Grave Error

Without much time to write in depth on various matters that interest me in relation to the recent Boston Marathon bombings, I am summarizing my thoughts here, many of which were previously expressed in 140 characters or less:

America is a Uniquely Violent Society

The Tsarnaev brothers’ violent rampage last week not only had a terrible human toll, it also revived the tough guys’  “the sky is falling” narrative. And the tough guys always react in the same way: they demand we be very scared, especially about foreign jihadists in our midst. We need to immediately stop immigration reform, suspend Miranda rights, and probably even impose a moratorium on all cookware.

Once the boys were identified and the press was drawing the Chechnya connection, I kept thinking that these brothers had finally become uniquely American, though something was missing. Come on, what is more American than a psychologically deranged person – disgruntled for any number of reasons – lashing out at innocent bystanders, resulting in a blood bath?

The only thing that kept the Tsarnaevs from earning true citizenship was that they hadn’t gone on a shooting spree (at least not until confronted by the police). And that was the good news for Massachusetts because had they used the Red, White and Blue weapon of choice, we would have seen death tolls in the high double digits, as we saw in Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson and Columbine.

But Massachusetts wasn’t the only one to benefit from the fact that these boys were not American enough to inflict real carnage. The NRA also must have let out a huge sigh of relief. Everyone was so focused on their makeshift bombs, that no one was asking how they got their hands on a sizable stockpile of guns. Moreover, we were able to focus on Islam as being inherently violent and not on how guns and the violence they cause are are unique to American society.

As I wrote after the Sandy Hook shootings, where 20 children and 6 adults were slaughtered by a deranged gun owner,

So, for example, when a crazy Muslim American shoots up an American military base – something oh so uniquely American – we immediately call it terrorism and blame Islam. But if that American man had not been Muslim, as in the other 61 mass shootings during the last 30 years (seven this year alone), we’d all be talking about mental illness, how we’d be safer if everyone were armed, and generally treating the senseless murders as an unavoidable natural disaster that lasts a two day news cycle.

Consider that we have since learned that the Tsarnaevs did not receive any help from foreign terrorist organizations. They were, like in the case of Columbine, nothing more than very disturbed young men, intent on inflicting harm and getting attention; what Juan Cole has called “a tale of adolescent rebellion“. Continue reading →

For the first time in a least a decade, I actually got around to seeing most of this year’s Oscar nominated movies: Lincoln, Argo, Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook and Zero Dark Thirty. Most of them (with the exception of Life of Pie which was not American and Silver Linings which was not per se about being American) were all formulaic, almost delusional homages to American Exceptionalism. Lincoln was probably the most boring of the lot, with all of Spielberg’s trademark dramatic finishing touches (roll call included), saved only by Daniel Day Lewis’ remarkable acting. Django had moments of brilliance from Christoph Waltz and the beautiful Kerry Washington to look forward to, but as a friend told me, it wasn’t like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly which you could watch the next night all over again. Once Waltz was off the screen, it was just a lot of blood. Tarantino is fun, but surely no Sergio Leone.  Meanwhile, Silver Linings doesn’t even merit special mention. Two nice people with mental illnesses solve their mental illnesses by finding each other? Are we supposed to believe crazy times two doesn’t beget even more craziness? What, was mental illness the only prop missing from the RomCom wardrobe?

Now the two most entertaining films were actually the two most unabashedly Red White and Blue pro-CIA propaganda pieces, both with dubious (and arguably dangerous historical re-scripting): Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. Argo despite its unashamedly fictionalized account of almost all of the historical events depicted in the film, was fun, suspenseful and kept me interested up until the end. But at no point in watching the movie did it ever cross my mind that Argo was going to or even should win the Oscar. It just didn’t feel like that good of a flick. It was, like Ben Affleck himself, completely mediocre and completely acceptable. Then again, mediocrity and acceptability are what it takes to make it in Hollywood.

Zero Dark Thirty, on the other hand, had more elements that were closer to the real historical events and was an all around much better film. And if taken as pure fiction, at least from my own humble perspective, was the most entertaining and engaging of the movies nominated for Best Picture. Having said that, Zero Dark Thirty was also plagued with a series of gross flaws which are the crutch of what I want to be writing about here. Continue reading →

Our national delusion seems to know no limits. Mainly I am talking about the likes of Wayne Pierre and his NRA cronies. But they’re not really the problem are they? The problem is the heads-in-the-sand tribal partisanship where people faced with every piece of evidence stacked against their “team’s” position will actually believe something as ridiculous as “guns don’t kill” or “guns aren’t the problem” or “we need more guns” to protect us all.  Or one side will be vehemently anti-war and pro-due process until their president is in power.

What kills me about this is that there are really smart people out there who buy into the partisan rhetoric and will accept utter nonsense as fact.

Let me give you a perfect example: yesterday while on the phone with a family member to say “Merry Christmas” I happened to express one major barrier to to moving back to the U.S., out of this world health care costs. The response I got was, yeah, but when a European gets really sick they come to the U.S. for treatment. Well, first of all that isn’t true. When a European gets sick, they get good, affordable medical care at home. When a super rich European gets really sick they sometimes go to an American hospital for really expensive treatment. When an American, a normal American who is not really rich (in other words, one who could be me) gets really sick, they die and they die broke. They cannot afford elite American health care. To say we have the best medical care would be like saying that America has the best food in the world because it has the most expensive restaurant in New York City. We do not have the best health care system in the world, and we definitely do not have the best health care results. To say or believe otherwise is completely delusional, and when push comes to shove, the only reason to argue that we do is for purely partisan gain (ie, to root for the home team).

Back to guns: conservative writer, David Frum, has taken particular aim at the pro-gun wing of his party, and has done a very effective job at highlighting the correlation between the prevalence of fire arms in the U.S. and the outrageous number of gun-related deaths, injuries and crime, and how all that guns do is turn normal quarrels into violence clashes.  Following Wayne Pierre’s call for federal agents at schools, Frum tweeted a series of news posts on gun violence in America to very effectively demonstrate the extremity of the gun-apologists’ blindness:

From Frum’s December 21st Twitter feed: Continue reading →