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Fatal complacency
4 hours ago
Showing posts with label nukes and fridges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nukes and fridges. Show all posts
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
The Moral Lacuna of Libertarianism
"We cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his own people that there will be no mercy."
— The Obama
Little did I expect I'd ever have to side with Obama against Ron Paul.
While nation building like in Iraq is not a good idea — the war there should have ended the day Saddam was caught — and it may be legitimate to speak of a welfare-warfare state in that context, the vicious, inhuman nature of the libertarian extremist anti-war attitude is now in plain sight.
While this was going on…
…Ron Paul had this to say:
"Last week we once again heard numerous voices calling for intervention in Libya. Most say the US should establish a 'no-fly' zone over Libya, pretending that it is a benign, virtually cost-free action,"
Yes, it is.
"…and the least we could do to assist those trying to oust the Gaddaffi regime."
You bet.
"Let us be clear about one thing: for the US to establish a 'no fly' zone over all or part of Libya would constitute an act of war against Libya. Establishing any kind of military presence in the sovereign territory…"
Glad to see that the mystic and meaningless title "sovereign nation" still is a license to murder.
"The administration has stated that nothing is off the table as they discuss US responses to the unrest. This sort of talk is alarming on so many levels. Does this mean a nuclear strike is on the table? Apparently so."
Behold the death of a weak argument from ludicrous hyperbole.
"In this case, I would like to make sure we actually follow the black letter of the law provided in the Constitution that explicitly grants congress the sole authority to declare war. …the president … would have no authority to engage in hostilities because we have not been attacked…"
If a government like Gaddafi's slaughters the people it pretends to protect, any other nation or any private organization has an absolute right to go in and help the victims defend themselves, while taking any reasonable measure to avoid collateral damage. This is a natural right stemming from every individual's human right to life, which takes precedence over any national or international law, which at this point becomes null and void.
Anybody who would put the law above human lives is less than a human being.
"This is not our fight."
Where have I heard that before? Ah, yes, appeasing the nazis. Now, that was a good idea.
So if you ever see Ron Paul assaulted, like when Brüno tries to ass rape him again or a Gaddafi terrorist aims a missile at his plane, don't help Paul. He wouldn't want it.
Boy, am I glad that clown didn't get elected. (Never thought I'd say that.) Obama may be even more cowardly than the French, but at least he's been shamed into action instead of clinging to his delusions. Turns out Obama is indeed a better, or at least a less evil, person than Ron Paul.
"We don't have the money for more military interventions overseas… We have to rely on the Fed's printing presses and our ability to borrow from China to fund these wars."
A couple missiles and some jet fuel won't drive the budget over the brink. But if it need be to help human beings being slaughtered while fighting for their freedom, keep the presses rolling and palm off another couple billion dollars in bonds on the Chinese.
As far as I am concerned, Paul and his ilk of Libertarian peaceniks have crossed the moral event horizon. If the French are braver than you, you're doing something wrong.
How, then, do minarchist libertarians and objectivists arrive at such delusions?
Minarchism and more narrowly objectivism hold that there must be governments, or else there would be chaos — which is somehow bad. Also, for some reason there's no world government — as would be logical if there were one "objective" set of laws — but mankind is arbitrarily divided into countries, or nation states, or rather tribes.
Every tribe has a government to pacify, arbitrate between the members of, and defend only its own tribe, as governments must be funded by enforced taxation, and it would be wrong to use that money forcibly collected for the "common defense" of our tribe to unselfishly and altruistically defend a foreign tribe.
What's more, our soldiers enlisted to defend their own families and tribesmen. Thus, they will readily fight for the worst scum, if only it belongs to our tribe, but it would be wrong to expect them to fight for worthless foreigners, be it defenseless women and children or whatever.
Thus, objectivism and minarchist libertarianism both evict themselves from the realm of morality. Belief systems that encourage their followers to idly stand by while a few miles away mass murder is committed, which they could prevent at little cost or risk to themselves, cannot claim to be moral in any way, shape, or form.
Ayn Rand, who founded objectivism and injected it with her mistaken notion of minarchism, correctly observed that a morality is a code to sustain human life, and that self-sacrifice is immoral. (Why would you value anyone's life more highly than your own?) Yet these two belief systems she shaped forbid saving life even if no self-sacrifice is involved and thus become self-contradictory and, at least in their politics, invalid. Minarchist libertarianism, which unlike objectivism is not a comprehensive philosophy, but merely a political ideology, is thus completely invalidated.
Now, what's the difference between minarchist libertarianism and anarchist libertarianism, between objectivism and (anarcho-)capitalism? Let's stick with the example of the Libyan civil war.
On an objectivist aircraft carrier, the captain would address his crew like this:
"As we get our funding from American taxpayers, and you enlisted to protect only America, we are not authorized to defend foreigners. Therefore, we'll sit here, waiting for a direct threat to America to emerge, enjoying the Mediterranean sun, and watching those bloody foreigners getting slaughtered. Their problem if they can't by themselves handle the dictator of the country allotted to them."
This is the moral bankruptcy of objectivism, or at least of libertarian politics. (In fairness I should point out that the better sort of objectivists finds a workaround for that dilemma by declaring that helping freedom fighters is in the US national interest or that every human life has an intrinsic value.)
On a capitalist aircraft carrier, the captain would address his crew like this:
"We get paid for defending our customers, and you signed on to fight on their behalf. However, every once in a while, we hand out free samples to people who are not yet our customers, like those Libyans over there. If anyone of you has a problem fighting for Libyans, there's the gangway."
This is the moral nature of capitalism.
— The Obama
Little did I expect I'd ever have to side with Obama against Ron Paul.
While nation building like in Iraq is not a good idea — the war there should have ended the day Saddam was caught — and it may be legitimate to speak of a welfare-warfare state in that context, the vicious, inhuman nature of the libertarian extremist anti-war attitude is now in plain sight.
While this was going on…
Meantime, hundreds of cars full of civilians headed out of the city, a Reuters correspondent said.
"Do we have to wait till he (Gadhafi) kills us all before the (world) acts. We are very disappointed," said Adel Mansoura, an air traffic controller fleeing with his family.
"When we heard the U.N. resolution, we were very happy and thought we had our freedom but now we have been left on our own to the killers," he said at a petrol station where dozens of other cars lined for fuel as they fled.
The head of the rebel National Libyan Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, said the international community must act swiftly to protect civilians from Gadhafi's forces.
"Now there is a bombardment by artillery and rockets on all districts of Benghazi," he told Al Jazeera television. "The international community is late in intervening to save civilians from Gadhafi's forces."
"Today in Benghazi there will be a catastrophe if the international community does not implement the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council," he said. "We appeal to the international community, to the all the free world, to stop this tyranny from exterminating civilians."
…Ron Paul had this to say:
"Last week we once again heard numerous voices calling for intervention in Libya. Most say the US should establish a 'no-fly' zone over Libya, pretending that it is a benign, virtually cost-free action,"
Yes, it is.
"…and the least we could do to assist those trying to oust the Gaddaffi regime."
You bet.
"Let us be clear about one thing: for the US to establish a 'no fly' zone over all or part of Libya would constitute an act of war against Libya. Establishing any kind of military presence in the sovereign territory…"
Glad to see that the mystic and meaningless title "sovereign nation" still is a license to murder.
"The administration has stated that nothing is off the table as they discuss US responses to the unrest. This sort of talk is alarming on so many levels. Does this mean a nuclear strike is on the table? Apparently so."
Behold the death of a weak argument from ludicrous hyperbole.
"In this case, I would like to make sure we actually follow the black letter of the law provided in the Constitution that explicitly grants congress the sole authority to declare war. …the president … would have no authority to engage in hostilities because we have not been attacked…"
If a government like Gaddafi's slaughters the people it pretends to protect, any other nation or any private organization has an absolute right to go in and help the victims defend themselves, while taking any reasonable measure to avoid collateral damage. This is a natural right stemming from every individual's human right to life, which takes precedence over any national or international law, which at this point becomes null and void.
Anybody who would put the law above human lives is less than a human being.
"This is not our fight."
Where have I heard that before? Ah, yes, appeasing the nazis. Now, that was a good idea.
So if you ever see Ron Paul assaulted, like when Brüno tries to ass rape him again or a Gaddafi terrorist aims a missile at his plane, don't help Paul. He wouldn't want it.
Boy, am I glad that clown didn't get elected. (Never thought I'd say that.) Obama may be even more cowardly than the French, but at least he's been shamed into action instead of clinging to his delusions. Turns out Obama is indeed a better, or at least a less evil, person than Ron Paul.
"We don't have the money for more military interventions overseas… We have to rely on the Fed's printing presses and our ability to borrow from China to fund these wars."
A couple missiles and some jet fuel won't drive the budget over the brink. But if it need be to help human beings being slaughtered while fighting for their freedom, keep the presses rolling and palm off another couple billion dollars in bonds on the Chinese.
As far as I am concerned, Paul and his ilk of Libertarian peaceniks have crossed the moral event horizon. If the French are braver than you, you're doing something wrong.
How, then, do minarchist libertarians and objectivists arrive at such delusions?
Minarchism and more narrowly objectivism hold that there must be governments, or else there would be chaos — which is somehow bad. Also, for some reason there's no world government — as would be logical if there were one "objective" set of laws — but mankind is arbitrarily divided into countries, or nation states, or rather tribes.
Every tribe has a government to pacify, arbitrate between the members of, and defend only its own tribe, as governments must be funded by enforced taxation, and it would be wrong to use that money forcibly collected for the "common defense" of our tribe to unselfishly and altruistically defend a foreign tribe.
What's more, our soldiers enlisted to defend their own families and tribesmen. Thus, they will readily fight for the worst scum, if only it belongs to our tribe, but it would be wrong to expect them to fight for worthless foreigners, be it defenseless women and children or whatever.
Thus, objectivism and minarchist libertarianism both evict themselves from the realm of morality. Belief systems that encourage their followers to idly stand by while a few miles away mass murder is committed, which they could prevent at little cost or risk to themselves, cannot claim to be moral in any way, shape, or form.
Ayn Rand, who founded objectivism and injected it with her mistaken notion of minarchism, correctly observed that a morality is a code to sustain human life, and that self-sacrifice is immoral. (Why would you value anyone's life more highly than your own?) Yet these two belief systems she shaped forbid saving life even if no self-sacrifice is involved and thus become self-contradictory and, at least in their politics, invalid. Minarchist libertarianism, which unlike objectivism is not a comprehensive philosophy, but merely a political ideology, is thus completely invalidated.
Now, what's the difference between minarchist libertarianism and anarchist libertarianism, between objectivism and (anarcho-)capitalism? Let's stick with the example of the Libyan civil war.
On an objectivist aircraft carrier, the captain would address his crew like this:
"As we get our funding from American taxpayers, and you enlisted to protect only America, we are not authorized to defend foreigners. Therefore, we'll sit here, waiting for a direct threat to America to emerge, enjoying the Mediterranean sun, and watching those bloody foreigners getting slaughtered. Their problem if they can't by themselves handle the dictator of the country allotted to them."
This is the moral bankruptcy of objectivism, or at least of libertarian politics. (In fairness I should point out that the better sort of objectivists finds a workaround for that dilemma by declaring that helping freedom fighters is in the US national interest or that every human life has an intrinsic value.)
On a capitalist aircraft carrier, the captain would address his crew like this:
"We get paid for defending our customers, and you signed on to fight on their behalf. However, every once in a while, we hand out free samples to people who are not yet our customers, like those Libyans over there. If anyone of you has a problem fighting for Libyans, there's the gangway."
This is the moral nature of capitalism.
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Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Assange vs. the Galactically Stupid
There's this galactically stupid letter on Julian Assange at The Atlasphere.
(Insulting your allies behind their backs and then hoping it stays secret is a good way to find allies?!)
As all things in the universe are connected, everything is remotely connected to national security in some way. By this fascist (or rather objecto-fascist*) "logic," the government could do anything, confiscate anything, kidnap anybody, assassinate anybody, as long as it cries "national security" while doing it.
BTW, the government would not even have to prove the tenuous connection to national security. The proof, you know, is secret, too.
By this "logic," the government might just as well shoot random people in Times Square that "look Iranian" because "they might be carrying nukes under their coats." That would serve the cause of nuclear security about as well as kidnapping or assassinating people who publish "secret" information on hopelessly inept government negotiations that may or may not tangentially concern nukes.
That's how today's neo-fascism or, in this case, objecto-fascism works: Blind fear of terrorism and nukes, blind faith in the government's ability to do something about it, and a willingness to give said government carte blanche every time it cries "national security." Disgusting.
As an added bonus, here another letter that is not quite as stupid and fascist, and that asks a question that deserves to be answered:
"Does Assange ever release secret documents from our enemies?"
Well, I guess Assange releases whatever he gets hold of. So why doesn't he release documents from axis of evil governments?
Probably 'cause he ain't got any. Why ain't he got any?
Probably because those governments are even more fascist and better at silencing, kidnapping, and assassinating whistleblowers than the US government, by several orders of magnitude. So the US government is several rungs in hell above virtually any other government. Does that mean that it should be given leeway to kidnap or assassinate an odd dissenter every now and then, just because other governments do it regularly?
Finally, for fascists' favorite fervor, the "hundred Afghans," whose identity and collaboration with US forces the leak allegedly revealed to vengeful taliban, and whose blood accordingly is according to Palin et al. on Assange's hands:
And…
Of course it would have been better if WikiLeaks had redacted those names. But as long as this kind of thing goes on, your average soldier of whatever affiliation — and every yahoo rooting for them like a Palin — has more blood on their hands than Assange.
The fascists didn't care shit about collateral damage among Iraqis and Afghans while US troops did the killing. Again, the core idea(l) of statism at work: States may cause any number of carnage, casualties, and collateral damage they want; an individual may cause none.
But morality does not come in numbers. Just because there are 300,000,000 of you, that does not mean you collectively have any more right to harm or kill anyone than any lone dude has.
Sarah Palin said: "Julian Assange has blood on his hands!"
Then she removed her hands out of the caribou carcass.
Not that caribous are humans, but that bitch really got a lot of nerve.
And finally, here the latest proof that truth beats secrecy:
Take that, dumb bitch, pee king, and all the other galactically stupid among you.
* Objecto-fascism is the use of objectivist arguments to promote fascism or in a way that might as well be used to promote fascism.
…
The government has a legitimate interest in the secrecy of negotiations, of its estimations of foreign leaders, things like that, because sometimes secrets like this are in our national security interest or help the government achieve needed goals.
Assange's wanton release of this information will do what he wanted, embarassment [sic] and damage to America's foreign policy endeavors — some of which are critical to our nation's very survival, such as the efforts to find allies against Iran's nuclear ambitions.
(Insulting your allies behind their backs and then hoping it stays secret is a good way to find allies?!)
As all things in the universe are connected, everything is remotely connected to national security in some way. By this fascist (or rather objecto-fascist*) "logic," the government could do anything, confiscate anything, kidnap anybody, assassinate anybody, as long as it cries "national security" while doing it.
BTW, the government would not even have to prove the tenuous connection to national security. The proof, you know, is secret, too.
By this "logic," the government might just as well shoot random people in Times Square that "look Iranian" because "they might be carrying nukes under their coats." That would serve the cause of nuclear security about as well as kidnapping or assassinating people who publish "secret" information on hopelessly inept government negotiations that may or may not tangentially concern nukes.
That's how today's neo-fascism or, in this case, objecto-fascism works: Blind fear of terrorism and nukes, blind faith in the government's ability to do something about it, and a willingness to give said government carte blanche every time it cries "national security." Disgusting.
As an added bonus, here another letter that is not quite as stupid and fascist, and that asks a question that deserves to be answered:
"Does Assange ever release secret documents from our enemies?"
Well, I guess Assange releases whatever he gets hold of. So why doesn't he release documents from axis of evil governments?
Probably 'cause he ain't got any. Why ain't he got any?
Probably because those governments are even more fascist and better at silencing, kidnapping, and assassinating whistleblowers than the US government, by several orders of magnitude. So the US government is several rungs in hell above virtually any other government. Does that mean that it should be given leeway to kidnap or assassinate an odd dissenter every now and then, just because other governments do it regularly?
Finally, for fascists' favorite fervor, the "hundred Afghans," whose identity and collaboration with US forces the leak allegedly revealed to vengeful taliban, and whose blood accordingly is according to Palin et al. on Assange's hands:
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said there is still concern Afghans named in the published documents could be retaliated against by the Taliban, though a NATO official said there has been no indication that this has happened.
…
The defense secretary said that the published documents do contain names of some cooperating Afghans, who could face reprisal by Taliban.
But a senior NATO official in Kabul told CNN that there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak.
And…
Administration officials said they were not aware of anyone who has been attacked or imprisoned as a direct result of information in the 2,700 cables that have been made public to date by WikiLeaks, The New York Times and several other publications, many with some names removed.
…
A Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Chris Perrine, said Thursday that the military was not aware of any confirmed case of harm to anyone as a result of being named in the Afghan war documents.
Of course it would have been better if WikiLeaks had redacted those names. But as long as this kind of thing goes on, your average soldier of whatever affiliation — and every yahoo rooting for them like a Palin — has more blood on their hands than Assange.
The fascists didn't care shit about collateral damage among Iraqis and Afghans while US troops did the killing. Again, the core idea(l) of statism at work: States may cause any number of carnage, casualties, and collateral damage they want; an individual may cause none.
But morality does not come in numbers. Just because there are 300,000,000 of you, that does not mean you collectively have any more right to harm or kill anyone than any lone dude has.
Sarah Palin said: "Julian Assange has blood on his hands!"
Then she removed her hands out of the caribou carcass.
Not that caribous are humans, but that bitch really got a lot of nerve.
And finally, here the latest proof that truth beats secrecy:
The latest WikiLeaks revelation — detailing a memo which suggests that the British government advised Libya on how to secure the release from jail on compassionate grounds of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing — opens a can of worms on both sides of the Atlantic.
First, it puts David Cameron under renewed pressure. He has consistently adopted the line taken by the last Labor government that the devolved Scottish government took the decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in August 2009 independently and without pressure from London.
Today's leak appears to blows a hole in that story.
Second, it surely forces American politicians to rethink their view of Julian Assange.
US politicians — led by four senators from New York and New Jersey, where many of the families of the Lockerbie victims live — have been pushing for an inquiry into their deeply-held suspicions that the Labor government encouraged the release of Megrahi in order to open up trade with Libya.
If, as seems likely, today's leak pushes Cameron closer to such an inquiry, will Capitol Hill begin to realize that WikiLeaks can be a force for good?
Take that, dumb bitch, pee king, and all the other galactically stupid among you.
* Objecto-fascism is the use of objectivist arguments to promote fascism or in a way that might as well be used to promote fascism.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
America without Atheists Is like…
Imagine that fundie scum could have its way…
America without atheists is like a Christian Iran. Iran got everything America got — natural resources, fundies, plenty of morons — but one thing: religious liberty, i.e. freedom from religion.
Go ahead, fundie scum, and make my day. If you succeed, Jesusland will be a filthy third-world backwater without even the technological capabilities to build its own nukes or jetfighters. Realistan will kick your ass.
America without atheists is like a Christian Iran. Iran got everything America got — natural resources, fundies, plenty of morons — but one thing: religious liberty, i.e. freedom from religion.
Go ahead, fundie scum, and make my day. If you succeed, Jesusland will be a filthy third-world backwater without even the technological capabilities to build its own nukes or jetfighters. Realistan will kick your ass.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
World Loves US, Obama
Upon the election of The Messiah, the world is back in love with America. After winning over the axis of weasels on his first trip to Eurasia, his most recent visit to that continent even spread love and goodwill as far as the axis of evil. The biggest Fourth of July fireworks were fired, of all places, in North Korea.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Alex vs. North Korea
North Korea got nukes. Hilarity does not ensue.
So North Korea got nukes.
Well, how many can they possibly have? Two, three?
So they got three strikes and then we bomb them back to the Stone Age. No problem.
Remembering they already are back in the Stone Age. Uh oh.
So North Korea got nukes.
Well, how many can they possibly have? Two, three?
So they got three strikes and then we bomb them back to the Stone Age. No problem.
Remembering they already are back in the Stone Age. Uh oh.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Lost in the Fifties Tonight
Contains spoilers. May contain traces of sarcasm and nuts.
From development hell, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas send you Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. No complaints here action-wise.
A break-in at an Area 51 government warehouse, an escape by rocket sled, right into a nuke test detonation. MacGyver Jones has ten seconds to build a shelter. It takes more ingenuity and unlikely coincidences than duct tape, though.
From the chase, the movie cuts straight to the… chase. By motorcycle through what I gather is meant to be 1950s New Haven. From there, to a virtually endless off-road chase through the Hawaiian (uh, OK, Amazon) jungle.
Banter-wise, it runs from classics like "You brought a knife to a gunfight!" to original ideas like KGB agents chasing the heroes through a "better dead than red" rally. Whether or not you like them depends on your sense of humor. I enjoyed most of them, but I can see how some of them can come across as silly.
Truth be told, there's even some plot in between: the Roswell crash, Nazca Lines, El Dorado, and the eponymous crystal skulls, woven together workmanlike. Unfortunately, the El Dorado scenes suffer from a release date when memories of the Cibola scenes of National Treasure: Book of Secrets are still fresh. Crystal Skull doesn't manage to outdo Book of Secrets, so it comes across as a clone. That's of course the one thing that should never happen to a classic franchise like Indiana Jones or James Bond: being beaten by a relative newcomer.
In-jokes and self quoting is always fun in a series, but this one takes it to the saturation point and beyond. In fact, they mostly consist of Indy kicking goons out of their trucks, sometimes two at a time. As for the Ark of the Covenant visible in its broken crate in the warehouse — how good that only the crate broke, judging by what happened when it was opened in Raiders.
While the original three Indiana Jones movies paid homage to 1930s serials, this one is an homage to 1950s B-movies. After the Art Deco splendor of the 30s, fashion, interior design, and even automobile design apparently took a nosedive around WWII. Bel Air? Eldorado? Tailfins? Seems to be a complete list of 50s highlights.
Fortunately, I wasn't around to be in a position to tell, but I keep hearing it was indeed a time when badly dressed people threw out their antiques and heirlooms to furnish their homes with the latest plastic junk. Sounds like lousy times for an archeologist. If the movies succeeds at recreating the 50s faithfully, and I'm afraid it does, I can only say that the only good thing about the past is that it's over.
Worse, the movie recreates the 50s not only physically, but also spiritually. What else but the Bronze Age morals of the period could force Indy to marry his on-again, off-again girlfriend after twenty years? Why not go on living in sin?
Maybe it's only fitting that after James Bond, an inspiration for Indiana Jones, was emasculated by saddling him with that old feminazi bat, Indy himself settles down to become a family man. Turning Superman into The Incredibles. It's sad. But then, with the mysticism and supernatural deus ex machina solutions of the Indy universe, who could complain if Part IV ends in a church?
Maybe I should be lenient. The other three movies didn't have to live up to nineteen years of baggage. In fact, I doubt that any physically possible version of the movie could have. Even with twice the action and a perfectly polished plot, there's no way how a mere movie could compete with a legend.
You say some depth might have helped? Right, depth-wise, well, there ain't any.
Of course, Indiana Jones is meant to be nothing but an homage to popcorn movies. Yet things would be so much better if writers took the trouble to write on many levels, as Ayn Rand tried.
Nature abhors a vacuum, though. A work of art planned to have no meaning will acquire a meaning by default.
Every experiment proves something. If it doesn't prove what you wanted it to prove, it proves something else.
What you can take home from the Indiana Jones series is a study in metaphysical justice. If you do something thoughtless, it will have more unintended consequences than something well thought out.
Indy points out that the treasure in the crystal skull temple is not gold, but knowledge. Ergo he thinks that knowledge is good. Yet the Indiana Jones movies show over and over again that man can't have knowledge.
From having to keep his eyes wide shut at the opening of the Ark of the Covenant to its being confiscated by the government to the loss of the Sankara Stones to the "give it up" lesson his father teaches him re the Holy Grail to the finale of the latest installment, where alien knowledge seems to be so powerful that it disintegrates the seeker — the moral is: give up. You can win against the villains, but not against fate, the gods, or the malevolent universe.
Of course, it's a plot device. Another lazy writers' trick. If everything is reset to square one in the end, they won't have to worry about the implications of an Ark or a Grail on the loose in the next movie.
Yet going down this way, the whole series acquires a downer message. Nice try, Lao Che.
From development hell, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas send you Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. No complaints here action-wise.
A break-in at an Area 51 government warehouse, an escape by rocket sled, right into a nuke test detonation. MacGyver Jones has ten seconds to build a shelter. It takes more ingenuity and unlikely coincidences than duct tape, though.
From the chase, the movie cuts straight to the… chase. By motorcycle through what I gather is meant to be 1950s New Haven. From there, to a virtually endless off-road chase through the Hawaiian (uh, OK, Amazon) jungle.
Banter-wise, it runs from classics like "You brought a knife to a gunfight!" to original ideas like KGB agents chasing the heroes through a "better dead than red" rally. Whether or not you like them depends on your sense of humor. I enjoyed most of them, but I can see how some of them can come across as silly.
Truth be told, there's even some plot in between: the Roswell crash, Nazca Lines, El Dorado, and the eponymous crystal skulls, woven together workmanlike. Unfortunately, the El Dorado scenes suffer from a release date when memories of the Cibola scenes of National Treasure: Book of Secrets are still fresh. Crystal Skull doesn't manage to outdo Book of Secrets, so it comes across as a clone. That's of course the one thing that should never happen to a classic franchise like Indiana Jones or James Bond: being beaten by a relative newcomer.
In-jokes and self quoting is always fun in a series, but this one takes it to the saturation point and beyond. In fact, they mostly consist of Indy kicking goons out of their trucks, sometimes two at a time. As for the Ark of the Covenant visible in its broken crate in the warehouse — how good that only the crate broke, judging by what happened when it was opened in Raiders.
While the original three Indiana Jones movies paid homage to 1930s serials, this one is an homage to 1950s B-movies. After the Art Deco splendor of the 30s, fashion, interior design, and even automobile design apparently took a nosedive around WWII. Bel Air? Eldorado? Tailfins? Seems to be a complete list of 50s highlights.
Fortunately, I wasn't around to be in a position to tell, but I keep hearing it was indeed a time when badly dressed people threw out their antiques and heirlooms to furnish their homes with the latest plastic junk. Sounds like lousy times for an archeologist. If the movies succeeds at recreating the 50s faithfully, and I'm afraid it does, I can only say that the only good thing about the past is that it's over.
Worse, the movie recreates the 50s not only physically, but also spiritually. What else but the Bronze Age morals of the period could force Indy to marry his on-again, off-again girlfriend after twenty years? Why not go on living in sin?
Maybe it's only fitting that after James Bond, an inspiration for Indiana Jones, was emasculated by saddling him with that old feminazi bat, Indy himself settles down to become a family man. Turning Superman into The Incredibles. It's sad. But then, with the mysticism and supernatural deus ex machina solutions of the Indy universe, who could complain if Part IV ends in a church?
Maybe I should be lenient. The other three movies didn't have to live up to nineteen years of baggage. In fact, I doubt that any physically possible version of the movie could have. Even with twice the action and a perfectly polished plot, there's no way how a mere movie could compete with a legend.
You say some depth might have helped? Right, depth-wise, well, there ain't any.
Of course, Indiana Jones is meant to be nothing but an homage to popcorn movies. Yet things would be so much better if writers took the trouble to write on many levels, as Ayn Rand tried.
Nature abhors a vacuum, though. A work of art planned to have no meaning will acquire a meaning by default.
Every experiment proves something. If it doesn't prove what you wanted it to prove, it proves something else.
What you can take home from the Indiana Jones series is a study in metaphysical justice. If you do something thoughtless, it will have more unintended consequences than something well thought out.
Indy points out that the treasure in the crystal skull temple is not gold, but knowledge. Ergo he thinks that knowledge is good. Yet the Indiana Jones movies show over and over again that man can't have knowledge.
From having to keep his eyes wide shut at the opening of the Ark of the Covenant to its being confiscated by the government to the loss of the Sankara Stones to the "give it up" lesson his father teaches him re the Holy Grail to the finale of the latest installment, where alien knowledge seems to be so powerful that it disintegrates the seeker — the moral is: give up. You can win against the villains, but not against fate, the gods, or the malevolent universe.
Of course, it's a plot device. Another lazy writers' trick. If everything is reset to square one in the end, they won't have to worry about the implications of an Ark or a Grail on the loose in the next movie.
Yet going down this way, the whole series acquires a downer message. Nice try, Lao Che.
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