It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank An old man said to me, won’t see another one And then he sang a song; “The Rare Old Mountain Dew” I turned my face away and dreamed about you
The best games are those with simple rules that give rise to complex, rich, and varied outcomes.
Marcus du Sautoy, Around the World in Eighty Games
I was idly flipping through the weekend’s Wall Street Journal when some gaming photography caught my eye. Once again, they have tossed a bone to us gaming hobbyists, this time with a review of two recently published books. In print, the article is called “Brains, Luck and Swords” – although in the on-line version the title is changed to a rather mundane “Glory of the Board” accompanied by the names of the books being reviewed. I like the print title better; it’s part of what drew me in as a reader.
Before we get into the books, let’s talk about those pictures. At the top of the article is a game of Go in progress. At the bottom, at least in the print version, is a First Edition box for Call of Cthulhu, the role playing game, from 1981 (which, for the record, I have never played). That second image let me know that, although I was in the review of books section, I was about to read an article about games. It is what really got me on board.
The first of the two books, and the one that gets the bulk of the copy, is Around the World in Eighty Games by Oxford math professor Marcus du Sautoy. His book mixes a love of mathematics, of games, and of travel into an exploration of history, culture, and the propensity of humans to engage in play.
The quote I top my post with, also used as a pull quote in the WSJ article, describes du Sautoy’s theory of game design. In some ways I’d like to think it mirrors my own prescription for the perfect board game design. A game needs to be simple enough for players to quickly grasp all the rules but complex enough that they can’t quite see all the possibilities. Dr. du Sautoy’s math background allows him to appreciate the power of math to transform the basic into the unfathomably1 complex.
Dr. du Sautoy goes on to declare that the ultimate in game design is Settlers of Catan, the game he associates with his travel to Germany, the home of Reiner Knizia, Wolfgang Kramer, and the birthplace of the Eurogame. One might dicker with his “best board game ever” declaration while acknowledging that these things are a matter of taste. That is, until he addresses Dungeons & Dragons, a game he apparently2 doesn’t care for. As the review states, in some cases, there is no accounting for taste.
To create a fair and balanced treatment of the RPG, we are introduced to Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground3, a (as the subtitle would have it) guide to tabletop roleplaying games from D&D to Mothership. The reviewer recommends the second title particularly for those fans of the genre who may find themselves transported back to the 70s or 80s through remembrances of a long-neglected hobby. The author, Stu Horvath, runs a podcast called VintageRPG and this eye-catching summary of the genre will certainly have its appeal. Heck, I wouldn’t mind a copy of my own.
And while du Sautoy’s book would seem to have more meat and, perhaps therefore, more redeeming value, I don’t think I’ll rush out to buy Around the World. Several of the criticisms levied by the review article hit home for me. The D&D denigration isn’t even the worst of it! The reviewer complains that du Sautoy occasionally gets lost in his theme – stretching the gaming-while-traveling story beyond comfort. From the review, he includes narrative because “he doesn’t know how else to fill his fictional travel schedule.”
The real red flag here, though, is the politics. As the reviewer notes, many adults play games to escape from the nastiness of, among other things, the political world. It is thus disheartening when authors of academic books find it necessary to stuff their own political leanings into an unrelated work. Naturally, those leanings are bound to be, in du Sautoy’s words, “left wing.” The review goes on to savage a particularly blatant virtue signal.
Do I need more of that in my life? Is it a price I have to pay to get some good analysis regarding the intersection of math and gaming? I’m thinking maybe not, although I may yet change my mind on this.
The funny thing is that as I was mulling over just this question it occurred to me that I do exactly the same thing as I write these posts. Despite (mostly) keeping my posts to non-political topics and (failing that) dispassionate observation, I do find myself compelled to occasionally toss in a bit of my own opinion -framed in the light of righteousness. If I were to write a full-length book, would I have the discipline to refrain? Or is my own view of the world too tied up together to entirely separate, for example, political economic questions from game design? Maybe we’re all wired this way, to some extent. Maybe our respective worldviews are all tied together so that discrete topics are never really to be considered in isolation.
Maybe I just ruined another post on games with a digression into today’s political battleground.
The example from the book used in the review explains that a 5×5 Bingo grid using 75 balls produces 111 quadrillion different card possibilities. ↩︎
The review doesn’t give the details and du Sautoy’s publicists certainly don’t shy away from courting the D&D fans as potential buyers of his book. It is just possible that the review’s author, John J. Miller (the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College), needed a convenient segue into the second part of his review. I can’t know for sure without reading the whole of du Sautoy’s work. ↩︎
Note the Oxford comma. One more recommendation for this book. ↩︎
Perhaps that’s a surprise, considering that nowadays women outnumber men by the fraction that superior intelligence and unwavering work habits give them, but in those days it was so: lots of men, few women.
I decided that my game playing might well benefit from some deeper exploration into the details that surrounded the Prague Spring. So I sharpened up my search engine and embarked upon a quest for a non-fiction book that covered the topic. I was hoping to find something along the lines of Mark Bowden’s treatment of the Battle of Hue, although I probably knew going in that was too much to hope for. What I did find was that books were either of questionable quality or they were out of print and, as a result, outrageously expensive. Not surprisingly, with the search string “Prague Spring” active, I did turn up a work of fiction titled Prague Spring by Simon Mawer.
I had never heard of Simon Mawer until just that moment. He apparently has had a run of literary success in recent years and, due to that popularity, his novels are available from my Public Library. He writes historical fiction and his two most popular (and most acclaimed) works focus on Continental Europe and World War II. That superficial background info was good enough to get me to check (!) out Prague Spring and dive right in. I anticipated a rewarding reading experience, one way or another, from its quality and/or its subject matter. With the book saying “Prague Spring” right there on the cover, I figured I’d certainly learn a thing or two about the Prague Spring.
Prague Spring‘s focus, however, is on the personal – even while its story is driven by the historical. It is a book about young love and the taking of younger lovers. Every key element in the story (except, of course1 Brezhnev’s decision to send tanks) is driven by sexual desire.
I have a very strong suspicion that the relationships – the affairs – of the book are taken from the author’s own memories. He is of just the right age to BE (primary character) James in the story. Mawer’s career path through academics might also leave you wondering about the basis for the older man/younger female student sexual relationships that also grace this work. Whether he is writing about himself or about others, though, the representation of the dynamic of the “sexual revolution” are realistic, even if not reality. They would be his “lived experience” whether directly or indirectly so.
Likewise, I see the favorable treatment of socialism as coming from the sensibilities of the author, both as a student and of a citizen of a nation2 with a strong “liberal” tradition. In 1968, much of Europe saw the Czechoslovakian aspiration of “socialism with a human face” as the good and natural state of Democratic government. All of the characters (and, by implication, the government of England) agree with this understanding. Does Mawer agree? Even as I suggest he does, his writing transcends the politics of the time with a perspective subsequently earned over more than five decades. If the discerning reader goes no farther than the words on Mawer’s pages, it should be clear that the seeds of the Prague Spring’s downfall grew not just out of Moscow. There was a fundamental weakness to Czechoslovakian socialism – even the best version thereof.
To wit, a chapter has the above-referenced older man, a British diplomat, take his student-girlfriend to Munich. She accompanies him on a trip where he delivers documents to his “free world” embassy, using the privilege of his diplomatic immunity to cross a line forbidden to Czechoslovakian students. While in West Germany, the girl is shocked by the bounty of capitalism. She muses that Czechoslovakia “won” the war against Germany, by virtue of being on the winning side, yet it is the (West) Germans who bask in the luxury of the post-war economic boom. Despite being on the cusp of attaining the ideal form of human existence, Czechoslovakia is plagued by shortages, oppression, and corruption. Its greatness and its beauty, Mawer’s writing makes clear, is often courtesy of the Empires from which it was created in 1918. Socialism has contributed little to nothing.
So is Mawer exposing a bit of reality, despite himself? Or has his 75 years of experience on this planet altered his views on politics? Likewise, I wonder if Mawer, now too old for even a May-December romance with a college girl, is beginning to see the folly of free love.
I see something in his characters that, likely, has been common to many, many relationships since the dawn of his generation’s sexual revolution. Sexual intimacy has become cheap – a fact that makes commitment, trust, and fidelity all the more expensive. Versions of the discussion in which James and Ellie engage have permeated my own college environment and experiences. If sex can be meaningful or meaningless, memorable or literally forgotten the next morning, then to it can be attached no additional implications or depth. Sharing a physical moment (or all-nighter) with a woman gives you no claim on her future behavior – and surely we (men) can accept this assertion. And yet, how many youths use the (easier) path of physical intimacy as a foothold into emotional intimacy and the potential for a serious relationship? How many get burned when the other half of their coupling does not do the same?
When the likes of Simon Mawer were born into this world, most people would have assumed the exact opposite. Nobody believes that the hippy generation invented casual sex but, for most of us (before free love and to a large extent afterwards), the assumption was that sexual activity and, often, even mere physical expressions of desire would follow commitment, not precede it. The “revolution” of Mawer’s generation was to separate the physicality of sex from the deep emotions of love from the morality of commitment.
What they lost, though, is that the traditional binding of all three drives has created a far more powerful force than they each would separately. When the primal urge for sexuality drives home one’s commitment, and does so within the bounds of an accepted moral framework, isn’t the subsequent bond of marriage and family that much stronger?
Thus we see, through the eyes of Mawer’s young James, the conflict inherent in the “free love” of 1968. James is driven by a desire for the immediate. He “wants” Ellie even while acknowledging that said desire will likely be fleeting. His thoughts make much of his attraction even while acknowledging that she less than “attractive.” If we were to force James to declare his “intentions,” to make a commitment, would he still pursue Ellie? Would he do so genuinely, or would he follow his lust by deceiving himself and/or others?
Furthermore, and despite (we assume) his having no longer-term intentions3, he begins to feel the trappings of commitment and relationship. These manifest as jealousy and possessiveness, both (justifiably) recognized as negative factors in a relationship – especially a casual one. But can a man shun jealousy without also foregoing his urge towards making a romantic commitment? What is the result in the “dating environment” when a premium is placed on emphasizing only the shortest of short-term outlooks?
Prague Spring obviously got me thinking about these sexual issues. Put into its 1968 context, it begs the question as to whether we’ve embarked on a decades-long journey down a dead-end road. While, obviously, couples still are faithful, make commitments, and marry each other in 2023, it is done within a cultural environment that encourages almost none of these things. Furthermore, the strength of Prague Spring as a novel stems from its being set at a political and cultural fulcrum of the Cold War. It’s an important facet to its writing even as it makes use of that setting mostly by walking us through the events – noticing the details in passing – as opposed to dramatizing the historical context directly.
As to that excerpt quote that tops my piece, it’s a line from chapter one, taken from very near the beginning. I had to read it several times to figure out what it was trying to convey. It stands out from most of the book’s prose in both style (it’s the first, although not the last, time the author breaks the 4th wall) and substance. It makes me wonder, as I have before, if such is not the price for being able to write a book that takes place in the “bad old days” and involves, largely, sexuality from the male perspective. Or is this instead something that the author really felt was necessary to explain? He is old enough to remember segregated colleges and skewed ratios of the past. Maybe he is aware, due to a teacher’s sense of youthful perceptions, that the campuses of 1968 would be entirely foreign to the college students of today.
Then again, I am probably trying to read too much into this once sentence. Mawer may have simply been thinking of the slight numbers advantage that women had in the late-80s, early-90s. He may not even be considering the large and growing skew that some campuses see “nowadays.” Although there was good helping of gendered “affirmative action” involved with 80s campus diversity – it somehow felt more natural. He is also not wrong. Many of the women I knew DID apply themselves a little more seriously and rigorously to their studies then the average man. The point being, his quote might4 just elicit agreement from me if I felt it applied to the average male/female college ratio over the last half-a-century or so.
Mawer is also too old to write chapters in present tense. And yet he does – some of the time. Unlike some other books, I could not discern why some were present and some were past. I saw no pattern.
Seeking patterns, I noted the author breaks the “fourth wall” three times, engaging in direct discussion with his reader rather than telling the story. The second time is to relate the book’s 1968 events into the post 2018 division into separate nations, surely a welcomed bit of context for many readers. The third time is to tell “what happened” with one of the characters. That he uses this device so rarely underscores an apparent importance when he does so. So, was it that important to point out that women are inherently superior to men? Maybe so.
Was that one fictional, Czechoslovakian woman so important that we need to know how she survived and escaped communism? This makes me again muse about how much of this story might be autobiographical. Not to ruin it for you, but the gal in question ultimately meets with tragedy. Indeed, maybe herein is a theme of Prague Spring. All ends in tragedy – and yet some of us soldier on. Eventually freedom did prevail in Prague but it was a long-coming eventuality. The wait was truly eternal to those protesters who were killed in the fall of 1968.
Prague Spring has not garnered the critical attention of Mawer’s more popular works, so perhaps it is up to me to make its recommendation. Is it a good book? I enjoyed it well enough. Does it make it a great book? Maybe not. Is Mawer, as an author, worth reading? Maybe. It’s tough to grasp the bigger picture from only a follow-on work by an author that is respected for his prior novels.
I’m no expert and I didn’t put in any research effort, but I feel like this one is a fairly safe assertion. ↩︎
Mawer is a British author who lives in Rome. I’ll leave my reference to his political origins vague. ↩︎
Within the story, Ellie is portrayed (by virtue of her class background) as James’ “better.” Thus, even Ellie’s father is willing to accept James as a “fling” who is, long term, beneath her. When it is time for her to marry, she’ll find someone of her own station. ↩︎
My hesitancy springs from an article I recently read detailing the notably poorer outcomes for boys versus girls in our educational system. The article’s author focused on classroom environments far more suited to the natural temperament of girls as opposed and unsuitable to the physicality of many boys. She also noted that the relative overachievement by girls has been a feature of the (American) public school system, almost from its beginnings. That is to say, the long term discounting of boys as “bad students” is a flaw in our educational system that underserves half the population. ↩︎
Now I got Bathing Ape, I got DCMA I got brass knuckles hanging from my neck in my chain I got a model 26 but she stays in her place I got a Kershaw neatly tucked inside in my waist
I thought of this old lyric a week or two past, prompted by legislative attempts to legalize brass knuckles in states where they remain illegal. For reference, brass knuckles are currently legal in 12 U.S. states. 17 states restrict them via concealed carry prohibitions while others prohibit sale and carry but not ownership. Some states deem them illegal under any circumstances.
The debate seems a bit amusing to me. It’s almost as if we’re arguing over some horse and buggy regulation, which we’re afraid to repeal because we might unleash a wave of horse-drawn carriage incidents which have only being kept at bay by the force of a 200-year-old law. Would anyone use* brass knuckles to commit crime and mayhem? Do people do this in the roughly-quarter of the nation in which they are entirely unregulated? The mere mention of the device, though, got me thinking of a song from a few years back.
The song Keep Your Hands Off My Girl is, apparently**, a bit different than what the band Good Charlotte usually writes. It is supposed to be funny, its rap/metal sound notwithstanding. The context of this above-cited section is speaking with the voice of a nightclub DJ who is talking about how the girls he meets, when performing, like to sport high fashion luxury brands (Dior, Chanel. Louis Vuitton, HG and YSL). Our DJ wears stuff designed by the Good Charlotte guys themselves along with perhaps several thousand dollars worth of weaponry.
That last implication seems to be missed by most people – include many Good Charlotte fans.
For example, I came across an angry rant about the apparently-misogynistic lyric – heard as the singer bragging about abusing his young***, fashion-model girlfriend. In fact, I’ve seen all kinds of misheard versions of the above four line, many which make even less sense. For what it’s worth, I cribbed the precise wording shown above from the internet but it tracks what I hear when I listen to the song.
Let me explain it.
A Glock 26 is the sub-compact version of the Glock 17, the company’s standard 9mm pistol. It’s functionally about the same as its big brother but is designed to be concealed on one’s person. A Kershaw is one of the more popular knife brands – not stupid expensive but also not a cheap knock-off. For example, the Kershaw that “Gibbs” carries on NCIS runs about $300 these days. The Glock probably lists about $700 but sells for a good bit less. Again, not particularly pricey but also not discount bin.
Ironically, the Madden brothers are from Maryland, where carrying a pair of brass knuckles is illegal without permit (which I can’t imagine being granted so you can wear them as a necklace). Maryland is also what’s known as a “shall issue” state for concealed pistol carry. If the singer really does go clubbing with brass knuckles, a knife, and a Glock hidden on his person, and is caught, he’d probably be convicted of multiple felonies.
But in States where the laws are not so restrictive, there is nothing particularly offensive about this “fashion” choice. In fact, one might even read into these lines an advocacy for responsible defensive gun use. The singer goes out in public practically dripping with weaponry and yet has no intention of every using any of them (“she stays in her place”), not even in reaction to the “hipsters mean-muggin’ on” him “all night long” and attempting to draw him into a fight.
Take this as a context when reading Holman Jenkins; recent (paywalled) editorial piece titled Gun Owners vs. Gun Nuts.
If you can’t read it, I’ll offer an elevator summary. The author suggests that our society could be improved by separating responsible gun owners from the gun nuts among us. He cites an excessive obsession with firearms reported for several recent criminals including – perhaps a little off point – the case of the National Air Guardsman who leaked a trove of highly-classified government documents to gamer forums. He suggests that the fetishization of guns has destroyed the traditional gun culture in America and that, in order to reclaim it, a national public outreach campaign should be employed – much as the effort to stigmatize cigarette smoking has dramatically changed our view of using tobacco in public (or, really, using it at all). He makes clear he is not proposing an anti-gun campaign and understands that, should it become such, it will fail in the task for which he proposes it.
At first blush, a pop star using knives, guns, and brass knuckles as a fashion statement sounds like exactly the “fetish” that Jenkins is talking about. Is it? Or is this, as I suggest, a bit of a tongue-in-cheek statement about responsible gun ownership?
Almost unrelated, I have just started watching Narcos on Netflix streaming. That show uses, as a dramatic centerpiece in the opening episode, the Public Service Announcement (of sorts) from Ron and Nancy Reagan wherein she urged America to “say yes to life and, when it comes to drugs and alcohol, just say no.”
Her sentiment is reasonable. Most of us – especially those of us not enmeshed in the use of recreational drugs – would agree that the simple joy of living life is, in and of itself, worth celebrating. Drug habits and drug abuse can prevent us from taking full advantage of what we have. She wasn’t wrong and, in the larger context of her speech, she wasn’t off-base.
Yet reducing it all to “just say no to drugs” trivialized her message and turned it into something counter-productive. It was flipped on its head – used as proof the the tribal elders didn’t know what they were talking about. Worse yet, turning it into a “national campaign” to change the society-wide attitude toward drug use almost certainly has to be looked back upon as a policy failure. It was a misdirected message – a variation on preaching to the choir. However many “squares” might have found the national “just say no” campaign effect effective, when it came to the actual, intended audience, the 80s teens, it fell flat. How many jokes have been made over the years about the frying pan illustrating “your brain on drugs?” Compare that to the number of kids who were actually scared straight by a frying egg. If any.
Likewise, there is nothing wrong in what Jenkins asserts. There is a certain subculture that treats firearms like toys and, worse, combines that lack of respect with a reckless, confrontational aggressiveness. See, for example, videos on line of young YouTubers posing with guns before blasting a hole in the ceiling of their parents’ basement. He also, correctly, warns that his proposed campaign, if seized by the virulently anti-gun crowd, would create something that would backfire even more than the “just say no” campaign. As much as he gets right, I think he completely mischaracterizes the problem, the culture of gun owners, and the “culture” of the people he wants to target. I’m going to take a stab in the dark here – I think Holman Jenkins has had little to no contact with firearms nor the regular citizens who own and use them.
Based upon my personal experience, the “gun culture” in America tends to be very serious about safety and responsibility. The more formally a group is organized, the more no-nonsense their line. That said, these are still all happy, friendly people that like to laugh and tell a joke (and shoot firearms). I’ll grant you that, from the outside, a little bit of off-color (or even black) humor on the subject may be indistinguishable from a glorification of crime, violence, and murder. From the inside, though, I doubt anyone could make that mistake.
The solid streak of black humor does not seem so unreasonable coming from a community that feels like it is constantly under siege. I’ll offer an example, a cartoon, that has been recently floating around on social media. The folks I’ve seen posting it do so with the subtext that I (the one who shared the picture), too, am prepared if anyone dares to commit violence against my home and family. And yet it is a joke, not some statement of intent. I know of nobody that actually, really wants to have a violent and deadly gun battle in their own home. The point, and even the sub-subtext when posting, is that of deterrence****. “Don’t come to destroy my home and family, I am prepared to fight back.” Si vis pacem, para bellum, and all that.
My point, though, is that anyone who has reposted the cartoon probably does fit, one way or another, Jenkin’s designation as a fetishist. If a photo of a wall of guns doesn’t give you a shiver of pleasure and desire, you probably wonder at the sanity of people shiver with pleasure at such a sight. But for those that do, we would never mistake a gun collector for someone who would shoot at congressmen out playing charity baseball. Nobody would, with or without Jenkins’ massive public awareness campaign.
I have no doubt there are people in this world just itching for someone to try them – to start something that will end in violence. Contrary to Jenkins’s thesis, though, these people would already be shunned by the “good” gun culture. Are shunned.
The letters to the editor in the Journal said all of this more quickly (the article is already more than two weeks old) and far more succinctly than I have. Several say much the same that I have above, just a little more clearly. Others agree and amplify what Jenkins has called for, and many wishing to brush aside his cautions on the message and hammer home the need for banning guns. Each in their own way, they help make my point.
Jenkins is wrong in his identification of the problem and wrong again with his solution. Sorry.
*Just to be thorough, I have no doubt that, every once in a while, somewhere in this wild and crazy world, someone commits a violent crime using brass knuckles. I just can’t believe that this is any more common than crimes committed with a brick, or a bowling pin, or the business end of a high-heeled shoe. Or to put it another way, I cannot conceive that there is any meaningful, statistical impact on crime achieved by the regulation of what, these days, seems more of a museum curiosity than anything dangerous.
**So sayeth some fans on the internet. I have never been much of a Good Charlotte listener and haven’t taken a shine to any of their work outside of this song.
***The songwriter was also in his late 20s when he wrote this, so making sense of the argument is a stretch.
****To be honest, if someone were to get into a shooting fight in their home after having posted a joke about how they’re eager to do so, that might come back and bite them in a trial. Most gun owners understand that someone who ever ends up using a firearm against another human being is going to be held to a higher moral standard than the rest of us. Gun owners do communicate this but it probably wouldn’t hurt to do it more and better. I don’t think this kind of education, though, matches with what Jenkins is calling for.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
In my country, we passed the “Inflation Reduction Act,” which is primarily a climate act, $369 billion, which will actually be much larger than that, because the heavy lifting is done by tax credits that are very long-term, some of them actually open-ended, and the early investments that have already been triggered by it give a great deal of reason, many reasons, for believing it’s going to be much larger than $369 billion.
Former Vice President Al Gore, speaking at the WEF
There’s a favorite joke in politics. Q: How do you tell if a politician is lying to you? A: His lips are moving.
It sometimes makes me wonder, do we all operate on this assumption that we are generally being deceived and adjust our expectations accordingly? Or are the lies and omissions that seem a part and parcel of the political class actually relied upon because they work?
When the “Inflation Reduction Act” was about to rammed through the U.S. legislature, I had a burr in my hide about the misnomer. I didn’t complain about it here because in the time it took me to draft some thoughts, it was signed, sealed, and delivered. A done deal.
So much was shoved into that single piece of legislation, priced out at $739 billion, that surely a large majority of Americans could have found something they didn’t like about it. Assuming, that is, they had time to understand “what’s in the bill,” which nobody did. Part of me wants to believe that if “the people” did comprehend the details, we would have objected to them – or at least to those most offensive of details. I’d like to think that if the bill were given a fair and open hearing, it would have flopped. But I don’t know.
For me, it was apparent all along that core of it was Democrats’ “Green New Deal,” which they have been vigorously pushing since 2019. It was then remarketed as “Build Back Better” and finally (contradictorily*) the “Inflation Reduction Act.” I guess I shouldn’t have acted surprised. The basic content of the bill has been the cornerstone of the ruling party’s policy initiative since they won the mid-term election during Trump’s term.
I remember reading a Wall St. Journal headline, just after the bill was adopted, suggesting that now it had been passed and signed into law, President Biden will have the task of “selling” its provisions to the populace.
First off, one would think this is getting the politics of Democracy backwards. Don’t you first try to develop popular approval for you policies and then enact them? Do we really have to pass bills so as to find out what’s in them? Worse still, my own cynicism suggest that the White House sees their job being not to convince people that recently-signed laws are good but, rather, to convince them that there is nothing going on they need worry themselves about.
The time between seems to have suggested that my cynicism is on point. Most of what I’ve heard about the the monster package is that it has resulted in all of the good things that have occurred ever since it was signed.
But since lips were moving, we obviously knew all along that we were being lied to.
I’ve complained before about the tendency of government (especially government, although it may just be human nature) to decide first what they want to do and only then figure out why the people must need it. It’s not a left-right issue; the Republican side followed the same playbook when passing the “Patriot Act.”
Furthermore, the issues that seemed so big and so controversial when it was incumbent upon the president to “sell the voters” now get nary a nod. Manchin’s forgotten deal to provide for West Virginia coal workers? Hey, caveat emptor. 87,000 new federal police officers to collect taxes? Challenged, the left was quick to assure that if you’re not a crook, you’ve got nothing to fear.
What I don’t remember is if this package really was sold on the basis that it was needed for, and primarily designed to reduce inflation. Yes that was the title, but was it “Inflation Reduction Act (*wink* *wink*)”? Or were they even boasting at the time, as Al Gore did the past week, that the vast majority of the expense of the bill actually was being heaped onto climate change issues?
Is it really a lie if nobody was ever supposed to believe you in the first place?
*It’s either pressing the accelerator or putting on the breaks but, as anyone who has ever driven a motor vehicle knows, you don’t want to do both at the same time.
First to go, last to know, we will defend to the death our right to be misinformed
This is the hundred-and-eighth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post.
Since I first found out that the movie Full Metal Jacket is based upon a book, I have wanted to read that book. That desire turned out to be more difficult to fulfill than you might think. The original version of the book The Short-Timers sells, used, for close to $400 on Amazon in hard cover. The film-tie-in printing sells for less, but still not cheap.
I had resigned myself to a substantial bargain-hunting project across a vast array of obscure, online used-book stores when I stumbled across a find. The Short-Timers was apparently taught as part of a college course*, the professor of which posted an e-book version for students to work from. I was, thus, able to read a copy.
There’s a bit of irony here, which I’ll get to via the long way around.
The Short-Timers is a semi-autobiographical novel(ette?) by Gustav Hasford. Hasford really was in the Marines during the Vietnam War and really did serve as a combat correspondent. He actively participated in the Battle of Hue. After the war, he wrote The Short-Timers in 1978 as part of a writer’s workshop and was encouraged to submit it for publication. It was immediately bought and published. It was a best seller in 1979 and then in 1987 was made into the movie. It was intended to be the first of a trilogy, of sorts, but he died before finishing the third work. The Phantom Blooper: A Novel of Vietnam (also out of print) was published in 1990.
Before then, though, Hasford began having what must be interpreted as psychological issues. In 1985, he failed to return 98 books from the Sacramento, CA public library. The combined value of the haul was enough to issue a warrant for misdemeanor grand theft but authorities were unable to locate him. Shortly before the Oscars ceremony where he was to be honored, campus police from California Polytechnic State University found nearly 10,000 library books a storage locker rented by Hasford. They had executed a warrant based upon 87 books and five years of Civil War Times magazine issues overdue at their library. Above and beyond his overdue books, there were many additional volumes that he had “borrowed” without actually checking them out. His collection was valued at over $20,000 worth of stolen property.
The criminal charges resulted in jail time and he served three months (of a six-month sentence). The future royalties from his books were also garnished so as to pay back outstanding library debt. For his part, Hasford blamed his troubles on Fascist-state conspiracies. Absent means, he moved to the Greek island of Aegina, where he died** of heart failure (caused by untreated diabetes) in 1993, at the age of 45. A sad end for someone who should have been on top of the world.
So is it fitting that some of us (not naming names, here) are forced to “borrow” his work so as to be able to read it? For those that believe in Karma, there seems to be a great cycle at play here.
By hook or by crook, I am glad I was able to finally read the book. A path so well-worn doesn’t really merit much by way of “review,” but I will offer a few opinions.
The Short-Timers is broken into three chapters, as opposed to the two in Full Metal Jacket. The first, of course, is the recruit training at Parris Island. Reading this part, I marveled at Kubrick’s skill in converting from word to visual media. I was also amazed at how much of the dialog (which I suppose I credited to R. Lee Ermey) was taken, word-for-word, from the original text.
In the latter half of the movie (two more sections, per the book), much of the preserved dialog is internal. For the visual medium, Kubrick converted this to actual inter-character dialog. Recall, also, that the movie was narrated by Private Joker, which fills some of the remaining gaps.
This reminds me of a recent thought.
The first time I watched Full Metal Jacket, I was a bit put-off by the narration. The narrator’s delivery is both stilted and awkward. It was actually a large part of why I didn’t entirely love the film the first time around.
Then I watched it again. And again. It occurred to me that Joker’s disjointed prose and high-school-kid-reading-from-note-cards delivery was part of the character. Joker is a kid who, before he signed up for the Marines, had the notable experience of writing for his high school paper. Based upon that, he managed to land a job as a profession reporter – a paid writer for the Marine Corps. Should we be surprised if he still sounds, a little bit, like a high-school teen?
If you haven’t seen it, Mathew Modine (that is, Joker), plays the senior researcher who creates “Eleven” through training and experimentation. In the latest season he returns with a rather substantial role. Playing now an older man with a very different background, his dialog delivery is still, 35-years-later, about the same as how he voiced Joker. So did Kubrick craft the narrator’s style on purpose? Or did it just come as part of the Mathew Modine package? Maybe*** I’ll never know.
As to other contrasts between book and film, the main difference is this; the book is darker. Much darker. There is more death, more injuries, and more morally-questionable situations. (E.g. Cowboy survived the encounter with the sniper in Hue but was ultimately done in by…?) It also makes you wonder… how much of this maps to actually events that Hasford experienced versus the popular-in-the-seventies absurdist writing style? Again, maybe I’ll never know.
If you love Kubrick’s film, and you haven’t read this yet book, I’d suggest you give it a go. It’s short (he he) and it may-or-may-not-be free.
Return to the master post for the Vietnam War. Continue on for another, more serious book about the battle of Hue.
*I can’t remember which school and it was long-enough ago I can’t find it in my browser history. It’s probably for the best that I don’t provide outright instructions on how to do something shady.
**He died of angina in Aegina? If it weren’t real, I wouldn’t believe it.
***Mathew Modine kept a diary during the filming of Full Metal Jacket during the filming and published it, as Full Metal Jacket Diary, in 2005. Maybe now I have to read that?