John Lindal’s Blog

Kill Bill

June 8, 2007 on 10:05 am | In Deep Thoughts, Movies | No Comments

Normally, I blog about a movie soon after I see it, but Kill Bill really wasn’t worth mentioning — until now, when I figured out what was bothering me about it.

All the major characters in the movie, with the exception of the sword maker who had retired, were animals, not people. Sure, they were sentient, but for all the good it did them, they might as well not have been. They were completely governed by their desires and instincts. For example, not once did it occur to the main character that she should forgive Bill and move on — not because he deserved it, of course, but because the alternative, revenge, would ruin the rest of her life.

The characters in the movie were highly skilled, very clever, very smart, and very wily, but all they ever used any of it for was to outwit and kill each other. Lions and hyenas do this, too. The only differences are in technology and tactics.

Animals, as far as we can tell, are governed entirely by instincts and desires, so they cannot choose how to behave. Humans, however, are sentient, which allows us to step back from ourselves, learn the difference between right and wrong, and choose how to behave.

Some people like to claim that the difference between right and wrong is fuzzy or relative or even nonexistent. To me, this is nonsense. Of the Ten Commandments, four through ten (using the Roman Catholic version) should be obvious even to atheists and anarchists, if they stop to think about them. They are all examples of “Do unto others as you would have them do to you,” which is the foundation of a stable society.

Given that there is a clear difference between right and wrong, if one chooses not to learn it, or one does learn it and then chooses to do wrong, then that is Evil. The choice discards what makes the person human and debases him or her to the level of an animal. This is what all the characters in Kill Bill did.

Isolationism

June 7, 2007 on 11:23 pm | In Deep Thoughts | No Comments

Paul Conrad’s latest editorial cartoon is great. It is the drawing of a human spine, with the caption If the Democrats only had a backbone. It got me thinking, Why doesn’t America have a backbone?

We do, of course, but it only really stiffens up when we’re attacked. We tried our best to stay out of both World War I and World War II, but when we were attacked (RMS Lusitania and Pearl Harbor), we went all out.

More recently, we are sticking our heads in the proverbial sandpile to ignore both the globalization of the work force and the mess in the Middle East.

Why do we try so hard to ignore the rest of the planet? My theory is that it is because we were founded by groups of people who wanted to get away from the rest of the planet and do their own thing. And every successive wave of immigrants has had the same goal, because it sucked wherever they were coming from.

To be fair, this is finally starting to change. Some among the latest waves of graduate school immigrants are returning to their native countries, both because they see good opportunities there and because they want to help improve their homeland rather than run away from it.

This is good for the planet. It is helping to drive globalization, which helps improve living conditions. But the natives in America, those who have been here for at least a couple of generations, still think the old way: Ignore the rest of the world because it sucks, while America is great.

This old attitude will die hard, but it’s simply not economically sustainable. If Company A moves each piece of its operations to whichever country does the best job for the lowest price, and Company B does everything in America, guess who will go out of business first? Hint: Wages in India, China, and the rest of Asia make our minimum wage look really high.

But back to the backbone. We’re still fighting globalization, and we’re still fighting the war in Iraq. In the latter case, I intend the double meaning. Our troops are fighting, and we at home are fighting the deployment of those troops. Nobody wants to see their kids killed in combat. I’m a father, too. But the difference between WW I/II and Iraq is that, in Iraq, people do not consider the sacrifice to be worthwhile.

The catch is that, if the Americans pull out, the situation will be the same as what happened in the Balkans after the Soviet Union collapsed: genocide. And it will be our fault, because we both started it and allowed it to happen.

Make no mistake. There is no silver bullet for Iraq. The political situation is a mess, and with Islam so thoroughly integrated with politics, the outlook seems pretty hopeless. It’s pretty hard for most Americans to understand how nutty it is, since we are so used to separation of church and state.

This is where a backbone becomes important. Do we want to pull out, let the Iraqis massacre each other, and pretend that we had no part in it, or do we want to help stabilize the country so genocide is no longer a concern? The latter requires backbone because it requires sacrifice on our part. Our troops are going to continue to die as long as the turmoil lasts.

I read an article a few years ago that made me go, Aha! It’s main point, via an example, was that suicide bombers kill people not because they hate Americans or because they believe that they will get thirty virgins after they die and go to Heaven, but simply because they have no hope.

So my theory is that, once Iraq has been rebuilt to a certain critical mass, thereby giving Iraqis hope for a better future, even the lunatic fringe will eventually decide that suicide bombings are not the best career path. And even though the lunatic fringe will surely still continue trying to sabotage the rebuilding efforts, the rest of the Iraqis, who should be directly involved in the rebuilding efforts, not merely passive observers, will stop tolerating such lunatic fringe behavior and fight back on their own, rather than relying on the Americans to do everything. Then it will be safe to bring our troops back home, because, regardless of what kind of government the Iraqis ultimately decide to set up, they love their children, too.