For a while I've been meaning to post about the political economy of one of my favorite shows, The Walking Dead.
Anybody who has been paying attention should understand the zombie apocalypse was just the catalyst for the breakdown of society. It could have been a plague, a nuclear war.... Over these 7 seasons, zombies have increasingly become background; the real drama is human. It is the drama of the survivors after civilized society has shattered. (And I hope everybody realizes that the "walking dead" refers not only to the zombies, but also the survivors who are still walking. As Louis C.K. put it, we'll all spend way, way more time dead than alive.)
I'm a political science major. So the last few seasons of The Walking Dead for me have been the best. I know a lot of fans miss the first few seasons, when survivors were frantically scavenging and trying to survive the hordes of zombies. Then they figured out how to do that, and pretty well I might add. What they still haven't figured out how to do is survive other survivors.
My thesis is that The Walking Dead is a meditation on the nature of human civilization. What the survivors are trying to do is basically run through the last few millennia of human civilization in just a few years in order to survive, an erstwhile civilization that developed on outwardly growing circles of human association, like tree rings: first family, then clan, tribe, groups of tribes, nation, nation-state, country, and global citizenship.
In the real world, our human civilization is located somewhere between country and global citizenship. I've posted before about Jeremy Rifkin's empathy thesis and what it will take for us to become a global citizenry....
In TWD, all of that development has been deleted. We're back to the start. But even worse this time, most families have been destroyed, so the first and most basic human connection has been severed. The protagonists in TWD make do by making their closest fellow survivors a kind of surrogate family. Rick's family has started over the first few seasons to extend into a clan or tribe... And that's about as far as civilization has progressed from the ashes.
So enter Negan. What would Machiavelli say about Negan? What would he advise Negan to do? Probably, "Be yourself." There is really no viable alternative in the TWD world.
Where I predict the story arc goes -- and I haven't read the TWD comics, so I may be way off -- is that the threat of Negan is the catalyst to unite the disunited tribes in the vicinity, who will ultimately rise up against him in victory. But without Negan, those tribes would have warred, traded suspiciously, or avoided one another for a very long time. In a way, Negan is both an inevitability and a blessing to accelerate the rebirth of human civilization. If there were no Negan, another Negan would have arisen in his place.
But imagine Negan will be victorious in his parochial neck of the American woods. We still have Fear the Walking Dead on the west coast. Surely we have other Negans or Ricks in the U.S. south, midwest, northeast, etc. Eventually these groups -- call them tribes or more likely nations -- would develop, expand and encounter one another and be forced to adopt a policy of fight, trade and cooperate, or live and let live. This takes us back to a period of human history before Christ.
Violence, conquest, slavery and exploitation were integral parts of human pre-history described vividly in the Old Testament. TWD is about reliving all of those stages of human history in fast-forward speed. I find it fascinating and can't wait to see how it all turns out. In TWD, humans are the stars of civilization in rebirth, even as the survivors are surrounded by the (much less deadly) walking dead in the background.
So, for fans who miss the first few seasons, please understand that it couldn't have turned out any other way. Negan had to happen. And -- without moral judgment -- Negan is not necessarily a bad guy, considering all of the Negans in human history who united disunited, warring peoples and gave them some kind of security, and allowed some measure of human society to flourish -- including science, the arts, literature, and so on.
We aren't the heirs of just Socrates, Plato, Locke and the Founding Fathers, we're also the heirs of Alexander the Great, Julius Ceaser, Genghis Khan and Napoleon. Don't knock Negan: the post-apocalyptic world needs him for now.
----------------------------------------------
One may point out that the development of human civilization today isn't congruent. In some parts of the world, like the Amazon or even Afghanistan, clan or tribe is still the dominant phase of human development. Thanks to globalization and the developed world's competition for resource dominance, those societies have come into increasing contact with the globalized, neoliberal, Western world. This incongruence inevitably leads to conflict. Yet this isn't a clash of civilizations; it is a clash of different levels of development.
Let's not confuse this clash with the clash created by refugee migrations caused by civil war, conventional war, or drug wars, as in Central and South America. Iraq and Syria were, until recently, fairly developed countries economically with stable political systems, albeit undemocratic. There war and the collapse of civil order pushed civilization back to association by tribe (based on religious sect); but sectarian or tribal conflict was a result, not a cause, of those conflicts and refugee crises. Just look at Aleppo today, where thousands of Syrians want to stay in their homes rather than become refugees despite merciless war crimes comritted against them. They are being forced of their homes at the point of a gun.
In no way am I endorsing or even justifying the xenophobia of the Geert Wilders or Donald Trumps of the world. Indeed, those populist demagogues are not only attacking "the other" in places like Syria but also peaceful citizens and residents of their own respective countries, most of whom have been living peacefully and productively in those countries for decades. They are being scapegoated.
Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Friday, June 21, 2013
Scalia: Our 'morphing' undead Constitution
We've all seen this happen in the movies and games like Resident Evil. We know what we need to do. We have no choice but to shoot our mutating, undead Constitution in the head.
As zombie movies have taught us, it's only appropriate that a loved one pulls the trigger. And nobody loves the Constitution like Scalia. It's times like this when I thank God for the 2nd Amendment!
By Chris Gentilviso
June 21, 2013 | Huffington Post
By Chris Gentilviso
January 29, 2013 | Huffington Post
Monday, March 11, 2013
The socio-economics of zombies
I don't have any evidence yet to back this up, but I think there is definitely a connection between economic and social upheaval and interest in the zombie apocalypse.
The same goes for all types of preppers: the gun nuts; survivalists; underground bunker-builders, et al.
We also have to admit that this instinct of embracing mass death, or at least preparing eagerly for it, goes back a few decades in the West, especially in the U.S.
I can't prove it (yet), but I am sure that there has existed a sense of personal insecurity in the U.S. that sought some source: nuclear war; famine; plagues (natural and man-made); environmental catastrophe; and now, zombies. A corollary of that feeling of insecurity is a distrust in our government and institutions to 1) recognize the "real" danger and 2) tell us the truth about it, and 3) protect us from it.
It's all of a piece.
I would love to see some socio-economic research about who is engaging in all this prepper stuff most actively. My guess is that the very poor and the very rich are excluded; it's likely most prevalent among the working and middle classes who have something to lose, walking the knife-edge of economic insecurity.
By Meg Kinnard
March 11, 2013 | AP
Thursday, February 14, 2013
A well-run government has the leisure to debate zombies
No, this is not from The Onion, and yes, you are reading the headline below right.
OK, granted, it's another question why Canada's elected leaders don't have anything better to do than debate hypothetical illegal zombie migration. Then again, they're not wasting their time debating whether to pay for the bills they voted for, to "sequester" their budgets, or to disapprove of Cabinet ministers' nominations because those nominees agree with the Prime Minister who nominated them.
So on the whole I still give Canada's parliament the edge.
So on the whole I still give Canada's parliament the edge.
By Taylor Berman
February 13, 2013 | Gawker
Monday, December 31, 2012
NRA's latest lie: More silencers keep us safe
I learn something new everyday. Today I learned there is actually something called the American Silencer Association, supported by that other famous firearms association, the NRA.... Because the Founding Fathers obviously would have wanted to keep their muzzle-loaded powder-and-ball muskets quiet when fighting King George's lobster backs.
Again, the only good use I can think of for silencers is in case of a zombie apocalypse, because we all know that zombies are attracted to gunfire.
 |
| Got flashlight? Got silencer. |
Silencers could give the next Adam Lanza even more time to kill -- but to the NRA, they protect kids' hearing
By Alexander Zaitchik
December 30, 2012 | Salon
Saturday, December 15, 2012
What a 'real' zombie apocalypse would require
So some dude at Harvard has written "The Zombie Autopsies," which all but legitimizes zombie-prepper paranoia.
The key take-away is that any zombie infection must affect the human frontal lobe and the cerebellum in a very specific way. Since most people don't use their brains at all, it's not much of a stretch to think that some zombie virus would use it for them.
Then all our stockpiled canned goods, guns and ammo in our bunkers will have been supremely justified!
Meanwhile, here are what truly Bad Brains look like:
By David Moye
December 14, 2012 | Huffington Post
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Hard to classify
OK, I admit it, I'm struggling with how to label this story.... Zombie preppers gone wild? Life imitating art? Accessible firearms escalate stupid argument to a life-and-death struggle? Rednecks are nuts?
But here's the weirdest part: after he shot her in the back, the redneck boyfriend drove his girlfriend to the hospital for treatment. Like, he made his point, he shot her, that proves he's right and she's wrong and all the rest is bygones. He's now charged with attempted second-degree murder.
Anyhoo... is season 3 of The Walking Dead the best ever or what? Michonne should have finished off the Governor when she had the chance, am I right? I sure hope he gets what's coming to him!....
 |
| "So you guys call walkers 'biters,' huh?" |
Monday, October 29, 2012
USG finally getting serious about zombies
Finally, the U.S. Government is getting serious about an inevitable Zombie Apocalypse. Seriously:
"This is a very real exercise, this is not some type of big costume party," said Brad Barker, president of Halo Corp, a security firm hosting the Oct. 31 training demonstration during the summit at a 44-acre Paradise Point Resort island on a San Diego bay. "Everything that will be simulated at this event has already happened, it just hasn't happened all at once on the same night. But the training is very real, it just happens to be the bad guys we're having a little fun with."Hundreds of military, law enforcement and medical personnel will observe the Hollywood-style production of a zombie attack as part of their emergency response training.
Meanwhile, America's zombie electorate is finally getting serious about the 2012 presidential race, which affects the living and undead alike. Not seriously.
(My favorite zombie-voter complaint from a zombie Soccer Mom: "47% of zombies feel entitled to brain stamps, and the government should just hand out brains to them.")
Seriously though, zombie soccer moms aside, Republicans have the most to fear from zombies taking over America, because as every good Republican knows, dead people vote Democrat. No exceptions.
Happy Halloween!
Friday, February 10, 2012
Essay: Why is the end of the world so American?
Despite my far-left politics, I feel the strange allure of American survivalism. Post-apocalyptic movies like Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man, The Road Warrior, Waterworld, The Postman or The Book of Eli, wasteland lit. like The Road, or even zombie movies (my favorite) like 28 Days Later, Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Dawn of the Dead, not to mention the top-rated AMC television series The Walking Dead, instruct us that those who are hardened and prepared, psychologically and materially, stand a better chance of survival. Part of me -- I'm not sure which part -- warns me to ignore this instruction at my own peril.
There is something primal and basic in survivalism that seems so true due to its harsh black-and-white morality, its whittling down of priorities, and its focus on saving loved ones and treasured ideals. And there is something so manly about it, let's face it. (I don't have a very good feeling how popular all this stuff is with girls, I admit. Survivalism -- and my lack of it -- is not something I'm keen to talk about with most guys, much less the ladies.)
But why in America is survivalism suddenly so popular? And why are we churning out all this pop disaster that makes it feel necessary? (To be sure, the Brits are catching up). More concretely, why do we also have so many real-life American Redobuts, ready and waiting for God knows what and when? As alluded to, it must have something to do with our culture, starting with our fear of nuclear war in the 1950s with our fully stocked bomb shelters all the way up to our fear of flu epidemics, Big Government collapse, and resource shortages from global supply chain shocks. And to be sure, there are those who yearn for the terrible, black day that proves that America's love affair with firearms, so deadly in the short run, is supremely justified in the long run.
But that doesn't explain it all. No, I suspect it partly has to do with a sense of foreboding, a subconscious resignation to an imminent Day of Reckoning for us in the West, and America in particular*, for how good we've had it in a world that is so violent and unequal. And perhaps retribution for our sins. And our sins, depending who you talk to, are myriad and profound.
(* And New York in particular. I often recall the hilarious yet insightful question of a very dear non-American: "Why is Hollywood so obsessed with destroying New York City?" Indeed, why? Is it Los Angeles's way of getting back at its coastal rival? Is it because Wall Street assholes deserve it? Or is it jealousy because they are cleverer, richer and win more pennants? Anyhow, I feel sorry for New York and New Yorkers already, both pre- and post-9/11. Give it a rest, guys. Why not let Boise, Branson, Lubbock or Fargo take one on the chin for America for once, huh, Hollywood?)
On the Right, they say the Reckoning will come when we can't pay our profligate debts, or the digital currency collapses and Big Government turns violent and despotic, or even when we become so self-centered, decadent and idolatrous that an angry God "raptures" the good souls to heaven while leaving the sinful dregs to fight over the smoking remains while being hounded by the armies of the Anti-Christ. And Randroids have been threatening us with retribution for our sins since Atlas Shrugged in 1957.
On the Left, they say the Reckoning will come when we have depleted all the planet's resources, or genetically modified crops suddenly collapse and we forget how to feed ourselves and by extension, the world, or when climate change deprives the U.S. and many other places of the necessary conditions for industrial agriculture.
Both sides still fear the spectre of nuclear war -- from an errant Russian nuke, a burgeoning China, a jihadist's dirty bomb, or a crazy Iranian missile attack. Strangely (?), the end of the Cold War has done little to calm our fear of, and fascination with, the nuclear end times.
Then there is sci-fi pop culture which terrifies us with hordes of flesh-eating zombies, rapacious or blood-drinking aliens, planet-killing meteors, and super-diseases engineered by the government -- ours or another's -- leaked into the general population.
There is a pretty well-accepted psychological theory that argues we humans love horror stories because they help us to imagine and prepare for the worst: we can thus live out the worst case scenarios in our minds, and anticipate how we would deal with them, without actually suffering them. If that is the case, then the growing popularity of apocalyptic tales means that we are giving tremendous thought to such what-if scenarios. Does that mean such scenarios are becoming increasingly more likely?
Another well-accepted psychological theory states that we humans evolved in an environment of ever-present danger; and when danger is absent, we don't quite believe our eyes; so we seek to invent or imagine it, for example, through extreme sports. If so, then one could argue that the growing peacefulness in the West and America in particular is causing a corresponding psychological backlash, a secret yearning for an equal measure of danger to balance the scales. And it doesn't get any more dangerous than the end of the world.
Then there is the explanation that with technological progress we have become so psychologically and physically flabby and self-unreliant that we subconsciously yearn for the ultimate workout, the ultimate test of self to weld six-pack abs and Jim Brown's chest on our manliness. I mean, we don't know how to hunt or grow food anymore. We don't recognize any of the plants around us, even in our backyards. Most of us don't even know first-aid, CPR, or basic wilderness survival skills taught in Boy Scouts. This is not to mention the social epidemic of U.S. obesity, especially among the poor, and Southerners.
I find some evidence for this explanation in the growing popularity of survival shows on TV, which allow us to sit on our couches munching chips while "learning" something about taming -- or rather, bonding with -- those dwindling oases of wild nature. There is more evidence for this theory in the popularity of figures like James Wesley Rawles, best-selling author of Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse and How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It. I mean, what kind of pathetic nerd learns how to survive from a book? It sounds like something I'd do*. (Both books are available on MP3 and Kindle for all you hardcore woodsmen.)
(* I admit I read The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead by visionary survivalist Max Brooks, but only because there are no real-life zombies to practice on (yet), not even in the woods.)
But I think the vogue of contemporary Western survivalism is best explained by something else: our modern sense of helplessness in the face of unstoppable globalization and the towering power of mechanistic, bureaucratic de-humanizing corporations and governments. The West -- that is, its diplomats and business cabals -- presently rules the world; but as individuals we Westerners, and especially we Americans, seem to matter less and less. And that doesn't feel right. It doesn't sit well with our myth of ourselves as ruggedly self-reliant cowboys riding life's range of possibilities.
And now it's time to return to my more familiar political-moralistic tone. The Tea Parties -- may they fail miserably -- and the Occupy movements -- may God bless them -- are looked down upon by a majority as malcontents trying to impose their fringe worldview on the rest of us, but at least they're trying to change something. Most of us, despite our vague dissatisfaction, have given up. Organizing, protesting, questioning authority, grassroots campaigning to pass a law or Constitutional amendment -- these are looked down upon as naive pursuits at best, and anti-American at worst. Labor unions -- who traditionally gave voice to the voiceless and balanced normal people's concerns with the national-industrial plans of commerce and government -- at least in the private sector, are nearly dead in America.
Compounding our sense of helplessness, the Left-Right consensus that impersonal "free markets" and "the invisible hand" solve most problems better than a group of actual human beings with a singular purpose leaves most of us convinced that nothing we do matters (except in the statistical, mystical aggregate), and even worse, we nowadays believe that interfering with those impersonal forces is tantamount to a political and economic crime, a la apocryphal capitalist "wrecker" spies in the Soviet Union who managed to throw a monkey wrench into otherwise humming factories churning out a better life for the masses.
In the face of perceived unstoppable, impending collapse, some choose to wall themselves off from it, and/or to create something new and pure in its place. You don't have to be a flower child to recognize the similarities between a rural survivalist practicing sustainable agriculture and pursuing renewable energy and water supplies with hippy communes starting in the '60s. These loose networks of survivalists formed by social networks, radio programs, shared books and films, and even their common choice of redoubt (Idaho-Wyoming-Montana) points to a yearning for their own like-minded community, albeit separated by hills, woods and fences. They don't want to be alone alone.
So modern American survivalism cannot be dismissed as silly, fringe, or just good fun. It's serious business. We ignore this phenomenon at our own peril. Moreover, we ignore what they're feeling -- and our inexplicable commiseration with them -- at our own peril.
The antidote to impotent rugged individualism (expressed through survivalism) is organization. Not building another party, NGO, or corporation -- but organizing actual groups of human beings with a singular purpose around common goals and then acting resolutely. Those people in the Tea Parties and Occupy movements who have tasted what such gatherings of like-minded, everyday people feel like know it is intoxicating -- and eye-opening. They want more and more of it. Regardless of their politics, they are acknowledging their individual powerlessness yet exercising their individual will to voluntarily join a powerful collective. Heck, even survivalist communities, conventions and social networks are an ironical cry for "Community!" by neglected, rejected, and self-exiled loners.
Don't get me wrong, I'll keep enjoying my Walking Dead, Max Brooks and Bear Grylls. I even enjoyed Atlas Shrugged... when I was a teenager. But I am not under any illusions as to the power of the rugged individual survivalist. Rather, in him I see my own fears and shortcomings... and the failure of globalization to preserve a sense of community and individual security even for many Americans.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Reuters: 'Zombie banks' try to fool markets to delay inevitable
Publicly traded banks which come clean about the real value of their bad loans get punished by the market, so they have adopted a "delay-and-pray" strategy.
How many "zombie banks" are still out there? As long as they keep playing tricks and papering over their losses, we won't know for sure... until it's too late and it causes a financial crisis and a call for another expensive government bailout.
By Jonathan Weil
January 12, 2012 | Reuters
Monday, September 12, 2011
'Tea Party Zombies Must Die' is wholesome American fun
After an irate conservative clued me in, I played a quick game of Tea Party Zombies Must Die. As a big zombie enthusiast but a retard at first-person shooters, I can say it ain't bad. My favorite was the siamese Koch Bros. zombie with six limbs.
Look, I don't see what all the hubbub is about. First, Tea Partyers like guns. Second, people kill people, not guns or violent video games. Third, there are no zombies in the Bible, hence everybody knows they're only make-believe good fun. Fourth, even if they were real, everybody knows that zombies aren't people; that's why there are no laws against killing zombies. (However there are laws against desecrating a corpse, so... in practice you may have a hard time proving to law enforcement officers, ex post facto, that those were indeed zombies you mutilated with a crowbar and riddled with an AK.)
By Joshua Rhett Miller
September 9, 2011 | FOXNews
Monday, May 23, 2011
CDC on preparing for zombie apocalypse
This blog post at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tried to answer every American's main concern: "How do I prepare for a zombie apocalypse?" It was so popular the traffic took down the entire blog.
There are also less likely disasters like a flood, tornado or earthquake when zombie-preparedness measures could serve you well, I guess.
According to the CDC, these are your Key Supplies:
> Water;
> Food (Twinkies?);
> Medications;
> Tools and Supplies;
> Clothing and Bedding;
> Important documents (you might need your passport to flee the zombie hoard; or, your original birth certificate to be authorized to become the 1st President of the new zombie-free state "Birtherstan"); and
> First Aid supplies (useless if you are bitten).
But the CDC totally forgot:
> "Guns. Lots of guns."
> LOADS of ammunition;
> Various hand-held weapons;
> Seeds for a garden in your home fortress;
> Lime and other materials for a latrine in your home fortress;
> Gasoline, batteries, generator;
> Signal flares to attract the Army, if they're not dead yet;
> Construction materials for fortifying and repairing your home fortress;
> Books and board games to fight deadly boredom during the weeks and months barricaded in your home fortress;
> etc.
Actually, the list of survival needs is so long that, if you haven't started preparing yet, chances are it's already too late for you....
The CDC also says you should have an Emergency Plan, including:
> The types of emergencies possible in your area. (Zombies, duh);
> A designated meeting place for your family to regroup;
> Your emergency contacts... or just a list of people to call and say goodbye to as zombies are breaking down your doors and windows;
> Your evacuation route. (See "Birtherstan" above. Located one valley over from Galt's Gulch).
BTW, if you watch the series "The Walking Dead" then you know the CDC, headquartered in Atlanta, wasn't any good at stopping the zombie apocalypse. Let's hope they do a better job in real life!
By Ali S. Khan.
May 16, 2011 | CDC Public Health Matters Blog
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Liberal-effete NPR: Renegade robots the only modern Myth?
"Looking across the last 50,000 years of storytelling it's hard to find fundamentally modern narratives that rise to the level mythology. Until you consider artificial intelligence, AI."
I do agree with liberally slanted NPR that robots turning against their human creators represents a new type of human Myth, but I vehemently disagree that it is the only modern contribution to mythology.
He-llo, ever heard of zombies, NPR ?! You're showing your elitist, effete stripes. NPR readers, too. Only one online commenter, a female of all people (Erin Bell), even sort of mentioned zombies but she got it all wrong and called them renegade robots of a sort.
Look, does anybody recall any stories about Greek, Roman, Chinese, or Native American heroes battling armies of the walking dead? No.
And there are like a thousand times more movies and books about zombies than there are about sentient renegade robots. And way better ones, too. Tell the truth: how many of you ever fell asleep watching that Kubric classic of the evil sentient machine genre, 2001: A Space Odyssey, vs. falling asleep watching Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead? I rest my case.
HAL: "Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?"
Dave: "Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....."
By Adam Frank
February 16, 2011 | NPR
February 16, 2011 | NPR
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Pre-Tea Party dead conservatives decide to donate
The estate tax ('death tax') is even more necessary than I thought: somehow Republicans are managing to donate money from beyond the grave. I guess they're upset they died before the whole Tea Party craze took off and don't want to be left out. That means we have to take all their money away before they die and then make sure they don't somehow take it back, or at least qualify for a major credit card.
I've heard myths of dead Democrats managing to vote, but really, the act of getting online and paying with a credit card from the great beyond is really a bigger feat than trudging to a polling station. (Lots of polling stations are in churches, churches are near graveyards... you get the picture).
I would chalk this phenomenon up to zombie conservatives rising from their graves, but apparently this woman was cremated so we're talking about a ghost here.
Ghostbusters 3 has long been in the works and it will come out not a moment too soon!....
Alternatively, this just goes to show what we already know: Tea Partiers are old. So old, in fact, they're dead.
By Arthur Delaney
January 14, 2011 | Huffington Post
Friday, November 27, 2009
Reagan not Reagany enough for pro-Reagan RNC?
Hey, seriously though, I've got a bunch of great, original campaign slogans for the RNC, which sees a sure-fire winner in resurrecting Reagan from his eternal infernal torment:
- "Where's the Reagan?"
- "A Reagan is forever."
- "Obama: The un-Reagan."
- "Got Reagan?"
- "Think outside the Reagan."
- "They're R-r-r-eagan!"
- "The few, the proud, the Reagans. (Except Ron, Jr.)"
- "Yo quiero Reagan."
- "We make Reagan the old-fashioned way -- We Reagan it."
- "Don't get mad. Get Reagan."
- "(Reagan) Lifts and separates."
- "Get a piece of the Reagan."
- "Leave the Reagan-ing to us."
- "Reagans wanted."
- "(Reagan) The king of presidents."
- "When it absolutely, positively has to be Reagan."
- "Once you Reagan, you can't stop."
- "Did somebody say Reagan?"
- "It's not your father's Reagan."
- "Reagan's number two; he tries harder."
- "Is it live, or is it Reagan?"
- "I'm Reagan, and I can't get up!"
By John Nichols
November 25, 2009 | The Nation
The most rigidly conservative members of the Republican National Committee are circulating a proposal to establish a purity test for the party's candidates.
If adopted, the party would withhold money from any contender who disagreed with conservative principles on more than two of 10 essential issues identified by the right-wingers.
"The problem is that conservatives have lost trust in the Republican Party that we will govern as conservatives," argues James Bopp Jr., an RNC member from Indiana who has spearheaded the purity-test push. "I think that loss of trust is warranted to a certain extent because of the fact that we in the final several years of the Bush administration were supporting increased government, earmarks and, ultimately, bailouts."
Earlier this year, Bopp and his compatriots pressured RNC chair Michael Steele to declare President Obama to be a "socialist." The conservative crusaders were rebuffed then, but if they win approval for their purity test at the committee's winter meeting in January, the party will officially express:
"Republican solidarity in opposition to Obama's socialist agenda is necessary to preserve the security of our country, our economic and political freedoms, and our way of life."
"Republican solidarity in opposition to Obama's socialist agenda is necessary to preserve the security of our country, our economic and political freedoms, and our way of life."
With Orwellian irony, Bopp and his buddies have labeled their proposal: "Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates. "The relevant portion of the resolution reads:
WHEREAS, the Republican National Committee shares President Ronald Reagan's belief that the Republican Party should espouse conservative principles and public policies and welcome persons of diverse views; and WHEREAS, the Republican National Committee desires to implement President Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates; and WHEREAS, in addition to supporting candidates, the Republican National Committee provides financial support for Republican state and local parties for party building and federal election activities, which benefits all candidates and is not affected by this resolution; and THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support: (1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill; (2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare; (3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation; (4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check; (5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants; (6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges; (7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat; (8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act; (9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing, denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and (10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership; and be further RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy positions of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee; and be further RESOLVED, that upon the approval of this resolution the Republican National Committee shall deliver a copy of this resolution to each of Republican members of Congress, all Republican candidates for Congress, as they become known, and to each Republican state and territorial party office.
Fair enough.
So here's a question: Applying the standard established in the resolution – review of the candidate's official record, public statements and answers to questions – would Ronald Reagan pass the purity test?
Let's see:
(1) Deficit spending soared during Reagan's presidency.Strike one.
(2) As governor of California, Reagan oversaw the development of Medi-Cal, the nation's largest Medicaid program – expanding it to cover long-term care and developed massive new managed care systems. Strike two.
(3) As governor of California, Reagan Reagan established the Air Resources Board to battle California's smog problems and supported aggressive government intervention where the market had failed to protect the environment. As president, Reagan signed more wilderness protections laws – which restrict private-sector exploitation of natural resources – than any president in history. Strike three.
(4) Reagan was a former union president who campaigned against the Taft-Hartley Act and other restrictions of the right of unions to organize. Strike four.
(5) Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which granted amnesty to most undocumented workers who could prove they had been in the country continuously for the previous five years. After he finished his presidency, Reagan continues to speak out forcefully for immigration rights. Strike five.
(6) After the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut, Reagan was urged by some to surge more troops into the region. Instead, he ordered the Marines to begin withdrawal from Lebanon. Strike six.
(7) Reagan acknowledged that during his presidency the U.S.sold weapons to Iran. Strike seven.
(8) Reagan was the first president to invite an openly gay couple to spend the night in the White House and he famously argued that gays and lesbians should not be discriminated against in a 1978 television advertising campaign. Strike eight.
(9) Shortly after his inauguration as governor of California, Reagan signed into law the most liberal abortion statute of its day". Strike nine.
(10) Here's Reagan, in 1991, on gun control: "I support the Brady Bill, and I urge the Congress to enact it without further delay." Strike ten.
Of course it is true that Reagan, like John Kerry, was for some ideas before he was against them.
Reasonable people might debate the proper point at which to try and pin Reagan down.
But no reasonable person can suggest that Ronald Reagan would have met the eight out ten test the RNC right-wingers seek to apply – especially on hot-button issues such as gun control, gay rights and immigration.
Indeed, one of the favorites of the RNC's extreme conservatives, Florida U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio, recently declared that Reagan was wrong to support amnesty for undocumented immigrants.
And it is probably worth noting that, when Reagan was seeking the Republican nomination in 1980, conservatives Phil Crane and John Connolly suggested that "the Gipper" was an amiable fellow but just not pure enough. Crane positioned himself that year as as a pure conservative alternative to Reagan.
Crane, the purist, won 1.8 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire Republican primary and exited stage right.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Sirota: America is zombie-crazy!
Zombies are always around, we just don't always notice them....
By David Sirota
October 9, 2009 Creators.com
What's with all the zombies lately?
That could be a question about one of the hippest retro fads that pop culture has going these days. Inspired by horror genres of past, zombies have lurched back to pre-eminence in books like "World War Z," video games like "Left 4 Dead" and blockbuster films like "Zombieland." Even the highbrow producers at National Public Radio recently devoted a segment to a University of Ottawa study entitled "Mathematical Modeling of An Outbreak of Zombie Infection." Indeed, the undead have become so popular, they've spurred "zombie walks" in cities and spawned Weird Al-ish parodies through Jane Austen knock-offs like "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and bands such as the Zombeatles (with their hit "Hard Day's Night of the Living Dead").
Frighteningly enough, though, that question about zombies could also be asked of America's political culture.
It was only a year ago that "zombie" first entered the colloquial economic lexicon during the collapse of the financial institutions that were cannibalizing the economy. From a balance-sheet perspective, many of these firms were dead. But they were quickly reanimated as zombie banks with trillions of taxpayer dollars.
Like a typical zombie outbreak, the initial plague spread.
On Wall Street, we have zombie executives — those who destroyed the economy but nonetheless kept their same jobs and now continue paying themselves huge bonuses. At the White House, President Obama hired zombie advisers whose zombie economic ideologies and records manufacturing recession conditions should have killed their careers, but who now sit in high government office letting out moans in support of the zombie banks.
On Capitol Hill, the scene this Halloween season looks like Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. Decrepit zombie politicians with the funk of 40,000 years stalk Congress with the very zombie lobbyists that the election was said to disempower.
Lately, they are working in tandem to construct zombie health insurance companies — for-profit corporations eternalized by public subsidies, customer mandates and almost no regulation or competition. At the same time, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that should have already concluded keep plodding on with an unchanging zombie strategy — all while media zombies push zombie myths about death panels and birth certificates, effectively feasting on the last functioning lobes of the American brain.
Call me a zombie pundit, but I agree with "World War Z" author Max Brooks' suggestion that the concurrent rise of zombie pop and political cultures is no coincidence.
"Zombies are an apocalyptic threat, we are living in times of apocalyptic anxiety (and) we need a vessel in which to coalesce those anxieties," he says.
In fact, I'll go out on a severed limb and take it further: If zombies specifically represent the apocalyptic downsides of immortalized mindlessness, then today's zombie zeitgeist is not merely a result of scary quandaries created by stupidity. It is a reaction to both those problems and the sense that they can never be thwarted.
Here we are, a year after a financial implosion that should have driven a stake in the heart of free market fundamentalism. Here we are, a year after an election that was supposed to pour holy water on Wall Street vampires, exorcise the economy's demons and challenge the ancient mummies of neoconservative foreign policy. Yet here we are, with virtually nothing changed, watching the same zombie crises indomitably stumble forward.
And so what do we do? We flee to entertainment venues that let us enjoy the campy thrill of confronting the undead — even though we've lost the ability to do that in real life.
"The zombie is a way for us to explore massive disasters in a safe way," Brooks says. "You can't shoot the financial meltdown in the head, but you can do that with a zombie."
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Liberal zombies and true humanism
I'm glad somebody finally wrote a political article about zombies. Zombies deserve their due. I gotta admit, I love zombie movies, (and zombie lit, like World War Z) even though they've ruined so many nights of my sleep. Indeed I like most post-apocalyptic films. Sure, they're full of guns, but I actually don't mind, because it would be silly to argue that we need the 2nd Amendment in case the undead storm our homes and office to devour our flesh. (Right?) Why I really like zombie movies is that humans show their true colors when faced with an unstoppable zombie horde. The loud macho guy turns out to be a whining pussy; the hysterical, frightened girl turns out to be a calm, dead-eye shot when it counts; the loyal husband turns out to be a selfish coward; the pious priest turns out to be faithless; the dried-up cynic turns out to have hidden reservoirs of faith; and sometimes, the decent, selfless and brave guy turns out to be decent, selfless and brave.
I also like zombie movies because you get to see how people behave when they all know they're going to die. I mean, die pretty soon. Most of us live our lives as if death is something that happens to other people. But what if it suddenly dawned on all of us that our lives were not measured out in yawning decades, or even years, but in fleeting days and hours? What if we knew death wasn't just scary, what if we knew our death was going to be downright terrifying? In zombie movies, nevertheless, somewhere toward the end, the last survivors typically come to some kind of stoic acceptance of their fate, while drawing comfort from their comrades. They realize "they're all in it together," as Waldman notes. Whether the "it" here is life or death, or both, I'm not sure.
In real life, we don't all live and die together. We die off one by one, years and decades apart, creating the illusion that we're each of us immune to the zombie's bite. But as Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg remarked, that silent, legless ghoul is dragging itself through darkness toward all of us. It's going to get us all, eventually. We are all in this together. In the zombie genre, it's no coincidence that those who decide to split from everyone else to save themselves almost always end up a limb and a brain short. Conversely the brave, decent guy often meets his end by sacrificing himself to preserve his fellow survivors a bit longer, thereby calmly choosing the time and place of his honorable death.
So I spend a lot of time thinking about which character I am in this undead horror flick that is life. Am I basically decent, generous, and brave, or am I a selfish coward? Am I the macho poseur who's secretly afraid? Am I the faltering hysteric who surprisingly manages to save the day? Am I the atheist who still hasn't met his foxhole? I variously feel like all of these people. I identify.
Although it's certainly odd, it might even be healthy to imagine every now and then that zombies have taken over, that death does lumber behind every corner, that precious moments reunited with friends and loved ones really are all that matter now: Have I said everything that needs saying? Did my life have any sense or proportion? Does x, y, z "crisis" really matter? Who are the people that matter most to me, and how fast can I get to them? Is there something left to prove? To show? To forgive? Is there still enough time to...?
Another interesting sub-theme of zombie movies is that the immediate needs of the living take absolute precedence over our feelings for the dead. Those who mourn their dead (or undead) loved ones to excess and forget the needs of the living usually get dismembered and zombie-fied for their trouble. I find this a very harsh moral.
Finally, zombie movies fascinate me because the characters display a will to survive although survival is hopeless. And not just personally survive, but survive as a group. I truly believe there is a species survival instinct -- genetically hardwired humanism -- in all of us which overrides our personal survival instinct. As ravenous zombies take down the group one by one, as the survivors' numbers and options dwindle critically, the species survival instinct always kicks in, turning them all into basically decent, selfless, and brave people who are willing to sacrifice totally for the good of the group. At that point, as a viewer, something weird happens to me: I become jealous of these characters. I want to feel what they're feeling then. I want their absolute certainty and clarity in those last moments. I want to be with them in that barricaded attic or rooftop, because that is where perfectly kind, compassionate, and united human beings dwell. Right there. And maybe only there. The promise of life can't bring us together like that; only the threat of imminent death. And that's a darn shame. Imagine how great the world would be if we could all be decent, selfless and brave all the time -- with no zombies!
Anyway, fast zombies are way scarier than slow zombies. You watch the Dawn of the Dead re-make or 28 Days Later and tell me it isn't so.
By Paul Waldman
June 16, 2009 | Prospect.org
Zombie Movies by Decade
The popularity of each resident in our cultural stable of monsters rises and falls as the years pass. Presently, vampires are at the top of the heap, with HBO's True Blood and Stephanie Meyer's unbelievably successful Twilight book series (22 million copies sold in 2008 alone) leading the way. The last few years saw a glut of ghost stories, many adapted from Japanese horror films. Werewolves are in a bit of a rut right now, but perhaps they'll make a comeback sometime soon. All of these menaces can be presented in the context of campy fun, genuinely frightening horror, or even highbrow (or at least upper-middlebrow) entertainment.
But then there's the zombie. There are no highbrow zombie movies or novels, and admitting you love them amounts to a declaration that your tastes are unrefined. In truth, zombies should be boring. There are only so many things you can do with them, narratively speaking. They can't charm you, like vampires, or make you pity them as they relate their torment while in human form, like werewolves. They clumsily lope after you, hoping to feast on your flesh, and they have almost no personality as individuals. Instead, zombie mobs are just an undifferentiated mass of malevolence. What's remarkable is that a villain with such little complexity has thrived for so long.
And "thrive" does not begin to describe the status of the contemporary zombie. They've come a long way from their roots in stories of Haitian voodoo masters using magical powder to enslave unfortunate souls. Consider some recent developments: One of the big publishing hits this year is Seth Grahame-Smith's refashioning of Jane Austen's classic novel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Later this month, Chicago will host its first ever Zombie-Con. The New York Times' Paul Krugman is obviously a secret zombie-phile; his blog contains multiple references to zombies. There are too many zombie comic books to list. Increasingly, we're seeing "zombie" used as an adjective in a widening variety of contexts, from "zombie banks" to "zombie computers" to "zombie ideas."
At the center of this cultural juggernaut of the undead, are the films. Zombie movies have been around almost as long as there have been movies. While some scholars point to the 1919 silent German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as the first zombie film (the zombie in question was actually a hypnotized mental patient), the first mainstream zombie picture was probably White Zombie (1932), starring Bela Lugosi. For the aficionado, though, the truly seminal zombie film is George Romero's low-budget 1968 masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead. Before that film, zombies were usually employed as slave labor, guided by the master who had created them. Romero reimagined them as a mob whose purpose was to destroy and assimilate all living humans. And to eat brains.
Although previous efforts certainly referenced current events (for example, the first film in the Nazi zombie subgenre, Revenge of the Zombies, was released in 1943, while World War II was still going on), Romero's films set observers looking for political themes amid the brain-eating. When Night of the Living Dead was released, many saw it as a metaphor for the Vietnam War or domestic social upheaval. Perhaps most notably, its male lead, Duane Jones, was black, a rare casting decision at the time. In interviews, Romero insists he was not trying to make a point about race. "We cast an African American actor because he was the best actor from among our friends," Romero said in 2008. "And when we finished the film, literally as we were driving it to New York in the trunk of a car, that was the night Martin Luther King was assassinated." Jones' character is shot at the film's end by a group of vigilantes who mistake him for a zombie. Romero's sequels became much more explicit in their societal critique; in Dawn of the Dead, the zombies mindlessly wander around a shopping mall, as if repeating the essential activity of their former lives.
But most people who love a good zombie romp aren't too interested in political subtext -- they want to see arms being gnawed and large numbers of the undead blasted to kingdom come. And they've got more opportunities to feed their (OK, I'll admit it -- our) zombie jones than ever. Wikipedia contains a long list of zombie movies made since the 1930s, and if we turn that list into a graph, we see that the genre has exploded in the past decade. While there may be more films being produced overall, any way you slice it, if you're a zombie lover, this is the time to be alive.
So what's going on here? Why is our love of zombies only growing stronger?
In part, it's because the subject the zombie most directly addresses is so universal. For all the metaphoric possibilities zombies hold, at their most fundamental, they are death itself, pursuing us through the countryside. As Simon Pegg, the co-writer and star of the zombie homage/spoof Shaun of the Dead, recently wrote in the Guardian:
Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.
Their ineptitude actually makes them avoidable, at least for a while. If you're careful, if you keep your wits about you, you can stave them off, even outstrip them -- much as we strive to outstrip death. Drink less, cut out red meat, exercise, practice safe sex; these are our shotguns, our cricket bats, our farmhouses, our shopping malls. However, none of these things fully insulates us from the creeping dread that something so witless, so elemental may yet catch us unawares -- the drunk driver, the cancer sleeping in the double helix, the legless ghoul dragging itself through the darkness towards our ankles.
Metaphors aside, one can't examine the zombie phenomenon without addressing the genre's extreme violence. A vampire movie involves lots of skulking around and a few bites here and there. A zombie movie, on the other hand, will inevitably feature buckets of blood and dozens of zombies dispatched in almost comically violent ways -- limbs severed and bodies torn asunder. And that's not even mentioning the cannibalism.
The particular nature of the genre's violence may lie at the heart of the contemporary appeal of zombies in films and especially in video games. Imagine an action movie in which the hero repeatedly put a shotgun to the head of actual human beings and pulled the trigger. Even if they were very bad people, as an audience we'd come to feel that the hero was a sadistic freak, whatever the nobility of his larger cause. But not so with zombies, who are visibly human, despite their lack of consciousness and life force.
And in video games, you move from observer to participant. You can chop off their arms, blow off their heads, and generally engage in the most vicious kinds of violence one can imagine, and it's OK because, hey, they're zombies. Yet unlike the games in which you are fighting aliens or robots, your victims look basically human. When you play a zombie game, you get to act like a psychopath without saying to yourself, "I really shouldn't be enjoying acting like a psychopath." The zombie game allows us to indulge our inner barbarian without self-doubt.
There's so much more we could discuss -- an entire book could be written on the unending dispute over the relative merits of fast zombies and slow zombies, for instance. But since TAP is a magazine about politics, we must ask this question: Apart from the extreme violence, is the zombie genre fundamentally liberal or conservative? Does its increasing popularity serve anyone's political ends?
While one can certainly use zombies to express all kinds of ideas, I would argue that at heart, the genre is a progressive one. It's true that fighting off the zombie horde requires plentiful firearms, no doubt pleasing Second Amendment advocates. And in a zombie movie, government tends to be either ineffectual or completely absent. On the other hand, when the zombie apocalypse comes, capitalism breaks down, too -- people aren't going to be exchanging money for goods and services; they're just going to break into the hardware store and grab what they need (and if you think your private health insurer is going to be paying claims for treatment of zombie bites, you're living in a dream world). But most important, what ensures survival in a zombie story are the progressive ideals of common cause and collective action. A small group of people from varying backgrounds are thrust together and find that they can transcend their differences of age, race, and gender (the typical band of survivors is a veritable United Nations of cultural diversity). They come to understand that if they're going to get out of this with their brains kept securely housed in their skulls and not travelling down some zombie's gullet, they've got to act as though they're all in it together. Surviving the tide of zombies requires community and mutual responsibility. What could be more progressive than that?
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