We Could be Heroes

Just For One Day
A Review on Lone Survivor (2013)

Lone Survivor is a pretty good movie. Yet, for all of its documentarian aspirations, it never reaches the intensity of Captain Phillips. For all of its artfully executed slamming and banging, it never reaches the heights of Black Hawk Down. It's a movie that does its darnedest to be an important film. Yet, after two hours, a desire to justice to the story, and using many techniques of similar films, Lone Survivor falls far short of its goal as one of the great movies about the War on Terror.

The problem isn't that isn't the best film in a crowded class, it is that it's chosen form is problematic. The central stumbling block of Lone Survivor is that it never gets past its own artifice. For all of its desire to tell the real story (which is a phrase, I fell, should be in quotes), you are ultimately looking at Marky Mark, Into the Wild, the bi-boyfriend from Six Feet Under, and John Carter, he of Mars. But, you know, with beards.

All of these actors are either incredibly talented (with the exception of Taylor Kitsch, the patron saint of unwanted gifts, a man who thinks that the key to tough guy roles like Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood is to do nothing, and the single greatest charisma vacuum since Shia Lebeouf), so it isn't their lack of trying that causes this disconnect. In fact, its the inverse that causes the problem. They're good actors and we know it. And they look like it. And it doesn't work.

As desperately as this movie wants to look like real events-- and claims to be based in reality-- it looks fake. It looks great, but the eye of the movie goer is smarter than all of the movie's efforts and gestures. We know its fakes because it looks fake. To claim to hue so closely to reality and then to look fake is unacceptable. To quote Red Letter Media: "You might not have noticed it, but your brain did."

The fundamental problem is boiled down to a single fact: The only Navy SEAL who very clearly does not belong in this movie is the Navy SEAL the film is is named after. That's a problem.

With that said, Lone Survivor is a movie that is technically proficient at a level that few directors can ever dream of achieving. If youv'e watched The Kingdom this shouldn't come as a surprise. Peter Berg has an excellent sense of how an action scene is supposed to work. His storytelling is also admirable. It's simple. It's unobtrusive. We know these men through minor sketches and little conversations. While they fail to add up to anything greater, we know who these men are with very little effort.

It is also worth noting how the failure of authority and the system fails the film's heroes. It's a minor chord that United 93 revolves around and, while they are very different movies, it's a point that is well worth making, however minor it may be. It's also a point that seems more relevant as time goes on. It's one thing for our servicemen and servicewomen to die in combat, but it's another thing for them to die because of bureaucratic SNAFUs. It's one of the few times the movie moves away from the hagiography its trying so hard to craft.

Lone Survivor is a perfectly capable, action thriller with some very well played realist tones, but it isn't much more than that. In a world where people are coming back from the service in greater numbers than ever (or not coming back), these kinds of stories are not rare. They exist as books, as 60 Minutes interviews, as articles, and as people who are standing next to you at the bar. They're out there and this isn't one of them.

To be good is not enough. What's more is that truly excellent films about the War on Terror (or the Long War or whatever you want to call it) already exist. Paul Greengrass has directed most of them, the rest are directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and the best one was directed by an Italian guy fifty years ago.

The film has other problems. The lives of the Afghans and the motives of the Taliban are played out too simplistically. It relegates the Taliban to a bunch of decapitation hungry goon (which, to be fair, they are). It also paints the Afghans (specifically the Pashtuns) as a noble people driven by a sense of honor. It's Orientalist claptrap and it's also a plot point out of the Soviet-Afghan War movie, The Beast. The movie doesn't have space for these people or that sort of story telling. Which is a shame, because that's one of the most compelling parts of the story and, unfortunately, the movie's last act does lag.

And there's other points, but who cares? If you want to see a compelling movie based around real events, this is it. If you want to see something more substantial, something that has thoughts and feelings on the state of the human species and the complexity of the human soul go see Zero Dark Thirty. Or, better yet, read Black Hawk Down. Or, like, engage with a veteran. You probably aren't going to get a rad story, but you might, you know, learn something.

In the end, Lone Survivor tells its story with skill, empathy, and with no little amount of awe, but it still is not enough. It doesn't do its subjects justice.

Also, its cover of "Heroes" is embarrassingly bad and woefully out of place. Instead listen to the real version.

 

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and has opinions about the War on Terror but saves them for when he's had too much to drink. You can follow him on twitter.

Stop Trying to Get Me to Care about Movies, Movies!

Gaaaaah. I think I want to see this. Damnit. It's like a cluster of everything I want to see in a movie. It's like they know.

Adventures of Imperial Glory!

A Quick Thought About the Lives of a Bengal Lancer--

This movie isn't a great one. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer in terms of Imperial Adventure moves falls below GungaDin, but above The Northwest Frontier (and probably well above Carryon Up the Khyber if the You Tube clips are accurate). There are certain kind of movies that I am drawn to though, and regardless of the quality I have to watch them. I've been over this before, but besides the obvious choice of WWII movies, movies about Imperial adventure are high on the list. It's a problem I have.

Outside of my own ridiculous solipism, movies like The Lives of a Bengal Lancer meet a larger need. They're the grease that keeps movie studios going between bouts of costumed affair dramas and biopics about dead jerks. Like the Western or the War movie or the screwball comedy, it meets a certain need, it stars a certain kind of actor, and it gets in and out without you having to think too hard. It's old fashioned film making and for better or worse it represents the kind of movie they don't make anymore.

And considering that it comes on a dual-disc with the movie Beau Geste,, I think that means that this isn't the most popular Gary Cooper film of all time. . . except maybe with Adolf Hitler, apparently (then again A Matter of Life and Death comes similar packaging and that movie is just about perfect). This movie is no A Matter of Life and Death, though, what it is is the perfect B-picture. It meets every need that it is expected to meet and it does it without you really ever having to pause and be embarrassed by the fact that this movie has a dramatic use of brown face.

(To be fair the brown face scenes are awesome. Hear that, liberal elite? Awesome. Also: It is totally grounded in historical fact. Chew on that, hippies.)

What I like is its expedience in storytelling. It's the kind of thing movies like it (or their distant relatives) should take note on. There are no B-plots that don't get resolved or flow into the main story. There aren't any ruminations on what this all means or the impact of their mission unless it directly

This film has no fat. A butcher would be proud.

It seems that movies forgot what they were. Nowadays everything is getting longer and longer. I suppose it is as a response to television and video games being what they are (3d is also a symptom of this fear). They want cinema to be more cinematic and one thing TV can't do is make something that's three hours long.

Looking at this movie (and many more like it), I think that they're missing the point. You don't need a one-hundred forty minute running time to make a movie cinematic. Since the birth of cinema they've made good films that are good partially because they're short and to the point. Making them longer, to me, is an attempt to treat the wrong symptoms.

There's also the old adage of quality over quantity, but I'm being a hypocrite here, so let's just move quietly along, shall we?

Another reason this movie benefits from its percieved brevity is that we don't get much of a chance to mull on the fact that this movie tacitly supports the subjugation of about a fifth of the world's population. That tends to put the damper on enjoyment, as a rule. Its storyline is also about as pat as a movie like this can get. There's no surprises, there's no real insight, it's just a story that follows three men (a jaded veteran, a cocky upstart, and an unproven rookie) as they take on an Afghan warlord (I should make a list of that stock character's apperances. . .) and then the movie ends as soon as they've accomplished that.

It's a frolic. There's no substance, there's no real philosophy, there's just men doing their jobs and then a big bad guy with an accent dies at the end. In between there's some horse riding, aome costumes, a some outdoors, a dragon lady, and dialogue that ranges from glib irony to cloying sincerity. In short: It's an old fashioned adventure film. What more could a man want?

Hope I'm not too late on this one. . .

ZERO DARK THIRTY
a review by James Kislingbury

Fear and pain can do incredible things and Zero Dark Thirty reminds us of that. It’s a well played procedural thriller that is based firmly in the characters of this world. It’s as much a piece of art as it is a remembrance of the past twelve years. It’s both exciting without being crass and mournful without being a dirge.This careful balance of fiction and facts is what makes it such a deeply satisfying work of art.

This movie is based on known quantities. It’s reliant on them. From the very first seconds of the film, we’re reminded of what kicked off this whole mess in the first place. From there it launches into another topic (and another important plot point), which is the government’s policy of, ahem, “enhanced interrogations.” It’s one of a few things we already have feelings about, which range from suicide bombs to government incompetence to the raid itself, but where the movie becomes more than a collection of facts is how these things are handled.

It doesn’t take much to recite what we know (we have 60 Minutes for that) and it isn’t much of a leap after that to make us feel how we’re supposed to feel (Answer: Bad.), what does take skill is to use these images (or not use them in the case of 9/11) to tell a compelling story in a way that isn’t obvious or exploitative. It can’t be easy to draw up a film like that and maybe there’s a reason it took 11 years for a movie like this to happen.

It is either because of or in spite of this irony that Zero Dark Thirty works so well. The scenes where you don’t know what is going to happen are just as riveting as the ones where you know exactly how they will end. I find it incredible that this film can lean so heavily on things that we already know and still find ways to surprise me. It’s for this reason that I want to avoid spoilers, for this movie is so much more than Osama bin Laden being shot in the face.

Though, that was pretty alright too.

Now, since I have to: Let’s rap about torture.

The torture is handled as brilliantly as a subject like that can be handled. It isn’t handled like an argument or a topic of discussion. It isn’t evidence or a plea for your emotions. It is just a thing that happened.

It is done dispassionately and as (seemingly) objective as possible. Bigelow doesn’t harp on about the mistakes (or even the gains) of the “detainee program,” rather it lets us develop our own opinions and feelings by showing us what it actually looks like. No news anchors or Basil Expositions in the background telling us what this means, there’s just couple of men in a room and one of them is chained to a ceiling beam and has a bucket of water being poured in their face.

But, because it is torture, it isn’t just a thing that happened. It’s torture and, worse yet, torture in our name. And we’re watching it happen to a human being and not in a way that proves that James Bond is dealing with rough customers or because Jack Bauer needs answers, but because it is an unavoidable truth of this manhunt and of a few planes stuffed full of people slamming into buildings.

Zero Dark Thirty gives its audience the credit to come to their own conclusion and, when it shows a man in a dog collar covered in his own feces, it also trust that they’ll come to the right conclusion.

What an idea.

I’m interested to watch this movie is ten or fifteen years with people who are children now. I want to see what people who couldn’t possibly remember the morning of 9/11 think about this movie, because they never felt the rage or the fear that I know I felt and that I know a lot of other people felt. I wonder how this movie is going to age, how it’s going to be felt by people who don’t remember September 11^th or people who weren’t even born when it happened.

We all live in a world affected by it, so not matter what there is that connection, there is just something about remembering what it was like to be that afraid and that angry and seeing what people do with it. There’s this sense that we are doing this for you that makes the whole of the movie that much more frightening and that much more sad. Even when we get to the end, even if it was worth it, we can’t undo the things we did because we had one bad day.

Maybe that’s too soliphistic of a point to make. With that said, with a movie as well constructed as this one, I can’t imagine it was too far outside the minds of its creators.

Without giving too much away, the final shot is something of a Kuleshov Effect. Without dialogue, without a response, and without any real anchor to the rest of the movie, it leaves you to puzzle out the meaning using what you've just seen. It’s the movie’s thesis in brief.  Looking at this character and the background and where they are and what has just happened it is clear that Kathryn Bigelow is saying much more about her subject than she needs to put into words.  

 On its surface Zero Dark Thirty is a tense, intelligent thriller that works perfectly as what its tagline claims to be, “The ultimate manhunt.” Beneath that, though, it’s an important meditation on where we are and how we got here as Americans, as well the price of fanaticism. It’s a movie about emotions as much as it is about logic, as well as obliterating these things out of fear. Zero Dark Thirty skillfully transcends all of the stumbling blocks and talking points of the War on Terror to deliver a riveting film. Basically, it’s the best movie about the mess we're in that has ever been made.

Sino-Cinema and you!

I was watching the caper movie Let the Bullets Fly and I realized something that I wasn't proud of, I realized that I know jack shit about Chinese history.

I actually had to find out when the movie took place by watching the trailer. I guess it's assumed that if you're watching this film, you're Chinese, so you just know what the deal is. You understand the imagery, you understand the language (and there's a lot of that going on, which makes me feel bad for the Cantonese film student who has to learn about Billy Wilder), and you understand the forward movement of time in terms of China's history. I don't know any of that and it made me feel dumb and confused. I don't like feeling dumb and confused, Chinese film industry!

Really, though, why should they stop to explain their film? As lacking in knowledge as Americans might be of world history and geography you don't have to explain The Godfather or Apocalypse Now to an audience member. They understand the basics of this story and this time period without actually knowing anything about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident or that the mob is a CIA front for the New World Order. None of these movies pause to explain things to the slow foreigner, they just tell a story. Hell, maybe Let the Bullets Fly is payback for decades of westerns.

I can't rationalize my way out of this, though, not even if I tried. I mean, it's 2012, I'm a literate American, I have DSL, and China is a five thousand year old nation with a population of one-billion people and what I know about their history starts with Dynasty Warriors 3 and ends with Rush Hour 2.I also know that there's a rumor that the Chinese drink their own pee because it's good for your skin. I have my doubts about veracity of that rumor. Regardless of whether it's true or not that should not be the first thing to pop to mind when I think "What up with China?"

All knowing about this does is underline my ignorance of that particular chunk of the world. I don't know Sino from Shinola. So, I decided to solve this problem by watching some more movies about China and by the Chinese.




Naturally I started with a movie about the Rape of Nanking.

The Nanking Massacre is something I'm familiar with to some degree. I've watched a documentary or two on the topic and it's popped up in books I've read and classes I've had, so despite how ignorant I have positioned myself as the content of City of Life and Death did not come out of the blue.

It's a weird movie. On the outside it seems to want to be The Battle of Algiers. They're both gritty, they're both political films by their very subject matter, they're both chock full of violence, they both revolve around one particular city during one particular conflict, and they both chose to be filmed in black and white. The most important difference is that The Battle of Algiers is one of the greatest films ever made and City of Life and Death is not.

That seems to be where it ends, though, because despite its outward appearances, City of Life and Death is basically a straight melodrama with all of the devices and blocking of a standard blockbuster (with a few dashes of steady cam here and there). When this movie wants to go big, it goes very big, too big in fact to still have a foot in reality. None of this helps when you add on the fact that one of the best movies of all time shares a similar style and premise (Plus the title recalls Rome, Open City, which can't be doing it any favors either).

Now, again, I'm quite sure the Rape of Nanking was an intense event and I don't mean to denigrate that, it's just that it doesn't not quite translate into a film as well as it could have.In this case heightening the emotions of the film keeps it from being grounded, it makes it the viewer aware that they're watching a movie about Japanese war crimes and not an actual human experience.

I know there's a fine tradition of Chinese neo-realist films, it is just that going from Let the Bullets Fly to this makes this war movie's operatic moments stand out all that much more. Opera is fine and it has its place in film, but in this particular case the melodramatic aspects undermine what I imagine to be a serious and realistic film. Realistic films don't call for stage blocking. A stylistic quirk isn't something you want to be thinking about, especially when it comes to something like international war crimes. It's not something any film should ever want, really.

Then there's the fact that the very idea (or appearance) of sensationalizing rape and mass murder is a risky undertaking. Either it seems redundant to add further horror to something that is inherently horrifying or it seems exploitative about making a commercial product of somebody's suffering. It might not be a fair criticism and it isn't likely the intent of the authors, then again if the film worked better, I wouldn't be bringing it up.

City of Life and Death does have its moments in between its fairly average world building. I would imagine that it is much more emotionally arresting if you're unfamiliar with the Nanking Massacre and even without the cold shock it does stand out as a pretty solid drama. Despite some more questionable CGI, the film's action sequences are pretty well composed. They don't rank up their with the urban battles of Enemy at the Gates or, again, Battle of Algiers, they do seem to get across the very specific kind of terror that fighting in cities creates. Plus, I doubt that they had the resources of either of those films.

The film also doesn't sap the humanity out of the Japanese either, which, upon reading what they did during the war seems like a very reasonable stylistic choice. It gives its Japanese enough space and humanity to keep it from becoming the kind of one-sided, gung-ho history lessons that a lot of war movies decide to become.

Even though the Japanese soldiers seem to fit into very particular archetypes (here's the reluctant soldier, here's the proud and implacable commanding officer, here's the zealot, et al.), at does make the effort to make them human beings before they're war criminals-- no small feat for an army that perpetrated something called the "Rape of Nanking."

It shows them as people who are caught up in a situation they didn't create and what they do with it, regardless of their nationality and the Chinese (and their European defenders) find themselves in the very same situation.It's this parallel that keeps the film whole, even if it isn't particularly compelling. That's not a profound point to make, I know, it is appreciable when you consider the kinds of emotions this story must involve.

Despite how much the oddness of the "comfort women" aspect of the plot makes me want to squirm and tut approvingly there is one particular moment that tells me that a lot more thought was put into the subtext of this film than you would have previously assumed.

The scene in question involves a young woman being raped by a Japanese soldier at what amounts to a militarized brothel. There's a moment where this woman turns to a Japanese man and she gives him this look that very clearly states that she has all of the power in this particular relationship despite every outward indication that she is a victim. It's a complex and small thing to get across in this much larger film, but it stands out as the one memorable moment that isn't entirely based on shock or misery. I don't know that I've ever seen a woman give a look like that in cinema and I'm glad for that.

I know that saying it's one of the most elegant and rape scenes I've ever seen sounds like a glib joke.** I also know that its worth acknowledging that there are many ways that something like sexual assault can be handled in fiction besides, "Oh, isn't this terrible and fucked up?" These terrible things are not there to be exploitative or to victimize people and that actually does create some compelling, if brief, drama.

The next movie on the list that I tried to watch was the The Founding of a Party, which lasted for about twenty minutes before I went cross-eyed.




Remember when I had an editor and a maximum word count? No? Well, I was a mess then, too, but let's not let that bog us down.

Anyways.

Now, while it's embarrassing to be a grown man in 2012 with the internet and everything to know a high school Power Point presentation amount of information about a country with over a billion people, the fact remains: I really do not have the time for this. My dome is already chock full of World War II stuff and I've still got to cram a bunch more Afghanistan stuff in there and there is never going to be a point where I'm satisfied with what I know about those times and places.

The reality is that I'm always learning new things, even about things that I know quite a bit about already. For example, I didn't even know about the rumor that Afghan women, upon capturing enemy soldiers, would rape them and then pee down their throats until they died! I've been reading about Afghanistan for years and that's the first time I ever heard that!

I bet you didn't know that and now we've learned something together!

The closest I get to knowing anything either interesting or substantial about the Celestial empire has come from research I was doing about other countries. It's kind of impossible to dodge the Rape of Nanking and the Second Sino-Japanese War because you can't exactly read up on the Pacific Front of WWII without involving China in some aspect-- most historians consider them to be a big part of that whole affair. So, there's that.

The second era of Chinese history that I'm familiar with is a side-effect of trying to learn about British colonialism during the Victorian era (and there's a lot of it!). Specifically I was trying to learn about the upheavals and uprisings and minor empires of Central Asia during the second half of the 19th century and I ran into the Dungan Revolt.I mean, it's one thing to learn about small wars that nobody else has ever heard of, but it's an entirely different bag of marbles to learn that there's entire peoples that you've never even dreamed of existing. It's exhausting and it's discouraging and usually by the time I find out about this stuff, I say "Fuck it" and read a chapter of this Murakami book.

But my knowledge basically starts and ends with that singular event (and even that I am not too hot on). It's more or less like saying "I'm familiar with early American history because I am familiar with the works of Jeremiah Johnson." That shit won't hold together when you're defending your dissertation.

In my defense there doesn't seem to be any movies about the Dungan Revolt, so at least what I do know I can say I had to find in a book. Or, more likely, a wikipedia page of questionable historicity.

In my further defense, not knowing much about foreign peoples and histories isn't something exclusive to countries full of white people. Take France for example: I keep on finding out new things about there every time I go back into the World War II history hole. Like, do you know how many republics France has had? How many do you people need?

Oh, wait, no I do know one more thing about Chinese history, which is "Free Tibet?" Right? That still seems like the right choice to make, doesn't it?

All of this adds up to more than nothing, right?



Other Chinese films I have watched/tried to watch/got angry while watching-- I'll be brief--

Iron Monkey 2-- 

Iron Monkey 2 is most confusing because it seems that it could take place anywhere between 1890 and 1945. That doesn't seem to be a stylistic choice, it seems that the movie's budget was "Things that fell off of a moving truck on its way to an antique disposal facility." It's an ugly, confusing mess and I don't think that's due entirely to my pre-establish murky notion of Chinese history.I honestly have serious doubts about whether or not it is actually related to the original Iron Monkey in any way.

Project A 2--
Jackie Chan is always fun and while it has much better choreography and art design I still have to wonder why all of these Chinese men are wearing machine-made t-shirts from the 1980's. That is something I am certain is not an aspect of Chinese history.

The Last Emperor--
This barely counts, but I'm putting it on the list because it is an actual movie that is actually worth a damn.While we could talk about the cinematography or the epic storyline or whatever, this movie stands out in my mind because it includes a scene where it is established that the emperor has two eunuchs whose job description includes: "Smelling the feces of the emperor." There's a reason it won Best Picture. I'm sure there's a lot of people that think it's stylistic and "prestigious" nonsense and hardly deserves to be nominated for such prestigious awards, much less win them, but on the other hand fuck those people.

Nanking-- 
In my mind, one of the other burdens City of Death has is that it has to compete with Nanking.Not only does it overcome the pretentious premise, but it's one of the most arresting documentaries I've ever seen. It also succeeds as important in the way "important films" fail to do. It isn't about awards, it is about documenting one of the uglier episodes in human history. It also made me have to accept the fact that a Nazi party member could exist as proof of the potential goodness in all human beings.



Alright, that's enough of whatever that was. I'm going to go put this to bed by watching the rest of Big Trouble in Little China.

EDIT: Holy shit there's an arcade shooter called War in Shanghai 1937. Fuck.

*After doing ten seconds of research I discovered that the film was set during a period known as the "Warlord Era," which in terms of the name of an era is far more badass than the Gilded Age or the Belle Epoque. Plus, the Warring Twenties is even a cooler rhyme than its Western brother, the Roaring Twenties. I also like that "cliques" were apparently a major part of Chinese politics throughout the ages. It makes me think that China was ruled by insane high school girls for a number of years.


**Here's an article from Jezebel about how to make a rape joke. It was made in wake of Mr. Tosh's ill-advised response to a heckler and I think its safe to say that this is one of the better reasoned arguments regarding the subject

Happy Afghan-mas

I don’t think the Taliban could ever come back. I mean the foreign soldiers are here now so they can’t. All they can do is blow themselves up. Let them.

--An Afghan Fortune Teller.

It's funny in a way. I'd travel to Afghanistan if it wasn't so fucked up, but that's more or less the only reason I'd ever care about the place.

Top 5 Groups of People That Want to Kill My Dad

My dad is an old man. That isn't a relative judgment, the man is simply old and only getting older. He has has been for quite some time. What I've realized about him, though is that the older he gets the more people directly threaten his life in new an insidious ways. It's a cruel irony of life that all of the most terrible things in existence are invented in the last quarter of your life and that everything good in the world occupies the first quarter.

The threats to my father are very real and effect his life in blood-curdling ways. Every day of his life is full of threats to his life by jabbering hordes or barbarians just beyond our front gate. God help us if they ever figure out the side-gate's lock doesn't work.

I could go on and on about how and why and who his life is threatened by, but I'll let the internet's most original art form-- the list-- explain it all to you.



5. Afghans.
Here are what we know about the Afghans-- Fact: Since before time have tried to destroy the United States of America. Fact: An Afghan can keep you warm in winter and spice up a boring looking couch, but is not to be trusted. Fact: We don't know that the Afghan people aren't all Freemasons. Fact: Afghans need to be bombed.

We've been in Afghanistan (correctly pronounced "'Ghanstan") for nearly ten years and there doesn't seem to be any progress. We haven't taken any new territory in years and we yet to take the Taliban capital city (Barack Obama has had two years to take them out, why hasn't he done it yet!?). It is clear that this war can't be won by the liberal go to's of "building government" and "counter-insurgency." It is clear that we need to, as my father has pointed out on countless occasions "Bomb that whole place out."

Why the bureaucrats and intellectuals at the Department of Defense haven't thought this up yet is appalling and more than likely due to the Democratic legislature that's dominated the government since the beginning of the Bush administration. We need to drop nukes on the Afghans, it is the only reasonable way to save them from the threat of Czarist Russian marching over the Oxus River.


4. Iranians.
Iranian Muslims and their allies in Iraq are a new and frightening threat to America. We have never had a hand in the Middle East in any way shape or form and for some reason they want to kill us all and feed us all tabulleh until we start wanting more than one wife. Most of their problems can be laid at the feet of Jimmy Carter, who had the audacity not to attempt another autocratic coup like his better Dwight D. Eisnenhower. This is the only point in history in which the USA did something in the Middle East-- and even then we didn't do anything, so who looks crazy now, Iran?

The Iranians present a unique threat to my father and the American public by creating a two pronged assault on our values-- one by creating nuclear weaponry and the other by buying our restaurants and not paying rent. They both present equally nefarious threats and unfortunately with the nuclear threat, we can't just change the looks when they go away for the weekend.

Iran is also Muslim. That means that they are bad. What about Saudi Arabia, you say? No, they aren't Muslims. Who told you that? That is silly. If the Saudi Arabia was full of Muslims, then I think they'd have something to do with 9/11. Oh what's that? You were mistaken? Yeah, I thought so.

Right now an Iranian is trying to build a bomb. While I'm sure the Democrats in congress would love for them to have a fully functional bomb, what we need to do to save Israel and my dad is to get into a third land war in the Middle East. Luckily, unlike the past ten years, we have the man power and cash to fund a project like that. What's even better is that it will all be paid for and taken care of by the time my dad dies, preventing the Iranians from inflicting any sort of economic payback.

People forget about 9/11 because they don't care about our country as much as my dad does. My dad loves his country so much that during the Vietnam War, when he was asked to enlist, he signed up for the Reserve and valiantly protected his country for a week out of every four. Were there any VC sneak attacks between 1966-1968? Nope. Because a healthy mix of zeal and not wanting to leave the state.

Right now an Iranian is trying to build a mosque on Ground Zero, the holiest land in the United States, right after all of the churches and where ever else they attacked on 9/11 (I think it was a field of some kind). Muslims don't understand that Ground Zero is sacred, not unlike their wailing wall or that Cash to Gold place on Raymond Ave. Since all of New York is now a holy site, having been covered in ash, dust, and TV broadcasts of the 9/11 attacks, it is only fair that Muslims build their mosques under the East River, as our constitution dictates. That way Americans can live in safety, without any more Muslims trying to take over our country, possibly in conjunction with the Chinese or maybe rap music of some kind.


3. The Chinese
China wants to take us over. It's already and established fact that China is going to overpower us economically in ten years, forcing us up past being the number one economic power in the universe to last place. That is how lists work. I wish it were not as ugly as that, but it's a fact. China will stop at nothing to butt in line in front of us, which will only lead to a series of butts that will only stop when Zimbabwe or Czechoslovakia or some other country finally steps in front of us. When you start speaking Chinese one day, don't say that I didn't warn you. . . except that if you did say it, I wouldn't understand you, because I don't speak Chinese.

It is clear by their increasing needs to express themselves freely and demands at more government transparency that the Chinese are just trying to lull us into a false sense of security. Once that is done, they'll club us over the head and take over our country just as the Russians did between the years 1956 and 1960 and the Fire Nation did between 1989 and 2003. We cannot let this happen again. The only possible way to prevent this is to warn people by telling them that the Chinese are taking us over. Say is as many times as you need to until the words lose all meaning. That is when you know the words are working.

If the Cold War taught us anything is that the nuances of human beliefs are just smoke screens to take over Vietnam. And we all know how that went. A Communist is a Communist, no matter how much trade he does with us or no matter how much debt of ours' that he owns. They aren't to be trusted and will stop at nothing to. . . do something.

I'm not entirely sure how the Chinese are going to take us over, but their military spending has increased from 13% of our military budget to 15.2% of our military budget in just thirty years. This rapid uptick in spending can only lead to one conclusion: The Chinese are going to take us over. Either by marching over the Bering Straight, into Alaska, then catching a ferry over to the mainland, or by hiding themselves piece by piece in to-go boxes, biding their time in our fridges, waiting for their moment to reassemble and strike us as one.

Also, the Chinese can't drive.



2. Mexicans.
Mexicans are as old of an enemy of America as the Freemasons or maybe the Jews, depending on what mood they're in.

Mexicans have been stealing jobs from Americans for years. The most obvious example of this dates way back to the 19th century, when a cobbler left his shop for the day. When he returned in the morning, he found that Mexicans had broken in and finished all of his cobbling in secret, without his permission. Typical Mexicans, stealing jobs out from under good, hard-working Americans. Also, the Mexicans played crappy accordion music and one of them might have had a baby in the bathroom.

"But, James," you say, sipping your espresso, readjusting the Afghan around your neck, "Mexicans contribute so much to our society."

Oh, do they? DO THEY REALLY?

Let's do a checklist on what these "Mexicans" have and haven't given us:
* Mexicans did not invent the light bulb. If it was up to them, we'd still be lighting candles like shnooks!
* Mexicans can't even get pitas right. A tortilla, more like tortilladon't. . . Wait, that's shit, give me a moment.
* Mexicans didn't win World War II. They didn't even lose World War II. Make up your mind, Mexico.
* Mexico didn't see one of the all-time, greatest films of all time, Scoot Pilgrim Versus the Universe. Mexico said "I'll wait until it's on DVD." How are we going to get a sequel if you don't see it the first weekend, huh?
* Mexicans might be lizardpeople.
* Wait, I got it, I got it. Tortilla, more like tortillyuck! Yeah. That's good punnery.
* Mexicans stole the pyramids from Egypt. You know what else they stole? My six-speed bike.
* My geography might be off, but if you replace "Visigoths" with "Mexicans," it becomes clear that the Mexican people destroyed the Roman Empire. Do you want us to become like Rome, bloated and vain, with wars in the middle east that we can't pay for, hobbled by ineffective government and cheap farm labor? Do you?
* Mel Gibson made a movie about ancient Mexicans. . . I guess that's one stroke in their favor.

There is no job a Mexican does that can't be filled by an Irishman, who's at least white and at least seem to speaks some kind of English.


1. Liberals.
Liberals are the single greatest threat to my dad and the American people. They're everywhere. They're in our schools, they're in our government, they're in our army (when they say we should stop spending/carpet bombing people), they're on our TV, they're in our Communist parties, they're in our key parties, they're in our key clubs, and they're the number one reason Coke doesn't taste like it used to.

The best presidents in US history have all been good, old-fashioned Conservatives, like Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, and all of our worst presidents have been infamous characters like Bill Clinton and his Magical Surplus Tour and Barack Obama, the single worst president in the history of the United States, including that one year a snake got into the Oval Office and we were forced to abandon the White House. No Liberal has done anything good for the people of the United States ever.

In your ignorance of these threats you might say, "But, wait a minute, didn't a Democratic president win World War II for us?" Well, nice try, but FDR only won that war by using "conservative values." It looks like egg is on your face. Oh, and the myth of FDR pulling us out of the Great Depression? Another liberal lie. The corollary to this should be obvious: Any time a Conservative did something wrong it was because he was being liberal (not to be confused with Liberal) or, possibly, his was crippled by a Liberal congress, like George Bush was time and time again. There is no dark chapter in American history that does not have the stink of the Liberals.

For many years the Liberals stole the newspaper off my dad's front lawn. Also, they once left the fridge open and all of the dairy products went bad. Another time, my dad left his shoe-shop for Classic Liberalism.

There is no conceding to the Liberal, there is no understanding or aid to be given to them, because they are inherently stupider than the rest of us, also they chose to be this way, so they deserve everything they got coming to them. So, it works both ways. Being a Liberal is the worst thing a human being can be and about the most despicable. America wasn't founded by these men. It was founded by hard-working men with old fashioned ideas like freedom of religion, right to representation, right to bare arms, and freedom of speech. Good Conservatives like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Payne all pitched in, using their traditional, Conservative values to campaign for

Liberals, unlike the Chinese, Mexicans, and Muslims, don't want to just take everything we have, but erode it completely. They want to take away our rights to destroy the Constitution. Democrats are the greatest threat that we face as a democracy. They want to change the letter of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by doing something. That's right, everyone, something!

Liberals don't care about the Constitution, that's why they pass laws to take away our rights. For example just look what Barack Obama has done! Just look at all of it! Taking away our rights! There was that one thing. Yeah. And that other thing! I bet you feel the pinch of the boot heel on that one. Oh, yeah, and his health care. Yeah! How about that. Taking away our rights by installing the most banal form of government health insurance imaginable! I bet in three months you'll be attatched to a government-created, life-support system that you have to feed your paycheck into just to buy another week of life. But what if you have a bi-weekly paycheck? Too bad. Welcome to Obama's America.

That isn't what our slave-owning, affair-having, rich, white, dieist forefathers had in mind when they wrote our Constitution in secret, having less than half of the approval of the American people for a revolution! They probably had something else in mind! Probably not this! And they probably had more wigs, too!

Also, our president is black! And gays might want basic civil rights! That kind of thing never used to fly in America and the trolley only cost a nickel. Now we don't even have a trolley and our nickle is made out of lead and crushed-up dreams.

If the Liberals had their way and the Constitution was undermined and changed the way they want it not only would slaves be legally treated like human beings and non-property payers be allowed to vote, but women and all kinds of minorities, as well-- including the Irish! Imagine that, a Catholic getting sworn into office! Not in my America. Not in George Washington's America.

So, when you vote this November, don't think of yourself, think of my poor father who's life is in direct and literal danger by the hordes of so and so's coming over the border/ocean/walls/congressional hearings/delis/Mexican restaurants. American liberty is in your hands American, don't fumble it.