intertribal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
intertribal) wrote2008-10-25 12:15 pm
intertribal) wrote2008-10-25 12:15 pm
i'm the president. i'm the decider.
President H.W. Bush: "Now Junior, I mean Dubya here, he's the real Born-Again."
W. is a movie I think every American should see. It starts off and you're so amused by the "impersonations" by the actors of Bush and his cabinet that you think it's going to be an SNL skit, but what it becomes is cathartic experience.
First off, let me just confirm that Josh Brolin is one of my new favorite actors. Yes, all I've seen is this and No Country For Old Men, but, damn. He's a talented guy.
Does Bush come off as sympathetic? Yes, in a welcome-to-the-human-race kind of way (Perp: "You don't know what it's like." Goren: "What? To work so hard, and still be a nobody?" Perp: "Yes..." Goren: "Welcome to the human race."). Would Bush, as Stone I believe said, like this depiction of him? No. It's fair, and it's sympathetic, but it's not gentle. I seriously doubt any of his supporters would like this movie. Other people who come off similarly include Colin Powell, the rest of the Bush clan, and Laura Bush. Plenty of people come off as unsympathetic - Condoleeza Rice was a particularly grating sycophant, Rumsfeld and Cheney are brutal strategists who disappear when the "WMDs" in Iraq are similarly nowhere to be found, and Karl Rove is a peculiar Gollum-like creature who skulks in the shadows of the war room with binders filled with statistics who lives so vicariously through W. that at one point he calls George H. W. Bush "Poppy". But part of W.'s problem is that he is surrounded by people trying to put words in his mouth - Rove and Cheney in particular are the most egregious of the bunch - and he must every now and then remind these underlings that he is the President, he's leading the campaign, it starts and ends with him. As it turns out this is because he suffers from a chronic fear of not being in control of his own life, not living up to the Bush name, not being Texan enough, not "earning his spurs", as his father puts it.
What this movie drives home is something I very much agree with: that politicians are just people, just normal people with the same psychoses and neuroses the rest of us have - they've just got the power to act on their insanity. W.'s problem is essentially that he lives in fear of disappointing his father, who prefers his brother Jeb - when W. becomes governor of Texas but Jeb loses the same race in Florida, Bush Sr. mopes about how hard it is for feet-on-the-ground, head-screwed-on-straight Jeb, and W. says, "Why do you always have to be feel bad for Jeb? Why can't you feel good for me?" When Bush Sr. loses the presidential race in 1992 and breaks down crying, saying he thought the war would be enough, W. is flustered and infuriated - he shouts that this would never have happened if his father had charged onto Baghdad like W. told him to. While pacing outside as his mother consoles his father, W. tells Laura that he will never let that happen to him. And indeed: during the campaign for war in Iraq, he asks Ari Fleischer if the latter told the press that "I hate assholes who try to kill my dad".
At a disastrous press conference, Bush struggles to pick his worst mistake.
We have no idea, of course, if these conversations took place, but they may very well have. The thing is, I've realized recently that part of the reason I want to work in government is because I want to be there for the wank. People in government are crazy, snarky, bitter, tired people, and this movie captured that excellently. My favorite scene in the whole movie is probably when W. is leading his cabinet - in their suits and their middle-aged bodies - on this trek through some kind of military training ground that is essentially prairie. They're constantly batting at flies and trying not to groan because W. in his safari suit is so enthusiastic about this, laying out his vision for the war in Iraq and dismissing Colin Powell as a worrywart, cracking jokes that the rest of them are obligated to chuckle at. They seem to have lost the trail, but W. assures them the vehicles are just up ahead, another half a mile, "just follow me!" and they all head off into the wilderness.
A lot of people think that politicians are a different class of people. They're either super-intelligent hyper-Americans, revered as Gods, or soulless, evil robots (or soulless, evil puppets who can't tie their own shoelaces). This girl in my thesis class said the other day, "People in the State Department are all the same. They just re-program the new people that come in." And a lot of people follow this idea that Capitol Hill is all anonymous suits and ties, "yesmen", cronies working for Big Ideas. This is just bullshit, and that goes for both parties. Believe me. People in the State Department are most certainly not "all the same". I can tell stories. This is from my research:
"The fact that the USA tried to discredit Sukarno through attempting to make a pornographic movie about his romantic proclivities indicates the climate of the times."
"While some of Sukarno’s American critics considered his recent outburst egregious but not inconsistent with previous antics, the CIA detected a deeper significance. Agency analysts began to suspect that Sukarno was becoming mentally unhinged… One of Sukarno’s wives, his fourth, seemed to be the source of most of the problems; the CIA’s contacts reported that some of Sukarno’s associates were plotting to kill her."
"The undersecretary of state [Ball] discounted what he considered wishful thinking by Jones; the ambassador, whose retirement was at hand, seemed to be showing the strain of seven years at a difficult post. An extraordinary request by Jones a few days earlier that Johnson personally assure Sukarno that the CIA was not trying to assassinate him did not improve Ball’s estimate of the ambassador’s judgment."
I'm sorry, but this is stuff I find positively hilarious. And it's all true, and it all had real consequences. Politics is about a lot of things, but politicians are not sterile 'droids. They're not all-bad or all-good, like so many people would like to believe. They don't behave in a way a realist political scientist would describe to be "rational". But then again, who does. People are not perfect calculators of gain/loss margins.
W. and his reverend pray after he announces that he has heard the call:
"God wants me to run for president."
The reverend's doubt-filled reaction: "... truly?"
no subject
I think primarily the whole picking out things you disagree with and only commenting on those is what grates me. My mother does something similar: she only responds to anything with corrections. It feels like I'm just there as a critical exercise for your beliefs, instead of an actual person who gets to be genuinely excited or emotional about something, who gets to be my own person instead of a reflection of what matters to you.
I think the whole agreeing on the presuppositions to discussion is probably a large part of what's missing and what makes this not work.
I feel I have to rescue whatever you're attacking because I'm a contrarian. Because whatever you're attacking isn't there to defend itself.
I'm not saying you have to accept what I'm saying, or agree with me or shut up. I don't know what to do really, except not write about things that are likely to incite arguments.
no subject
Me too, actually. I just rarely say so explicitly.
I feel like this would just seem like bullshit coming from you
I agree, because I think it is bullshit. I get to the intellectual points, and leave out the fluff, usually. To me, that's just being polite, and I don't really give a crap about being polite. Maybe I should, I don't know. If you disagree with someone, that's what's interesting, that's what needs discussing--maybe you see what they're saying, but maybe be discussing it you'll both be able to refine your views. It's fantastic.
I'm not sure how to tell you to have a discussion instead of an argument except maybe that driving the discussion in a certain direction by only talking about something you personally take issue with, and not acknowledging any points the other person makes, is sort of going to invite an argument.
Hm. But why tell them that I agree on everything else? That's implied by the fact that I don't mention it. It's not very interesting. I mean, if we just agree, than we might as well end the discussion and go home. I don't see what the point of talking about agreement is. I guess I could question those too.
I think primarily the whole picking out things you disagree with and only commenting on those is what grates me. My mother does something similar: she only responds to anything with corrections. It feels like I'm just there as a critical exercise for your beliefs, instead of an actual person who gets to be genuinely excited or emotional about something, who gets to be my own person instead of a reflection of what matters to you.
Whoah. I can't speak for your mother, but that's totally not what I'm trying to do at all. When I respond with a disagreement, even if I responded with a 'correction', I would most likely see it more as being helpful, like, "Well, I think you're on the right track here, this is all great, I agree, but there's one point I take issue with, and it's this." And if you can prove my point isn't relevant, or isn't important, then it stands as is. It's also beneficial for me to think about, but that's not really my primary concern, to 'critically exercise my beliefs'. That's just how I deal with people I think are intellectual equals. Ideally, it makes us both emotional and excited, the discussion itself, but clearly there's a disconnect there for us right now.
I think the whole agreeing on the presuppositions to discussion is probably a large part of what's missing and what makes this not work.
Maybe...though I'm not sure we mean the same thing by this? Well, what presuppositions would be missing?
I'm not saying you have to accept what I'm saying, or agree with me or shut up. I don't know what to do really, except not write about things that are likely to incite arguments.
I certainly wouldn't want you to do that. I'll try to be more careful/considerate, though I think part of this must rest on misunderstanding...
no subject
I don't think this is implied. I don't think you think I'm your intellectual equal, I think that you think I'm your intellectual punching bag. When you don't respond to other things I assume it's because you don't find anything interesting about it.
I mean, a lot of the things that intellectually stimulate me are not opinions. It's like, let's think about a plane crash. That's what gets me excited, and that's the kind of thing that doesn't need an argument - or, I mean, you could have one, but it's more the kind of thing that just invites more evidence, more stories, more weirdness. And I do want to hear bizarre opinions on things like plane crashes, but I want to synthesize it myself. Anyway what I'm trying to say is that I much prefer pooling data to having arguments, especially because I don't think I'm informed enough to have an argument. I like to bring things up but I don't have arguments about things unless I really really know what I'm talking about, and even then, you don't have arguments about things like plane crashes beyond the very technical arguments of what caused the plane to crash.
no subject
But it's true that I don't find plane crashes terribly interesting. I asked why you did, and that was interesting, but for me, planes are just one small thing, one small symptom of larger forces. I mean, for you they aren't just planes either, but in a much more metaphorical way? But that will be my opinion on things like plane crashes, because it's how I think. I don't get pooling data, because at a point it stops being helpful to a scientific investigation and just becomes more data. That's the sort of thing I write about on my LJ sometimes--methods of investigation, and logical ways of going about these problems, and why sometimes it doesn't work--because it interests me, because I want to make things better. I don't always think I'm informed enough to have an argument either. That's why I take quotes and scraps--too much, sometimes--because I want to think about them and have people think about them with me so that we can develop ideas further, and learn.
no subject
I don't understand most or any of the quotes you post, which makes it hard for me to really get much out of it.
no subject
sorry, that's probably my fault.
no subject
no subject
Exactly.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject