Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Cowboys and Liberals
Oh yeah…this guy definitely makes the sidebar.
The post has a link to something that’s supposed to explain his political beliefs. I have not gotten around to clicking those links because I don’t particularly care; not in the habit of filtering things out that way. But what he’s been noticing about the classic “cowboy,” is exactly what I’ve been noticing. We don’t hear of the cowboy, except in derogatory terms: X has a “cowboy mentality,” that is a bad thing, if you have to ask why then you are just a bad person.
What is the now-and-then-discussed “cowboy mentality,” anyway? Those who make it necessary to ask the question, far outnumber those willing and able to provide an answer. Well, this writer has an answer — and you can tell it’s a thoughtful one, because it mirrors what I’ve had to say about the same subject.
As it so happens, back when I was in film school, we studied various genres, one of which was the western, a form that is as uniquely American as jazz or baseball. I still have some of my old notes, outlining the classic structure of the western film:
1. The hero enters a social group.
2. The hero is unknown to the society.
3. The hero is revealed to have an exceptional ability.
4. The society recognizes differences between themselves and the hero.
5. The society does not completely accept the hero.
6. The villains threaten and do harm to the society.
7. The villains are stronger than the society; the society is weak and ineffectual, unable to defend itself or punish the villains.
8. The hero initially avoids involvement in the conflict.
9. There is a past history, or some kind of symmetry or respect between the hero and villain.
10. The villains do something particularly evil to draw the hero in.
11. A representative of the Democratic Party, I mean society, asks the hero to give up his revenge.
12. The hero fights the villains.
13. The hero defeats the villains.
14. The society is safe.
15. The hero gives up his special status, the society accepts the hero, and the hero enters society.
To this, I’d like to add an ancillary point about the collision between the classic make-believe male-fantasy “western,” and reality. It does exist. The story, as outlined above, is a parable about the antithesis between what civilization does once it can rise up, after the roads are paved and the buildings built — and, what was done to kill the snakes and clear the swamp and make it possible to pave those roads. Those are two different things.
The savage men whom polite society deplores, are the very men who made it possible for that polite society to exist. That’s what the western is all about, and it’s got a lot more to do with reality than most people think. The oh-so-civilized nobility ostracizes these hard, brutal men and any of the residual customs that may remind others of the hard, brutal men. And yet, the oh-so-civilized nobility needs the hard brutal man — would not exist were it not for them — a lot more than the hard, brutal man needs the oh-so-civilized nobility.
This meme is riveted to the plane of reality, upon so many fixture-points. Soldiers aren’t supposed to “mistreat detainees”; we made that rule, after we were able to, when our country’s continuing freedom and sovereignty were made secure, after our soldiers “mistreated” what only today we call “detainees” and back then called “The Enemy.” Good things that happened because we put that rule in place? Nobody can name any; nobody tries to. We’re just told the world sees us in a certain way, and so we had better keep on sticking to the rule.
Carter appeased; Reagan coerced; Reagan got results and Carter did not. History, incorrectly, remembers Reagan as a “moderate” and a “compromiser” and sees Carter as “our best ex-President.” What else? Our hard, brutal men who were sent to boot camp to learn to be savages, drove Saddam Hussein out of Iraq. Our oh-so-civilized sissy-men who write for newspapers, command the rest of us to believe this venture was a failure. Yet, is Saddam Hussein gone, or is he not? By changing the goal of an enterprise when the enterprise is halfway done, as our liberals command us to do with their red-herrings about Weapons of Mass Destruction, etc., what has mankind accomplished? Not much. Champagne, Post-It Notes, that’s about all. Yet there they sit, chirping endlessly about why the Iraq invasion is a boondoggle and a quagmire…even though Hussein is out of the game for good, and nobody can dispute this.
Our future was threatened during World War II. We survived that, to later make these purple-paisley rules about not being too tough, making sure Mohammed Al-Hoozeewotsit gets cream cheese on his bagel every day at Gitmo or else a lawyer will file a brief somewhere. Why did we survive it? Because of men like George S. Patton Jr., who surely would be banished from polite society today quicker than you could say his name. No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country, he won it by making the other bastard die for his. Remember that? This is what ensures our survival…and then once we do so survive, we show our most vituperative hostility to such a thing, the way a petulant teenager snarks at his parents, for snark’s sake alone.
It’s just another human failing, destined to rise up and rise up again, generation after generation, no justification for it whatsoever. People may argue against that out of emotion, but they can’t make a good case against it.
And so, by decree of the blue-state glitterati who decide what the rest of us are supposed to be thinking, the classic movie-western goes bye-bye. Because, you see, it simply must. It has a life-lesson for us, something certain elites can’t afford for us to learn.
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