OLIVER STONE'S W

cy twombly



In town today I went into Dollar General to get some lighters and a smell-good candle to neutralize the scent of dead mouse in a wall killed by d-con. This too will pass. I found a display of $5 DVDs. Only one looked like something I'd like to see, though with much reservation. It was W by Oliver Stone, released 2 years ago. I respect Stone's film making so much I thought I'd take a chance with it. As usual, Stone did it right. When it was finished, I concluded we've had the average American 4th grade little rich boy for President. We actually had a child for "the decider" for 8 years. When Reagan was doing his 8 years, I thought it couldn't be worse, then it was. I felt like the film followed W and let him be himself in his private life as well as in office. The choice of music was light-hearted happy music while we're watching our country being brought to its knees by Cheney, Rummy, Rice, and W through Karl Rove's ventriloquism. Dubya, as Molly Ivans called him, was Charlie McCarthy to Rove's Edgar Bergen.



Most poignant of all in the music was at the end when the credits rolled; Bob Dylan's Masters Of War played all the way through. The first music in the film that was not light hearted, that I noticed. I took the soundtrack to add some levity to the weighty story and I felt it was about the same as children's rhymes that tell where W was coming from inside himself. It gave him a tra-la-la touch: What Me Worry? Josh Brolin, the actor playing W, became him. Oliver Stone did a great deal of research into W's life. He came out true to the W remembered from those frightful years. Stammering at press conferences was the same in the film as then, leaving out the worst of it, like the time someone asked him a question about India. He started a sentence with a word or two, over and over, unable to answer because he didn't understand the question. He finally was so frustrated he turned around and walked away, leaving the press conference. You can see that on YouTube.



When he was governor of Texas, he said he believed God wanted him to be president. I thought: God the destroyer, of the 3 aspects of God; creator, preserver, destroyer. I can see it his way when I consider this is the time for the breakdown of everything in civilizastion, somebody was needed in the  most influential position on earth to kick the downward spiral into motion. Reagan, guided by God the destroyer, set up the decline and fall of the American Empire, and W's legal team took the election 20 years later, not by popular election, but by judicial fiat in a supreme court packed by the Reagan Revolution with right wing ideologues, and it paid off. Since Reagan, the courts all over the country have been shifted to the right by putting right wingers in as many judge positions as possible. The word Liberal, meaning somebody who believes in democracy and equal rights for all, has been changed to mean subversive. Alas, subversive to fascism only, which is why they want defenders of democracy out of the picture. Fascism is a word the corporate media won't use, though fascism means right wing militarism.



Yesterday on the news I heard you can't blame just one side in congress, you have to blame both sides, when it's only the republicans breaking down the democracy in congress. It sets my blood to boiling when I hear some media mouthpiece saying both sides are to blame. It's only both sides in that democrats are not about taking from the poor to give to the rich. That's just not a democrat principle, while among the republicans it is the driving purpose. The way republicans are winning elections tells me the American people want the end of what we have of democracy, at least 51 percent do. When it's gone, it's not given back. Attempts to get it back would be reaching to catch a falling knife.



At lunch with friend Jim Winfield yesterday, he was saying "we" about the fascist takeover of our government, and I said I can't join in the We, because I do not want American democracy overtaken by fascism. That I am powerless to change the direction back toward democracy makes it all the more They, not We. I am not a post-Reagan republican; therefore, not a member of We. I am We among American We The People, but not among the corporate powers sweeping democracy aside to get it out of the way for more money to take from We The People to help them work all the better against We The People. Talk, now, about democracy is called socialist, something far far away, forgotten in our past if we ever had democracy. In the time when democracy is going away, it seems like it has never been. Maybe it was an oligarchy / plutocracy all the way along. Reflection says it was, leading me to believe the democracy experiment in America has failed. Failed to the point that the republicans are goose-stepping toward putting the democratic party out of existence, because it has the same name as democracy. Shut down democracy as a goal and rule without opposition. Homeland Security.



We the people are so manipulated by propaganda that propaganda has become truth. In a cabinet meeting in Oliver Stone's film, the Gang of Four were talking about Middle Eastern dictators. Of Saddam Hussein, on of them said, "He's no Hitler." I thought, But one of you in that room is. Even better than Hitler, more sophisticated control machinations with at least equally effective propaganda manipulation. We the people have become we the suckers. If they were ever brought to court to be tried for UnAmerican Activities, they'd use for their justification: the dumb-asses should have known better. There was an awful lot of non-corporate press telling the truth of what they were doing. It was out there. Of course, they'll never be tried. It would cost the government too much after they've drained our resources. Ayn Rand is a novelist, not a philosopher. Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer, not a philosopher. These are the great minds, the guiding darkness for them that lurk in the dark.



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