Avatar: The Blue Ones are Iraqis

James Cameron exists just to piss me off.

First of all, fuck Terminator.

Second of all, Titanic was not about the Titanic. Titanic was a romantic tragedy set on a sinking ship; the same god damned narrative could have been told in a film titled "Lusitania". Except "Lusitania" is a far stupider title than "Titanic" and torpedoes are far less metaphorical than icebergs.

Thirdly of all, Dark Angel. Jessica Alba as a super soldier / secret agent who doesn't get tied up? Fuck that noise. Even the jackasses behind Idle Hands realized this simple truth: Tie up Jessica Alba.

And now we have Avatar, the quintessential "God damn you, James Cameron" movie.

Yes, the movie is pretty. Yes, it is an innovative use of [insert name of technology they used which will be outdated in 10 years]. And, yes, the CG / Live Action crossover was impressive. But as we learned in the early 90s, graphics do not make the game; pretty, aesthetically pleasing shit is still SHIT.

Which brings us to the story.

I've seen Fern Gully. I have read The Lorax. And I saw An Inconvenient Truth. So, I get it, ok? Nature good, Industrialization bad. Trees > Painless Dentistry. And while that sounds great and happy and precious the simple fact of the matter is that we have iphones, atomic bombs, and vibrators; we aren't giving this shit up. In the exclusive disjunction of (Laptop V Daisies) we are picking the fucking laptop. And while this may piss off that hot little fairy, the Lorax, and Al Gore? They can suck it; we like modern conveniences.

So when Avatar gets its hippie on and tries to craft a narrative within which the industrialized, mechanized white people are the villains and the nature-attuned, holistic blue people are the good guys? You would think this would piss people off, right? The movie is saying "industrialization bad" so, you would think, people in the audience who live in an industrialized society would be irritated, right? Except, no, it does not piss the people in the audience off. WHICH PISSES ME OFF!

Why? OK. Here's what is going to happen when you go see Avatar: You'll be sitting there minding your own business. Then, via the narrative, you will slowly be lulled into a sense of sympathy for the blue people. Those big, mean, industrialized white people want the blow up the blue people's tree and, man, those blue people are pretty damn great! So, when the white people start throwing gigantic metallic explosive shitbombs at the blue people? People in the audience will boo the white people. And then when the blue people start to fight back and kill white people? Members of the audience will cheer.

Members of the audience cheer when white people are killed by blue people. Members of the audience, who are white, industrialized, resource-mongering, colonializing, imperializing, white people cheer when white people are killed in Avatar.

Which is the point at which you, the reasonable viewer, are completely justified in standing up and bellowing at the top of your lungs: "WHY ARE YOU CHEERING WHEN THE WHITE PEOPLE DIE?!?! YOU'RE THE WHITE PEOPLE, JACKASS! YOU DON'T GET TO SYMPATHISE WITH THE NATURE ATTUNED HIPPIE FUCKS AND THEN DRIVE YOUR SUV TO BURGER KING YOU UNOBSERVANT, IGNORANT, SHIT! YOU'RE THE FUCKING BAD GUY! YOU ARE THE WHITE PEOPLE!!!"

That's the fucking "god damn you, James Cameron" quality to this shitflick; the movie places the audience in the role of the villain. We are the villains! The white people in the movie? They're blowing up blue people for the sake of obtaining the resources which occur in the blue people's native land. The white people are going to war to obtain resources; they are killing native people to obtain resources.

Spoiler alert! The white people are European Caucasians. The blue people? The blue people are indigenous tribes, Native Americans, Iraqis. The blue people were minding their own fucking business when the white people showed up with their mechs, gunships, and smallpox and starting blowing the living shit out of them. So then the blue people fight back and the audience, composed of the descendants of the Europeans who kicked the shit out of the Native Americans and who are members of the society which went to war with Iraq for oil, start to cheer their little hearts out...for the Blue People / IRAQIS!

You enter the theatre with your European-descended brethren and leave surrounded by jihadists...who then get in their SUVs, drive to Burger King, and talk about how those poor blue people were just minding their own business when the white people invaded and started being assholes. Never, in the entire process, realizing that they, themselves, are the fucking white people.

It boggles the mind, really.

Look, I like trees; I appreciate nature. I like to engage in imaginative flights of fancy within which I drink from streams, hunt native game, give thanks to the earth mother, and fuck a hot little wood nymph under a clear moonlit sky full of stars. But I also realize, since I am not fucking retarded, that one cannot have both the happy-go-lucky natural lifestyle and a polio vaccine. And since I do not want to die of polio? I am comfortable accepting that I am the product and member of an industrialized society the functioning of which is reliant upon disenfranchising blue-people-hippie-fucks.

So when I watched Avatar? I cheered for the white people. Because I am a white people. I am not a blue people. If I cheer for the blue people? I am cheering against myself. And that would be not only moronic, but also exactly what James Cameron wants me to do.

So, I do not mind if you pay $10 to see Avatar. I don't even care that much if you like the film. But for the love of fuck, at least cheer for the white people. Recognize that the only reason you are alive today is because your ancestors did to Native Americans, black people, and brown people EXACTLY what the white people in the movie do to the fucking six-foot tall smurfs.

Because if you start empathizing with and cheering for the blue people? I'm going to take your shit, smash it in front of you, and then march your ass out to the woods with nothing but a bow and arrow and a loincloth. Because, apparently, that's what you really want if you think those fucking blue people are so god damned awesome.

Or I'll just call you a race traitor; that would be far simpler.

Tom Metzger's home [chat]ed by the ATF

On Thursday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives raided Tom Metzgers home. Tom Metzger's, for those who do not know is my neighborhood racist and EoisaS's favorite Times Union letter writer.

Tom Metzger, director of the White Aryan Resistance, said in a phone interview this morning that federal agents searched his home because of a bombing that took place in 2004.

According to Metzger, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives officers searched his residence on Ferguson Road in Warsaw Thursday morning because of the recent arrest of twin brothers Dennis and Daniel Mahon.

Metzger told the Times Union he went downtown and hung out until the ATF were done.

Apparently, Metzger has an internet radio show.

Here is a link to a video interview. It is kinda strange to but a voice to the words.

Ancestral Guilt: Inherited Idiocy

So friend works at the Freedom Center and last night called to talk about whatnot. During our conversation he told me that the Freedom Center has an authentic slave pen on exhibit. Apparently some people when confronted with the slave pen feel a deep sense of guilt which correlates to whether or not their ancestors owned slaves or participated in the slave trade. The thinking, using that term loosely, is that if great great great grandpa Jethromiah owned slaves then his presently living kin (who, mind you, are not slave owners) have reason to feel bad or guilty.

And I'm pretty sure that invoking that attachment to ancestry and so belaboring a fabricated notion of inherited guilt is fucking stupid.

I know that in the Western tradition we are inundated with the notion of original sin, the notion that we are all fundamentally flawed not due to what we do but what those who came before us did. But if you think about it? That idea has no basis in reality; we made it up.

Certainly one may employ a biological notion of heritage and so argue that as with genetic diseases ancestral sins are passed down from generation to generation. But to employ a biological basis for non-biological fabricated bullshit phenomena is, said plainly, moronic.

Moreover, a person's ancestral guilt is fundamentally based upon one's knowledge of their ancestry. If you do not know that great great grandpa Beasley was a slave owner, or a member of the KKK, or a Nazi, or Australian then you have no sense of guilt founded on your knowledge of great great grandpa Beasley given that you have no knowledge. This is not to say that by maintaining ignorance one may avoid the need for an embrace of ancestral guilt but rather indicates the nature of ancestral guilt: It does not exist until we create it. Upon one's discovery of an ancestor's transgressions one may invoke a sense of shame or guilt. But note how this process occurs! "Upon one's discovery".

It is not the case that one is born with the shame or guilt as, say, one can be born with an inherited genetic predisposition towards the acquisition of cancer. Rather, one adopts guilt, embraces guilt, fabricates guilt. There is no fundamental component of one's being from which ancestral guilt spawns: YOU MAKE YOURSELF FEEL GUILTY!

This is not to say that one ought to release one's feelings of guilt and rather embrace a feeling of pride over one's slave owning ancestors. Rather, my point is that one ought to shut the god damned fuck up about one's ancestors and relatives and focus, rather, on what you do; what you have done.

You are your own being. You are not a branch on a tree. You are not merely a link in an ancestral chain. You are not your parents, your grandparents, your great grand parents.

You are fundamentally your own individual being responsible for and beholden to your self.

Fucking act like it.

Not so much with the dreaming.

Every third monday in January I make a pilgrimage, a ritualistic and sacred trek, to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Why? Well, the third monday in January is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And I really don't know what else I'm supposed to do to celebrate.

I'm serious, too. What am I supposed to do? What are any of us supposed to do? Go ahead and read about the history of the day. Now, did you see anywhere therein a description of what we're supposed to do? Are we supposed to exchange gifts, volunteer, decorate eggs, salute a flag, or just blow smoke up the black man's ass?

Because that's all this day seems to really be about: appeasement without advancement. Congratulations, dream achieved: Bankers and Postal Workers get a day off.

Huzzah!

I also enjoy that Martin Luther King Jr. day is not January 15, King's birthday, but rather is on a relative, approximate day thereabout. It's the approximation of a holiday for something approximating equality. It's faux respect and reverence. And I don't understand how that makes people happy.

Honestly, if you are truly pissed off about inequality or racism or slavery or some other bug that happens to dwell within your ass how is the third monday in January in any way beneficial to your particular historical or cultural pet peeve? What does it really do for you? In what way do you benefit?

Sure, you get a token speech, an expected article on a news site, and maybe a presidential candidate will show up to your rally and tell you what you want to hear. Great. Go ahead and make a "Mission Accomplished" banner. It will be just as appropriate now as it was then.

Because it's not doing anything for you; it's not really helping. It's the holiday equivalent of getting Don Imus kicked off the air. Sure, your cause gets some attention and people pretend to care for a little bit. But on the third Tuesday of January? The postal workers and bankers will be back at work, the speech will be forgotten, the candidate will move on to the next town.

And Martin Luther King Junior will still be dead with his cause and ideal condensed down to a bumper sticker motto.

But on the bright side, Barak Obama could be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. So maybe progress and equality will come despite you jackoffs focusing on trite bullshit rather than pursuing true progress.