Confirmanda de Veritate

Which is "reality check" in Latin.

• Big Hollywood had an article on something called "The Philosophy of the Western"; sadly I don't think the book has explored the fact that rugged individualism never actually existed, certainly not in the settlement of the West. I wonder, does it mention—independent of nonsensical "deconstructions" like "Unforgiven" (did you know a real old Western town would lynch a cowboy for cutting up a whore?)—that cowboys and gunfighters were regarded as vermin by townspeople? Does it mention that "gunslinger" and all the rest were journalistic inventions of the early 20th century, and the actual communities just called them "bad men"? I doubt it very much.
  
  But some idiot was saying the one thing he doesn't like about Westerns is all the shooting at Indians. Now, first off, Indians aren't really all that common in Westerns; and second off, the Indians they do shoot at are usually Apaches, Sioux (and related Plains Indians), or Comanches. And Apaches and Sioux were basically land Vikings—40% of the Apache economy was raiding! Comanches, meanwhile, were Orcs (or, for you Browncoats, Reavers), minus the cannibalism but with additional working-their-raped-and-tortured-slaves-to-death; I said it before and I'll say it again, somehow the Aztecs weren't the biggest assholes in the Uto-Aztecan language group.


• This is more "let me explain that thing that was puzzling you" than "reality check", but I was rereading the inestimable Ben Shapiro's article on the most overrated movies. One of them on that list is Blade Runner, and he's essentially expressed his puzzlement with its acclaim. Everything he says about it is true—"The pacing...is glacial, and the plot is amorphous"—but he's missing one important piece of the puzzle.
  
  That piece is, I think, an illustration of the difference between film geeks who are audience, like Ben, and film geeks who are creators like my sister (filmmaker) and me (writer). Know what we like about Blade Runner? The production design. The cultural setting. The lighting. God help me, the con-slang of "city speak". Blade Runner, more than any other science fiction movie, feels like another world, and we like the "this is how we get it done" aspect. Hell, it feels more like it's set in 2219 than 2019. The fact he's good at this—see also Legend—is the only reason anyone puts up with Ridley Scott, even though most film geeks are too blinded by cant to know it.


• So what's with all the right-wing love for Firefly? I was just reading some of Jonah Goldberg's stuff about it, and the sweet little lamb actually thinks the Alliance is based on Maoism. The mere mention of it on Breitbart's sites starts a sickening love-fest, and John C. Wright can't say enough nice things about it, either. Of course, Wright's not really a fair example: it literally took a miracle before that titan of intellect knew there's a God.
  
  No, jackasses. The Alliance is not Maoism, and Whedon is not talking about "government intrusion" or the nanny state. Have you ever actually read anything he's written about politics? Whedon loves all those things, the man took Women's Studies at Wesleyan for Christ's sake. The Alliance is you. It's his opinion of "neoconservatism" and the Iraq War, which was just getting underway when he made the show—how dare you interfere with Saddam Hussein's rape rooms, you imperialists! And yet he calls himself a feminist...but you were totally the ones with "cognitive dissonance", no question.
  
  Maybe the fact "evil corporation" is completely redundant, in every single thing his pudgy hands have ever touched, should've been a clue. Or his obsession with the aforementioned "cognitive dissonance", which, outside of a very few scientific contexts, is just a politer way of saying "false consciousness". I've been in middle school too, I understand your need to think at least one person doesn't hate you, but Whedon is not that person.


• Speaking of people who support legalized prostitution and opposed getting rid of Saddam, but believe their commitment to women's rights is unquestionable, you know what's proven by the widespread Libertarian support for legalizing drugs and prostitution? Other than that they'll deliberately destroy all civilized standards purely for the sake of their unreflective political fetishism, I mean?
  
  They don't know anything about East Asia. Know what the brothels were, in premodern Asia? Orphanages. Know what tactic modern organized crime frequently uses to get women for their brothels? Drug addiction.
  
  And if you needed any proof that Libertarians are just as doctrinaire of ideologues as Communists, you know what their only defense is, if you point these things out? "Oh, well the theory makes that impossible." Just like Mao during the Great Leap Forward.


• Ever hear of Democratic Peace Theory? It's the idea that democracies/republics don't attack each other. It's a fundamentally materialist theory, in that a major part of its arguments has to do with democracies frequently being more prosperous—and prosperity has no direct relation to war, sorry, comrade. It's also not borne out by history; America didn't have any wars against non-democracies until the 20th century (did you know Mexico was a republic?), unless the Indian Wars count, and the belligerents on both sides in both the French Revolutionary and World Wars had, with a few exceptions, variations on about three systems, two of which are used by all modern liberal republics.
  
  And also, of course, it's Whig/Hegelian triumphalism, with a utopian strain of "if everyone would accept our system, there'd be no more wars!" Religions don't even claim that, idiots, and they do involve miracles. But anyway, the "Arab spring", currently underway, looks, if it has no other good effects, to put paid to Democratic Peace Theory once and for all. If those protesters manage to set up really functioning democracies, those democracies are quite likely to have wars with each other and with Israel, the US, and various European countries. Unfortunately for the theory, democracies are defined as states that do what their people want: so what if their people want to fight?


• Late Addendum: So ever hear of the Space Preservation Treaty? It would ban all weapons in space; Dennis Kucinich introduced a related bill back in '05.
  
  I know what you're thinking (or at least what I hope you're thinking): "But don't they, and the people who wrote the WMD-in-space ban in the Outer Space Treaty, know about Jon's Law, and the Kzinti Lesson that's a special case of it?" Of course they don't know. At least I hope they don't know. I'd accuse Kucinich and the proponents of the above treaties of trying to smother space development in its cradle, but I try to remember Heinlein's Razor. They probably just are that stupid.