Friday Blogging - 7/25/08
by Chris 2 comments Leave a comment July 25th, 2008TGIF!?
8:25am
Obama’s speech in front of 200k in Germany yesterday:
It was a pretty good speech. Full of his usual high minded rhetoric about coming together for change. It also had a call to action for our NATO allies: Send more troops to Afghanistan!
9:30am
You can read the text of Obama’s speech here.
If you want to check out an informed criticism of Obama’s Afghanistan policy, check out this article by Juan Cole.
Here’s a highlight:
Nor is it at all clear that sending more U.S. troops to southern Afghanistan can resolve the problem of the resurgence of the Taliban there. American and NATO search-and-destroy missions alienate the local population and fuel, rather than quench, the insurgency. Resentment over U.S. airstrikes on innocent civilians and wedding parties is growing. Brazen attacks on U.S. forward bases and on institutions such as the prison in the southern city of Kandahar are becoming more frequent. To be sure, Obama advocates combining counterinsurgency military operations with development aid and attention to resolving the problem of poppy cultivation. (Afghan poppies are turned into heroin for the European market, and the profits have fueled some of the Taliban’s resurgence.) Stepped-up military action, however, is still the central component of his plan.
10:50am
The political message of the Dark Knight?
11:00am
Is Obama commander-in-chief material? It’s the wrong question.
1:00pm
Thoreau has a Bush impeachment catchphrase in mind.I forget where I heard it, but this is my favorite, “Impeachment, it’s not just for BJs.”
2:10pm
“[McCain is] a politician who was in a war as a young man and was captured by the enemy. It was heroic service, but it wasn’t leadership. And yet the myth of military leadership is the foundation of his claim to the presidency.” - Digby
4:40pm
IRONY ALERT
“No regime should ignore the will of its own people” - George W. Bush
5:30pm
Have a great weekend!
Possible Dark Knight SPOILERS following:
I have thought about what the movie tries to imply. There is the scene where Dent is interrogating the guy to try to find out about what the Joker is up to when it comes to Rachel. He acts like he is going to shoot him, gives him the whole coin bit (”Heads you live, tails you die”), except the coin is double-sided heads. He never intends to kill the guy, just to scare the crap out of him (possible waterboarding/torture corollary). Batman comes to stop him and tells him not to do such things, that it could jeopardize everything Dent has accomplished.
There is the part where Batman savagely beats Joker in the interrogation cell. Gordon doesn’t beat the Joker (although he does look the other way and does try and stop Batman before he bars the door). The cop who does try to beat up the Joker ends up failing and letting him free.
Cut to the part with the cell phone surveillance. Fox tells Wayne that every day the machine is present at Wayne Enterprises, he won’t be. Also, Batman ends up becoming a villain of sorts to the police at the end of the movie and having to run. You get the big speech about how Batman is a guy who does whats right and accepts the consequences for his actions because he can handle it.
Add those things together. The point of the movie is that Batman isn’t the ideal hero for the city, and that Dent was. Dent was elected by society to do what he is doing, which is working the justice system legally to clean up the city. Dent shouldn’t be a vigilante and act on his own because that isn’t his role. Batman was not elected by the people, he is a vigilante, who Gotham is lucky, has a set of principles that help keep himself under control. The movie doesn’t shy away from calling Batman a criminal and it doesn’t have a problem suggesting that he should go to jail for what he does. Being a vigilante thus means having to accept the consequences of your actions. The cell phone bit was unethical, as Fox, the voice of wisdom in the scene, points out. The movie isn’t saying that sometimes it is required to break the rules. Its saying that a vigilante can break the rules, but they have to be willing to accept the consequences. Government officials CANNOT break the rules, since it is their charge to uphold those rules.
Excellent comment. Very thorough.