Monsters, Inc.

--ISIS, Adam Zyglis

There's nothing more toxic or deadly than a human child.
A single touch could kill you.
Leave a door open, and one can walk right into this factory;
 right into the monster world.
 I won't go into a kid's room. You can't make me.
 --Monsters, Inc. (2001)

What had I done?
[w]e were all quite likely going to be killed,
or beheaded, and for a news story
that wasn't going to change the world.
We thought it was important.
We had the best intentions 
--War Journal, Richard Engel
___________________

A seven-year-old's understanding:


A neighbor's young son -- a rabid Star Wars fan -- once asked me to choose my favorite toy from amongst his vast collection of miniatures. I chose what appeared to be a fuzzy benign creature from among the field of oddities.

"I'm just gonna warn you that he's a monster," said Theo, in a cautionary statement.

"That's o.k. -- I think he's cute," said I.

"He eats people," said Theo.

"Well then -- I don't like him anymore," said I.

"He's a monster, and he does what monsters do. You chose him; you can't not like him for being what he is."

Lesson: Know the people you choose to partner with; if their behavior does not comport with yours, you will not change them. (Corollary: they will possibly change you, and not necessarily for the better.) It is Aesop's fable of the Scorpion and the Frog. This one idea is the distillation of half of the advice books on how to achieve a successful relationship.  

Ignore this advice, and the ability to say you forged a partnership will provide you cold comfort. Review the past 12+ years of United State's foreign policy and come to your own conclusions.

From the mouths of babes. Word.

Totenkopf

--Marine Reconnaissance Division patches

Peace is for Queers 
--Seven Psychopaths (2012)

We're not fantastic motherfuckers,
but we play them on TV
It's a dirty word Reich,
say what you like
 --The Golden Age of Grotesque,
Marilyn Manson 

Here’s the smell of the blood still:
all the perfumes of Arabia
will not sweeten this little hand.
Oh! oh! oh! 
--Macbeth (V, i) 

But when I swing my swords
they all choppable
I be the body dropper, the heartbeat stopper
Child educator, plus head amputator 
--Liquid Swords, GZA

 _________________

Ranger recent piece on the video game "Assassin's Creed" received a reply regarding the perception that assassins kept democracy free form the forces of evil.  Despite the glorification of assassinations in pop culture productions like video games and Tarantino's film Kill Bill (a glorified video game), democracy is not promulgated at the tip of an assassin's sword.

Assassination is not a democratic principle.

Yesterday, while cruising eBay for some sterling silver jump wings Ranger came across a Special Forces crest with its noble-minded motto (De Oppresso Liber) -- sporting a death's head over the logo; talk about cognitive dissonance. Yet it took him back to the day that he wore a death's head on his uniform.

He also remembered another memento of his SF time, the Zippo lighter with a death's head MACVSOG crest which was presented to graduates of the One-Zero Combat Reeconnaissance School (B53 May '70). Ranger has written of the death's head before, but each time he encounters it on United States military paraphernalia he considers the matter anew.

Soldiers must kill to perform their combat mission, but why does the military and civilian leadership allow such symbolism our patches?  Such gruesome heraldry is understandable on an SS Nazi uniform, but how can he accept this on a U.S. uniform?  Yet at one time Ranger wore one, just as do present day military men.

Despite the ubiquity of the symbol on U.S. unit patches, Ranger has never seen the image on a Vietcong or North Vietnamese Army patch ... weren't they the bad guys who did not value human life?  The U.S. used body counts as a gauge of success during most of the Vietnam war -- doesn't this "poundage of death" metric of success indicate a slip between the theory and reality of winning hearts and minds?

Death is never a measure of a successful operation, as a Commander may not kill his way into a successful victory -- so why the proliferation of nasty death's heads in the service of a liberal democracy?  Oddly, the hooah military sites celebrate these death-oriented symbols while at the same time calling our adversaries barbaric and inhuman.

And we remain surprised when another member of our society revels in another bloodbath worthy of an assassin, a person who would celebrate the symbology of the death's head.  These wayward "nutters" hold the mirror up for us, all members of a violent society.  The neo-assassins are us, externalized.

The champions of the death's heads would say, their violence is controlled, is targeted at those who deserve the wrath of a democracy, but there is no controlling the murderous impulse once out of Pandora's Box.  How is a kindergarten shooting spree more doleful than the violence applied with alacrity (from der Homeland) in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©)?

Are dead kids bad in the Continental U.S. but acceptable when killed by a Hellfire missile in some foreign land we ostensibly bless with our democratic principles?

Web of Life

Omnia vivunt, omnia inter se conexa
[Everything is alive; everything is interconnected]
- -Cicero

Ya kill for a little bit of money.
There's more to life than a little money, you know.
Don'tcha know that?
And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day
--Fargo (1996)

Lack of awareness of the basic unity
of organism and environment
is a serious and dangerous hallucination
--Alan Watts
_______________

We are largely a nation of disconnected, distracted and disaffected individuals. We lack a sense of Other and fail to respect that we are a nation of disparate individuals. It is so simple: The one is part of the whole, and we all have a part to play. The problem is, we are egoistic, and believe we are the center around which it all revolves.

God exists to fulfill our dreams. Prosperity Theology tells us that He wants us flush, and some Christians read Theology of the Body as inducing us to have great rolls in the hay, at God's behest. Many strands of mainstream Christianity are now hawking a "Hot Monogamy" theme. It's all about us, except when it isn't.

There is something beyond all of us, and that is The Other, the Stranger. The Bible commands us to love him (Deuteronomy 10-19), but most of us find that hard to do. Examples of the difficulty of this endeavor abound, both among our fellow humans and with the other inhabitants of our world.

We seem alienated from animal life unless it exists to amuse, clothe or feed us. Ranger has neighbors in the rural county in which he lives who kill hawks, coyotes, raccoons, opossums and rattlesnakes, and the commercial farmers get special permits to slaughter deer wholesale because they forage the tomatoes they grow. This is especially hideous as tons of tomatoes are scrapped every growing season for being too ripe to ship.

We kill because the little critters are deemed nuisances, or for the sheer pleasure of killing varmints. Like the character Leonard Smalls in the film "Raising Arizona", they are especially hard on the little things. Ground hogs are killed for sport, and African safaris continue to be a draw, though most of the hunts are canned.

Many (illegally) kill Florida panthers for the sport, and though their numbers are being dangerously reduced, bobcats fill in as sport for some lusty deer hunters. Forget slowing down on the highways to protect wildlife -- for many, it is a real-life version of Death Race 2000.

We lack empathy, and fail to examine the most basic of our actions. We have allowed government to commit indecencies and crimes in our name. We invade, topple and kill as easily as if shooting wild boar, ignoring the interconnectedness of all life, both animal and human.

In contrast to his neighbors, Ranger feels privileged to view the wildlife that forage on his property. The occasional red fox is seen, and hawks were never killed, even when they targeted chickens. All life is connected and has purpose.

It is unfortunate when we forget we are all part of this web of life. The New York Times ran a story on Paris's city bike initiative, reporting that 80% of the Vélib's had been vandalized or stolen, often by disaffected residents (French Ideal of Bicycle-sharing Meets Reality.) Said one Parisian user: “It’s a reflection of the violence of our society and it’s outrageous: the Vélib’ is a public good but there is no civic feeling related to it.”

That is the bottom line: We may not feel kenzoku (blood brother affinity) with many, but we can always have a civic feeling, a feeling of being a good steward, if societies are to persist in anything other than an Escape From New York sort of way.

"In an unsuccessful effort to stop vandalism, Paris began an advertising campaign this summer. Posters showed a cartoon Vélib’ being roughed up by a thug. The caption read: 'It’s easy to beat up a Vélib’, it can’t defend itself. Vélib’ belongs to you, protect it!'” But if you don't believe Velib' belongs to you, you will not protect it. You may vandalize and cannibalize it, in order to get your petty share, but in its wholeness and functionality, it means nothing to you.

Life is give and take, and we are all part of the whole. This is something that all men must remember, whatever their country or religion. From killing we may escape and survive, but there must be a place where it is not carried to excess or committed with alacrity.

Too often our lives and wars feature both excessive and frivolous killing, and our disposable society does nothing to dissuade this voraciousness. More for me, and there will always be more.

Until there isn't.

--Lisa and Jim