Batman the Republican

Thus was titled the NR review when Tim Burton's stylized vision of the Caped Crusader debuted some 20 years ago. While I have forgotten the precise spirit in which it was written, I believe the review made the point that Batman's ideology was discerned in his open embrace of vengeance as a motivation for chasing the Joker. None of Superman's "truth, justice and the American Way" in the abstract for him; no, with Batman, it was personal.

This particular aspect of Batman's character didn't last even through the second movie, and is nowhere present in Chris Nolan's more gritty reimagining of 2005. Yet, it is hard not to view last year's The Dark Knight as other than an extended apology for the War on Terror, and specifically the widespread use of electronic surveillance by the Bush administration.

That said, Batman's alleged infractions are pretty tame. Other than monitoring the cellular network, his exercise of private violence is common to the superhero genre. He doesn't even kill the Joker! And the express theme at the close -- that Batman will choose to shoulder the burden of public obloquy -- is, in context, a head-scratcher. For he doesn't shoulder this burden for the public safety: for "doing disagreeable things so that common people can sleep safely in their beds at night," in John le Carre's memorable phrase. Rather, he shoulders it for something he didn't do, so as to protect the reputation of prosecutor Harvey Dent. Why? Something about how Dent's reputation gives people faith and hope in . . . something. But Dent understandably went off the deep end, and he's dead anyway, so what's the point, why not come up with a better cover story than this?

The film is ambitious and raises some good questions, but the story ultimately falls short of its potential.

No Country for Old Men

I saw No Country for Old Men on DVD. A few thoughts:

First, don't watch it. Yeah, it's a good movie, but it's depressing as hell. Spare yourself the assault on your mental health.

As a technical matter, Josh Broslin is a little old for his role. If his character was 18 years old on enlisting in the army in 1965, he would be only 33 by 1980, not the 39 that Broslin was when the movie was released.

I can't help comparing the movie to A Simple Plan, another movie about how the discovery of a suitcase full of money can ruin your happiness. But there are differences:

In A Simple Plan, Bill Paxton and his pretty, younger (by nine years) wife (Bridget Fonda) are happily living a lower-middle-class life (he's a clerk, she's a librarian) when he discovers the suitcase in a plane wreck. As their efforts to conceal the discovery lead them to ever-greater acts of evil, it is her greed and ambition as much as his that spur them on.

In No Country, Josh Broslin and his pretty, younger (by eight years) wife (Kelly Macdonald) are living a lower-working-class life -- in a trailer park no less -- when he discovers the suitcase at the site of a drug deal gone horrifically bad. "Happy" would be exaggerating their level of contentment with their circumstances; "resigned" might be more appropriate. But they love each other in a quiet been-married-awhile way, which is where, as a man, I would assert that true happiness lies. Interestingly, although she has less, the prospect of great wealth delights her less. Indeed, her immediate reaction is fear for her husband's safety and loosing the little she has.

Obviously, between the two, I would rather be married to Kelly Macdonald's character, but I'm mainly curious about which, if either, character could be generalized as representative.

"Yourself", v1.0

Following links from Hit Coffee (I forget which), I discovered Why Women Hate Men, where writer Weasel airs the excrescence of the man-seeking-woman personal ads and subjects them to his florid and caustic wit. Gird thyself for major-league nasty. And not in the good way.

While I am now largely beyond shock at revelations of female misbehavior, I have some difficulty imagining a large population of women scanning the personals in search of commitment-free sex. (Roissy claims to have found them, for what it's worth.) Yes, by all accounts there are women willing -- indeed, eager -- to be gamed into a casual hook-up. But my impression is that successful game requires social context: a bar, club, lounge . . . something. But a personal ad? Perhaps if it is written with sufficient poetry, an ad might capture a woman's imagination. But the space to poetically express the desire to bang a random woman has to be pretty narrow.

So why do men write these personals? It may be that, however small the market for the, um, services thus advertised, it remains yet underexploited. More likely, however, is that the writers are looking to rise above the vast plain of nice-guy C.V.s and have overestimated the appeal of this particular tack.

I can see myself in those ads. No, I never wrote ads like these. But I can imagine that they are the kind of ads that I might have written if: (1) I was sexually promiscuous; (2) I thought person ads were a good way of meeting people; and (3), I was even more bereft of class than I actually am.

But I can relate to this display of ignorance and incompetence in attracting women. A wise blogger once known as Bobvis wrote the following:

Be yourself. But not the version of yourself you are now.

But the devil, as it were, is in the details. I understand the importance of self-improvement, but once the big ticket items were squared away, I had no clue what it was I supposed to become, the internet didn't exist, and I didn't have the kind of relationships with anyone who knew the answer whereby that knowledge might have been transmitted. So, left to my own devices, I spent my early twenties desperately flailing about for a version of "self" that women would want to buy. And in that flailing were mistakes every bit deserving of the mockery with which Weasel regards his list of personals.

Whose Life?

Ross has a great article about the uses and limitations of Just War thinking. But this part jumped out:

But for the [Just War] framework to have the desired restraining effect on statesmen and warmakers, it has to marry practicality to idealism, and strike enough of a balance between the two to make it seem applicable to real-world crises. And if it's important not to stretch the theory to justify any goal or end you seek, it's also important not to narrow it to the point where it seems so unrealistic and disconnected from the realities of war that policymakers will feel comfortable ignoring it . . . . If you find yourself saying that a modern state cannot take the fight to a terrorist regime if doing so unavoidably involves civilian casualties, you're advancing a theory of jus in bello that no state can accept - and ultimately, I suspect, you're giving ammunition to the side of the debate that wants to do away with moral restraint in the struggle against terrorism entirely.

Yep, he's talking about me. It's not that I am eager to shrug off moral restraint; rather, it is that I decline to be bound by restraints that do not likewise bind our adversaries. As Ross himself points out, jus in bello may be tedious, but reciprocity is clarifying. In warfare, I will abide a "framework of restraint" if I believe my enemies are also restrained; if not, then not.

Meanwhile, Freddie offers the obvious:

There is a basic calculus at work in your posts on this subject, Joe [Carter], that I find remarkably in vogue in this debate: that the life of a Palestinian is simply worth less than the life of an Israeli. You won’t admit to it, of course, but it is an assumption that undergirds your argument at every turn.

I don't know who Joe Carter is, but this party is already well attended. It should come as no surprise that Israel regards Israeli lives as worth more than Palestinian ones. On the contrary, the very purpose of the Israeli government, or any government for that matter, is to preferentially promote the security of its own citizens.

But the thing is, Hamas also regards Israeli lives as worth more, but from the equation's other side. Hamas chooses to expend disproportionate Palestinian blood to spill Jewish blood, and not just in the sense that they-should-have-seen-this-coming; no, Hamas rejoices specifically in the opportunity to close with the IDF in urban warfare on its home ground; and there is every indication that Hamas sees the consequent suffering of its people as primarily a source of a propaganda. All this, so they can kill a few Jews.

As I've written, I would recommend to Joe Carter that he stay out of other people's messes; however, if both parties to the conflict regard Israelis as worth more than Palestinians, then I don't see a problem with taking the point to be well-stipulated.

On Yet Another Foreign War

While I've been preoccupied with home repairs during the Christmas break, it appears that the Jews and Arabs are fighting again.

So it goes.

Put me with Megan in that it is difficult for me to find any moral issue here to get much exercised about. The tit-for-tat has accrued a Kabuki-theater aspect to it, as has our canned diplomatic reaction. I can't even get much enthused that IDF might strike a blow against terrorism, seeing as how I got all enthused when they went after Hezbollah in 2006, and look how that turned out.

America needs, to borrow a term from game theory, a "dominant strategy" for the region, i.e. one that minimizes our exposure regardless of what the local players do, and regardless of who prevails. To which end, I offer my one-point plan for dealing with the Middle East:

Don't get any of it on you.

I'm somewhat less sanguine, however, about this (H.T.: Ace)

Bluntly: these people and their pagan god have no place living amongst us. The only reason such a scene occurs is the utter contempt with which the elites that control our immigration system hold America's historic civilization. Those elites must be deposed, and their work undone as expeditiously as possible.

On The Wire, Season 5

I just wrapped up watching the last season of The Wire on DVD. Truly, we have lived in the Golden Age of television.

In no particular order:

• Has there ever been a series in which almost every word and gesture of every major character has been so cranked up on full-octane testosterone? Will there ever be again?

• Am I the only viewer who didn't figure out until this season that Snoop was actually a woman? I thought she was a twelve year old boy.

• Did the series jump the shark when it made Detective Freamon the mastermind of an illegal wiretap? McNulty, I can see, except that he didn't have the brains to do it alone. But Freamon never showed any bend-the-rules kind of attitude. Without being a scold, he knew the rules of evidence and was always careful and meticulous about building a solid case.

• The show's verisimilitude has been the subject of much more intelligent commentary than I could offer. But I have to say: whatever it's accuracy in depicting the complex interaction between the media, politicians, police, educators, and their underclass clients, never once were we shown, say, a small business owner struggling along under Baltimore's oppressive taxation and property crime. Sometimes, I got the impression that David Simon doesn't know, or doesn't care, about where all the tax revenue comes from that funds this vast enterprise, and the series was poorer for it.

Maybe other trenchant observations will eventually occur to me.

Senator Webb on Prison Reform

Via Ross, a Washington Post article on Jim Webb looking to reform . . . something having to do with prisons. In between assertions about how mavericky Webb is for taking on this issue, we read:

This spring, Webb (D-Va.) plans to introduce legislation on a long-standing passion of his: reforming the U.S. prison system. Jails teem with young black men who later struggle to rejoin society, he says. Drug addicts and the mentally ill take up cells that would be better used for violent criminals.

[snip]

In speeches and in a book that devotes a chapter to prison issues, Webb describes a U.S. prison system that is deeply flawed in how it targets, punishes and releases those identified as criminals.

[snip]

A disproportionate number of those who are incarcerated are black, Webb notes. African Americans make up 13 percent of the population, but they comprise more than half of all prison inmates, compared with one-third two decades ago. Today, Webb says, a black man without a high school diploma has a 60 percent chance of going to prison.

Webb aims much of his criticism at enforcement efforts that he says too often target low-level drug offenders and parole violators, rather than those who perpetrate violence, such as gang members. He also blames policies that strip felons of citizenship rights and can hinder their chances of finding a job after release. He says he believes society can be made safer while making the system more humane and cost-effective.

Nothing here about protecting white prisoners from rape and assault by black prisoners. Instead, he's concerned about (I gather) ex-cons' "citizenship rights". What rights would those be, Senator? The right to keep and bear arms? Somehow I doubt that makes his list. Indeed, I would bet you that the only "right" that concerns him is their right to vote in overwhelming numbers for Democrat candidates.

Meanwhile, the problem of ex-con employment is real enough. But what "policy" of the government "hinders" their ability to find work on release? The policy of massive immigration that makes a relatively crime-free Mexican a better bet for an employer than a black with a sheet? Somehow I doubt that makes his list either. In fact, the only government "policy" I can think of are those that make criminal background checks easy for employers to make; the employers thereby reserve job offers for those who haven't been in trouble with the law. What, exactly, is Webb proposing here? That ex-cons become a protected class? That discrimination against them in hiring be illegal? This isn't as far fetched as it sounds: all it would take would be to find that such discrimination has a "disparate impact" on minorities.

To its credit, the Washington Post prints the push-back:

Tom Riley, spokesman for the Office of National Drug Policy Initiatives, said it has become an "urban myth" that the nation imprisons vast numbers of low-level drug offenders.

People are often surprised to learn that less than one-half of 1 percent of all inmates are in for marijuana possession, he said. And those offenders were caught holding, on average, 100 pounds.

"That's a pretty different picture than I think most people have," Riley said. "It's true, we have way too many people in prison. But it's not because the laws are unjust, but because there are too many people who are causing havoc and misery in the community."

I've read before that simple drug possession charges are almost exclusively reserved for the very gang members that Webb says he wants to target but for whom it is very difficult to make any other case. But I doubt Webb will care. This is his SWPL play to attack law enforcement for not arresting more whites.

Senator Webb has gradually pissed away everything about himself that made him such an interesting candidate in the first place. He's now just a garden variety liberal with fawning press coverage.