a sense of joy and then a panic

First, a study finding that "almost twice as many Americans would prefer to have a son rather than a daughter."  If you actually look at Gallup's report, though, this has been pretty typical since 1941.  Basically, it's because of men - 49% of men prefer a boy while 22% prefer a girl, and 31% of women prefer a boy while 33% prefer a girl.  For some people (not all) I think there's a little bit of "I want someone like me" involved in this kind of thing, both for psychological reasons and because you "know" how to raise someone of your own gender.  Like when my mother was pregnant, she wanted a girl and my dad wanted a boy - or rather, he "expected" a boy because he "could not believe" that he would not have a boy.  But women seem to have less of this than men.

This, however, is interesting - "both male and female Republicans are more likely to want a boy than are their gender counterparts who identify as Democrats."  Education level is also interesting - among respondents with a high school diploma or less, 44% prefer boys and 25% prefer girls; among postgraduate respondents, it's 32% for boys and 33% for girls. 

Anyway, the Atlantic suggests that while Americans may - like other cultures/societies - prefer boys to girls, they don't actually do anything to try to get more boys.

Second, Texas is trying to decide whether or not to allow the Sons of Confederate Veterans to have a confederate flag license plate.  The vote is delayed because the ninth member of the DMV board died and they have to pick a replacement.  Nine other states already have allowed the group such a license plate, and they sued Florida when Florida said no, leading a federal judge to decide that Florida was engaging in "viewpoint discrimination."  (My mother said "In that case I'm going to get a license plate that says the Tea Party are fuckers and if they say I can't have it then I'll sue Nebraska for viewpoint discrimination)  Jerry Patterson, a son of a confederate veteran, spoke in favor of the license plate by arguing that confederate veterans served honorably in the Civil War, just as he did in Vietnam:

"Not all things in Vietnam were done in a manner that I'm proud of. I served in Vietnam but I'm not proud of what happened. This is history and any time you commemorate history and those who served honorably, be they... the Sons of Confederate Veterans, I think they should be honored.”

Beyond the license plate thing: this is why I hate the word "honor."  Proud of what happened and yet still have served honorably.  Actions you can't be proud of, but done in an honorable way.  I think "honorable" and all its variants should be replaced in that sentence with "obedient," or some word that signifies "did what I was told to do by people with more power than I."  Then again, pretty much every military group in the world seems to call themselves honorable no matter what they're doing, so I'm not sure ethics has anything to do with "honor" now anyway.

What I immediately thought of after I heard The Big News (I was watching Cupcake Wars on the Food Network, which did not cut away to any breaking news report, so I heard it from fengi on LJ first) was "what now."  Is the war on terror over?  I think your answer to that depends on what you think "causes" terrorism, or why you think terrorism exists.  By this measure I figure that moderates are most likely to think the war on terror is over.  A crime/offense took place (9/11), we had to go after the person responsible (Bin Laden), and now that person is dead - the end.  Justice is served, the slate has been washed clean, now we can start over with "peaceful dialog" (this was a comment on the NYT... made me laugh, I had to say, the idea that enemy death -> peaceful dialog.  Trying to imagine Bin Laden saying that after 9/11, you know, like, "well, now that the towers have fallen, I hope we can have a peaceful dialog with you guys."  What an empty gesture). 

But the right isn't going to think the war on terror is over - after all, Islamofascism still exists, and that causes terrorism, and until the entire religion is wiped out, terrorists will still exist, and we will still be at risk.  And the left isn't going to think the war on terror is over - because military, political, and economic policies that encourage terrorism either directly (funding terrorists) or indirectly (blowback) will continue, so terrorism will continue.  From a long-term view, it's hard to believe "terrorism" will ever be vanquished.  Guerrilla warfare will never be vanquished either.  It's a strategy of waging asymmetric warfare, not a cult.  But I guess the moderates will have a field year speculating about what this means for Obama's re-election and we'll be throwing around words like "murderous militant" and "enemy of democracy" (this was from one of Nebraska's representatives, Lee Terry.  I really doubt Lee Terry has a firm understanding of what democracy actually is, based on this statement), etc.  The domestic political scientists and politicians and pundits will be going nuts pretending they have any clue what goes on internationally in their efforts to forecast What This Means For America, and this isn't a conversation I'm really interested in.

So this is pretty much Anti-Climax of the century, for me.  Hadn't we all moved past this, in our justification of Iraq and Afghanistan?  Hadn't we all adopted new excuses: liberating women, liberating civilians from dictators, spreading democracy, making the world safe - and then, fixing what we broke?  I thought that good old revenge was already off the table.  But now we're back to Square 1, apparently, and in U.S. history books of the future the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a few long paragraphs, no more than a textbook page, under the title Response to 9/11.  Then maybe whatever happens next - wherever we go next, in our war on terror - will be under the next entry, another few paragraphs.  Hundreds of thousands of people killed: the "response." 

Also, I've read some comments that the U.S. turned itself into a monster in order to respond to 9/11, but I don't know about that.  I think it's a nice fantasy, that America was some kind of stoic Lady Liberty prior to 9/11 and then was transformed into Hel the Hag by a massive act of violence, good girl gone bad.  But it's hard to say that after reading a book like Overthrow or Shock Doctrine.  Foreigners have been waking up to find themselves in secret torture cells with a CIA agent for decades.  Let's not forget that, even though it would be easier to.  It is frightening, really frightening, to look at the news in the context of the history of U.S. foreign policy.  Maybe that's why a lot of political scientists don't like to do it.

So, anyway: some historic-centric links.

Juan Cole: I was also dismayed by the propagandistic way the White House promoted its war on and then occupation of Iraq. They only had two speeds, progress and slow progress. A big bombing that killed hundreds was "slow progress."... I think if Bush had gone after Bin Laden as single-mindedly as Obama has, he would have gotten him, and could have rolled up al-Qaeda in 2002 or 2003. Instead, Bush’s occupation of a major Arab Muslim country kept a hornet’s nest buzzing against the US, Britain and other allies.

Chris Hedges (that paragraph about the empathy the US received after 9/11 is incredibly true, and incredibly sad, in retrospect): 

The flip side of nationalism is always racism, it’s about self-exaltation and the denigration of the other.

I was in the Middle East in the days after 9/11. And we had garnered the empathy of not only most of the world, but the Muslim world who were appalled at what had been done in the name of their religion. And we had major religious figures like Sheikh Tantawy, the head of al-Azhar – who died recently – who after the attacks of 9/11 not only denounced them as a crime against humanity, which they were, but denounced Osama bin Laden as a fraud … someone who had no right to issue fatwas or religious edicts, no religious legitimacy, no religious training. And the tragedy was that if we had the courage to be vulnerable, if we had built on that empathy, we would be far safer and more secure today than we are.

We responded exactly as these terrorist organizations wanted us to respond. They wanted us to speak the language of violence. What were the explosions that hit the World Trade Center, huge explosions and death above a city skyline? It was straight out of Hollywood. When Robert McNamara in 1965 began the massive bombing campaign of North Vietnam, he did it because he said he wanted to “send a message” to the North Vietnamese—a message that left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead.  These groups learned to speak the language we taught them. And our response was to speak in kind. The language of violence, the language of occupation—the occupation of the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—has been the best recruiting tool al-Qaida has been handed.

This is why racism remains a "thing" in my novel, which is post-apocalyptic (and I don't even have the apocalypse coming from across borders - it's just part of social organization in Junction Rally, as it has been for all its years of existence).  The Yellow Plague: Asians and Asian Americans in Post-Apocalyptic and Zombie Fictions by Bao Phi:

But like many brands of American horror and action genres, popular post-apocalyptic and zombie fictions tend to veer towards straight American male fantasy - many of the fictions and films in the genre operate under the assumption that, if all hell breaks loose, all issues of race, class, and gender are (supposedly) irrelevant compared to basic human survival - and consciously or otherwise, most leaders that emerge in these imagined post-racial scenarios are straight, white alpha males. In the Western pop imagination, there seems to be a desire to wipe the difficult questions of co-existence off the table - and what better way to do that, then to imagine a situation where five to ten random (and mostly white) strangers must fight off mindless brain-hungry hoards while trying to divide the bullets, bacon, and fresh water into equal shares? Where the musings and philosophies of fancy pants artists and social commentators like myself are next to useless?

Let's say that North Korea or China suddenly launched an attack on present-day America, like in the video game Homefront or the upcoming remake of Red Dawn. The popular, traditional white male western narrative would then position a white hero leading a resistance of people against the invaders, and our race wouldn't matter - because we're all Americans right?

No. History has taught us is if that shit went down, and Asians in Asia attacked America, the first people who would be fucked would be Asian Americans. We'd be imprisoned without due process, called traitors, tortured and murdered in the street. And yet none of this is ever explored in post-apocalyptic scenarios where Asians bring about doom. I guarantee you, if a science-project-gone-wrong in North Korea causes zombie apocalypse tomorrow, you can bet it's the Asian Americans who won't be getting their share of beans at the survivalist pot luck.

I think this argument - on the emotional/psychological desire for an apocalypse to "wash away" people and structures you don't like - is perfectly applicable to post-apocalyptic fiction that isn't British and isn't even all that "cozy" (i.e., involves cannibals and zombies and killer flus).  Some of the comments imply it better fits the American model anyway.  Related: "AEnema" by Tool: "Some say we'll see Armageddon soon/ I certainly hope we will/ Learn to swim, see you down in Arizona Bay." Who reads cosy catastrophes? by Jo Walton:

I argued that the cosy catastrophe was overwhelmingly written by middle-class British people who had lived through the upheavals and new settlement during and after World War II, and who found the radical idea that the working classes were people hard to deal with, and wished they would all just go away.

In the classic cosy catastrophe, the catastrophe doesn’t take long and isn’t lingered over, the people who survive are always middle class, and have rarely lost anyone significant to them. The working classes are wiped out in a way that removes guilt.

And from the comments (man, this is so why Zombieland did not work for me):

On a bad day, it could even be secretly, guiltily desirable: all those people who fit so well in the modern world, but didn't know how to deal with *real* change, would be swept away. And the people who knew how to prepare would be vindicated. The reader is implicitly in the category of people who can deal with change, of course, by virtue of having read the book.

The desire to be freed of social constraints and to get fat off humanity's detritus crosses the economic divide.  

Pop Agitprop from Cheap Truth #13, published in the 1980s, a series of scathing reviews by sci-fi authors, of sci-fi authors - I think this gets to the heart of the problem with a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction very well (and is related to that terrible Dodge Ram commercial as well, re: the sheer amount of self-stroking misanthropy that goes into crafting a post-apocalypse):

The gem of this collection is Vernor Vinge's "The Ungoverned," a sequel to his commercially successful novel THE PEACE WAR. In this ideologically correct effort, radical Libertarians defend their realm from an authoritarian army. Thanks to their innate cultural superiority and a series of fraudulent plot Maguffins, they send the baddies packing with a minimum of personal suffering and a maximum of enemy dead.

First, and very characteristically, it is post-apocalyptic, conveniently destroying modern society so that a lunatic-fringe ideology can be installed as if by magic. Vinge avoids extrapolating their effects on society, because society is in shambles.

John Dalmas contributes a decent male-adventure Western. Unfortunately this story pretends to be SF. It is set on yet another colonial planet lapsed into barbarism, a fictional convention that allows SF writers to espouse reactionary social values without a blush of shame.

Dean Ing's recent novel for Tor, WILD COUNTRY, takes a similar tack. This book, the last in a post-apocalypse trilogy, is a meandering series of shoot-'em-ups. Its hero is an assassin. The villain is a gay heroin-smuggler, as if an America devestated by nukes did not have enough problems. Ing's hasty depiction of future society is grossly inconsistent; ravaged and desperate when the plot requires desperadoes, yet rigidly organized when Ing suddenly remembers the existence of computers.

The book is a Western, set in a West Texas conveniently returned to the robust frontier values of Judge Roy Bean. Men hold their land, with lasers if possible, while women raise corn and keep the home fires burning.

The book is speckled with maps, diagrams, and lectures on the Second Amendment, which, one learns, "absolutely and positively, guarantees citizens their right to keep and bear arms."  Like his fellows, Ing treasures this amendment, the last remnant of the American policy that he is willing to respect. There isn't much mention of, say, voting, or separation of powers. Power resides in the barrel of a gun, preferably the largest and shiniest possible.

No We Can't by Hunter (this one is political, but I think it ties in nicely with the apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic, vision, and the desire for this vision to actually happen - thanks to realthog for linking it):

Past-America could provide at least some modest layer of security to prevent its citizens from descending into destitution in old age; we in this day cannot. Past-America could pursue scientific discoveries as a matter of national pride, even land mankind on an entirely other world; we cannot. Past-America was a haven of invention and technology that shook the world and changed the course of history countless times: whatever attributes made it such a place we cannot quite determine now, much less replicate. Public art is decadent. Public education is an infringement. Public works are for other times, never now.

America of the past could build highways and railroads and a robust electrical grid. We cannot even keep them running. Of course we cannot keep them running: that was past-America. That past America had a magic that we modern Americans cannot match. Perhaps it was beholden to Satan, or to socialism, or merely to some grandiose vision of a better future, one with flying cars or diseases that could actually be cured, with proper application of effort. Whatever the case, past-America was wrong and stupid, and we know better.

We are told all the things America cannot do. We have yet to be told any vision of what we might still be able to do, or what hopes we should still retain, or why our children will be better off than we were, or why we ourselves will be better off than we were a scant few decades ago. Perhaps the very climate of the world will have changed, and the sky will be hotter, or the storms will be bigger, but none of those are things we can do anything about. Perhaps there will be nuclear disasters, or oil spills, or epidemics, or perhaps a city here or a city there will be leveled by some unforeseen catastrophe; we can be assured of it, in fact, but none of those things are things we can expect to respond to better next time than this time. Those are not, we are told, the tasks of a nation.

But for the first time in The Two Towers, I'm actually enjoying it.  I trudged through Rohan and Helm's Deep and Fangorn Forest and Isengard.  Trudged.  Could not care less about Merry and Pippin.  Could not differentiate between Aragorn, Legolas, Theoden, and Eomer.  Had to force myself to read anything at all, and didn't understand why things were dragging on and on.  Teeny tiny bits of poetic description do linger - the Men looking at the weak River Isen - and the Ent-Entwife saga was amusing, if rather essentialist.  I loudly proclaimed to my family that I preferred the movies to the books, whined to my friends, etc.  But now I'm in hellish country with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum - and I actually really like it.  Keep in mind that I don't enjoy the Frodo-Sam-Gollum parts in the movies - so dreary and drab, so full of Elijah Wood looking drugged - and I've always been a relatively crazy Viggo!Aragorn fangirl. 

I think Tolkien is actually better at writing about doom and gloom than he is at writing about happy things, or battles, or conquering heroes.  We'll see if my assessment of this changes, but I was really getting tired of listening to Gandalf scold Saruman at Orthanc.  I feel like there's a certain... honesty in how Tolkien writes about Frodo/Sam/Gollum and their strengths and weaknesses - Frodo with the weight of the ring just doesn't give any thought to Gollum's state of mind, Sam has admittedly uncharitable and unreasonable thoughts about Gollum, and poor Gollum (who wants to eat birds and corpses) just wants the Precious, so that he can be Gollum the Most Precious One.  And they all do things like "grovel heedlessly" when confronted with danger, because fuck, what are they gonna do against a Nazgul?  I feel like I can understand all their respective emotional anguishes - whereas the characters in Book 3 just kind of seemed like depthless, emotionless props/war-machines that occasionally became hungry.  Kind of like Orcs, but Good Orcs. 

Plus, Tolkien's description of these doom-gloom parts of the world near Mordor is great in a fantastical, pseudo-Lovecraftian kind of way.  Here's Gollum talking about bringing the Precious (I mean the Ring...) to Mordor: "He'll eat us all, if He gets it, eat all the world."  Here's Tolkien's description of the land near Mordor: "the lasting monument to the dark labour of its slaves that should endure when all their purposes were made void; a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing - unless the Great Sea should enter in and wash it with oblivion.  'I feel sick,' said Sam.  Frodo did not speak."  Ah.  And here's the Dead Marshes: "The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark greasy surfaces of the sullen waters.  Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long-forgotten summers." 

And here's my favorite part so far (possibly of the entire thing), also from the Dead Marshes:

"I don't know, said Frodo in a dreamlike voice.  "But I have seen them too.  In the pools when the candles were lit.  They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water.  I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad.  Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair.  But all foul, all rotting, all dead.  A fell light is in them."  Frodo hid his eyes in his hands.  "I know not who they are; but I thought I saw there Men and Elves, and Orcs beside them."

"Yes, yes," said Gollum.  "All dead, all rotten.  Elves and Men and Orcs.  The Dead Marshes.  There was a great battle long ago, yes, so they told him when Smeagol was young, when I was young before the Precious came.  It was a great battle.  Tall men with long swords, and terrible Elves, and Orcses shrieking.  They fought on the plain for days and months at the Black Gates.  But the Marshes have grown since then, swallowed up the graves; always creeping, creeping."

It's almost like all the stuff that's happening in the kingdoms of Men is B.S. that we're not even getting the straight story about (rather we're reading the Gondor Textbook about the History of Middle-Earth, if you know what I mean), and the story of these three small creatures tries to tell it like it really is, from a perspective that also somehow transcends their particular turmoil and stretches into real mythic poetry.  I'll be very curious to see how this evolves in Return of the King, but for now color me really surprised at how this is shaking out. 

Connie Chung worked for CNN at the time, hosting Connie Chung Tonight.  Martina Navratilova is a former tennis star, current tennis commentator.  Extra note: Navratilova was born a citizen of Czechoslovakia (then a Communist country).  She defected to the U.S. when she was 18, in 1975, seeking political asylum - she had already been told by Czech authorities that she was "becoming too Americanized" - and became a U.S. citizen in 1981.  This interview took place in 2002.  Bold emphasis is mine.

CHUNG: All right. I'm going to read what was said, a quote from that German newspaper. Quote: "The most absurd part of my escape from the unjust system is that I have exchanged one system that suppresses free opinion for another. The Republicans in the U.S. manipulate public opinion and sweep controversial issues under the table. It's depressing. Decisions in America are based solely on the question of how much money will come out of it and not on the questions of how much health, morals or environment suffer as a result."  So, is that accurate?

NAVRATILOVA: Well, that's pretty accurate. I mean, I was talking about the Bush administration making a lot of environmental decisions, again, based on money pandering to the people that perhaps help put Bush in the office. I was talking about a particular amendment that I know about. There was a vote that was about education. It was a good bill. And then they try to sneak in that Alaska Wildlife Refuge drilling. It's like, by the way, we're going to drill but we don't really need to know that we're going to do it.

CHUNG: But what about that one key sentence, I think, "the most absurd part of my escape from the unjust system is that I've changed one system that suppresses free opinion for another?" You're trading one regime for another. I mean, that's I think one of the main quotes that raised so much ire.

NAVRATILOVA: Well, obviously, I'm not saying this is a communist system, but I think we're having -- after 9/11, there's a big centralization of power. President Bush is having more and more power. John Ashcroft is having more and more power. Americans are losing their personal rights left and right. I mean, the ACLU is up in arms about all of the stuff that's going on right now.

CHUNG: So you were or weren't misquoted in that particular -- you know, regarding that particular sentence of trading one regime for another?

NAVRATILOVA: I don't think I said it exactly in that context. I certainly didn't mean that I'm here in a communist country and that I can't be what I want to be. However, when it comes to personal freedom as a lesbian, I am getting more squished here than I would be in Europe or in...

CHUNG: In Czechoslovakia.

NAVRATILOVA: Well, Czechoslovakia, in a communist country, they sent you into the asylum. This is a whole different story.

CHUNG: Can I be honest with you? I can tell you that when I read this, I have to tell you that I thought it was un-American, unpatriotic. I wanted to say, go back to Czechoslovakia. You know, if you don't like it here, this a country that gave you so much, gave you the freedom to do what you want.

NAVRATILOVA: And I'm giving it back. This is why I speak out. When I see something that I don't like, I'm going to speak out because you can do that here. And again, I feel there are too many things happening that are taking our rights away.

CHUNG: But you know what? I think it is, OK, if you believe that, you know, then go ahead and think that at home. But why do you have to spill it out? You know, why do you have to talk about it as a celebrity so that people will write it down and talk about what you said?

NAVRATILOVA: I think athletes have a duty to speak out when there is something that's not right, when they feel that perhaps social issues are not being paid attention to. As a woman, as a lesbian, as a woman athlete, there is a whole bunch of barriers that I've had to jump over, and we shouldn't have to be jumping over them any more.

CHUNG: Got you. But sometimes, when you hear celebrities saying something, do you ever say to yourself, I don't care what so and so thinks, you know. Yes, go ahead and say whatever you want to say. But you're not a politician. You're not in a position of government power or whatever.

NAVRATILOVA: No. And I just might do that. I may run for office one of these days and really do make a difference. But...

CHUNG: Are you kidding me?

NAVRATILOVA: No, I'm not. One of these days, hopefully. But when you say go back to Czech Republic, why are you sending me back there? I live here. I love this country. I've lived here 27 years. I've paid taxes here for 27 years. Do I not have a right to speak out? Why is that unpatriotic?

CHUNG: Well, you know the old line, love it or leave it.

NAVRATILOVA: I love it and I'm here and I'm trying to do my best to make it a better place to live in, not just this country, but the whole world. And, you know, I'm doing my little part. And I'm just a tennis player.

I watched The Stand the other night.  The long ass TV miniseries based off Stephen King's book.  And boy, I wasn't a fan.  Production values may have had something to do with it, but I think mostly it's me realizing that Stephen King is really into Good vs. Evil.  This is the (almost) end of The Stand.  The crazy crowd with semi-automatics are the bad guys, and the people they're about to "crucify" are the good guys.  You probably didn't really need for me to explain that, though.  It reminds me of Jesus Christ Superstar... except totally un-ironic and, seemingly, un-self-aware.  As you can see the crazy crowd is led literally by a demonic figure (played by Jamey Sheridan!  He made a great lieutenant on Criminal Intent)...


Did you catch the giant hand?  The giant Hand of God?  I laughed when I saw that, but apparently it's in the book as well. 

What's funny is I was about to write about how cool the on-going Vegas-chill music in the background is, and then I realized I was still listening to the Mulholland Drive soundtrack underneath the youtube video.  So, maybe if you watch The Stand while listening to Mulholland Drive's luscious "Go Get Some," some of the didactic effect is muffled. 

I didn't realize how really into this sort of thing King is until I read Under the Dome.  And at the time I read it, I was like, "where is the Stephen King I love?"  But I now think that there are two Stephen Kings, and I only love one.  That's the Stephen King of The Shining and Pet Sematary and Carrie and Night Shift and even Salem's Lot (although this one is kind of a bridge between the two "Kings").  The temptation is to say, oh, I liked him better younger, before he cleaned up, before the car crash, but no - The Stand was written around the same time as all the stuff I just mentioned.  The Shining and Pet Sematary, my favorites, are both straight-up horror stories about people faced with incredibly taxing - but "real," and personal - situations (alcoholism and cabin fever/ death of a child), are basically handed this Opportunity by scary scariness, take the Opportunity, make a royal mess of everything, hurt others, and hurt themselves.  The end.  Carrie isn't too far from this theme either.  Another example I like that isn't so popular is Riding the Bullet (death of a parent).  Every time I watch this movie, late nights on USA, I get a little more out of it and what it has to say about death and our relationship with our parents.  But another impossible situation and dark choice lies therein.  Another short story that got turned into a movie, Apt Pupil, is another great example of this.  You don't get a lot of anagnorisis in this one, and you're left wondering whose downfall you're really watching - the privileged teenager learning to kill (because what's his taxing situation?) or the former Nazi hiding in the suburbs. 

Then there's "Last Stand" Stephen King.  After The Stand, "Last Stand" Stephen King reappears in It (which is up there with the worst endings ever seen), Desperation (wow, this is a Christian story), and Under The Dome (we all know my opinions on that one).  There may be others, but those are the ones I can really claim to know.  The defining characteristic of "Last Stand" Stephen King is the use of ensemble casts, the "ragtag team forced to work together to defeat the forces of darkness" thing.  And ensemble casts do make it hard to focus on one character's descent into the dark, but there's a lot of sloppy characterization that goes into the creation of these ensemble casts - which is why you can so easily parse these books for King's politics and, uh, religious preferences.  There is no mystery in Under The Dome about who's Good and who's Evil because it is all so obviously coded: e.g., dogs (included in the Dramatis Personae!) only belong to good people.  "Last Stand" Stephen King also makes use of taxing situations, though they tend to be cosmic, or at least very physical and interactive rather than emotional and introspective.  You get people literally trapped in prison cells, literally being near-annihilated by an apocalyptic flu, literally trapped under a literal freakin' dome. 

Probably most importantly, "Last Stand" Stephen King is also into dark choices and the possibility of seduction by evil, but the good guys don't get seduced.  These heroes don't falter.  Maybe they've made some minute wrong decision earlier in life and have since learned the righteous path, or maybe they just needed the guiding hand of a saintly child (Desperation, all the way).  Some people do fall into the dark trap, but these people are minor characters who meet terrible ends 2/3 of the way through.  They're not who our sympathies are supposed to lie with, so when we watch Nadine jump from the evil Randall Flagg's balcony and go splat on the concrete, it's a distanced "well that's what you get for siding with Evil" sort of effect instead of the sadder, more frustrated reaction you have to watching Jack Torrance chase his family around or watching Louis Creed bring his wife back from the dead even after he went through all that holy shit did you learn nothing Louis why why why.  No.  In "Last Stand" Stephen King, you don't watch downfalls, and you certainly don't fall down with them.  You watch comeuppances from a safe distance.  Most of the heroes, in fact, escape unscathed. 

And of course, there is the stuff in between.  Salem's Lot sets up a "Last Stand"-ish situation - humans against vampires - but aside from the vampires being predators, there's nothing very moralistic about the division, and the heroes are really whittled down by the end, and oh yeah, Father Callahan and his disastrous moment of doubt when faced with the head vampire.  Easily my favorite part.  Cujo actually doesn't have much of a dark choice or a downfall, because all that happens in the beginning of the story - to the poor St. Bernard Cujo, who really just gets infected with rabies.  Cujo's my kind of Stephen King, though it's told by the victims instead of the maniac.  Some people dislike Storm of the Century, but what I like about SotC is that even though the "moral choice" is clear - don't sacrifice your kids to people who might be demons - the little town doesn't make the right decision, and the hero who opposes them is severely punished, the end.  There are moralistic implications, but it is balls to the wall as a horror story.  Because part of why I don't like "Last Stand" Stephen King stories is that they fail for me as a piece of horror.  They're more like action parables, and although there are a few token sacrifices, the bulk of the Good ensemble cast will probably survive.  There is no danger in these stories.  There's no unknown.

Jesus Christ, I didn't actually mean to write so much about Stephen King.  Clearly King has really influenced me in my understanding of what makes a horror story through both positive and negative examples.  What I really meant to write was something about why "Last Stands" between Good and Evil are so appealing, and what emotional button gets pushed by writing and reading this sort of narrative.  Note that I don't know the answer to that, btw.  And fuck it, it's 1 a.m. and this is what I'm going with.  Enjoy The Hand of God, y'all.

- Man, there were a lot of monsters in 480 B.C. Like, serious, Rawhead Rex stuff.* Fangs and goat heads and all that. Look cool though. I'd probably be creeped out in a theater.
- The Persians are definitely way more interesting in design than the Spartans. They've got all the monsters and exotica. Nice fancy bull-head thrones. The Spartans are, well, spartan.
- Yeah, this is pretty racist. Especially considering Frank Miller's comments, yowza. Frank Miller, a black mark on your name. Now I feel bad for liking Sin City.
- Leonidas is definitely a basket-case. Somebody's got a little General Ripper in 'im.
- Was I supposed to find the whole Gorgo stabbing Rapist Guy empowering? I must have missed it.
- The political ideology presented in this movie kind of defies reason. I'm with Roger Moore. This is pretty much the definition of fascist art.
- Cool fight scenes? Sort of.
- Oh fantastic. Now I get to watch Mission Fucking Impossible III.

*: Of all the Clive Barker stories I've read, how is RAWHEAD REX the one I can't get out of my head?

Kinds of Killing, by William H. Gass

In order to prepare private citizens for the military, a humiliating and painful bullying is generally prescribed. Its aim is to inculcate obedience and create callousness. Leaders must be resolute and heartless, prepared to send any enemy “to their deaths, pitilessly and remorselessly,” as the Führer demanded. Next a campaign of denigration of the chosen opponent is undertaken. This is designed to reduce the humanity of the enemy and to prepare a social web of support for behavior that is basically cruel, immoral, and normally disapproved. It strengthens every aspect of your plans if the society that you represent brings to the project a tradition of paternal domination and abuse, reaching from the family to the Kaiser and to its final station, God. Deep feelings of injury, inferiority, and large reserves of resentment—the fresher the better—are nearly essential.

A general sense of uneasiness helps, as if you knew someone were watching where you walked, reading your mail, and overhearing you talk. This atmosphere of anxiety can be sustained when the agents of power are pitiless.

---

The Nazis were down for the count, but the count was only at nine when Allied warplanes kicked dozens of towns nearly out of existence (Dresden, most infamously) and the Red Army arrived to repopulate the ruins by raping the women who remained. They brought with them destruction, pillage, theft, murder, and savage revenge. Death, it seems, was also an Allied deity.

Evans, after his usual sober and responsible account of how the end came for Hitler and Goebbels, writes: “The deaths in the bunker and the burned-out streets above were only the crest of a vast wave of suicides without precedent in modern history.” This penultimate killing was sometimes done out of an ancestral sense of honor, or from the shame and indignity of a trial that would brand them as criminals, or to avoid the mistreatment of their displayed corpses, or out of despair for Germany and the failure of their enterprises; but not often because they were wrong, not because they were guilty, not because they were moral monsters and could no longer bear the creatures of evil they had become.

Afterward, death would add still more to its roster with trials and hangings. Not just the guilty paid its price. In what was perhaps the final irony, many survivors of the camps would kill themselves because they were alive.

From The Guardian: "The Power of Dictator-Lit"

In fact this is not Berdymukhamedov's first book. In May 2007, mere months after assuming power, he published Scientific Fundamentals of the Development of Public Health in Turkmenistan (Berdymukhamedov trained as a dentist). And who can forget the classic To New Heights of Progress: Selected Works – or Speech of the President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov at the Extended Sitting of the Cabinet of Ministers? However, these tomes reached a local audience only; unlike his predecessor, Berdymukhamedov has had to struggle for global success.

Alas, information on what's actually inside the new book is scarce, although to judge by the cover – which depicts a smiling, cardigan-clad Gurbanguli gently fondling a handsome steed – it is less philosophical-historical tract and more coffee table tribute to Turkmenistan's Akhal Tekke horse breed. Intriguingly, Turkmenbashi was also something of a hippophile. He had a beautiful pet horse named Piyada whose portrait hung in the national gallery in Ashgabat. And, of course, the majestic poem on page 30 of Ruhnama (Volume 1 of the English edition) begins with a startling combination of searing declaration and enigmatic questioning:

"I have a powerful Turkmen thoroughbred, would you groom it Jgalybeg?"

Meanwhile Berdymukhamedov has a long way to go if he hopes to catch up not only with Turkmenbashi but also his fellow Central Asian dictators, all of whom are published authors many times over, and all of whom have works available in English.

Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan has knocked out such classics as Strategy of Formation and Development of Kazakhstan as a Sovereign State, In the Flood of History, and The Epicentre of Peace. Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan has authored works of cultural appreciation ranging from Khiva: The City of a Thousand Dreams to political tracts such as Uzbekistan on the Threshold of the 21st Century: Challenges to Stability and Progress. The heavyweight champion, however, is surely Emomalii Rakhmon of Tajikistan. His website proudly lists 17 books (more than one for each year he has been president), all available in handsome leather-bound editions, among them The Tajiks in the Mirror of History in which Rakhmon argues that the ancient Persian prophet Zoroaster was born in the territory of modern day Tajikistan.