul. and fuck that, even. it’s easy to say this shit from where you are. joining the war, are you? come here, bitch. stand in front of me and say this shit. know why? i’m not feeling rational. and i don’t give a fuck. i’ll beat your ass silly and rest in between blows so you have a chance to spew your intellectual political snot. you can even win, how ’bout that? you can be right. you can be objective and cold and unsympathetic and correct, even!

and then when you’re done, ima crack you again. bleed, you fuck. feel me now, do ya?

It’s tough to take these statements out of context. We were living—especially NYC people—in an alien world. Honestly, alien to anything I’d ever experienced in my entire life. Some NYC residents were more levelheaded than me (“levelheaded” has always been my strength , or more educated in the ways of US foreign policy than me. But you have to understand, I mostly didn’t pay attention to news or history before 9/11. Just skimmed it. I might have had the phrase “Tonkin Bay” in my mind’s echo memory; I may have known about Vietnam, but I didn’t know about South America or our casual methods of manipulating the public, our casual toppling of governments, our funding terrorists to meet our own goals, our vampiric and greedy and often blundering and ignorant foreign policy actions done over and over again. So I want you to note the words about “anti-imperialist.” That was no joke. And it gets better:

i’m an american, born and bred. and i’m proud of my big-mouthed, strong, powerful and wealthy country. so fucking what. go take a flying leap at a skyscraper if’n you don’t like it. with or against us. 

see, im getting all kinds of insane shit. like “oh, if america weren’t around, we’d all live in peace.” well, we always need a scapegoat. [...]

countries — if you’re even gonna bother having them — are defined by borders. THAT is what makes a country a country, foo’. and wars and terrorist acts are about borders. and maybe we can discuss sex, food, health, hobbies, travel, religion (no thanks), or literature. but just because the internet spans the globe does not mean we can be together on everything. 

because the bottom line is you are not an american. and that means, in this particular case, that you are not sitting on this side of the bleachers WITH BLOOD AND GLASS IN YOUR STREETS and tears on the phone and smoke in the air and fear fear fear in the streets. 

That’s something, hunh? The talk of countries being defined by borders. That was me, no lie. And that was me, echoing George W. Bush’s words “with us or against us.” I was exactly the kind of emotional reaction combined with ignorance that our malicious government hoped to take advantage of. 

And I am a fighter still today, so my back was up and I was not in Nuance mode whatsoever. I was thinking another building could blow up any minute. We were not even allowed to use the bridges or leave the island, remember.

Ironically, those who are repulsed by my stances today about land/ownership/borders…they can blame US policy. Because I was running on a bunch of defaults before 9/11. It was 9/11 that made me investigate US foreign policy a lot closer than I ever had. It was a smack in the face. It made me spit out my steak. 9/11 and our government’s use of it led directly to my new views on the world.

More from the Nezua of Nine-Eleven:

 

i don’t want any more discourse from fucking foreign armchair generals. i don’t care if you find a “hole” in my logic. i am not here to argue it with you. this is not logic i am putting out, but sentiment. and how can you really share it? if you do, then welcome. grab a biscuit and a box of ammo. 

if not, then just go away. this is no time for dissidents, deserters, or wishy-wash. this is MY country in dire need. we have no fucking time for your anti-american sentiment. 

Biscuit and a box of ammo. I was seriously considering joining the Marines. I polled my readers. No joke.

aaron has not answered his phone since day before yesterday. he lives at broadway and lispenard. this is about fifteen blocks south of where the barricades are today. he lives in the part of the city now closed off. to civilians.

In NYC we were worried about our friends and family being dead. It was not a TV event. And the city was occupied by military with guns. But with less visible police and soldier forces than I saw in St. Paul. Think about it.

hmmm. 

what would i talk about, were there not smoke in the air out my front door? what would occupy the mind, were there not thousands of crushed bodies and smoldering concrete and glass chips outside?

hmmm.

In a lot of my entries from the time, I make jokes. I don’t think I need to explain it to you. That’s the kind of thing one does when the mail is piling up outside the door because one is afraid to touch the possibly-poisoned letters, and when one can smell burnt bodies everytime s/he walks out the front door.

i feel shitty about some of us tonight. americans. man i thought we were better than that. fucking idiots. inspiring fear in the hearts of dark-skinned, turban-wearing americans. threatening them. maybe it wasn’t all widespread, but even one time…c’mon, people! we’re smarter than that!

ugh. fear.

At least you know I wasn’t a wholly different person then. Just ignorant in a few ways and scared and angry and in need of education. 

tomorrow i’m going down toward ground zero and i’ma find out if what i can volunteer to do. if i am going to jail (here we go again! hahaha), then i am not going to miss out on getting my hands in the ash. i need to touch this destruction. it just doesn’t seem real.

I did. They didn’t need help or blood. It made me proud of New York to see how we were pulling together. Of course the government was lying about the dangers. When people say “NEVER FORGET!!” this is one of the things I remember. The government cares not for me. Never forget.

and listen. if you care: bin-laden is a brilliant, dedicated, intelligent, charismatic, loquacious leader. he possesses vast energy and ambition. a brilliant, dedicated, intelligent, charismatic, loquacious leader whose sole goal is to use his vast resources to fund his very articulate, insightful, incisive personal hatefest deathwish killlust for AMERICA. and yeah, he’s probably not alone. what about those videotapes? what about his very vocal crusade? what about his ideas?

the man mocks us — not to say storm off in anger after him ’cause “oooh he mocks us” but he is being smarter then us and thus far has the right to mock us. and that hurts. we should not be so ignorant and flower picking.

we are complete assholes for knowing all we have and letting him run around getting strong and ready. i wouldn’t have. i know the schoolyard. i lost my cherry there. i got my scars there. i learned the nine faces there. i grew old and died there. i learned to dance there. 

if we did “begin things” by our stance with israel (and don’t you have friends whom you gain from and who you would stick up for? no? mannequin.) then it was stupid, as per schoolyard rules, to only swat him and turn our back. and in that sense, we “deserve” some shit. but i can’t say that because i reject the concept of deserve. so i will say that we should have hit a lot harder. we just blew up some of his friggin toys. and he’s so damn cocky and irreverent and effective, and now we say oh, duh….i din’t think he was actually gonna stick me with that ex-acto knife he was waving around

so now it’s time to end it. it’s time to crush this with finality. no more land of the free ride on the big dick. bust loose on this muhfucker. act as if he is dangerous and devoted to eliminating us. see this attack as a failed attempt oh his part. see the attempt not over. see the spider bloated and grinning and spinning his web in YOUR house. 

he is learning from things if he is a smart boy. and he is a smart boy. and he is determined. we must be more determined. we must, effectively and with finality and when the time is right – put our foot down. crush this fucking flea. and find the rest of the infection. sear it to the ground. 

and then, love your neighbor. and sleep well.

How’s that for change? I was advocating a “burn down the forest” to get the Terrorists stance. I was claiming that sticking up for Israel No Matter What was worth anything that came our way. And in other ways, I was buying up the government’s propaganda. I was in Fight or Flight mode. But as I said, I calmed down from that. And I began paying attention. And I began reading and watching and listening. 

got past the barricade at 14th. then met the second one at houston. (never say “hyoo-sten” it’s “how-sten”) smoke was really getting thick. i took pictures and video. the shit did what i wanted. it got real. my teeth and mouth were coated with an oily bitter dusting. my eyes were watering. my stomach got ill. i started lurching out, up town, jesus how do those fucking firefighters stay in the epicenter for over 24 hours with no sleep? fucking supermen.

its beautiful at union square. i’m going back tomorrow. but i will be tired. i can’t sleeep at all. CNN in da background. flag in mah winder. im hardcore, baby. american 1000%. 

Yeah. Well. It is true that I couldn’t sleep. And that I was glued to CNN for months after that. And for weeks, I was in front of the TV 24-7. I watched TV more than I ate. I found myself paralyzed. Not only could I not touch the mail, I could not go about my life anymore. I watched it slip away and out of my hands until one day I was on a bus headed out of NYC because I had nowhere to go anymore and nowhere to eat and no way to feed myself. I did try a few times to find work after I got laid off that same September, but it was as if my entire world was cracked in two and I just slipped in the chasm and fell.

In fact one day, one of these september 11ths, I will really go into just how much the WTC demolitions/anthrax scare fucked up (re-fucked up?) my nervous system. And how the government played into that with their fear-peddling and wiretapping (we’re watching you, they are out to get you, disaster is looming over you) In a way that is not done playing out. I’ve touched on it briefly and perhaps somewhat vaguely in past writings, and that is exactly because it is not done playing out in me and it’s very heavy stuff that ties into other parts of my life.

But the point I wanted to make today is that there is something to be grateful for in those violent acts and the subsequent acts also assisted by our government in the agenda of scaring us and sucking up our cashKEEPSHOPPINGand and our resources and enacting mass-control methods over all of us far more devious and purposeful than, for example, the daylight savings routine of having everyone move their clocks and hand over their mental frame when instructed.

For years I operated on the leftover attitudes of my parents, attitudes formed in revolutionary anti-establishment days. I distrusted the US government, and felt no need to fortify that with education. I knew it to be a worthy stance. And yet, I still carried with me USA exceptionalist bravado. You can see it in my writing here. Some of you could have met me then and been disgusted by this. In fact, I would meet the old me today and if I heard those attitudes, I, too, would be disgusted. I was proud of not having to know anything about other countries, while they knew about us. I was AMERICAN. Really. In too many ways.

But that began a change. Part of it was living through this kind of violence, and later war, while talking with citizens of other nations: the Internet. It was hard, but good, to hear views that were not formed through the USA lens. You hear me reacting to that new change in one of the paragraphs above. But anyone who makes it their business to shed skin knows that very often, it hurts. But what is the alternative? Living “comfortably” in a sagging, stinking shell that should be cast off if one is to grow. 

Today? Well. I don’t think I need to go into how much I’ve changed. And you know, I’m very grateful to be different, to have read up on a few things, to have examined the actions of my country. I am no longer a nationalist or a “Patriot®.” I am no longer reactionary, reacting without thinking. I now act and I have spent much time in thought. All the changes I have made since do not spring directly out of that event. And if you know me at all, you know I’m always changing and always shifting. This will not stop now, it did not begin then. It is not a direct and simplified causal line I draw. Things are always interweaving: lessons, events, thoughts, purpose. And pursuing that process is just who I am; committed to real life, to real moments, to the real me.

But that event did inspire and set into motion many changes that have had a direct consequence on my worldview.

I now think in more global terms. I now think in more sane terms. I am now better for the world and for people. My heart, previously (unwittingly) armored and protected by United States propaganda, has been skinned and has risen from the ashes of the WTC wreckage to buoy me above selfish, violent, nationalist concerns. And now I do not curse other nations or those who question the USA’s policies. My fight is with greed and ignorance, the kind our MSM and leaders sell to us US citizens every day. My fight is with elites deepening class divides, which is part of the American Dream: to be on top of the pile. My fight is with the Pile. My fight is with those who would instill the mind-blinding lessons I had soaked up. My fight is with those now using pre-war propaganda against Iran in the same way they flooded our TVs with anti-Afghanistan propaganda before bombing them. My fight is with those forces which initiate the kind of violence that has killed hundreds of thousands of people since 9/11 in our phony War on Terror. 

September 11th. Never forget.

AS CHINA CRACKS DOWN ON DISSIDENTS in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, I can’t help but think of the slaughter at Tlatelolco. And I don’t mean the original slaughter. I mean the more recent one, where the Mexican Government, instigated and aided by our CIA, sent its army out to suppress student protests in preparation for the 1968 Olympic games and ended up gunning hundreds to death. To this day, there remain bullet holes in standing edifice, as well as a monument to mark the terrible day. To this day, the Mexican government lies about the body counts.

The massacre was preceded by months of political unrest in the Mexican capital, echoing student demonstrations and riots all over the world during 1968. The students wanted to exploit the attention focused on Mexico City for the 1968 Summer Olympics. The students demanded:^[1]

1. Repeal of Articles 145 and 145b of the Penal Code (which sanctioned imprisonment of anyone attending meetings of three or more people, deemed to threaten public order).
2. The abolition of granaderos (the tactical police corps).
3. Freedom of political prisoners.
4. The dismissal of the chief of police and his deputy.
5. The identification of officials responsible for the bloodshed.

President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, however, was determined to stop the demonstrations and, in September, he ordered the army to occupy the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the country’s largest university. Students were beaten and arrested indiscriminately. Rector Javier Barros Sierra resigned in protest on September 23.

Student demonstrators were not deterred, however. The demonstrations grew in size, until, on October 2, after student strikes lasting nine weeks, 15,000 students from various universities marched through the streets of Mexico City, carrying red carnations to protest the army’s occupation of the university campus. By nightfall, 5,000 students and workers, many of them with spouses and children, had congregated outside an apartment complex in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco for what was supposed to be a peaceful rally. Among their chants were ¡No queremos olimpiadas, queremos revolución! (“We don’t want Olympic games, we want revolution!”). Rally organizers did not attempt to call off the protest when they noticed an increased military presence in the area.

The massacre began at sunset when police and military forces — equipped with armored cars and tanks — surrounded the square and began firing live rounds into the crowd, hitting not only the protestors, but also other people who were present for reasons unrelated to the demonstration. Demonstrators and passersby alike, including children, were hit by bullets, and mounds of bodies soon lay on the ground. The killing continued through the night, with soldiers operating on a house-to-house basis in the apartment buildings adjacent to the square. Witnesses to the event claim that the bodies were later removed in garbage trucks.

The official government explanation of the incident was that armed provocateurs among the demonstrators, stationed in buildings overlooking the crowd, had begun the firefight. Suddenly finding themselves sniper targets, the security forces had simply returned the shooting in self-defense.

In October 1997, the Congress of Mexico established a committee to investigate the Tlatelolco massacre. The committee interviewed many political players involved in the massacre, including Luis Echeverría Álvarez, a former president who was Díaz Ordaz’s minister of the interior at the time of the massacre. Echeverría admitted that the students had been unarmed, and also suggested that the military action was planned in advance, as a means to destroy the student movement.

—Wikipedia Aug 7 2008

Luis Echeverria was ultimately put on trial for genocide. But was let go due to the statute of limitations running out. (Just my opinion, but seems to me that’s a charge that shouldn’t expire?) And the CIA eventually released [redacted] documents that gave a bit more insight into the event.

This is but one page, but I don’t think even all of them give the entire picture. If they did, they wouldn’t be released to the public. Because we know what the entire picture is, don’t we? Even if we don’t know all the facts of Tlatelolco, or exactly what is going on in China from our vantage point, or the particulars of any of the violence that proceeds, trails and surrounds our grand and fraudulent symbols of international family. Because anywhere the People gather to express their voice, the government—be it communist, democratic or otherwise—will be infiltrating and disturbing the cohesion and strength of that voice, finally using violence with no real hesitancy or remorse. And wherever these games go, the hosting governments will have to deal with this, and I imagine more and more. Because the People’s issues and voices—now increasingly outlawed, punished, minimized, or sent to Fenced-in ‘Free Speech’ areas—do seek a hearing, will always seek the public eye. And the unsettling juxtaposition of profit, spotlight, and ignored oppressions will always cause this confluence of energy and tumult. This is our modern-day Olympic Games Carnival settling down uneasily into a world where war and class divides are hurting so many.

A DEVELOPING country gets the Olympic games as an acknowledgment of its new, exalted status. An authoritarian government, awash with money, exploits the chance to project a peaceful, progressive image. Critics of the regime use the games as a chance to demand more democracy and human rights. There are demonstrations, forcefully broken up. [...]

The president … was determined that nobody would hijack or derail them; the games would go ahead whatever happened. He also realised how hard that would be when, on August 27th, about 400,000 people converged on the centre of Mexico City to hurl abuse at him.

Another rally was planned for October 2nd, just ten days before the opening. Thousands gathered in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, part of the vast new Tlatelolco housing project. Security forces were waiting for them. Plain-clothes agents tried to mingle with the crowd, but they stood out by wearing a single white glove.

They were subsequently found to belong to the self-styled “Olympia Battalion”, a shadowy paramilitary squad. Acting as agents provocateurs, just after 6pm they fired on the crowd, prompting army troops to open up with machineguns. As people tried to flee, some were killed by soldiers wielding bayonets.

—economist.com, The ghosts of Mexico 1968

It’s easy to connect Tlatelolco and Beijing right now, even though the violence and body counts are not at all comparable (Easier yet, as that last linked article demonstrates, to connect Tlatelolco and the Tianenmen Square incident). True, both governments are hiding whatever the actual facts are as obtusely and insistently as the USA hides the numerous American corpses being sent back to our shores regularly. And it’s also easy to point to China or Mexico, two countries we both love to vacation to, use products and resources from, and all the while chastise and shame and slander. Maybe it’s not so easy to draw the line back here to the Good Ole US of A because this citizenry believes in taking it. We believe in taking about anything that’s handed our way. As long as we can Twitter and WordPress it! So you don’t see the uprisings other nations deal with all the time.

I read someone recently…a few people, actually, who claim that the Protests of the 60s are some funky, outdated, trendy and now-gauche behavior. It seems to be Teh Cool Progressive Idea here and there to eschew putting your body and mouth where your beliefs are. What a sad, sad, joke this is on ourselves. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. People typing up storms condemning feet in the street, justifying slack muscles and the continued discorporation of our political and social selves, we approach the brain in a jar stage soon, a withering whirl we are of virtual word and war rushing through wires…until they yank the power.

Showing up with your voice and your body is NEVER passe. It is NEVER old or outdated and it will NEVER be less impressive than the most wrathful or righteous email, post, or tweet. To even classify it as a Thing to be Dated is foolish. Showing up with your self, at risk and front and center is the most effective way to make the People’s voice threatening at all. And if the Voice of the People is not threatening, then it is not taken seriously. If it can’t intrude on the proceedings of the more powerful, it is but an item to be considered on a possible agenda (or not).

I’m not condemning online activism, I partake in a lot of it. Yes, we know that petitions mean a lot, even when gathered electronically. But not until they are delivered. Further, I will never cheer on this gradual separation of brain and body that the online world loves to promote. However, I’m not here to set up a dichotomy between the two. In fact, I think a fusion of both is emerging and will continue to emerge and evolve until the Voice of the People moves swift, sure, and stronger than any measures of control. Which is good for la gente, though perhaps scary to those who would control and contain us, yet milk our energies and fuel for their own purposes.

This would be the point where I do tie these govt monitoring/suppression behaviors to my own country. This is where I mention being one of the RNC 1800. The RNC 1800 were only named so after we were behind bars. Or penned up in a greasy bus garage, or shackled for five hours straight without food or bathroom…before being held another 30 – 50 hours. We weren’t any predetermined group. We were simply people who were swept up by the orange nets of NYC police, who had plans in advance to squash all dissent and protest anticipated as a reaction to the GOP sweeping into NYC (to dance on top of the WTC wreckage in order to promote their fake leader for another four years). Some reports say tens of thousands, some say 100,000 people came to New York to make their voices heard. If you follow the links, you see why I connect this to Beijing 2008 and Mexico 1968. The same operations were in effect. Government infiltration and moles, classic COINTELPRO type action designed to crush and detain the proles so that the royalty can come to town without being disturbed. 

So maybe we don’t just “take it.” Some of us get out there and go face to face. But it’s not enough today, and on that aspect of critiquing street protest, I agree. We need the media, too. Which is why, while I joke about Twitter, I think that deployed hand-in-hand with street action, technologies like this will soon be a devastatingly powerful tool of the People. For example, even though Operation Overlord was the first practice drill for mass-arrests and detainment in our country, the news was squashed by the MSM. People even a few states away didn’t hear of it. To this day, many haven’t! (Of course the city was up in arms and behind us, gathering outside the jails and protesting and talking to local media.) It wouldn’t happen that way today. Nor should it.

Nor should we stop asking why billions can be spent on honoring atheletes (who deserve recognition for their talent and competition and achievement), and billions can be spent on police weaponry and detainment centers and tasers and fences and walls and wiretapping, and [UNDISCLOSED BILLIONS] can be spent on super-high tech futuristic control and pain-compliance weaponry—when only a fraction of that money spent with different attitude and purpose would lessen so many pains and imbalances that lead to these disruptions and imagined need for draconian and punitive measures in the first place. We should ask that over and over and over again. With our posts, with our graffiti, with our shouting voices, with our bodies, with our hearts.

I’D LIKE TO COME BACK to my film reviews more often, but they are one of the most time-consuming efforts I make, though one of the most satisfying. If I had another few hours in a day, I’d probably keep a wholly separate blog for film, photo, and all things visual. But just as your host is mestizolicious, so is this blog a blend of various elements, from human rights to political engagement to graphic art to people-powered notions to polemic to environmental concern to humor to film review. Anyway, on with it.

For purposes of categorization (and time!) this will be a “Film Overview.” Meaning, I see a film once, talk about it at home without further viewing capability, without having taken notes, without being able to grab stills. This means that my quotes may be off by a word or two as they are paraphrased, but the essence will be accurate as I was making mental notes and connecting the insights I had to specific film elements.

For the other types—especially Review and Full Analysis—I prefer to have a screening copy on hand and the ability to select any still image to illustrate a point. So this will be rather broad and only as detailed as I expect I can make it. For those who are new to UMX, my (formal) training and practice in visual art began in 1988 and I specifically majored in Film/TV at my second school, NYU. A handful of radio reviews that I did for Radio Pacifica can be found here and the written reviews I’ve posted here.

This will be an overview of Batman: The Dark Knight. There are spoilers! So you may want to skip this and bookmark it for later if you haven’t yet seen the film. However, I will do my best regardless to not mention anything gratuitously and only what I need to in making my points.

I realize it’s only fair to begin with a synopsis, but I’d rather quote someone else on that part, because my main interest here is stripping bare the underlying message. So here’s two summaries from imdb.com.

Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the city streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as The Joker. Written by Peteagassi

With just one year passed after taking out Ra’s Al Ghul’s plan to have Gotham eliminated and the mysterious disappearance of Dr. Jonathan Crane AKA the Scarecrow, after the city was nearly plundered with his toxins, Bruce Wayne and his vigilante alter-ego the Batman, continue the seemingly-endless effort to bring order to Gotham, with the help of Lt. James Gordon and newly appointed District Attorney Harvey Dent, but a new threat has now emerged into the streets. The Dark Knight faces a rising psychopathic criminal called The Joker, who’s eerie grin, laughter, and inhuman morality makes him more dangerous than what he has yet to unleash. It becomes an agenda to the Batman to stop the mysterious Joker at all cost, knowing that the both of them are in the opposite line. One with no method at all and seeks to see the world plunge into the fire he has yet to lit. One who represents the symbol of hope and uses his own shadow to bring the peace and order he has yet to accomplish on doing. Written by Anonymous

Okay, good. Got that? Porque I’m not even going to work my way up to the heart, I’m going directly between the ribs and yanking it out first. And I’m glad that “Peteagassi” used the phrase “war on crime” because

The Dark Knight is a fun, dark, cinematic delight wrapped around a pro-George W. Bush, pro-P.A.T.R.I.O.T act, anti-left, pro-GWOT, neocon message.

The film trumpets the views that:

a) Terrorists have no reasoning, nor any actual complaint. They simply want to see the world burn.

b) Those who would try to deal with the issue in terms of law and reason are using the wrong tools in dark and terrible time and will lose. [update as a reader reminded me below:] To win, you must “burn the whole forest down.”

c) Wiretapping is necessary to save us from lurking dangers.

d) George W. Bush is a Christ-like figure who is doing the right thing with no current recognition, but this is a sacrifice he has undertaken and will soon be hunted for it.

There are of course, other messages in here. But these are the overriding ones. And of them, I have no doubt. And most of these were hardly subtle, to tell you the truth.

I’m glad to find the poster image above. This was even after I formed my opinions (which was while watching it.) Take another look at it. WELCOME TO A WORLD WITHOUT RULES is important. As is the burning building (kind of…looks like a plane flew into it, eh?)

The “World without rules” fits under part B.

a: “You would have us be reasonable people in cruel times!” screams a major character, who gets badly disfigured because he was a shining example of law and tried to fight crime by the books. This is right in line with the CheneyBush Doctrine, of course, echoed again when Batman (Christian Bale) is trying to squeeze information from a mob boss. “Nobody will give you information. They won’t turn on the joker. They’re afraid of him. You have rules. The Joker doesn’t have any.” It’s the cry of the cop who goes crooked. How can we fight crime if we play by the rules while the criminals don’t have any? It’s the dark, dark, dark protestation of he who foregoes principle and embraces the Means Justify the Ends philosophy.

Multiple times the word “Terrorist” is tied to the Joker (played by Heath Ledger). That part was very blatant. From a barely audible TV droning out news reports in the background eventually finding its way to louder spaces, like directly from character’s mouth. Talk of “giving in” to “terrorist” demands.

The joker also blows up a hospital, and the way the papers float to the earth in the smoky aftermath of the building’s explosion, well. You didn’t have to live in NYC in 2001 to have certain images—played on our TVs over and over and over again—stick in your mind and remind you of exploding office buildings.

The Joker has a suicidal bent—like the extremist Muslim fanatics we are always hearing about—begging the oncoming cycle to mow him down, asking to be killed when at the end, relishing it. He laughs when you belt him. Each and every time.

It’s easy to get caught up here in this character. Not only is the media pushing this Joker aspect due to Heath Ledger’s death, but we do love a good villain. And he’s a good one. You can see the depth of the character’s pain at moments, but there is a fury there, too that leaps out only at moments and wakes you up from the act he puts on, which settles a sort of spell of revulsion and fascination over you.

He is a devil of sorts. He receives his joy from watching you fall, from knowing there is no goodness, from forcing you to choose that Ends Justifies the Means philosophy. He wants self affirmation that all is corrupt and people are terrible and dark inside, when you throw away all the conceits and affectation. He likes to murder because in someone’s last moments, you see who they truly are.

This is the character exploration and filmmaking that captivates. This is the part the movie relishes. This dark, haunted, killer.

“You think the city’s better now?” he leers at the Law through a video screen, caked-up makeup and eyes wild and wide. (Even the parts where he has his victims face the camera and read his notes reminds me of certain actual broadcasts from the Middle East in which US citizens were abducated and put on their knees in a green, gauzy, gray room and made to repeat and speak to the watchers, us.) Then he shoves his maniacal face into the lens. “THIS IS HOW INSANE GOTHAM IS!” And we know that he  personifies the madness into which society is descending.

Some messages speak against the right wing mantras, as outlined. But you will always have multiple messages, some that contradict, in all except the most clunky flicks. I stand by my reading of the broader overreaching and lasting messages.

The Joker begins by pulling off a complicated bank heist. But he doesn’t even really want the money, we learn. He doesn’t have reasons. He unfolds this amazingly complex and successful crime and then gets the loot and burns it. (With the Crooked Asian Weakling Type sitting atop the ten-foot stacks (three? as in three towers?) of money. Burning. Think “centers of finance” think “Towers.”) Because “some people just want to see the world burn.”

At first when we hear the story of his scars we feel for him, feel terribly. A child whose father victimized both his mother and himself. Later, the writer deftly snatches our sympathies away by having the Joker tell a different story of the origins of his scars, this time self-inflicted. You realize that you cannot trust his reasons, that he is just insane, and his revealing of the scar’s origins is a game he plays moments before he disfigures someone else. Now you feel used by him for your sympathies and are set against him even more.

b) Those who would try to deal with the issue in terms of law and reason are using the wrong tools in dark and terrible time and will lose.

I touched on this some already. But it is highlighted in stark example when Batman, desperate to find the Joker turns to wiretapping. The Joker is upending the very order of society by killing scores of cops, judges, lawyers involved in the prosecution of the mob (who has foolishly hired the Joker not knowing he is not a Regular Criminal but insatiable and deranged). Batman uses some technology already developed (ahem) by his friend Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) to tap into every single cell phone in the city, which then sends out sonar and visually maps and triangulates any person’s presence or voice in a massive ghostly three-dimensional landscape. Lucius protests and insists he must resign if this technology is going to be present.

But he will help this one time. Because it’s THAT important. As I said, the very fabric of their society is crumbling. What? Is Lucius just going to refuse? And let the terrorists win?

So we see the symbol of AT&T/Comcast, etc given the face of THEEEE world’s most benevolent actor (Morgan Freeman) as he kindly and justly agrees Just This One Time to do something horribly unethical and invasive. For the People’s good. We’re even shown that “to reward people” for doing the right thing, Batman programs the room to self-destruct when This One Time is over.

We actually see the ticking time bomb scenario play out not once, but twice! Does torture work? Batman beats the hell out of the Joker, who only seems to enjoy dragging Batman down to his level (terrorists winning) but he does get the information (Torture justified) the first time. The second…well, that’s tooo much of a spoiler. But it involves a “social experiment” in which he pits people’s fear of being killed and distrust of others and self interest against reason and trust and believing in others. And I’d say the ultimate message is that fear and self-interest are not reinforced that time.

c) George W. Bush is a Christ-like figure who is doing the right thing with no current recognition, but this is a sacrifice he has undertaken and will soon be hunted for it.

I know! This is the part where you are like all “Whoa Nez, that’s just out of control. Batman as Pro-P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act? The Dark Knight as Bush? Aren’t you, yanno, reading INto it a little too much or sumfin?” But not really. It’s quite clear. Especially if you follow from a to b to c to d, and the movie really leaves little doubt. Though I do see how it’s easy to focus on the character elements, the wicked good filming of fight scenes (can be hard to do, can be confusing or just disorienting or alternately, not kinetic or surprising enough), the seriously disturbing moments of violence (tag this “that fall won’t even kill me!”) the dark and emotional and convincing acting pieces, or the beautiful soaring and hang-gliding action that batman does with his cape.

Batman—he who fights terrorists with illegal and unethical but important and necessary means—will let someone else be the public hero-who-gives-hope. (He takes the rap for something to preserve the illusion of this hero the city needs in someone else.) Bushatman is the Christ figure, taking the weight on his back for the People. Sacrificing his good name and image and public adoration to Do the Right Thing, the Reviled Thing, but the Thing Necessary to Win and Beat the Terrorist(s). He is the “hero the people need now but that they don’t want now” says the Gary Oldman character, summing it up for us at the end. He will even be hunted for his taking on this weight, he goes on. But oh, how lucky we are to have him being whatever it is we need. Doing the things we deem illegal and wrong in our silly attempts to be reasonable in a cruel time with people so mad they have no reasons for their destructive actions, and only want to see our world burn.