Profit Produced Putin

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

At the top, let me say I reserve the right to disagree with my society, or my government, and also to share in my society’s guilt when we do wrong.

As I see it: If I live in the US, now waging two ongoing wars, then at the end of the day I might agree with having a death penalty. If I live in Canada, now in peacetime, then at the end of the day I might agree with not having a death penalty. In both cases, agree or disagree, I would know there were two worthy sides to that weighty issue.

It logically follows, then, being in agreement, that I wouldn’t, as a citizen, feel any need to wear “bad guy” clothes of matte black. But neither would I wear a good guy’s pure white wool: I would wear tired weathered grey. Because in this weary world, having seen many springs come and go, I can’t be as pure as Mary’s little lamb. And that is something I can live with.

Sometimes I think of how we created the rubble that Vladimir Putin arose in. You can’t blame him, as leader, for doing things like riding a horse or swimming across the Tiber. Or no, that was a Roman Emperor who swam—but they both do physical feats in public with their shirts off. And it works. In a non-democracy the followers daren’t be too smart.

And how smart are we? Did we really think that after the Berlin Wall came a-tumbling down Russia would transform into another virtuous Roman republic? One man knew better: Canada’s prime minister, Pierre Trudeau. He knew that people—not just as individuals but at the group level, the nation level—could learn: Trudeau repatriated Canada’s Constitution from London, despite people’s fears that we weren’t ready, as part of helping us to grow more responsible. And from his essays we know, too, that he trusted to Quebec to grow. But he didn’t agree with tossing Russia to the wolves with sink-or-swim capitalism. My God, what have we done?

Today Russia, while not a failed state, is not very cohesive either. The Russian people seem to require wars and annexations, and increasing oppression of gays, in order to function. They seem to have more mafia than any country except Italy—How much of that is our fault?

After Berlin, Trudeau pointed out—in vain—that Britain had kept up (communist-style) rationing for years after the war. To expect Britain, thought Trudeau, or a communist nation to bounce into capitalism overnight was madness. Trudeau was right, and the world bankers were wrong. Perhaps we were willfully blind. Perhaps, like the guys on Wall Street before the 2008 meltdown, we were too impatient for profits, and to hell with the chords of  “the better angels of our nature” of Russian society. I wonder how much Russians are now saying, “Every man for himself!” I do know Russians say, “When you move (between apartments) you move alone” meaning: friends don’t help friends move. Such is Russia.

After the World Bank’s shock therapy, Russia ended up with eight wealthy oligarchs. One of them was a former KGB officer, Vladimer Putin, and he came out not as an equal, but on top. Oppressing the other seven. “Money makes enemies,” they say, and the other seven, if not all of Russia, are Putin’s enemies. But I guess as long as he keeps doing what he’s doing, he’ll keep a lid on them all, and he’ll stay safe…

I try to watch the dominos falling without being bitter. The surplice over my armor is grey, but I know one nice thing about my fellows, even if, like Trudeau, I don’t always agree with the majority: Every one with any spirit wants to ride a white horse.

… …

Speaking of Russians moving between homes, you may recall that a future governor of California came from a country that was not communist, but not a part of NATO either: Austria. In his autobiography, Total Recall, Arnold Swartzenegger writes of being a young honest immigrant:

" It was a challenge moving to a country where everything looked different, and the language was different, and the culture was different, and people thought differently and did business differently. It was staggering how different everything was. But I had the big advantage over most newcomers: when you are part of an international sport, you’re never totally alone.

…The (body building) guys found me a little apartment, and as soon as I moved in, this friendliness turned into “We’ve got to help him.”…Another one unwraps a bundle and says, “My wife told me that these are plates I can take; they’re our old plates, so now you have five plates.” They were very careful to name things and give simple explanations…

I said to myself, “I never saw this in Germany or Austria. No one would even think of it.” I knew for a fact that, back home, if I’d seen somebody moving in next door, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to assist them. I felt like an idiot. That day was a growing-up experience. "

Sean Crawford

Calgary

February

2016

Footnotes:

~The sad Russian folk saying was explained to an American volunteer who was trying to compose literature for the Russian Alcoholics Anonymous.

~Russia’s getting worse. Note paragraph four in this link to yesterday’s The New Yorker. Russia just razed its small businesses and became even blander. “Razed” is meant literally.

~ “…increasing oppression of gays…” I’ve just learned from British writer Den Patrick’s blog that Russia is denying drivers licenses to gay and trans people. I guess (sarcasm) what’s next is gays will be declared “capitalist-roaders” or “reactionaries.”

~This essay began with my Free Fall Fridays prompt of “money makes enemies” 

~Total Recall subtitled My unbelievably true life story, Simon and Schuster, 2012, pages 82-83, hardcover.

~ “The Governator” has written five other books.

~As an entertainment reporter for the student newspaper, one morning I saw a pre-release screening, for critics and theatre managers, of The Terminator. Afterwards, a manager asked me what I was going to write. I explained why society fears Jack the Ripper more than Jesse James, and my words ended up on the marquee: “Without conscience or pity.”

After the screening, I have a fond memory of visiting the downtown Calgary police headquarters and telling the desk sergeant his fellow constables would be talking enthusiastically about the movie. But this was only after I walked up to the desk and got him to explain to me, point by point, how it would work to drive a car smashing into headquarters to free a prisoner, while killing all the cops. 

Morality, Boys and Hollywood

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Is Hollywood bad for us? Is our land, as a terrorist said, the Great Satan?...

Boys
Before television, or radio shows, or moving pictures, there was Rudyard Kipling's violent short story, The Drums of the Fore and Aft, about two army drummer boys. The boys play this song:

Some talk of Alexander,

and some of Hercules; 

of Hector and Lysander,

and such great names as these;

but of all the world's great heroes,

there's none that can compare,

with a tow-row-row-row-row-row-row

to the British Grenadiers.

I keep chuckling proudly over something about a boy in the TV show Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles ...
I'll get back to these boys later.

Hollywood
...For some bewildered or righteous folks our chaotic nation includes Hollywood TV shows and movies that are "scandalous and violent." Not exactly heroic. For them that rumbling sound you hear is a railway car, shaped like a hand basket, carrying us all thundering down to hell. For me though, as a writer and citizen, Hollywood makes clear sense.

Occasionally, of course, a director with a second-rate understanding for all aspects of movie making tries to load up his movie with sex and violence—ok, and with immorality—no way, and then wonders why his second-rate B-movie sinks like a stone. It is fine for a new director to make a pessimistic movie that speaks to the dark side of an audience; it is fine if his next movie speaks to the brighter side of that same audience—but what he must never do is make an attack on the morals of that audience.

Obviously the public doesn't need to have the conscious eye of a writer or anthropologist. At some less conscious level the immorality of a movie will register, and then the public will register their disapproval at the box office.The average person, I presume, never thinks much about Hollywood morality. Some people, if asked, might smirk and say that (since the 1960's) "anything goes." Not so.

To train one's eye for adult shows it is fun to consider shows for boys. I grew up during the golden days of black-and-white westerns. My peacefull granny bought me a cowboy hat. That summer I fell dead in so many ways: twisted, flopped, sagged—I did a terrific slow sag off a raised oil tank once. This while our TV heroes, such as the Lone Ranger, never once shot or even wounded anyone. (Batman was the same) To disarm the man in the black hat, at the end of the show, the hero would shoot the gun, not the hand. No blood. My brother Pat remembers a horse chase. The robber kept turning in his saddle to shoot at the hero, while our hero, in his white hat, kept winding up his lasso. (Yes, he "caught" the crook) Again, no blood.

(Stories)

TV changed to color, horse chases changed to car chases. Remember Dukes of Hazard? As in this summer's fashion of Daisy Duke shorts? "Just two good old boys, never meaning no harm." In every episode a police car would flip over. Always—despite how every second of camera time is precious—always the cops would be shown nimbly climbing from their vehicle, and thereby showing their prime time viewers that they were totally unharmed. The duke boys meant no harm.

Remember The Fugitive? It was broadcast after bedtime for children. David Janssen played Dr. Richard Kimble, searching for the one-armed man. In the adult world, where hats are often gray, the fugitive often found himself teaming up with shady characters. I remember watching an episode on the couch with a buddy. The fugitive's buddy-of-the-week had to slug a policeman and then the two ran off. My buddy shouted, "You see that? The fugitive never hits a cop! Then if he finds the one-armed man there will be no charges against him!" True. The other issue was: heroes don't hit policemen. Space age writers of digital scripts, and bronze age tellers of tales at hearth fires, have always held their heroes, such as Hector, up to high moral standards. A storyteller is part of the town, accountable to the town.

As a writer and story teller, I am mindful of Orwell's observation that every healthy society must demand a little more from people than it can reasonably expect. As a person, in the darkness away from the story teller's campfire, I know I am not so good. In fact, I am a timid middle aged man. If some one points a gun at me, or if he makes death threats, then I cannot sooth myself that "he is only trying to scare me." Of course, to spare me from taking the law into my own hands, such acts are criminal offences...

(Morality)

But as a timid man I might not risk waiting for the law to prevail. Also, if I have to club someone on the head then I might just be tempted to "clear my back trail," to relieve myself of feeling so afraid of someday being a target of revenge. I might be tempted to... er—, "terminate with extreme prejudice." (sorry) Luckily for everyone I live a nice timid life.

The closest I get to action is seeing Hollywood adventures where if my hero has to knock someone out... then he will take the time to tie the bad guy's wrists and ankles and elbows and and thighs and so forth, not forgetting to gag him too, and maybe take his uniform, and then rush off in disguise to save the day.

In The Terminator, the first movie, we see Schwartzennager, the robot, arrive, then later the resistance hero arrives naked. (It's a time travel thing.) The hero steals a cop's gun, but without harming any cops.

In T2 Schwartzenagger arrives again, then later the resistance fighter shows up and comes across a cop. We see him next wearing the cop's clothes and gun but we don't explicitly see the cop hog-tied. Tension: In our culture this sets up a dramatic tension. The movie is in no hurry, not until page 95 (paperback) of the book by Randall Frakes, to reveal that the "resistance fighter" is not human. Whew! Instantly the movie (and book) is moral again. (The cop must be dead) And the robot's subsequent killings can be explicitly shown.

(Men)

I found some interesting comments on a blog that I follow of anthropologist Grant McCkracken. He wrote for November 24, 2008:

"...This means TV can't ever ever entertain a tragic view of the world.... TV land is benign.

But on The Sarah Connor Chronicles, life's a nightmare, then you die... The characters know they are doomed in the short term or the long. Even if good wins out over evil, the world will still be reduced to rubble. But the hope of triumph is slender at the best of times, and incredible all the rest of the time."

... Post post script: Anyone interested in what feminism means for popular culture must watch this show."

McCracken also writes, "Please do check it out. It's numbers are down and, as I say, it's really just tremendously good fun."

One might cynically ask: Ha-ha, can a single viewer's tiny act do anything to change the (ratings) numbers? Nevertheless, "everyone doing tiny acts" is the basis of any society. People amidst democracy are accustomed to much greater responsibilities than with any other form of government. So anthropologist McCracken may be "crazy" to ask for action, but in this culture he is perfectly correct in doing so.

Morality
In Canada our suburban schoolboys mustn't carry a gun explicitly made for man-killing. Not unless, perhaps, they are in uniform in the army reserves. They can enlist as early as sweet 17 but very few enlist quite that young, for obvious reasons. I was once in high school, at a study table leaning forward to read of Kipling's heroes, while a long-haired classmate dreamed of rock concerts and banged his imaginary drums. I knew my classmate had no business going off to be a drummer in battle—leave it to the adults.

For the opening credits of Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles everyone is walking cool: the camera pans past the determined single mother, Sarah Conner, with her gun, then past her ally, Carmen, with her gun, and then to her son with his cool shoulder bag. As I recall, for season two the camera pans past the first two and then—scene cut. Because for season two John has advanced a grade and turned 16... But to the viewers he is still a schoolboy.

At this I am amused. And I'm pleased at how the TV producers are trying to cope, trying to be moral. And so I am proud to be North American. If any one calls us decadent, calls us "the great Satan" then I look him in the eye and say: "Don't be silly...."

I am so looking forward to seeing the Season Two DVD of Sarah Conner.

Sean Crawford,

drinking infidel red wine,

January, 2009.18

Footnotes:

~The link to the anthropologist's site is broken so I deleted it.

~Having bought the DVDs I can see that my memory was off—unless they changed things. After all, Hollywood has been known to do retroactive changes. They say the Gilliagan's Island opening song used to end "and all the rest" before they firmly decided on the number of cast(aways), and today when I see a re-run of even the very earliest episodes of Enterprise I still get the Rod Stewart type singer, and not the original nostalgic-type (for me) singer. So my essay stands.

~On the web, where many of us are young computer (nerd) users, where no one uses sports figure icons, but many use anime figures as our live journal icons... I can forget that many older people use their computers as glorified typewriters and mail boxes. And they don't watch popular culture. Last night I did an abreviated version of this essay as a speech at my toastmaster club. My speech evaluator was puzzled when I went from talking about terminators to some one named Sarah. A club member that I talked to afterwards didn't know any of the shows mentioned except for The Lone Ranger. Well. I've learned something.

~My brother-in-law was a hunting guide for rich crazy foreigners. I first knew that he saw me, his city-slicker brother-in-law, as sensible and competent, on the day he walked about in front of me while I had a loaded 303. This while we were shooting.

When our girls were plinking with 22's they, of course, were never behind us.

Sarah, Terminators and Feminists

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

The original Introduction was bookended by these two paragraphs:

As a teen my self-confidence and honesty was threatening to other boys, which really warped my behavior. ( I clammed up) Before liberation everyone's behavior was warped. I barely wish to recall what it was like for everyone to believe that any lone man in a large group of women was always more functional, with more leadership and can-do spirit, than everyone else in the group. But that's how it was in the pre-feminist years.

...

"Male" was the standard and female was second rate. For example there was a "morality scale" researcher, with a scenario where the man was faced with stealing drugs for his dying wife. The scientist made no allowance for females having morally valid yet different-than-his solutions, such as using dialogue... And it was not until years after "women's libber" was no longer in our vocabulary (we said "feminist") that a judge ruled that the legal defense standard, of acting just like any "reasonable adult" would do, must include the standard of the "reasonable female adult" too.

Sarah, Terminators and Feminists

Having a hatred for war and a fondness for feminists, I have a soft spot for the tormented Sarah Connor in the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Sarah is a single mother who knows that an atomic war is coming but instead of being paralyzed by her knowledge of Judgment Day she is determined to do whatever she can. One might assume that T2 is violent, (yes) action-filled (yes) and ... nonfeminist. (no) No, it is a moral movie: To see Sarah is to glimpse feminism. 

 For several years I was a nonvoting member of the University of Calgary Women's Collective and Resource Center. One of the other males at the center did that thing where a man dresses in spongy body armor head to toe, (cap-a-pie) and then the women are encouraged to hit him as hard as they can. The results may go beyond learning literal self-defense: On a metafilter web site a woman describes how from such practice she swiftly became empowered to react differently in so many aspects of her life. Feminists believe in empowerment.

 Were I to hit a man in such armor, my first blow would likely be at half strength, but then my next blow would probably land at mostly full strength. For a number of women, though, blow after blow is delivered at only a teeny fraction of what they are capable of: such is the power of social conditioning. Call it “learned helplessness.” In all fairness, those same women would strike desperately hard if their child was being threatened. I respect Sarah Connor for her self empowerment to strike hard: Not only does she learn to use various military weapons but even after she has a life sentence to the insane asylum, even when her life is over —or at least into limbo— she is determined to stay as physically fit as she can. In that hopeless jail, if she has nice muscles, it has nothing to do with attracting men. 

Of course feminists can attract boyfriends and have families and worry about their children. Sarah’s tribulations are during the cold war, when all children, worldwide, are at risk. Some day our grandchildren may be baffled at how we could learn to live with the horror of missile silos, but we did, the same way we could ignore how women didn’t have equal rights: Humans are good at denial. During those dread times we could choose to try our best to stave off Armageddon, or we could be passive. In those strange days when most people would wimp out, be overwhelmed, throw up their hands in defeat... while I felt like Crazy Eddie who, after being condemned by the king to death, got the king to commute his death sentence "for one year" so that he could "teach the king's horse to sing..." then, in those trying times, I could always depend on the Women's Movement to keep up with me, to keep slogging away at my side. Feminists believe in peace.

 When a man confronted Eddie for being crazy enough to think a horse could ever sing, Eddie answered gaily, "A lot can happen in a year. The king might die. I might die. Or the horse might learn to sing." As a boy I learned the lyrics to a spiritual: "...Joshua fit (fought) the battle of Jericho, and the wall come a-tumbling down." During those years when I was encouraging people to "hold on" to "never give up" because there might be a miracle, I never imagined that one day a horse over in Berlin would sing. Sarah never gives up. She can't: She can't forget the vision of herself in a gingham dress, which Sarah could never wear, in a park with her children, whom Sarah could never know. Who can forget seeing her other self and the children in that searing deadly wind? Not Sarah. She won’t dial down her consciousness. Feminists are willing to know things.

 Given her obsessed lifestyle, with no chance to attend a weekly women’s consciousness raising group, it is unlikely Sarah would stop to think long enough to call herself a feminist. But she acts like one.

Sarah is barren of sisterhood yet in her lonely way, she finds a philosophy. In T2 she angrily confronts a scientist, Dr. Dyson, who will soon be largely responsible for triggering our Day of Judgment. Losing her temper she yells that people like him kill because they cannot create life, cannot feel a child growing. In the book version by Randall Frakes she goes on to point out that men's version of creating is to give their name to the guns that they create. Meanwhile, the Calgary Police Service has adopted a new service pistol and wouldn't you know, it is named after Mr. Glock.

 In my young adulthood I watched as a few "woman's libbers" got other women the freedom to have jobs as notary publics and judges, doctors and police officers. We take this for granted now, but not then. It was two years before my father was born that a few suffragettes got other women the vote. At the time it was hoped that women, on becoming part of democracy, might be a civilizing influence for world peace. But I guess there are not enough people like Sarah. 

 My own mother believes in peace, but I can't deny there are other cultures, equal to ours in the sight of Allah, but not the same as ours: There are places where mothers teach their children to hold on to a double standard for women, and for foreigners, to hold fast to their hatred, and, in the end, to value hatred over peace. “Oh well,” says Eddie and I, “at least in my father's lifetime no two democracies have ever declared war on each other, so perhaps as democracy spreads...?”

Democracy is where two heads are better than one. Sarah, unfortunately, has little access to the democratic give and take of free speech. Bereft of a circle of empowering sisters she is alone with her knowledge of the coming horror...

 Alone, Sarah almost destroys her soul but then she suffers a child to be her call unto sanity. As young John says to a robot, "Don't you get it? Haven't you learned anything? You can't go around killing people." And she cries.

 Feminism, being for equality, includes men too. As my dictionary says, it means “political and social and economic equality to men.” I am picturing, from just before "women's liberation," a “power to the people” 1960’s male activist: As he feels confident and equal, as he feels truly empowered, then he will no longer need the crutch of having women make the coffee.

A feminist visiting Sarah's asylum would ask if the patients, men and women, are being empowered to be all they can be, by growing as much as they can, by making as many decisions as they can. Democracy in America, as the French observer De Tocqueville once explained in his classic, is where a free people make little decisions, often, so they will grow fit for making big decisions, occasionally, at the voting booth. Perhaps democracy, then, is a prerequisite for people to be motivated to even care to know what growth is, let alone care, Allah willing, for the growth of women.

 When I first saw Sarah she was a simple, single girl. An emissary from the future warned her: She was going to find strength she never knew she had, grow in ways she never thought possible. And grow she did. 

 Sarah reminds me of my own world. It wasn't very long ago that editors would not publish Andrew Vasche's mysteries about an ex-con, Burke, who fights child pornography rings, because nobody could believe such rings existed. Now we believe. Feminists, at first feeling alone, and being told they were crazy, have helped us to know that such horror exists.

If Judgment Day is a moral movie then it must have karma. It's only right that a shrink who messed with Sarah's mind has his own mind blown, such is the shrink’s karma, but what of Doctor Dyson? How could a husband and father have a rendezvous with death? Easy: Because of Cyberdine Industries. That's where a suspended pteradactal alludes to nuclear winter, where their secret vault requires two keys, turned simultaneously, to open up. When I was a child of the cold war hearing the sad air raid sirens being tested, “sorrrrrryy,” we all knew that if the man in Washington ever “pressed the button” it took two keys to empty out the silos. In that vault at Cyberdine was the “button." There rested the preposterous robot hand and the impossibly advanced chip.

Dyson saw. He was a scientist and citizen who knew that science and democracy requires questions and transparency, knowing that if an invention requiring a previous series of steps suddenly appears, then either the steps have been kept secret or the device has been stolen; he was a scholar who knew how to search the science literature and scrutinize the newspaper files, those files which would have led him to Sarah Connor's story; he was a man of planet Earth who knew we all must be alert to question strange new paths of death, from factories putting mercury down pipes into the sushi of Tokyo bay, to pesticides killing the higher animals, to fluorocarbons rising up to blast the ozone; …and so when Dyson was ordered, "don't ask!" and when he agreed not to question that button in the vault, when he passed along those orders, when he silenced an idealistic young long haired scientist, then, like a good Muslim German, he failed in his duty as a scientist, citizen, scholar and moral human being. Dyson failed.

 "The future is not set," said the emissary to Sarah Connor. "There is no fate but what we make." I agree. I believe devoutly, “Our greatest enemy is despair.”

 So hurray for Sarah! For me it is almost worth the price of admission just to see, for one second, my hero do a victory hop and skip in the prison hallway. In that second I see a human being go from victim to survivor, from shuffling peasant to purposeful citizen. In that moment I see a person of holy fire: Sarah will always create her own empowerment.

Sean Crawford

Still traveling through time,
at one second per second,
Calgary 2009

footnotes:

~While I look for peace, I have also written an essay for a clear-eyed view of war.

~For more on karma and morality, see my essay Morality, Boys and Hollywood, originally entitled Terminators and Boys, of July 2013.

~I still get homesick reading the pre-feminist 1940's Martian Chronicles. We had thought the future was set, that we were fated to more gadgets but no social change.

~The biggest surprise ovation I will ever receive was at a weekly (for ten weeks) peace meeting.

The meetings were so big that a huge lecture theater proved inadequate for the first meeting; (people were sitting in the aisles) we subsequently had to use a music recital hall. Most of us were from off campus. After someone complained about the futility of declaring the campus a "nuclear free zone" I said that yesterday I felt the same, but here, today, I was trying to be positive, for such declarations are not an end but a means to an end, a way of moving us further along the road to a solution that we cannot conceive of yet.

Without mentioning Crazy Eddie I reminded them of other unpredictable miracles such as Alcoholics Anonymous and stopping the White (A-bomb) Train, miracles that offered a way out from a hopeless terminal condition.

I said building peace is like everyone working together on a giant mural while you can only see the one little leaf that you are painting so painstakingly. You don't just quit. Instead you have a blurred vision of this big world that we are all working towards... And then, starting from off on the right, everyone in the hall applauded long and loud in solidarity.