Miles Watson's Blog: ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION , page 34

Heroes & Thieves: The Economics of Artistry

There is a widespread belief nowadays that it is not necessary to pay for music, for books, for movies -- indeed, for anything that is artistically produced or created. This belief is most commonly found among the oft (and overly) bashed Millennial Generation, but it is by no means confined to them. In a sense this belief was probably inevitable. Technology has expanded the definition of art to include a staggering variety of content. It is no longer limited to paintings and sculptures or to literary works or music. Broadly speaking, art is where you find it, and people now find art in video games, in podcasts, in YouTube channels, on social media, even on apps like Instagram. But concurrent with this expansion in the definition of art -- which could now perhaps be defined as anything requiring creativity to produce content -- is the credo that all of it should be free, and that if it isn't offered for free, it is completely acceptable to steal it.

In an ideal world, the argument that creative content ought to be free might at least be worth discussing, but we live in a reality where the vast majority of content creators -- artists -- need to be financially remunerated so they can keep making their art. And based on the discussions I've had with many people, and what I read on threads and forums and see on social media every day, I'm convinced very few people grasp the harsh economics that dictate reality for those of us who produce content -- art, if I may be so bold.

There is a belief in America which vastly predates the Internet, to wit, that it is acceptable to bootleg music, because record labels are at heart just corporations and you can't steal from a corporation, because what is a corporation but a bunch of thieves? Sinatra -- or Madonna, for that matter -- wasn't going to sleep on any less silken sheets because you got a bootlegged tape of their music. Later, this belief extended itself into the video and cable era: copied VHS tapes and stolen cable signals weren't considered theft because of the same "Robin Hood" style moral out-clause -- and this naturally extended once again into the age of the Pirate Bay and the midnight torrent. The rationale is -- and I am quoting myself here, just so you don't think I'm riding a moral high horse: "So you're gonna download a Disney movie without paying for it? Well, fuck Disney. They make billions and billions of dollars, they're not gonna miss your money."

I'm not going get into the whole debate of whether stealing from corporations in the Robin Hood-style, or what you may think is the Robin Hood-style, is in fact a moral prerogative. Corporations are large and powerful entities and well capable of defending themselves and protecting their bottom line. I have another bottom to worry about. My own.

I am a novelist. A pretty goddamn good one, frankly. And because writing novels is all I've ever wanted to do since I was a little kid with scabby knees and a Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox, I'd like to do it full time for the rest of my life. I have worked very hard to achieve this dream and am well on my way, but the road is very long and extremely bumpy, and the biggest bump looks awfully like a dollar sign covered in barbed wire. We live in a world ruled -- wrongly and badly ruled, but ruled nevertheless -- by money, and it is the iron law of money that when it comes to selling creative content, you've got to spend it to make it. Disney can do this. Miles Watson finds it a little more difficult.

There are many Miles Watsons in the word of created content -- novelists, short story writers, musicians, comedians, producers of web series, YouTube auteurs, graphic novelists, etc., etc. People who are, in the words of the publishing industry, either "small, indie, or mid-list." These are people who are creating content either wholly or partially on their own dime, without benefit, or without very much benefit, from underwriting organizations like record labels, publishers, agents, producers, studios, and so on. These are the people who are most grievously injured by the refusal of some people to pay for their work. And while it seems to be understood, by some people anyway, that we "small fry" creators are not corporations and don't have corporate resources, the logic which allows people to steal from corporations is nevertheless applied when stealing from us -- because of the fallback clause that "art ought to be free."

It's difficult not to get pissed off when confronted by this assertion, because of the ignorance implied in the idea that, in a society like ours, which is totally ruled by market principles, that "something for nothing" is a workable theory. Also by the almost psychopathic selfishness which is implied in said assertion. I think it would be more productive, however, to simply explain why the economics of free content do not work, are not sustainable, and in the end hurt the thief as much as the artist he is stealing from.

The idea that art ought to be free stems at least in part from a near-total ignorance of the artistic process itself, and much of this ignorance is rooted in the disproportion between the time and money it takes to make "content," and the time spent in enjoying it. A half-hour sit-com shoots for a week to produce 22 minutes of television; a weekly drama shoots for eight to nine days to produce one 43 minute episode; the ordinary film shoots for about forty to sixty days (not including pre-production and post-production) which take many months, to yield a two-hour movie. Likewise, a record album can take up to a year in the making to produce ten songs with an average listening time of three minutes and a total listening time of between 30 and 40 minutes. As for literal works of art, well, it took Michelangelo four years to paint the Sistine Chapel, which I once walked through in about a half an hour, ushered by a tour guide whose mind was clearly on her lunch. The fact that art is so difficult to produce but consumed so quickly creates a powerful impression, albeit a false one, that the process which creates the art is equally speedy, which in turn tends to devalue the art. This applies especially in my own field. How long does it take you to read a novel? If you're reading this, you're on Goodreads, which means you like to read, which means you probably read fast, which means the ordinary novel doesn't survive longer than a week or so in your hands. And if we use that as a standard -- roughly one week to read an ordinarily-sized novel -- the next thing we have to ask is: how long does it take to write what you read?

Writers, like other artists, work at different rates, each according to his talent, discipline, habits, genre, temperament, emotional commitment and contractual deadlines. There is, however, one factor which outweighs all the others in determining how prolific he will be or can be: the writer's economic situation. Stephen King is extraordinarily prolific because he is a workaholic with a restless imagination, but also because he is a very wealthy man and can devote as much time as he likes to writing. He was not nearly as prolific at the beginning of his career, when economic necessity demanded he hold down a teaching job which consumed much of his time and energy. And this is roughly where I find myself now. It takes me about one year to finish the first draft of a novel. That is, to conceive it, to organize the story in my mind, to compose a few crude outlines, to begin the book, and write it through to the end, with the inevitable delays that happen because of work, family, relationship, illness, travel, the usual emotional struggles a writer endures while writing, and so on. My books tend to be anywhere from 85,000 - 125,000 words when I finish the initial draft. (Put in practical terms, that's between 350 and 450 pages of printer paper.) Then there's the drafting process, the editing process, formatting the book, cover design, layout, and so forth. All of this takes money (many editors, for example, charge $7 a page). It also costs time, and that time, in my case, adds up to about twelve months. So, what took me 52 weeks to write took you one to read -- assuming you read the damn thing at all, which brings me to my next point.

Once the final draft is complete, the last "i" dotted and the last "t" crossed, this is when the real work begins -- "work" in this case meaning promotion -- trying to get you to read what I've written. This means social media promotion of the book, the use of paid promotional services, the hosting of book parties, attendance at book conventions and expos, buying copies at wholesale prices to sell through my own website, giveaways on Amazon and Goodreads, and so on. All of this costs money. And there is no saving money cutting out the middleman, because for lower-level authors, the middleman is yourself. I returned yesterday from Book Expo America, hosted in Chicago, where my novel "Cage Life" was featured. This trip was entertaining and I hope, productive. It was also costly. And while I was taking it, I did not write a single word. Promotion, like a day job, sucks up a lot of creative oxygen. Ideally, of course, I would produce two novels a year. But to do this I would have to be free of my job(s) and write full time, as I did when I was a screenwriter. And of course I cannot do that without A) the money a day job provides, or B) an audience willing to pay for my work. I am trying hard to build B), but building B) -- and here is where that nasty catch comes in -- costs money, which in turn necessitates A). At least for now. I need people to pay for what I do so that I can keep doing it. And this is where the argument that "content should be free" breaks down. Because content, or art, or whatever you want to call it, costs money to make. I can't afford to ladle it out for free. I need to be remunerated for it, if only so I can do more advertising and promotion -- never mind a clear profit. When you torrent a novel, or an audio book, or a song or an album or any other damn thing, you are denying its creator the money he or she needs to continue plying his or her trade, which is entertaining you. Simply put, if a writer is not getting paid for their content, then it is hampering their ability to produce more content. I like to think that the people who read my books will want to read more of my books. And I, in turn, want to write more books for them. But because I have a job, because I have other obligations besides writing, the process of writing takes longer than I want it to. So stealing content becomes an act of hostility, even of vandalism, while paying for it becomes an act of support.

Of course it's true that most people, if asked, would say that they "support" art, artists, and artistry. But in an age where people think that clicking "like" on Facebook is a meaningful act, "support" has become a meaningless word. Call me a crusty old fuck, but I believe that support, like love, is a verb; it is an action, not a concept, not an emotional state of being. Support does not mean jockeying a mouse across a mousepad, support means just that: support. And you support the artist by paying for his content. (If you don't like the content you paid for, you have the Sith-like pleasure of the bad review, to which you have every right.)

Don't mistake me here. I am not, n - o - t, NOT saying that because someone labored sweatily over their art that you are obligated to pay for it. No, and again no. A fry cook labors over his hamburger, a plumber over his pipe, a stenographer over his machine, an anesthetist over his pump, a soldier over his rifle, and nobody asks them how hard or how long they worked, only whether they carried out their appointed task -- cooking that burger, fixing that pipe, transcribing that hearing, anesthetizing that patient, assembling that rifle. My job is to entertain, and I should only be paid if I do just exactly that. But if -- if! -- you actually like my work, you have a moral obligation to do just exactly that, and support me with your money, so I can keep entertaining you. Back in the 60s, the social revolutionaries used to say, "You're part of the solution or you're part of the problem." People who illegally torrent artists they claim to love, and then wonder why that artist hasn't produced a new book or a new album or a new graphic novel in years, are part of the motherfucking problem, and they need to grasp that fact. Otherwise all that will remain is those who have corporate backing, and who the hell wants that?

A Puerto Rican in Hitler's Army: The Strange Case of Ramon F. (Part 1)

Note: In 2004 I conducted a number of interviews with veterans of WW2 for The Oral History Project. The most fascinating of these was with "Ramon F," who told me a story so unique that I had to conduct extensive research to verify its accuracy. Please note that Ramon's answers to my questions are about as far from "politically correct" as it is possible to be, and some of his opinions will upset or outrage readers. It is in part because of this, rather than in spite of it, that I am relating his tale here, for there is no understanding the Second World War without knowing what it was that motivated the Axis soldier to fight -- and in Ramon's case, what motivated him to continue his support of the Axis cause long after it had been defeated.

Understanding Ramon's story involves grasping the political situation in Europe in the 1930s and 40s. In 1936, a civil war broke out in Spain between the elected leftist government and its supporters (sometimes referred to as the Popular Front) and a coalition of right-wing interests (sometimes called the Nationalists) looking to establish a Fascist state in Spain. The Fascists won the war, and their leader, General Fransisco Franco, became dictator, largely through military aid from Mussolini and Hitler. Though Spain was a Fascist state from 1939 onward, it never joined the Axis and remained neutral during WW2. However, in 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Franco permitted volunteers from the military and Fascist party to join the German army to fight against communism. For political reasons the Spanish could not fight under the Spanish flag in Russia, so the German army put them in German uniforms and formed them into the 250th Infantry Division, known colloquially as "The Spanish Blue Division" because its members wore blue undershirts to indicate their membership in the "Falange," the Fascist Party of Spain. The 250th Division fought in Russia from 1941 to late 1943, when it was withdrawn to Spain, and during that time some 50,000 Spaniards served in its ranks. Among them was Ramon F. This is his story in his own words.


Q) When and where were you born?
A: I was born in the town of Monsanto in central Portugal in 1922, but was sent to live with some relatives that had settled in Puerto Rico, around 1927.

Q) Where were you raised?
A: Most of what I remember pertaining my childhood and adolescence relates to the tropical island that welcomed me at age 5, Puerto Rico. For a fact I speak, read and write in English and Spanish fluently but my Portuguese is very limited.

Q) What did your father do for a living?
A: My father's name was Gustavo Adolfo, he was a wine maker, my mother's name was Carmen Molina.

Q) Being Portuguese, what was your feeling on the Spanish civil war?
A:Not a thing moved me about the events in far away Europe until 1936, when I received word that my uncle Luis had been shot by the communists in Spain.
Our [Portuguese] leader Antonio Salazar supported the nationalist (pro Franco) against the Popular Front (communists). He allowed the representatives of the Nationalist Army to negotiate the movement of men and supplies from Germany via Portugal. I crossed the border with one such shipment and immediately joined the "Falange"  (I was 14 years old but because of my size and build appeared much older and was able to sneak in like you say in America). I was not involved in the general fighting and served mostly in guard duty at supply depots, that was the beginning of my relation with support services "servicios de intendencia" which would eventually be my branch of service in Russia many years later. When the war ended in 1939 I stayed in Spain working odd jobs and enjoying my first taste of personal independence.

Q) What were your feelings about Fascism & National Socialism (Nazism)?
A:Fascism to me is synonymous with "order". The people in the West do not know nor understand this. I think it is mainly due because of their form of rule, democracy has a way of undermining the fundamental values of nation, race and destiny. People like me who lived under dictatorship understood, stood up for and were willing to die for these principles; not because we were forced to do so... but because we chose to do so of our own free
> will. I see today's generations and shudder with fear at their total lack of ideals, of love of nation and the willingness to sacrifice individually for the benefit of the nation. True and I must give you this, there is very little in the form of leaders and ideals worth following today, yet I think that you owe it to yourself to seek a path that is both fresh and a reflection of your individuality, different... there is much more to life than following the crowd in their vices and the total degeneration of
the individual. Your grandfathers fought against us for what they believed was right and we respected them for that, but they never thought about us in the same way. We were and are still portrayed as vicious murderers and
automatons who had no will of our own and in this they were very wrong. At the other side of the macrocosm that is life you have exactly the same, we were also sons, brothers, husbands and most importantly men who like
your grandfathers fought not so much for political ideals but for love of nation and people.

Q: And your feelings about communism?
A: The Spanish equivalent for a "lowlife" is "tierra" which means "earth". I wouldn't call a communist "tierra, earth", it would be insulting....to the earth. The "earth" gives forth produce, beautiful flowers that feast our senses, food for sustenance and receives us when we pass away. A communist to me is the most unessential element in existence, to be dealt with in the very same way they deal with those unfortunate enough to live under
their yoke of terror. Franco shot most of them and I fully agree with that solution.

Q: How did you hear about the Spanish division being raised for service in Russia?
A: On June 22, 1941 [the day Germany invaded the USSR] the news spread like wildfire. Enough volunteers showed up to form not 1 but 5 or more divisions had Franco desired to do so. On June
24, I and hundreds of thousands marched to Alcalá street demanding that Spain contribute to the Great European Crusade Against Bolshevism.

Q: How did you volunteer?
A: Being  in superb physical condition and being a bona fide member of the "Falange" (which had it's privileges) all I had to do was to falsify my age on my birth certificate and I made one of the first 18,000 volunteers. By
July we were on our way to Germany.

Q: What was your family's reaction?
A: Horror! Having lost my uncle Luis they did not desire for me to join.

Q) What was your training like? (and where)
A: We trained at Graffenwohr in Germany, we were there for 5 weeks. We received exactly the same training as regular German soldiers. We learned to handle every weapon in the German arsenal, from a Walther P38 to an 88 mm antitank gun. Since we were already versed in combat it was thought we did not need to spend anymore time than that. We had a very violent clash of
cultures, you see we Portuguese and Spaniards are for the most part a fun loving people and Germans did not understand this. We would serenade Russian women with our guitars and got along generally well with the civilian population, we didn't wear our uniforms according to regulation, we grew beards, however we were very professional soldiers and the Germans and
the Russians would find out soon enough. One thing I regret is that I could never master the German language no matter how hard I tried.

Q: What was your first impression of the Germans when you met them? What were they like as soldiers & people?
A: First impression I got was, are there any small German soldiers? They were huge men. As a people they were the absolute example of nationalism and national unity. As soldiers they were second to none, I saw them
fighting and it was second nature to them. It would seem they were trained form childhood to fight and survive.

Q: What was first impression of Russia?
A: Abysmal, like going back a century in time, no decent roads, no utilities. They had no creature comforts with them to facilitate life. In my opinion this ability to survive and simplify life was essential in making the Russian soldier of WW2 the most resourceful soldier we had to face. These men could survive the most extreme conditions and hardships imaginable, unlike American and British soldiers who never lacked the essential supplies to wage war and who also had access to all the commodities imaginable, Russians could survive on almost nothing. They would have made the Spartans very happy.

Q: What military duty (duties) did you have in your unit?
A: I served in 250th supply troop. I was in charge of keeping accounts of all stocks and responsible for keeping adequate reserves available. You had
to be ingenious, I would order twice the requirements and would build a reserve which assured we had plenty in case of delivery problems. I would also drive a truck in the supply column when nobody else was available.

Q: Where in Russia did you serve?
A: Army Group North [Note: a grouping of German armies which fought near Leningrad during Ramon's time in Russia). We fought most of our actions near the Volkchov river, Krosny Bor and our first action was at place called Kapella Nova in october 1941. Since you would be marching one way or another (we were not motorized) it is very difficult to give you a chronological record of our actions.

Q: What were the Russian winters like?
A: I can't even put it into words. Picture yourself coming out of the shower naked, running a fever and stepping outside in a blizzard. Any exposed body part would freeze in a minute, ears, nose and our boots had no
insulating material which resulted in a lot of frostbite cases. The only defense was to wear two pairs of socks and keep the feet as dry as possible, provided your boots ran a size bigger than you normally wore. We often found out our feet swelled feet prevented us from putting our boots back on again after we took them of for treatment which consisted of a balm that was applied to the skin. We found out the Russians coated bullets with mercury (the liquid used in thermometers) since this substance is impervious to temperature changes and remains liquid and thus prevented the weapons action from
becoming jammed, this would also cause a horrible burning sensation when you were hit. Also they would dip their weapons in boiling water to remove the
standard lubricants that would freeze solid and jam all weapons operating mechanisms, in other words they used no lubricants whatsoever. We soon found
out the cold would make metal brittle and the surface would adhere to exposed skin. Artillery barrels would become distorted by the cold and you had to readjust your firing range by 3 to 5 degrees over the estimated
coordinates, otherwise your shells would fall on your own troops.

Q: How did your German comrades feel about the foreigners serving with them?
A: Uneasy at first. I personally don't blame them for I happen to have the same line of thinking about foreigners, however when they saw our
fighting qualities and our fervent hatred of anything communist they understood where we came from. I have talked with modern day American soldiers and
judging their actions, behavior in combat and training methods I would never want them fighting in a war next to me, and I don't mean to sound offensive
but some of these kids go into battle under the influence of drugs any alcohol. Also they rely too much on computers for everything, from range finding,
battlefield orientation and I seriously suspect they have ever trained to function if ever the computer system fails. I doubt they trained like us, we were capable of performing the duties of the next in rank proficiently
in case he was killed or wounded, I think today's modern armies have lost the capacity to instill individuality and initiative into the individual soldier.

Q: You were very young went you volunteered; how did you respond to the pressures and horrors of being at war?
A: One word sums this up"CAMARADERIE". A man knew he could depend blindly on his comrades. After the war this same camaraderie helped axis soldiers
survive the brutal treatment of the Allies (Russians, American and the French swine) for all of them committed hideous atrocities against our soldiers and civilians.

Q: What did you make of your Soviet opponents?
A: The toughest foe we ever faced. I never faced Americans or British soldiers but I doubt they could hold a candle to the Soviets. They were resilient, experts at camouflage, hand to hand combat and their weapons
were very reliable and designed for to endure the brutal conditions of their land.

Q: " Soviet civilians?
A: Like I said before we got along well with them. We would even share our provisions with them. I saw German and Spanish doctors caring for these people and giving them their first medical checkup ever. What hit us the
hardest was when their village leaders would come to us and ask if it was all right to re-open their churches and resume worshiping their faith. A little later they would bring out their icons from hiding and set up little
altars, sometimes they would join us or the German soldiers in our masses. One thing I want to clear up now and forever, German soldiers were not atheists as attested by most pseudo historians. They had chaplains, held daily mass and that included the Waffen SS. All that crap about us being some sort of non-believers in Christ is a lot of crap! The Russian people were for the most a very simple people. Those of us who saw the "workers paradise" up close learned to hate the communist
government not the people facing us in combat, unfortunately it was them or us but to say we actually hated the Russian people was just not true. The one
exception were partisans, these we would kill without regret.

Q: How did your religious faith serve you in the war?
A: Although political and ideological ideals serve as some sort of goal to chase after and give you a sense of belonging in the general sense, a deeply rooted spiritual link to a higher plane is necessary in war most of all. If you don't believe in some higher supreme being when you go to war... you will by the end of your first encounter; a mortar explosion in the midst of a group, all but one are unharmed... why him and not me or anyone else? It
> > doesn't make sense. We Latin people are staunch Catholics and had our chaplains that held mass daily, with Russian civilians attending.

Q: Much is made of atrocities committed by German troops in Russia; did you ever witness anything of this nature?

A: The only "atrocities " I witnessed were the ones committed by the Russians against our men, for which we extracted a very heavy price. Most you hear is about German atrocities here and there but believe me, the
Bolshevist swine were not human.

Q: Did you receive any awards, ribbons, commendations, of any kind from either the Spanish government or the German government?
A: An Eastern Front award was granted to all who served [Note: the "Eastern Front Service Medal," known cynically in the German Army as the "Frozen Meat Medal," was awarded to all Axis troops who served in the first winter of the Russian campaign, i.e. 1941 - 1942.] Being in a supply detachment I had very few occasions to play the role of hero. Although some division members won not only Spanish awards but also German decorations.

Q: What were the circumstances in which you were wounded?
A: We were delivering supplies to a company of the 262 infantry regiment near Krosny Bor in september 1943. We left our trucks on the road and carried the supplies down and up an impassable ravine. It got dark as we
were leaving and a Russian attack caught us halfway out, we were urged out by the commander, our 35 men clashed with a Russian patrol in the dark and a firefight started. We continued ahead in the darkness using our
compasses for orientation and came to a point some 350 yards from the ravine. We had to cross an open open field to the right of our position, which I vehemently opposed as being too risky. I went out with 3 men and found a small embankment that ran parallel to the field for 200 yards and then broke due east the last 150 yards back into the village. We followed this route of escape and made our way back into the town for some 50 yards due east until we came a street leading back to the
western part and the ravine. We made our way to a 2 story building that must have been some sort of warehouse; upon entering we found the ground floor had no exit to the ravine, cautiously we climbed the stairs and found the whole backside had been torn by an explosion. Peering into the darkness we could make out the outline of our trucks on the road, one by one we jumped
into the darkness and regrouped at the bottom of the ravine. As luck would have it as my turn came and I jumped I landed on a debris covered crater at
the base of the house and plunged some 12 feet down the crater. My comrades rushed after me and pulled me out, I found it hard to get out of the ravine and felt a numbness in my legs but paid no heed. back at camp I
collapsed and was rushed to the dressing station and from there to a German field hospital where I was examined and diagnosed with a broken back and
dislocated hip. The doctor's could find no explanation as to how I was able to make it back from the place I felled in back to the road up the steep ravine. I was commended for a wound award of some sort but firmly refused because I sincerely felt the way I was injured ( accidentally) was not worthy of any recognition, specially when my comrades were dying in combat.

Q: How were you received when you returned home?
A: Mixed emotions, but mostly it was a very warm affair. I personally have never cared for "official" recognition of any kind. We could feel the love and gratefulness of our people and that was enough to most of us. We
were dying to see our loved ones though.

Q: As the war turned against Germany, what were your emotional reactions?
A: Anger; that the western powers failed to see the writing on the wall and support our fight against the common enemy. One look at Europe's map immediately after WW2 makes you wonder what the western powers were fighting for and for what interests, certainly it was not for freedom, nor democracy. Jews ruled in Russia, Jews ruled (and still do) in the Western nations (especially in America) and that was whom they were fighting for. Two thirds of Europe under communist rule is definitely not my idea of freedom.

Q: Does the Spanish gov't compensate its veterans from the war in any way? Does the German gov't compensate its foreign volunteers in any way?
A: Are you kidding me?! We are one chapter of history they wish they could obliterate in the same way they have obliterated freedom of expression in their "Canosa Republische" of Germany. Even in Spain we were denied
pensions after the war!

Q: Are there any monuments to their service [the Blue Division] anywhere?
Yes, the most famous one being "El valle de los Caidos" (The valley of the fallen) built by Franco using communist prisoners of war (for once these vermin did something good in their useless lives). I have also included
pictures of 2 memorials, one in Madrid and another at Grigorowo in Russia. Yet the most enduring memorial to those who made the supreme sacrifice fighting Bolshevism is in the hearts of those of us who not only
remember them but also try to tell the truth about them.

Q: Did you/do you keep in touch with any of your former comrades?
A: Unfortunately not. And there are not too many left alive as I write, especially Portuguese for we were not that many to begin with.

Q: How do you feel about the way WW 2 Germany is portrayed now in movies and books?
A: Writers like Mexican Salvador Borrego and Rumanian Trian Romanescu have never been available in the English language and it is a pity for these men have told the truth about the origins and backstage causes of WW2 for decades. When your first taste of WW2 Europe is a book like rise and fall of the third Reich, written by a communist Jew named [William] Shirer and received by
mindless masses of people hungry to find out what happened and accepted as "the gospel" on the Third Reich it is a small wonder people are so misinformed about us and our struggle. As WW2 and it's aftermath fade into the realm of history we near the time when the last of us who served in that maelstrom will also fade into eternity... closing the final page perhaps forever on one of the most misunderstood chapters in humanity's struggle
to be free. It will be up to the new generations to carry on the struggle for truth so that the memory of our dead is finally vindicated by history.

Q: What did you do after the war?
A: Went back home to Portugal and stayed there for 3 years before coming down here [Puerto Rico] I served as a mercenary in Africa for a time as well, but aggravated my old back injury and had to return home.

Q: How do you feel about postwar Germany's treatment of its veterans?
A: Shameful, much like Americans treated their Vietnam vets. Waffen SS veterans were particularly mistreated, denied pensions which were rightfully theirs, making them the "resident evil" of a nation that was more concerned with appeasing Jews than with rewarding those who gave the most for nation and folk [people].

Q: Would you do it again if you had the chance?
A: Give me a rifle and show me the way to the front! I have no qualms about my past nor what I did, our generation was one of splendid young men who had conviction and faith in our cause.

Q: What do you think the world would be like if Germany had been victorious in Russia?
A: We would have contained the spread of Bolshevism, the historical implications of which are endless and open to speculation. Then we could have turned most of our might against the Western powers which would have never been able to defeat us.

Q: If you could change one modern perception about the cause you fought for, what would it be?
A: The "holohoax". Never in the history of humanity has truth been so distorted, digested by the masses and accepted as gospel in such proportions. Most people find it easier to let others do their thinking for them and accept the general concepts of history. It is up to the
individual to seek answers, to discern the mirages placed before their eyes by the Jewish controlled media and realize that history always has two sides; the victors and that of the vanquished.

This ends the formal interview I conducted with Ramon in 2004, but it was not the end of our discussion. You will note that I did not argue with any of his assertions, not even with the "holohoax" comment, and that some of my questions were fairly provocative and bound to produce inflammatory responses. The truth was, at the time I was eager to get the most controversial answers I could, because I figured I'd get an "A" on the project if I did (and I was right). Ramon, however, was a man of fierce convictions and did not need to be tricked into revealing his true feelings, however injurious they may have been to mine. The truth was I found him so complex, so fascinating, and occasionally, so horrifying, that I kept going back for more. In the next installment of this blog I will share more of what I learned about the man I came to think of as The Last (and Most Unlikely) Nazi.

The One You Fear: A Little Lesson From My Past

NOTE: In the summers of 1998 and 1999 I was assigned, in my capacity as a Parole Officer, to work with a task force made up of the City PD, county sheriff's department, State Police, and State Parole. Most of what I did was walk a beat with various cops on hot summer nights in the worst parts of town. I was 27 years old, in terrific shape, boxing at a local gym, and convinced I could handle anything that came my way. That feeling ended with a single conversation. I recorded it not long after it happened. I relate it to you now.

The sergeant pointed to the shirtless man standing under the lamppost. “Now there, that's the guy you have to be afraid of.”

I felt confused. The guy I had to be afraid of had the caved-in face of a junkie, a flat chest, pipe-stem arms and no ass at all. He did not look frightening. He looked like a skeleton that had just swallowed a medicine ball. I said so.

“Look again.”

I did. A shiny red scar ran down his belly like a seam. Next to the scar was another, the shape of a nickel. There was a third one on his shoulder, a big angry pinkish-red mass that was covering the remains of a tattoo. It was clearly defined on its edges but inside of it were little round holes where the skin was undamaged. While I looked at the guy I was supposed to be afraid of, but wasn’t yet, I thought how odd it was that he did not know we were watching him. Later I realized he just didn't care.

“Most people you can frighten with your gun," the sergeant said, hitching up his own gunbelt as he said it.
"Not this guy. That scar down his belly? You know how he got that?"

"A knife."

"I don't mean what did it, I mean how he got it."

"How could I know that?"

"The type of the scar. You see a scar that hooks like that, it means somebody gutted him. Put the blade in and then sawed upwards until they hit the sternum. You do that to a man, his guts fall out. His guts fell out, but he didn't die. The docs just pushed them back in. And the scar next to it, you saw that, right? Bullet hole. Somebody drilled him. So he's been stabbed and shot and it didn't put him away. You know how it is with getting hurt?"

I shook my head.

"Pain is like..." He paused to grope for the word. "It's like experience. When you were a kid, you fell and skinned your knee, did you cry?"

"When I was little, yeah."

"Why?"

I couldn't tell if he was kidding me. He had the face of someone who doesn't kid, who doesn't even know how to laugh. "Because it hurt," I said finally.

"You cried because to kids, pain is new. Every kind of pain. There's the first time you skin your knee, the first time you get stomach cramps, the first time you break your finger. Pain is new and new is scary. But you don't cry when you skin your knee now, because that kind of pain is old news. You don't cry when you cramp up or bust your pinky, because you got experience with that kind of pain. It hurts, but it don't scare. Well, you stab a man and he lives, you shoot a man and he lives, and he's got experience with that. The fear you'd feel when it happens, when the knife sticks, when the bullet hits, he doesn't feel it. Not the same way, because he's been through it before and he's still on his hind legs. If I stab you or shoot you, you'd be in a ball on the ground. But he can function. Do you understand what I'm layin' out? There's no kind of pain you can dish out he can't take."

I looked at the guy I was supposed to be afraid of. Still leaning against the lamp post. Still staring out at the world from behind dead eyes. I wondered what he'd felt when he'd seen his guts fall out. If it had been panic and terror they had left no traces on that gaunt, cavernous-cheeked, pockmarked wreck of a face. "What was it happened to his shoulder?"

The sergeant clicked his tongue, which was probably what he did in place of smiling. "He had his wife’s name tattooed there. When they split up he burned it off with a steam iron. He’s crazy, and he doesn’t want to go back to jail. But if you stay on this beat, you’ll have to arrest him someday.”

“And when that happens, I’ll have to shoot him?”

“When that happens, you’ll have to kill him. Or he’ll kill you."

We walked on. It was early; the whole shift was ahead of us, and I had to pay attention to my surroundings. But I couldn’t help thinking about the man with the scars. And that I was afraid of him.

Was Robert Heinlein a Fascist? An Analysis of "Starship Troopers"

Many years ago, my older brother tossed me his dog-eared, soft-backed copy of Robert Heinlein's infamous "Starship Troopers" and remarked with a grin, “Read this. It’s pure Fascism!”

I read it. I was still quite young, probably not even a teenager, but the book’s rapid pace, simple-yet-evocative prose, and somewhat classic themes about “coming of age in uniform” impressed me deeply. In a sense, it was like every cliché-ridden World War II movie I had ever seen, what with its soft-brained but somehow likable protagonist, its tough-as-nails but somehow sensitive drill sergeant, and its cast of familiar stock characters (dead-meat best friend; disapproving father; chaste love interest; officer everyone worships who dies a heroic death, etc.,) and stock situations. And yet there were undertones – and overtones – in the novel which were not present in any of those WW2 films. Heinlein seemed to be advocating a governmental system, and beyond that, an outlook on life, which was at a right-angle to the system and outlook preached in my Civics classes. It resembled my society, and it was descended from my society, but it was clearly not my society. So what was it?

“Fascist,” my brother said. “Fascist,” my mother said. “Fascist,” my creative writing teacher said. That’s what type of society it was. Fascist. But none of them bothered to explain what "Fascism" really meant. And in fact, most of the people who pillory Starship Troopers as a "Fascist" book don’t bother to explain what they mean, either. Possibly because they can’t. Fascism, to them, is like art; they don’t know what it is, but they know it when they see it. Or in this case, read it.

To call "Starship Troopers" Fascist, it is necessary to have a strict definition of the term. To do this we could do worse than go to the creator of the term, Benito Mussolini, who defined it simply as "the marriage of corporation and state," but this is actually of little help to us, since it evokes few if any of the characteristics actually associated with Fascism. In fact, no sooner did the word first appear, 97 years ago, than its meaning was twisted by both its opponents and its adherents, according to their own political lights. For Fascists or those sympathetic to Fascism, such as Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the Union of British Fascists, “Fascism” was simply a movement dedicated to patriotism and efficient government; government which retained many features of capitalist democracy but without all the corruption, waste, and inefficiency inherent in the existing democratic-capitalist system. (See Mosley's "The Case for Fascism," 1932). Socialists, communists and anarchists, however, usually described Fascism as simply “capitalism with the mask off.” They believed that “democracy” as it existed in such places as America, Britain and France was simply a sham designed to keep the capitalist class in power, and that Fascism was merely capitalism with the pretense of democracy thrown away (see Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia," 1952.) Thus, “Fascism” became an insult to anyone with an opposing ideology, and once World War Two began, among all those in the Allied camp – including America, which was considered by many on the Left to be the penultimate Fascist state (the Ultimate being, of course, Germany).

An insult, incidentally, is largely what “Fascist” remains today; elsewise a vague word which, to quote Orwell, simply means “something not desirable.” At best, use of the word summons up images of flag-waving, military parades, blaring loudspeakers, cults of personality, ceaseless wars, secret police, political prisons, fear-and-hate-mongering, etc., etc. but that’s basically it. It remains simply “something not desirable”, something not democratic, dressed up in an operatic uniform.

The actual word “Fasicsm” was taken from Benito Mussolini’s political party, the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, which in turn took its name from the Latin word "fasces," which described a bundle of rods which during the days of ancient Rome symbolized the authority of the government. And it is accurate to say that “Fascism” stands for authority of it stands for anything. But this too is of little help to us, because all government relies on and embodies “authority” (or put more bluntly – as George Washington put it – “force”) of some type or other. And in any case, Italian Fascism did not closely resemble the “Fascism” which already existed in Japan under another name, and it was radically different from the “Fascism” that soon came about in Germany. Spanish Fascism had little resemblance to either, and the Rumanian, Hungarian, and Croatian versions all had their own peculiarities as well. Some of the countries were simply “right wing”, and some, like Germany, combined extreme elements of both “right” and “left.” Some had concrete ideologies, some had no real ideologies at all. Some viewed the whole world through the prism of race, and others took little interest in it. Some were reactionary and others revolutionary. Thus, “Fascism” was in many ways similar to “socialism” or “democracy” or any other of a host of words which had so broad a meaning as to be almost meaningless. And yet the Fascist states were quite distinct from the capitalist democracies, from democratic socialism, and from Communism. They existed as a recognizable category despite their individual differences, as a pit-bull and a Doberman are recognizably different breeds and yet unmistakably still dogs.

Fascism is perhaps better understood if we speak of the commonalities of the different Fascist states instead of their differences. What these states had in common was, among other things:

1. They were nationalist or ultra-nationalist.

2. They were dictatorships, or at very least dictatorial oligarchies with a “frontman” dictator.

3. They were militaristic and organized society along military or para-military lines.

4. They controlled education to foster the military virtues of heroism, discipline, obedience and indifference to pain in their children from a young age.

5. They had aggressive and opportunistic foreign policies. (They stressed “Realism” in conducting their affairs, a term which in essence meant the concepts of opportunism, moral relativism, Machiavellianism and Social Darwinism all bound up together. In other words, “Might makes right.”)

6. They expressly rejected the principles behind democracy, internationalism and communism.

7. They were chauvinistic, and manifestly unable or unwilling to empathize with other nations or assume their point of view. (This attitude was not only national policy but a keystone of education.)

In "Starship Troopers," Robert Heinlein paints us a picture of a society which has distinct characteristics, characteristics which manifest themselves in the personality of the protagonist-narrator, Johnnie Rico, and to some extent, in most or all of the characters in the novel, including his father Emilio. These characteristics are also present in the nature the Mobile Infantry and in the society of Terra itself. They are often called “Fascist” – but are they?

The society of Terra is certainly nationalistic if one accepts the definition of that word as something other than patriotic. A patriotic person loves his country and way of life and is willing to defend it, if necessary at the cost of his or her own life, but has no desire to see that way of life imposed upon others, and indeed, takes little interest in the doings of foreigners. He is in a sense isolationist, at least in regards to the fact that his concept of foreign policy is “leave me alone and I’ll do the same to you.” A nationalist, on the other hand, is one who loves his country and way of life, but is either actively threatened by other countries and their way of living, or wishes to see his own way of living imposed upon them. A nationalist identifies strongly in a personal level with his country; he regards its successes as his successes and its failures as his failures.

Johnnie Rico’s attitude toward the Arachnids (“bugs”) is essentially a nationalist outlook. The bugs are competition, a threat, and so they must die. Us or them! “Either we spread and wipe out the bugs or they spread and wipe us out,” he says. The idea that the universe might be shared, that a modus vivendi between the arachnid and the human worked out via diplomacy, literally never occurs to him, because he’s worked out a formula he calls “compound-interest expansion” which says that the inhabitable universe will overflow with one species over the other “in the blink of an eye.” There just isn’t enough real estate to go ‘round. The war, therefore, is a Darwinian struggle between expanding species, a zero-sum game in which the loser is not merely defeated but exterminated. This is a very harsh attitude, but is it necessarily Fascist? That depends largely on the attitude of the bugs themselves. One can be forced into an attitude of us-or-them by the actions of an enemy who is unwilling to negotiate and whose aim is genocide (see the Russo-German War of 1941 – 1945). Frankly, the concept of “opening a dialogue,” so beloved of liberal politicians, is only possible if your enemy is willing to have one. Unfortunately, though the book states emphatically that the warrior caste of the bugs “cannot surrender”, Heinlein is unclear as to whether the pseudo-arachnids are reachable by diplomacy. Unlike Joe Haldemann's novel, "The Forever War," in which the seemingly endless conflict between the humans and the Taurans ends the moment communication between the two races is finally made possible, in this war, no attempts at negotiation seem to come about. No one seems interested in making them. It’s “us or them” and that’s that.

On point one, then, we can cautiously hang the “Fascist” label on "Starship Troopers."

To the second point, the organization of Terran society (which is covered rather extensively in Socratic fashion, first via the character of Mr. DuBois and later, via Major Reid) we must state bluntly that while the society is manifestly not democratic in the present-day American sense of the word, it is not Fascist either. The Terran Federation gives “the franchise” (the vote) only to those who complete a term of military service, on the principle that military service teaches people to place group welfare over that of the individual… but it still gives out the franchise. It is still a democracy, within its own rules of who may vote and who may not: a partial democracy, if you will. In a Fascist state, whether dictatorial or oligarchical or some combination of the two, there is no democracy of any kind, ever. The franchise exists only so long as the leaders cannot safely remove it from the public’s hands; once that moment comes it is always withheld, and all power concentrated in a small clique. There are no exceptions to this. However Fascist in overtone limiting the franchise may be, particularly on the basis of completing military service (and one could argue that this creates a sort of oligarchy all its own, though it must be mentioned that active-duty personnel, according to Reid, cannot vote under Terran law), it remains un-Fascist to have a franchise at all. Democracy has many forms, some stricter or more liberal than others, and the lack of resemblance to our own present state form cannot sustain a charge of Fascism. Point two goes to Heinlein.

On point three, we may safely say that Terran society is militaristic, but only within strict limits. Military service remains voluntary, in a sense it is very actively discouraged (Fleet Sergeant Ho tries very hard to make Johnnie change his mind about wanting to volunteer via his "horror show") and every effort is made to allow those who volunteer to withdraw from service whenever they choose with almost no consequences to themselves. In a truly Fascist state, military service is always compulsory: (in Nazi Germany the army was referred to as “the finishing school” for the ideological training which German boys began at ten.) What’s more, economic prosperity is not limited to those who have served, so it cannot be said that class differences on Earth are based on whether one has the franchise or not. In many ways I fail to see a great distinction between Terran society and, say, the society of Israel, which is highly militarized and which remains mostly democratic in outlook. One can incorporate militarism into one’s societal framework without being Fascist, and I think “Fascism” does not apply to this point either.

On point four, very little effort seems to be made to inculcate civilians with the military virtues or to indoctrinate children that they should serve in the M.I. or any other branch of service. In school, Mr. DuBois ridicules various alternative forms of government, mostly communism, and he also attacks the very concept of “rights” (the “right to life”, for example), which is nakedly Fascist in terms of outlook. His main point of attack on the present-day concept of democracy is that it failed because it failed to teach responsibility to the young – failed to discipline them harshly enough. He does not, however, force the students to parrot-back his ideas, and the class itself is regarded by the students as a joke. The system seems to have a built-in safeguard against turning schools into a recruitment center for the military. (The stupidity of the pupils, and to some extent of Johnnie, probably argues that the educational system of the Federation leaves much to be desired, however, and it has been argued that Fascist states do not as a rule produce great thinkers, except those who were educated originally under different governmental systems. It must be noted, however, that respect for authority seems to be a principal virtue of Terran society and that even Johnnie’s dimwitted classmates regard discipline, obedience and corporal punishment as beneficial and necessary to the maintenance of order. Questioning the methodology of the system seems to be encouraged to some degree, but actively challenging it is not permitted. When the doctor conducting Johnnie's medical exam ridicules the military and suggests that they should “let a medical man run things”, he quickly adds, “Never mind that – you might think I was talking treason, free speech or not.” This certainly has Fascist overtones, for free speech means little if it does not include the right to speak freely about political change. Once Johnnie joins the M.I., however, he is constantly inundated with a particular set of values, which is reflected in the fact that most of the chapters open with quotations (from Churchill, Paine, Kipling, John Paul Jones, and others) which emphasize the need for struggle, sacrifice, and selfless behavior, and for the need to accept pain, suffering and death as the price of freedom. Also absolutism, so long as it occurs within the military framework. There are even Biblical quotes to the effect that one must impart discipline and values very early in life; and DuBois states this directly when he uses the example of housebreaking the dog. Fascist and quasi-Fascist writers and idealogues always used similar themes in their works, but these works were generally directed at civilians. When directed at soldiers they do not rise to the level of a Fascist outlook, however, because soldierly virtues are by their nature composed along these lines: there is not a military organization in the world that could exist, even for a single hour, without them. Point four therefore goes to Heinlein, however narrowly.

On point five, it seems evident that the foreign policy of the Federation, and to some extent Johnnie Rico’s outlook on life, are based partially on a quasi-Fascist outlook of “us or them” with no holds barred and all actions viewed as self-justifying. The book opens with an assault on an alien city meant as a “demonstration of firepower and frightfulness” to let the humanoid race known as the Skinnies know “that they aren’t safe.” True, we later discover that the Skinnies gave the coordinates of Earth to the bugs, so perhaps the Skinnies deserve their fate; but one gets the dual sense that while Johnnie feels no animosity towards them, neither does he feel the slightest qualm about being the instrument of their destruction. Nor does he express dismay or disgust at the idea of the Nova bomb, “which can crack a planet wide-open.” Similarly, the terraforming of Planet P is taken as a matter of course; the ethical and philosophical questions of doing this on a planet which already has life, which caused so many difficulties in Kim Stanley Robinson's novel "Red Mars" aren’t even considered here. A sort of “Manifest Destiny” (or "Lebensraum") spirit obtains: necessity is the mother of morality. And yet we must ask, is there a single country today which uses morality as the basis of its foreign policy? And is there a single military which encourages its soldiers to question that foreign policy, or to feel moral revulsion at the methods used to take human life? All foreign policy is inherently “Fascist” in theory, since it is conducted out of perceived self-interest and by no other standard. But that does not mean it must be Fascist in practice. Likewise, All military values are “Fascist” in that they consider concepts such as obedience, discipline, courage, the ability to withstand pain, and skill at taking human life as chief among virtues. It is how the military is used that is Fascist, or non-Fascist in nature, and the foreign policy (interstellar policy) of the Federation does seem Fascist, especially when one asks the question: How would the Terran Federation behave in peacetime? The answer seems to be: It would pursue an interstellar policy which would inevitably lead to war. And the idea that peace exists merely as an interregnum between wars is pure Fascism.

But what about point six? Here we must say that Terran society, at least in the persons of DuBois and Reid, holds in contempt all previous systems of government and rejects their precepts, just as the Fascists did. Communism is called a fraud (DuBois has a field day with the Marxian theory of value) and democracy as we have it now is regarded as a well-intentioned failure. Political evolution has reached its end in the present system – so Reid implies. But Fascism takes more than arrogance; it grows out of nationalism, and the Earth being unified under one government, “nationalism” no longer exists in a meaningful way (there are, we can safely assume, no countries left on earth, merely districts.) We are suddenly confronted by an important question. How can the Federation be Fascist without nationalism? The answer is simple here. Nationalism in Starship Troopers has itself evolved into “racism” in the literal sense of the word. Johnny’s nation is Earth, embodied in the human race. He sees the bugs purely in terms of the threat they could pose that race; just as he sees the universe as “real estate” which rightfully belongs to man, and the bugs as an obstacle to human dominance of the galaxy.

This brings us to point seven, the inability (or unwillingness) to empathize with anyone outside one’s own nationality/race. It is not a sin to elevate one’s own interests over the interests of another, particularly in the realm of international (or interstellar) politics; but there is a point at which such behavior becomes inherently destructive. When Germany's chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, made his notorious remark, during the First World War, that the treaty which safeguarded Belgium’s neutrality was “just a scrap of paper”, he was, in fact, speaking the plain truth. Treaties are just scraps of paper. What he did not grasp, being a Realist, was that scraps of paper are the pillars upon which civilization rests. The Germans (or at least Bethmann-Hollweg) could not empathize with Belgium, invaded simply for being the most convenient route into France. He could not put themselves in the shoes of the Belgian people, any more than the British could sympathize with the Irish, the Indians, the Zulus or any of the other races they enslaved. Likewise, Johnny cannot empathize with the bugs. There is not one moment in "Starship Troopers" when Johnnie wonders what the human race might look like when viewed from the eyes of a pseudo-arachnid. He is either incapable of doing this because of his personality, or he has been conditioned in such a way that he cannot do this. Either way his outlook here is Fascist.

It is necessary to expand on this. One of the distinguishing features of a Fascist state is its philosophy regarding the the use of force. Generally speaking, the more liberal a state, the more reluctant it is to employ harsh criminal penalties (such as execution or torture) upon its citizens or use military power as an instrument of foreign policy. We have already discussed the Federation’s “galactic policy”, but the former issue – the way the Federation deals with its own citizens – gives us a revealing look at its worldview. It is established quite early in the novel that physical discipline is regarded in the Federation as the key element in maintaining social order. One of Johnnie’s classmates notes in DuBois’ class that as a child, if she were paddled at school for some infraction or other, another spanking would await her upon her return home – and rightly so. Johnnie’s classmates take the view that stern parental discipline and stern classroom discipline interweave with an equally stern civic code to create an environment in which the ordinary person will not want to commit crime. For those that do, public floggings demonstrate the folly of criminal action to the perpetrator and reinforce the law-abiding public’s desire to remain on the right side of that law. In itself this is not Fascist; all nations, regardless of their system of government, use the threat of punishment as a deterrent against crime. However, it is interesting that Heinlein chose flogging as the principal nonlethal punishment of the Federation, both for its civilian and its military population, because since antiquity, flogging has generally been regarded as a punishment reserved only for slaves. The use of a whip on a free man stirred controversy even during the days of Ancient Rome, and the widespread use of flogging on antebellum slave plantations was a contributing factor to anti-Southern feeling in the North prior to the American Civil War. Not long afterwards, the abolition of whipping as a means of discipline in the British Army came about in part due to the idea that such punishments were as degrading to those who inflicted them as those who were on the end of the lash – that they ultimately weakened the authority of the government who permitted their use. One of the key sequences in "Starship Troopers," and probably the most notorious, occurs when one of Johnnie’s boot-camp comrades, Ted Hendrick, is court-martialed for striking a superior officer. Hendrick is found guilty by a field tribunal, given a dishonorable discharge, and then chained to a post and flogged before the entire population of Camp Arthur Currie. Later on, Johnnie himself is found guilty of a less serious infraction, and while not discharged, is also flogged. As he is being led to his punishment, his drill instructor, Sergeant Zim, hands him a rubber mouthpiece and informs Johnnie “to bite down on this. It helps. I know.”

Presumably Heinlein put this moment in the story to show that discipline is the same for everyone, and that even the best soldiers may have strayed enough to taste the lash at some point in their careers – that presumably the reader will forgive the Mobile Infantry for its harshness because it applies its punishments fairly. There is no escaping the fact, however, that these sequences, particularly the one with Hendricks, are morally disgusting, and remain so despite the efforts of Heinlein to get the reader to sympathize as much for the soldiers administering the punishments as with the victims. The fact that Heinlein could not see that flogging is by its nature a degradation of the human spirit is troubling, but it is more troubling that the author chose to use the humiliation and degradation of Hendricks to achieve a positive epiphany in Johnnie Rico. At first so upset by his comrade's fate that he wants to quit the Mobile Infantry, Johnnie ultimately comes to regard his moral crisis as simply the last phase of his military training: a psychological obstacle course. In taking this view, he is almost consciously rejecting the empathy he felt for Hendricks: he is, in essence, viewing the empathy itself as a phase of his development he has now outgrown. This is by far the most nakedly Fascistic moment of the entire book, and it is a tribute to Heinlein's skill as a writer that it is also the most subtle.

Viewed overall, the points seem indicate a Fascist interpretation by a “score” of 4 – 3. But this does not in itself really answer the question as to whether Heinlein was actually advocating Fascism as a remedy for society’s ills. Undoubtedly he was not, at least within his own mind. It is clear, for example, that his ideal society had no room for racism, ethnic hatred, religious bigotry, or even much in the way of sexism, and no Fascist state has ever existed that was not based in part on some or all of these attributes. Instead, Heinlein’s views are the views of a writer who is seeking to remove the more attractive and common-sense elements of Fascism (and even Orwell, one of the foremost anti-Fascists of his day, admitted that “Fascism contains some good along with much that is evil.”) and use them as a kind of balustrade to shore up the faltering elements of democracy. He sought a balance between Fascism, or what we might refer to responsibly as Fascism, and democracy: a sort of “Enlightened Fascism”, which retained the best elements of both while shedding their less appealing elements. A question which we might wish to ask ourselves, given the present state of discontent with representative, capitalist democracy in America itself, is whether this sort of thing is actually possible.

And a more important question might be: if it is possible, is it desirable?

"Starship Troopers" is Heinlein’s answer.

Tinseltown Diaries: My Life As A Reality TV Star

For most people, arrival in Hollywood is the beginning of an entirely new chapter in their lives. It is the commencement of a long, winding, slippery, ill-lighted, rock-strewn, and extremely perilous journey toward a lifelong dream. For me it was directly the opposite. Moving here was not a means by which I would execute my dream. It was an end in itself. Ask anyone moving into an apartment here why they came to this town and they'll say, "I want to be a comedian," or "I want to be an actor" or "I want to direct movies." Ask me and I'd have said, "I'm just happy to be here."

I took my first trip to Los Angeles in 1999 and at some point very shortly thereafter I decided I wanted to live here. Life being what it is, and me being what I am, it took me about eight years to execute this ambition, but all during that while, no matter how much fun I was having or how satisfied with life I might have been, the idea of moving to L.A. always haunted me. I'd watch "L.A. Confidential" or an episode of "Angel" or any other damn thing set there and I'd feel the sort of helpless, hopeless longing you experience when looking at a photograph of an ex-lover you can't exorcise from beneath your skin. I didn't know precisely why I felt this: I was born just outside Chicago and raised just outside D.C., and I knew nothing of the West, of SoCal or even L.A. itself beyond what I'd seen on a few visits to my brother over the years. Nevertheless, I knew my ultimate destiny lay here. So when I arrived, following a four day-journey across virtually the entirety of the United States, I had already fulfilled my principal ambition. Some folks wanted to be screenwriters or stunt men or make-up effects artists or musicians. I wanted to live here. Now I did. And as I stood on my balcony that first night, gazing past the line of wind-rustled palms to the full moon that bathed the city in appropriately dramatic light, I asked myself a question:

"Now what the hell am I going to do?"

Though it hadn't been my actual objective in coming here, it seemed to me that since I was in Tinseltown, a.k.a. La La Land, a.k.a. (ironically) the City of Angels anyway, it would be foolish not to try to work "in the movie business" in whatever capacity they'd have me. I'm a creative person by nature, so it seemed natural to try my hand at that game.

Now, everyone who comes to L.A. trying to break into the entertainment industry will a tale unfold about the degrading, ill-paying, stress-crammed jobs they have worked to pay the rent while they tried to put dream into action. Your humble correspondent was no different. I worked security in Malibu and private investigation in Fresno. I've done light industrial work in Northridge and been an office temp (soooo many times) in Woodland Hills. I slaved in a soul-shatteringly boring insurance cubicle in Van Nuys and once -- I express no shame in admitting this -- was once reduced to the fetal position the prospect of another day at a "legal solutions" business somewhere in the depths of the Valley. The first twenty months I lived here were a brutal, pride-swallowing, ne'er-ceasing struggle against anxiety, depression and the side-effects of drudgery and poverty. Even now, I'm amazed that I endured it. But there are good memories, too, or at very least ridiculous ones, which leaven the gloom of the past. Among these was my first "break."

In the summer of 2008 I got a call from the sleazy talent agency I'd joined in the hitherto futile hopes of landing a part, no matter how small, on a show, no matter how stupid. I was put through to a casting director I will call Bebe. after the vaguely Mephistophelian character of the same name on "Frasier." Bebe asked me in a cheery, breezy voice if I'd be interested in appearing as an extra in a documentary shooting at a winery. It paid, but I had to dress up despite the heat. By the time I agreed the gig had changed; it was still a documentary, but closer and not quite so dressy. Even better, I said, but a phone call later the gig had changed a third time. It was now a reality show of some kind, but that didn't matter as I was only "background." It would take the rest of the day, but they'd pay me $50 in cash when I was done, and it would get me an IMDB credit, which was much more valuable than the money. An IMDB credit was tangible, objective, third-party proof that I had "broken through" and was a player, however small, in this strange and fantastic game. I was so enamored of this promise that the fact she couldn't answer any specific questions about the show, seemed in fact almost deliberately vague and evasive, didn't bother me. I wasn't even suspicious when she heard my girlfriend talking in the background and said, rather sharply, "So, you have a girlfriend?"

"Yeah," I said. "Why? Is that a problem somehow?"

"No, no," she replied hastily. "It's just that you may come back very late tonight."

When I assured her this was of no consequence, Bebe gave me a call time and an address in Northridge, and off I went, eager to have my first experience, however tangential, with the sprawling abstraction known as Hollywood. I found the location easily enough, a large home at the end of a cul-de-sac, in a very respectable neighborhood, and amidst the bustle of production assistants and camera crewmen and craft services people, found the director and introduced myself to him.

"Perfect, perfect," he said, looking me up and down. "Just what I needed. I'm not real happy with the quality of the other contestants."

"Contestants?"

His eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. "Well, sure. Why else would you be here?"

"I was hired as background extra."

"Background extra? What the hell would I need with a background extra on a dating show?"

"Dating show? Bebe told me--"

"Bebe. Jesus Christ." He ran a hand through his hair, which looked as if it had received similar treatment a number of times that day already. "I should have known. Well, I can't expect a casting director to be honest when she's on a deadline. Look, Miles, you're not here to be a background extra. You're a contestant on a dating show, and frankly, based on what Bebe's sent me so far, you're already the inside favorite."

"But I can't be a contestant on a dating show," I protested. "I have a girlfriend."

"A girlfriend?" He was utterly incredulous. "You have a GIRLFRIEND?"

It seemed to be the day everyone asked me that question. I wanted to shout, "Is it such a fucking surprise?" but opted instead to inform him that yes, I had a GF and to top it off, I lived with her. What followed was the classic cliche of a Hollywood temper tantrum, short form version. The director cursed Bebe in the slow, inventive, almost intimate way a man curses when he truly hates something or somebody. "Only Bebe would send a man with a girlfriend to be a contestant on a fucking dating show! Well, goddammit, I need four contestants and it's too late to find a replacement, and I can't rig the outcome because that's illegal. So I'm going to have to find a way to discourage this poor girl from choosing you, but it won't be easy."

In spite of everything I was flattered by this remark...until I saw my fellow contestants.

#1, an expensively dressed giant in his late 30s, but trying to look younger, had dyed his thinning black hair so ineptly I could see the stains on his scalp. #2, in his mid-40s, looked like the sort you'd find in the alley aside X-rated video store: his first words to me were an expression of bitterness that he wasn't getting more work on camera. #3, in his early 40s, spoke entirely in soap opera dialogue: 150 lbs of saccharine insincerity. In such company it was not hard to be the front runner. Jason Voorhees would have been the front runner. Without his mask.

Now, the premise of this show was that the woman in question was being set up (literally and figuratively) by her friends with four blind dates who had to compete for an actual, unchaperoned, a-deux date with the lady.
We would dine with her and her friends and family in the backyard of her home, and over the course of the evening would advance toward that goal or be eliminated by virtue of our responses. The poor girl thought we were friends of her friends who had agreed to do this because we'd been shown her picture and thought she was cute; she had no idea we were being paid to be there or that some of the contestants were wannabe actors and viewed this strictly as "work."

And what work it was. After the painfully awkward "surprise" moment -- which we shot three times, if I remember correctly -- we sat down to an enormous, lukewarm dinner of Thai food in the sweltering, bug-infested backyard. The director had placed me as far as was humanly possible from the victim, who I will call Keliani, probably in hopes she couldn't see me through the glare of faux-romantic candle-light, so I busied myself with the food and polished off an ungodly amount of white wine, which a production assistant poured liberally whenever anyone's glass got to the panic level. By the time Kelani had questioned the first three dates I was drunk off my ass. My answers were moronic, but so was the situation: what I mainly carry away from that part of the evening was the sudden compulsion I had developed to look at the camera. I literally became fixated on it. Whenever it wasn't pointed directly at me -- and sometimes when it was -- I stared at the fucking thing as if it were on fire, giving the director fresh reasons to regret Bebe had cast me for this "documentary."

After dinner Kelani was to ritually slaughter the nonexistent hopes of one of the suitors by making the first cut. While deliberations were in progress, I sneaked inside the house and watched an MMA fight on cable (I remember it was Urijah "the California Kid" Faber against Jens "Li'l Evil" Pulver. Unfortunately I'd consumed so much white wine I fell asleep. When I awoke the director was standing over me, sucking a cigarette down to its filter and raking his fingers through his now-destroyed salon haircut. "Okay," he said, in a tense, strained voice. "I think I did it. I think I managed to discourage her from choosing you."

"How?" I said, yawning.

"I kind of let her overhear me telling my assistant that you weren't uh, you know..."

"Straight?"

"Stable. I said you'd had a wicked breakup and were rebounding hard and just kind of, you know, a big hot motherfucking mess. I'm pretty sure she heard me."

She heard him. I was the first suitor to get the axe, which afforded me a chance to rinse the foul taste of cheap white wine from my palate with, you guessed it, more white wine. But when I tried to leave the set I was told I had to stay until shooting was over. "We need to get reaction shots from the losers!" the director explained.

More wine. A couple of Thai egg rolls. The fight card ended. Evening had become night. The other losers, #2 and then #3, came in and sat with me, comforted that at least I had been the first to go. At last, while #1 and his badly dyed hair were having a romantic, victorious dessert with Kelani, I was summoned outside, to the front yard. It was pitch black and for some reason the only light on the whole block was from the camera jammed in my face. I couldn't see a goddamned thing except this huge, glaring light, like the light an interrogator would use in a 40s gangster movie when he gives the crook the third degree. Considering the truly heroic intake of grape pumping through my veins, it was all I could do not to reel backwards into the graveled driveway as the director, unseen, told me to record my feelings about having lost my chance with Kelani. I was naive enough to relate my actual feelings, whereupon, with an exasperated cry of "CUT!" he said:

"Can you try to sound sad?"

We worked on "sad" for a few takes, but it was hopeless: wine is like truth serum to a beer-drinker. Eventually the director told me he'd settled for "disappointed," but in addition to making me tell the truth, wine also makes me assertive. I didn't want to settle: I had been paid this crisp $50 bill to play a role, and the role called for sad, so I insisted on more takes. I'm not sure if I ever hit the right note of sadness or whether the director just lied to get my drunken ass off the property, but either way, in a few minutes I was wobbling toward my car, convinced that my first foray into Tinseltown had been a huge success -- a feeling that dissipated well before the following day's hangover.

That was eight years ago, and I now have 47 IMDB credits to my name, which is no mean feat considering my true trade is writing and my work in "the business," far from being my life's dream, has never been anything but a means to make money. But I never see that first credit without thinking of how disappointed my girlfriend had been that the show got cancelled before my episode went to air. Far from being annoyed at the discovery her boyfriend was a contestant on a dating show, she'd been eagerly looking forward to seeing me make a fool of myself.

As for Bebe, I have to laugh whenever I see her name roll past me on the credits for a television show: for every actor cast upon it, I know, there might be a helluva story.

Is Hollywood Out of Ideas -- or Just Guts?

The idea that Hollywood is "out of ideas" has been gaining currency for many years. I myself subscribed to this theory, and had some excellent evidence to back it up. That evidence continues to pile up at the box office, year in and year out, lending a sense of certainty to the belief. The fact remains it is not true. There are plenty of new ideas in Hollywood: it's just damned hard for them to get a hearing -- on the silver screen, anyway.

Near the end of 2007 I moved from a small town in Pennsylvania to Los Angeles in the hopes of belatedly chasing my secondary dream of working in the entertainment industry. By the summer of 2008 I had my first industry gig, a five-week writing job, and this led, almost precisely a year later, to a "permanent" job at a make-up effects studio. I put the word in quotations because there are really no permanent jobs in "the industry" and absolutely no permanent jobs in make-up effects. The very nature of MUFX work is temporary. You work on a movie for six months; the movie wraps and you get the hook. Or, you work on a TV show; it gets canceled after the second season, and out you go. My job, it's true, was not rooted to any one project, and so I fancied I had more permanence, or less impermanence, than most. I was the "office coordinator," a nebulous term meaning that I did whatever needed to be done, from the august (budget estimates, script breakdowns) to the menial ("Can I get you some coffee, Lady Gaga?") and even the super-menial ("The wet sand we bought for the dummy is too lumpy; take this shovel and beat it flat."). There was no project too intimidating or ridiculous ("Help me put this temporary tattoo on that actresses' butt, but for God's sake don't look like you're enjoying yourself!"), no location to remote or uninviting ("I know it's quarter past four, and I know it's 35 miles away through stop-and-stop traffic, but you need to get these fangs to the location in Malibu by five.") for me to tackle. One of the most informative, if also the most boring, was called "tracking development leads." Simply put, development leads are little blurbs of information which tell you the status of just about every project which is trying to get off the ground in film or on television -- movies, television shows, mini-series, you name it. I had to sift through hundreds of these each week in hopes of finding one that might be persuaded to hire us to do its effects work.

Over the course of my year with the studio I must have seen somewhere in the vicinity of about ten thousand development leads, and after a few months I began to notice a specific pattern. About one-third of the ideas being pitched were what I would call "original," meaning that they had no direct link with any existing or previously existing movie, series, or franchise. The remaining two thirds were remakes, reboots, spin-offs, prequels, sequels, or adaptations. This is of course a very rough estimate. In any given week the figures might be radically different either way, but the overall trend was always for rehashing "old" concepts and against producing "new" or "original" ones.

Like many people, I took this to mean that Hollywood had run out of ideas, that after a century of moviemaking and sixty-odd years of television, the well had finally run dry, or was in the last stages of doing so. In fact, in writing a review of Rob Zombie's "Halloween" remake, I said: "Since Hollywood isn't interested in new ideas, and Zombie has apparently run out of such ideas as he has, I guess [remaking "Halloween"] was inevitable." It was only much later I heard Zombie say, in an interview, that after doing the "Halloween" remakes, he approached the studio with an original idea, only to be told he could direct another remake, this time of "The Blob," or hit the road. It wasn't that he didn't want to shoot his own stuff, it was that he wasn't being allowed to. And this led me to ask: Why?

The truth, I discovered after some digging, was that the "mid-budget" film was rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Inflation makes using numbers tricky, but speaking in broad terms, "mid-budget" films are those which cost between $5 - 60 million dollars, and which are generally geared toward adult audiences. To quote Jason Bailey's article on Flavorwire: "Slowly, quietly, over roughly the decade and a half since the turn of the century, the paradigm shifted. Studios began to make fewer films, betting big on would-be blockbusters, operating under the assumption that large investments equal large returns. Movies that don’t fit into that box (thoughtful dramas, dark comedies, oddball thrillers, experimental efforts) were relegated to the indies, where freedom is greater, but resources are far more limited." As it happens, "would-be blockbusters" are generally action-adventure or science-fiction/fantasy films, pitched to younger audiences and toward the youthful nostalgia of older theatergoers.

Now, what is immediately noticeable about most of the tentpole films being produced is that they are not merely films but franchises -- "revenue streams" in the vulgar verbiage of Hollywood bean-counters. Even when the original film in question was not derived from an already existing novel, comic book, theme-park ride, cartoon, etc., it immediately spawned a series of sequels, to the point that, using just these examples, Hollywood has, in the last decade and a half or so, turned out eight "Potter," five "Pirates," seven "Furious," five "Transformers," three or four "Star Wars" and more comic-book/graphic novel movies than I can actually count. At the same time it virtually stopped making adult-themed mid-budget films which were often notable for the originality of their storylines. Movies as diverse in theme as "The Godfather," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," and "When Harry Met Sally" simply were not being produced anymore. These movies cost money, took chances, and it was anybody's guess whether they'd recoup it at the box office: another "Fast & Furious" movie, on the other hand, is viewed as a safe investment. So too were the reboots and "re-imaginings" of every iconic horror film you care to name, along with the cream of 80s and 90s television shows. Even old radio programs from the 30s and 40s were disinterred, dusted off and sent staggering like mummies into the marketplace. No idea was too long in the tooth to get a $150 million budget, not even Edgar Rice Burroughs "Martian" series, whose first installment was penned in 1912.

At the same time, while this frenzy of remaking was in progress, original screenplays and concepts for television shows began to form an immense backlog at the studios. Young screenwriters and aspiring directors found themselves unable to get a hearing. It got to the point where some writers, simply to bilk the system, paid artists to transform their scripts into graphic novels, published the novels on their own dime, and then went to the studios saying, "I've got the rights to this comic book...." whereupon the doors immediately swung open. In the sphere of television, of course, this dam eventually burst: first at the cable networks like HBO and Showtime, and later, via the streaming services like Netflix, which began to produce their own, often superlative, original content. Thus the grotesque situation has arisen: whereupon studios steadfastly refuse to make anything original, whereas cable networks and services like Netflix are consistently pumping out daring new shows.

It seemed to me that this schizoid situation could not stand for long. After all, many "tent-pole" films bomb, saddling studios with huge losses -- "John Carter of Mars," "Battleship," "The Lone Ranger" and "Fantastic Four" all come to mind. Soon the suits would ease back on these all-in, bet-the-house rolls of the dice and go back to letting the Rob Reiners, Francis Ford Coppolas and Steven Soderberghs of Hollywood resume their work at the mid-budget level. Soon they would open the sluice-gates and let a flood of daring new original material pour into development, allowing adults alternatives to the sight of Vin Diesel chewing his dialogue like marbles, or the sound of another J.J. Abrams or Michael Bay film, each audible from 20 blocks away. Even Joss Whedon, who became one of Hollywood's hottest directors after the success of "The Avengers," admitted afterward, "What we need are new narratives."

As it happens there is no evidence of any of this occurring. On the contrary, studios like Disney have doubled down on their position, refusing to produce anything they can't turn into a theme park attraction, while networks and services like HBO, Showtime, AMC, Starz, Netflix, Amazon, etc. are sailing full steam ahead into the uncharted but exciting creative waters that gave us shows like "Breaking Bad," "House of Cards," "The Americans" and "Orange is the New Black," among many others. Increasingly, this is where writers and producers who would rather fail with with their own ideas than succeed with someone else's, end up.

When I was a kid, with a few notable exceptions, television was considered the lower end of the entertainment food chain -- Stephen King referred to it quaintly as "a bottomless pit of shit" -- while the silver screen was considered its zenith. Things have changed: the paradigm has capsized. Daring films penned by iconoclastic writers and helmed by gutsy, visionary directors are increasingly rare in commodity, while television, once rightly reviled, is now the home of creativity and daring. I don't honestly know if this situation is good, bad, or sacrilegious, but I do know that the expression "idiot box" now applies more to your local cineplex than it does your television.

Life as Film Noir: Remembering "Se7en"

The apocalypse. You're soaking in it.
                                           -- Lindsey MacDonald

I know I've said this before, but I'm the world's biggest sucker for atmosphere. The more and the darker the atmosphere, the better. For just this reason I've often found the Noir films of the 40s and the 50s to be irresistible. There's just something about unshaven, neon-lit private detectives, sitting at their desks in the dark, crushing out Lucky Strikes in dirty ashtrays while nursing straight whiskey, that appeals to me. And while this type of movie is largely finished as an active subgenre of film, it does make the occasional and glorious reappearance. "Angel Heart" was one such cinematic moment; "Se7en" was another.

I originally watched "Se7en" with only a vague understanding of exactly what it was about, but I do remember that I knew that the plot as I understood it -- cops on the trail of some fiendishly clever and inventive serial killer -- was already showing signs of fatigue even in 1995. I also knew that it was directed by David Fincher, who I wrongly held responsible for the shovefulful of shit that was "Alien 3", and was understandably wary. Sure, there were a few moments in "Alien 3" that showed an understanding of stylistic principles, but that didn't make up for what I regarded as the ham-fisted butchery of a beloved franchise. So I guess you could say that I was prepared for disappointment.

When I staggered from the theater a few hours later, I felt as if I'd been struck over the head with a meat mallet. Not only had I just emerged, gasping, from a stormy lake of glorious Film Noir cliche, not only had I been thrashed senseless by a diabolically clever plot, I had also been subjected to that most brutal of Hollywood treatments -- I'd been made to care about characters and then forced to watch them suffer agonies I'd scarcely wish on my worst enemy. Some movies are so forgettable that within hours of seeing them, you literally don't remember being in the theater ("Hideaway," a 1995 horror flick with Jeff Goldblum and Alicia Silverstone, was a perfect example of this). Others stay with you like the imprint of a red-hot brand. "Se7en" was one of these.

If I had to sum up why I liked it so much, I would point to one seemingly nondescript sequence which occurs between Detective Mills (Brad Pitt) and Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) in a bar. The two men have been working together a short while at this point, and Mills has been trying fairly hard to ingratiate himself with his partner, hence the drinks. But as they share a beer together on yet another rainy evening in the nameless city in which the film takes place, it becomes clear that the philosophies of the two cops are irreconcilable, and Mills has had quite enough of this gloomy, defeatist, all-knowing man.

Somerset: I just don't think I can continue to live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was virtue.

Mills: You're no different. You're no better.

Somerset: I didn't say I was different or better. I'm not. Hell, I sympathize; I sympathize completely. Apathy is the solution. I mean, it's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work.

Mills: I don't think you're quitting because you believe these things you say. I don't. I think you want to believe them, because you're quitting. And you want me to agree with you, and you want me to say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. It's all fucked up. It's a fucking mess. We should all go live in a fucking log cabin." But I won't. I don't agree with you. I do not. I can't.

Somerset: Oh, wait! You care?

Mills: Damn right.

Somerset: And you're going to make a difference?

I think it was at this point, during my original viewing of the film (Christ...was it 20 years ago?), that I realized I was not in the safe and familiar land of buddy-cop convention. These two dicks, despite fitting on paper the same descriptions as, say, Riggs and Murtaugh in "Lethal Weapon," were more like oil and water than peanut butter and jelly. Somerset viewed Mills as hardheaded and naive, unwilling to bow to his superior professional and life experience; Mills saw Somerset as a burnout and a quitter, someone who had confused his own personal decline with the decline of the world around him. And while they later warmed up to each other, thanks in large part to the efforts of Mills' wife, each retained their distinct philosophy right up to the end -- where, one imagines, Somerset's views were merely affirmed and Mills, insomuch as he was capable of anything at that point, had probably come to agree with him. But I'll come back to that in a moment, because it's at this point that I'd like to talk about why this movie resonated with me upon my more recent viewing in a distinctly different manner than it did back in good old 1995.

At that time, I was quite on the other side of the majority of experiences which presently define me as a man, but there were a few essential similarities. Like Somerset, I had developed, thanks to what might be called an unhappy formative period, into something of a cynic about human nature, human behavior -- human beings generally, I suppose. And "Se7en" played to a certain extent into my notions of how the world worked. From the ages of roughly ten to fifteen, which have an influence grossly disproportionate to their actual sum of days, life showed me no mercy. It seemed to me that the passage Orwell wrote in "Such, Such Were The Joys" was not so much an observation as an unalterable law:

"That was the pattern of school life -- a continuous triumph of the strong over the weak. Virtue consisted in winning. It consisted in being bigger, stronger, handsomer, more popular, more elegant, more unscrupulous than other people -- in dominating them, bullying them, making them suffer pain, making them look foolish, getting the better of them in every way. Life was hierarchical and whatever happened was right. There were the strong, who deserved to win and always did win, and the weak, who deserved to lose and always did lose, everlastingly."

Long after my life become enjoyable again I retained this view of existence, simply removing the word 'school' from the opening sentence. Like the character of Christopher Hart in Derek Robinson's cynical masterwork "Piece of Cake," I thought the world divided between bastards and suckers, and felt I had to make a choice between the two -- that there was no third option. I'm not sure I thought this as a conscious philosophy so much as felt it instinctively, but the fact remained that while I had a burning desire, even a need, to see justice done, I did not actually believe justice was obtainable. Even when justice prevailed, when the good guys notched one on their gun barrels, it always struck me as ultimately irrelevant. History, of which I was an avid student, was crammed too full of cases where the bad guys conquered. No matter how hard Howard Fast tried to uplift the ending of Spartacus, or Mel Gibson the climax of "Braveheart," I could not escape the story's unwilling moral -- that being in the right is no guarantee against being utterly defeated.

Watching "Se7en," my worldview was largely affirmed. David Mills struck me as the epitome of the good guy caught in the gears of the way the world works, and left crushed, mangled, beaten and bleeding, with all his good intentions destroyed along with his sanity. Steady old Somerset, on the other hand, who started his battle against life by surrendering, and then chose to continue the fight on his own terms in a kind of low-grade guerilla war, was more in line with my Hemingwayesque take on reality. He knew it all had to be done, but he was acutely conscious of its futility.

A great deal of the philosophy of "Se7en" is summed up by the exchange between Mills and the sleazebag who works the door at the massage parlor:

David Mills: Do you like what you do for a living? These things you see?

Man in Massage Parlor Booth: No, I don't. But that's life.

And yet, watching Se7en again after all these years, I have to wonder about the atmosphere of the film -- not its physical atmosphere, for which I will never have anything but affection, but its emotional atmosphere. It's moral surround, one might say. And despite everything else that happens in the film I keep coming back to that tete-a-tete in the bar, that little philosophical set-to between the young firebrand and the old stalwart. Why do I find it so compelling? Here, I think, is the answer. This is not an argument between two men or even between two disparate views on life. It is an argument between two points of view existing within all of us. On the one hand we have passion and zeal and naivete, and on the other apathy, weariness, worldly cynicism. On the left is the Bastard and and on the right, the Sucker, and as usual they are in a clinch, punching the shit out of each other until the canvas beneath them looks like the porcelain sink by a dentist's chair -- and in mid-root canal, no less. In most of us, no one gets the upper hand for too long. The most sarcastic of us can be moved to tears by the beauty that life offers, just as the most cheerful optimist can be driven to weep at the meaningless cruelty of it all. Just when we've got our boxing shoes set in one position, Life chuckles at our arrogance and whacks us with a liver shot.

In "Se7en," the motivation of the villain, John Doe, is exposed near then end, when he is provoked out of his cool killer's repose to respond to Mills' comment that he, Doe, is a murderer of ' innocent people:'

"Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that's the point. We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore."

You can call Doe what you want -- loony, psycho, serial killer, stupendous egotist -- but you can't call him apathetic. The respect which Somerset shows his then sight-unseen antagonist as the story progresses is largely a reflection of this. It's interesting that Mills, who treats Doe with disgust and contempt, refusing to acknowledge his abilities and determination, is actually quite similar to him in basic motivation. Both men want to make a difference, and both men are willing to put their lives on the line to see that difference made. It is merely their choice of methods that differs. In "Red Dragon," Hannibal Lecter insists that Will Graham caught him not because of any deductive genius on Graham's part, but because they are "just alike." And at the end of that book, Graham, lying in his bed of pain, acknowledges this is partially true. He has the capacity to "make murder", but unlike Lecter, he has the capacity -- and the desire -- for mercy as well.

Mills' decision to murder Doe at the end of the story is a victory for Doe's method, because, in the last analysis, it worked. He got what he wanted out of the entire scenario: he provoked Mills into the sin of wrath, which, unlike the other six "deadly sins" sins in the canon, is is sin precisely because the Bible holds it as a power which is reserved solely in God. But in another sense, Doe's victory is not quite as completely as intended. For it is implied that Somerset's commitment to fighting evil on his own terms, which has burned down to embers as the story opens, is rekindled by this confrontation with a new type of evil. If he long ago accepted that staying at his job accomplishes nothing, he has now recognized that retiring will also change nothing. Quoting Hemingway, he says that while he doesn't believe the world is a beautiful place, he does believe it is worth fighting for, and he will continue the fight -- alone.

But what about the argument? Who is right and who is wrong? I can't answer that question definitively, of course, and neither can you. How we would respond would depend a great deal on how we felt in that particular moment, and as intelligent people, we know this and elect to stay silent. But in the original draft of the screenplay, the author, Andrew Kevin Walker, does attempt an answer. Mills, having blown John Doe's brains out, sends a note to Somerset from his holding cell which reads:

YOU WERE RIGHT. YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.

Let us hope not.

What Happened to Jack: A Cautionary Tale

I ought to warn you that I am extraordinarily pissed off this morning, and prone to draw a little blood in the service of a friend of mind who has been cruelly wronged by a country he wanted to adopt.

Jack -- that's not his name, of course, nor it is an imaginative nom de plume, but I'm too angry to be clever -- was born in Ireland to working-class parents. Everything was tough in "Stab City," as he called his home town, including the weather, which he once likened to Mordor's. Against all odds, while in his early 20s he emigrated to Japan, taught himself the language, and made a considerable fortune in the aeronautics industry before his thirtieth birthday. A few years ago he pulled up stakes and came to America, looking to parlay that fortune into a large slice of American Dream.

Jack, you see, had a conscience. When he began to believe that his chosen industry was growing increasingly militarized, increasingly shaped for the purposes of a future war with China, he left it, despite the promise of an even larger fortune if he remained. When I asked him whether it was easy to do this, given the staggering sums of money to be found in weapons manufacture, he replied, "A week before WW2 broke out, Britain was still selling Nazi Germany everything it needed to make war, even though the bloody Brits knew perfectly well all that gasoline, scrap metal and what-not would be used to kill British soldiers. Who wants to be a party to that?"

(Like I said, conscience. Or perhaps I should say morals, which are not to be confused with ethics. Ethically those British businessmen had every right to sell Hitler war-making material; morally they were fucked, and, one fervently hopes, later killed by German bombs during the Blitz.)

Jack came to America on a visa, and after many months of nosing around perspective business opportunities, bought into a large, successful gym franchise looking to expand further into Southern California. He leased a 23,000 square-foot gym, equipped it with all the latest and best in exercise equipment, and hired a large and competent staff to run the place. He extended discounts to law enforcement officers and active-duty military personnel, cross-promoted with other local businesses, and made many friends, including your humble correspondent. In short, he did everything an immigrant to the United States is supposed to do and then some -- entered legally, paid taxes to the Federal, state and local governments, pumped money into his adoptive community and created jobs for home-grown Americans.

Time passed, and Jack, living here in SoCal, went to renew his driver's license. When he arrived at the DMV he was told that though his paperwork looked to be in order, it was the wrong paperwork; one of the nine Federal agencies which oversees the regulations involving business visas had screwed up, and the short of it was: no license.

As a resident of California, I can tell those of you who are not familiar with the place that it is almost impossible to exist here without a car, especially if you live in outermost Los Angeles County, where there is no public transportation to speak of, and even ride-sharing services like Uber fail to operate in a consistent or reliable way. California was built for cars, many neighborhoods do not even have sidewalks, and the trains they are always threatening or promising to build remain blueprints on somebody's desk. I am a man who would rather walk five miles than drive one, I probably average about six to seven miles on foot every day, and even I can't function without my automobile. Jack, with much more at stake than I have, had to have that license; so he waded into the sea of red tape that is the immigration bureaucracy, hoping that when he emerged, the D.L. he needed would be gripped firmly between his teeth.

No such logic. After 9/11, the Federal government embarked on its largest power-grab since the Civil War, and the inevitable result of all this expansion in the name of security was that many of its newly-bloated agencies found their jurisdictions overlapping. Different agencies would claim power over the same situation, creating duplicate paperwork and general confusion as to who was really in charge. Inevitably, human egos became involved, turning a knotty administrative problem into an opaque tangle of jealousy and confusion. In this tangle Jack's simple desire for a fucking driver's license became hopelessly lost. Not even his high-powered attorney was high-powered enough to cut the tape. The best solution he could come up with was to suggest that Jack obtain a green card, as the acquisition of the card would automatically solve the license problem. It seemed like a reasonable enough idea: after all, Jack had sunk a fortune into America, he might as well stick around for the long(er) haul. But concealed within the suggestion was a trap of sorts, and possibly the motive for all the needless difficulty in the first place.

Jack had made a legal -- and, I emphasize, morally unimpeachable -- fortune while living and working in Japan. He had obtained Japanese citizenship during that time, and the bulk of his fortune remained in a Japanese bank. In other words, the money he'd earned had already been taxed quite thoroughly by the government of Japan. Were he to obtain a green card, the entirety of his assets everywhere in the world would also become subject to retroactive taxation by the U.S. Government, even though none of those assets had been earned here. He would, in essence and in fact, be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 2.5 x 3.5 inch square of laminated plastic.

Jack did not think this was fair. The U.S. government had done nothing to assist him in creating his initial fortune, and he was not a U.S. citizen. He did not see a reason why he should share the money he'd earned in a foreign country with the IRS, especially he was already paying American business taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, etc., etc., to a hefty six-figure tune., not to mention employing American citizens.

I want to emphasize that Jack had no objection to rendering unto the American Caesar what was actually Caesar's in terms of tax revenue; but this struck him as simple blackmail, a money grab on top of a power grab. Cut us an unearned slice of your fortune, mate, and we'll give you a driver's license. Refuse, and you take the fucking bus for the rest of your stay. Assuming you can find one.

Jack fought the good fight with the U.S. bureaucracy for many months, but as a foreigner on a business visa he feared driving on an expired license, and trying to manage his business and personal life when dependent on rides from others -- as if he were a tween begging transport to the mall from his older brother and not a successful businessman who'd made millions and employed a large staff of Americans at living wages -- was a miserable experience. Still, he might have gutted it out if not for the final straw, which came in the remark uttered by someone at the DMV in one of his many fun-filled conversations with that agency:

"You know what your trouble is? You came here legally. If you were an an illegal immigrant we'd be obligated to give you a license."

Consider this for a moment. I mean, really consider it. Under California law, an illegal alien, who is by his very presence in this country committing a felony under Federal law, has more right to a driver's license than a legal alien who is employing numerous Californians and paying huge sums in taxes to the state.

This is not a scene in a story by Kafka; this is not an except from "Catch-22" or even of "M*A*S*H." This is actually happening.

Do not misunderstand me. My name is not Ebenezer Scrooge. I am perfectly well aware that people cross the border illegally in search of a better life for themselves and their families, and if I were dirt-ass poor and living in Mexico, and I thought I could live a more human life in America, I'd probably cross the border, too. The issue of illegal immigration is a complex one, rooted partially in the legacy of the Mexican - American War, which was morally dubious and possibly criminal, and partially in the wicked policies of the modern-day Mexican government, which escapes the responsibility of its own racism and corruption by encouraging its poorest and darkest-skinned people to leave Mexico, and thus relieves itself of social pressure that might otherwise lead to a revolution I think is long overdue.

At the same time, however, I refuse to accept the absurdity of our government telling someone who has obeyed its laws that he would be better off if he were violating them.

Jack gave up and returned to Japan, and before long will be selling the gym. He is still understandably bitter over his experiences here and judging from what he wrote in his last e-mail I'm not sure he will ever return. If he does, it will be only for vacation purposes and I'm damned sure he won't be buying any more businesses, employing any more people or paying any more taxes.

Oh, Jack. If only you'd come here illegally!

How Writers Think

So, against your better judgement, in defiance of the warnings given by family, priest and professor, you want to know how a writer's mind works. How they come up with their crazy ideas.

Okay. Here goes. My explanation will have to include a small amount of biographical detail, but you'll understand why in a moment.

In late 2007, I moved to Los Angeles with the vague goal of working in that sprawling abstraction known as "the entertainment industry" while I polished what I thought was the final draft of my first novel. And in fact by the following year I'd scored my first real gig, writing what is known as a "technical draft" of a screenplay for a make-up effects shop owner who had the option on a British horror novel. I parlayed this gig into a full-time job at the effects studio in question, and when that job went the way of all flesh in 2010, I worked freelance as a "make up effects technician," a sort of helper monkey to the actual make up effects artists, until the summer of 2013. When that too began to dry up, I fell ass-backwards into something called game capture, i.e. helping to make trailers for games like Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, FarCry, Watchdogs, Destiny, and many others.

Game capture is sometimes referred to by initiates as "virtual production." That is, it is exactly like the production of movies, television shows and commercials, the only difference being that the set, and to some extent the actors, are virtual. Now, anyone who has worked in production will tell you that it is about 20% work and 80% waiting. It takes hours to set up a shot, and after the last take is captured, hours to set up the next one, and during these down times the actor/game capture technician is free to do what he likes so long as he doesn't stray too far from the capture bay. He can sleep, eat, read, surf the web, drink a beer, play with his phone, listen to music, or chat with the other techs, and I spent countless hours doing all of these things, as well as editing my various novels. Sometimes, however -- and this is kind of ironic, I grant you -- I played video games of my own. It is true that most of the games I played were very old, probably because my laptop was an ancient Dell Inspiron E1505 with a processor that was old enough to buy alcohol, but they were better than nothing during those seventeen-hour days when we spent only three hours working and the rest goofing off.

One of my favorite games was "Civilization." If you're not familiar with it, Civilization is a strategy game which allows the player to build and guide a civilization over the course of about 6,000 years of history, from the Stone Age to the Nuclear, and beyond. I found this game fascinating, not leastwise because it bore no resemblance whatever to the slam-bang, adrenaline-infused, first person shooters that I played at work. But simultaneous with playing endless matches of Civilization, I engaged in a conversation with one of my co-workers, who was speculating about the nature of the universe (you speculate about a lot of shit at three in the morning when you've done nothing but drink coffee and eat donuts all day). He mentioned a theory, which he seemed to remember hearing in Carl Sagan's "Cosmos," that our entire universe might simply compose a single atom within the toe-nail of some other being, and so on and so forth in both directions: infinite regression, infinite progression, infinite reality extending infinitely.

I countered with the idea that is gaining currency among quantum physicists, i.e. that the universe is not "real" in the sense we generally use the word, but actually a complex, three-dimensional hologram, which may have a finite limit on the amount of information it can store (much in the manner of a video game), and may, by extension, have a Great Projector (a hologram, presumably, cannot project itself, but that's an entirely different debate). I looked up the article in question, from a website called Motherboard, and read the relevant passage to him: "If we are living in a giant hologram, can we really say that all the sim worlds and massive multiplayer online games we’ve built aren’t as real as our universe’s planets, star clusters and galaxies, all of which boil down to quantum dots on a cosmic bitmap?"

At that moment we looked at my laptop, where a game of Civilization was in progress. In point of fact, I was at that moment about to drop a nuclear bomb onto a large city held by one of my enemies: my finger was hovering over the button which would deliver the warhead.

"If this theory is true," my friend said. "You are about to kill millions of people."

"If this theory is true," I replied. "Pac-Man has a soul."

I pressed the button. Bang went the virtual city of my virtual enemy, reduced to virtual rubble by my virtual bomb. We got a good laugh out of it. But later, as I drove home over the dark, whisper-quiet streets of Hollywood, I couldn't help but wonder about the future. The version of "Civilization" I was playing was more than ten years old. The most recent versions were much more complex, and that complexity also extended to the game's artificial intelligence. Was it possible, I wondered, that at some point that the tiny bits of data within the game, representing individual groups of people within cities, might achieve some semblance of consciousness? And what about the M.M.O.'s mentioned in the article? What about games like Sim City or Second Life, which are not games at all in the conventional sense but virtual online worlds, which now exist, via their servers, independently of their users, to the point where they are actual "places," albeit ones without a physical existence?

Several episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" dealt with the moral dilemmas inherent in the idea of machines or holograms developing self-awareness. But in the case of "Star Trek" the plots usually revolved around the entity in question wanting to be granted the same status as his human counterparts -- wanting to be seen as "real" and wanting freedom of action within the framework of the "real world." The reverse idea, the idea of human beings descending into the alternate reality of the hologram and the machine, was never fully explored.

What do I mean by this? Well, it's been said for years that virtual reality would take gaming to its next phase, the point where a player does not stare at images on a monitor but actually experiences the physical reality of the game via neural and sensory interfaces, and can interact with that "reality" in much the same way he interacts with the real world. It would be possible, given such immersive, interactive technology, for a person not merely to see, hear and feel that cyber-reality but perhaps, one day, to smell and taste it as well. In a certain way, the virtual reality of the game would become indistinguishable from the "actual reality" of everyday life. It would be "real."

Now, suppose for a moment that the characters within the game in question achieved, over the course of time, not merely intelligence but consciousness. Became self-aware and began to exhibit the characteristics of intelligent beings. Imagine for a moment that you are gaming within this virtual world full of free-thinking beings, and you encounter one which has, say, the physical attributes of Lara Croft. Thanks to your neural-sensory interfaces, you can do quite a bit more with Miss Croft than exchange treasure maps and witty banter. You can -- if she's willing, this is a sentient being after all, and she packs a gun on each hip -- take her to virtual bed. And if you do this, you are not simply masturbating with a computerized blow-up doll: you are actually experiencing sexual intercourse with a willing partner, albeit one that doesn't exist within the confines of our own physical reality. But the wildest part, the part that my writer's brain was leading to perhaps from the very first moment this discussion began, comes in the form of the next question:

What if Lara gets pregnant?

What if, when you achieve climax, your physical ejaculate is matched by "virtual ejaculate" which, no less real for its nonphysical state, joins with Lara's nonphysical "egg" and creates a program within her being which, at some future moment, will emerge as a baby whose attributes are drawn from both Lara's information and from your own? What would your rights and responsibilities be in regards such an entity?

Preposterous questions, you say. Lara isn't "real" and therefore neither is the baby in her virtual womb. Well, we have just demonstrated that Lara, being sentient, is very much "real," and her baby, when it is "born," will be equally real, at least within the virtual reality in which it was conceived. Although the baby may owe its conception to something as simple as an algorithm that calculates the odds of pregnancy after sex, and then initiates a fetus-program within Lara as a "triggered event" within the game, the baby will nevertheless be "born" a conscious entity, with its characteristics perhaps partially based on the information the computer has about you on file: your looks, intelligence, speech patterns, habits, and perhaps even your psychological makeup.

Would it be your child? If not, what the hell would it be? One thing seems certain: this child-thing, being a hybrid of sorts -- neither human nor strictly speaking a self-generated sentient program -- need never "die" in the sense that we physical beings experience death. In point of fact, death, within the confines of virtual reality, need not necessarily be a permanent phenomenon or even exist at all. (Theoretically, a series of redundant backup servers and cloud drives scattered over various locations could keep a program running indefinitely in some form or other, even if the servers upon which it originally existed were physically destroyed.)

The truth is since no computer is at present self-aware and "alive" (so far as we know and presently define the term), we have yet to be able to examine how the concept of life, or of death, would operate in regards to beings who exist within a virtual sphere of reality. And even if the master program of the "game" reality regulates and sets limits on "life" in much the same way as human life is regulated by its biological clockwork, even if the child eventually "dies" by virtue of being erased somehow, wouldn't this mean that the progeny of your "child" could, in essence, form a virtual branch of your family that might go on for centuries or millennia to come? Isn't it possible that servers containing this reality could be sent into orbit around the sun on small spacecraft, using solar radiation as their power source, and thus, in a manner of speaking, achieve almost literal immortality, perhaps never even realizing that their reality within the servers was not physically "real?" Could not our own, supposedly reality, our very existence at this second, be nothing more than information processed through sophisticated closed-circuit servers, monitored and regulated, but not necessarily directed, my a master intelligence?

This is the type of shit writers think about at 4 AM when driving down Hollywood Boulevard, eager to get home so they can crack a beer, pet their cat, and catch four hours of sleep before they get back in the car and return to work.

But their thinking, fuddled as it may be by too much caffeine and too little sleep, doesn't stop there. Their theorizing can be taken still further. Through the interactive technology necessary to achieve virtual fatherhood, we can ourselves descend into the virtual world of the game and act within it, effecting its environment in whatever way we choose or can get away with. The denizens of that world, however, cannot do the reverse. They have no physical reality per se, so they cannot leave their reality and interact with ours. But let us supposed robotic or even android technology is suitably well-advanced within the next few decades; wouldn't it be possible for a being from the game reality to upload itself into such an android, whereupon it would occupy a physical body, and be able to move about in our world? What if Lara Croft could follow you home?

And what if she was pissed?

All of these thoughts ran through my head, in some fashion or other, as I traded neon-lit Hollywood for shadowy Burbank. And as I lugged my laptop into my dark and silent house at four in the morning, I could still feel the warmth of the laptop through the fabric of my backpack. A slumbering electronic world lay within that machine. To me, it was just a game. An amusement. A distraction. But to someone, somewhere, perhaps it was something more.

Perhaps it was everything.

Perhaps it was my next book.

REALITY IS A PUNCHLINE: A PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF FRANK MILLER'S "THE KILLING JOKE"

Some call it sick, but I call it weak.
--- Don Henley

My dictionary defines reality as "the totality of real things and events." As definitions go, particularly of somewhat ineffable concepts, that's not too shabby. At least on the surface. But when you think about it, "the totality of real things and events" is not strictly what we mean by reality. The connotation is different from the denotation. "Reality" to most people is truth. It is the inescapable, the unavoidable, the inarguable, and more often than not, the unpleasant. When we tell someone to "come back to reality" we mean the world as it actually exists. The world of our senses, foremost among which is sight.

Beauty comes in at the eye; so does reality. The phrase "what you see is what you get" is for human beings quite literally true. To us, sight is the means by which we make contact with the thing we call reality -- the denotation of reality and the connotation of reality. When we come out of a daydream, we abandon the mind's eye for the two plugged into our brain, but in both cases we are seeing. Our experience of the "real world" generally begins with what we see.

Not long ago I was watching, or rather re-watching, Carl Sagan's Cosmos, when I was reminded of an interesting but seldom-reflected upon fact. Gamma Rays, X-Rays, Ultraviolet, Infrared and Radio Waves are all different kinds of light. The human eye can see only that which which exists between the ultraviolet and the infrared -- what we refer to as "the visible spectrum", which is in fact only one sixth of the total spectrum. So what I am seeing right now as I type these words is in essence only a fragment of what we might call True Reality.

Put another way, what we see is not what we get -- not by a damn sight. Our concept of reality is imprisoned within our senses, and our senses are incomplete and shallow. What we see -- and what we hear, taste, smell and touch -- is not True Reality. And this holds true of other animals as well. Sharks have poor eyesight but possess “mechanosense”, the ability to "see" the electrical impulses generated by living things. Rattlesnakes hunt by seeing heat; bats by sonar, which is another way of seeing sound. For these creatures, "reality" is quite different than it is for us, but not necessarily more accurate. They interpret the universe through the senses they possess; and their view of the universe is shaped by those senses. Who is to say that a mole sees the world more rightly or more wrongly than an eagle? Is not each creature's view of reality simultaneously incomplete and valid? Is what the spider sees somehow more "true" than the vision of the fly?

Taken at its most basic level, The Killing Joke is not a clash between combatants but between reality systems, world-views, philosophies of life; what the Germans call Weltanchauung. The three principal players in the drama all interpret reality in a different way, and each one believes the views of the others to be wrong. The superficial question posed by the graphic novel is whether The Joker or The Batman is "right" in their particular interpretation of the world. A much deeper and more important question is whether or not True Reality might not encompass all three beliefs. But to even attempt to answer that question we must first take a look at the three antagonists and their ideas of what is inescapable, inarguable, unavoidable...or in other words, true.

The Joker's outlook is perhaps best described as a kind of train-wreck of existential nihilism, absurdism and chaos theory. His belief-system attacks all other belief-systems by its very nature. To him, the whole of existence is a joke, a sort of seething mass of absurdities thinly crusted by the delusion that life makes sense, that there is justice in the world, and that people and their actions are firmly rooted in sanity. Though viewed as delusional by others, the Joker maintains quite the opposite; he and he alone gets the joke, and everyone else is simply kidding themselves. Perhaps tired of being viewed as "community of one", he makes a vicious and extremely well-planned attack on the sanity of Jim Gordon, repeating his theory that "one bad day" is all that separates the ordinary man from the insane one. Indeed, the Joker by his very existence is a kind of attack, not on sanity but on security. On meaning. On the belief that, well, life makes sense, there is justice in the world, and that sanity reigns. In that sense he stands somewhere between the Jewish interpretation of Satan and the Norse god Loki; he stumps for everyone who struggles not to burst out laughing when confronted with horror or tragedy, and if he were a song lyric he would probably be, "I wanna cry, but I have to laugh."

The Batman is often presented as the "flip side of the coin" in relation to The Joker. He had the "one bad day" the Joker refers to, one which clearly effected his sanity and shaped his personality, but is outlook on life is exactly the opposite of the Joker's in every other respect. Although he employs brutal violence against his enemies, he never intentionally takes life; whereas the Joker leaves corpses everywhere he goes, often in great profusion. (Bruce Wayne values human life too much to commit murder, whereas the Joker uses murder as the ultimate expression of contempt for the so-called "inestimable value" of that life.) Most importantly, the Batman believes that justice is obtainable; indeed, his every action is in essence a violent attempt to impose order upon chaos. But it is not the order of a police squadron but rather a disciplined vigilante mob. In this respect he is the straight man to the Joker's anarchist clown; the grim, dour, unsmiling son of a bitch who refuses to admit that life is a pointless, existential farce, and will always be there, bucket in hand, to douse whatever flame the Joker has kindled in Gotham City.

Jim Gordon is the third picture in the triptych. Although much closer to Batman than to the Joker, he nevertheless sees the world somewhat differently than Bruce Wayne. For Gordon, justice is not the final object, but rather the imposition of law, which of course is not at all the same thing. Although he uses the Batman freely, the decision to employ a vigilante is one of pragmatic desperation rather than sympathy; he has never personally adopted the Batman's methods for himself. His crust of "delusion" -- in other words, his grip on sanity -- runs all the way to his center; deeper, in fact, than even the Joker's worst atrocities can penetrate. And presumably deeper than Bruce Wayne's, who after all spends half of his life swinging around town dressed as a giant bat. When confronted with the "one bad day" Gordon wavers, but does not crack. Indeed, his devotion to the law is such that one can legitimately wonder if he isn't, in his own way, every bit as crazy as The Joker.

Here are three particular points in the spectrum, each adjoining the other and to some extent overlapping, yet each also distinct and separate: the anarchist, the vigilante and the cop. Who can honestly say that he does not possess some measure of each within him?

Everyone feels, from time to time, precisely as The Joker does, i.e. that life itself is a joke, and that attempts to impose order and discipline on it are futile. At the same time everyone also has outbursts of vigilantism within themselves -- impatience with the law, a desire to inflict vengeance personally even if it conflicts with the letter of the law. Somewhere in between is the need for consistency, for order, for obedience to the rules, for the things which allow civilization to exist – the Jim Gordon personality. And indeed, all three viewpoints are to some extent validated by existence. Not a day can pass when we don’t see absurdities, when we don’t feel a need for justice, when we don’t take comfort in the existence of law. There is, however, a fundamental difference between The Joker and his two counterparts, and the difference is much more significant than one of method.

If pressed, both Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon would probably confess to moments of sympathy with the Joker’s point of view. Every man is occasionally beset by doubts even of his most fundamental beliefs, and indeed, in a certain way, Bruce Wayne’s decision to become The Batman is partially rooted in an acceptance that order, fairness, justice and so forth are unobtainable in life without taking extreme measures. However, both men reject the Joker’s philosophy whenever they are directly confronted by it. When they are pressed, they cling more tightly than ever to their fundamental beliefs – this is evidenced in Gordon’s case by his refusal to let the Batman take vengeance on the Joker despite the terrible thing he did to Gordon’s daughter.

The Joker, on the other hand, seems to harbor a deep inner doubt as to whether his philosophy is actually valid, or simply a reflection of his own weakness…the failure of his pre-insane personality to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. One of the most common devices of narcissists and egocentrics is the insistence that because they failed, everyone must fail; because they were inadequate, everyone else must be inadequate too. It is a frquent failing to mistake one’s own decline or downfall with the downfall of the world, and The Joker, though he has forgotten most of his former life, seems to be haunted by its persistent echo of the man he once was. When The Batman taunts him by saying that it is not everyone who is “one bad day” away from being insane, but rather only The Joker, the normally imperturbable psychopath reacts with uncharacteristic outrage and anger – perhaps even panic. What if he really is a weakling who took refuge in madness because he wasn’t man enough to stand up to the unfairness of Life? What if the absurdities and chaos of that Life are not its defining quality but simply one facet of its jewel? Wouldn’t that invalidate his point of view? Wouldn’t it, in fact, make a joke of the Joker?

We are all to some degree vested in our view of reality. Just as human existence is governed largely by the way we interpret reality through our senses, our religious beliefs, political opinions and our outlook on life shape the way we see that life and how we interact with other human beings. A shift in the spectrum would cause extreme disorientation, perhaps even madness. But it does not have to cause madness, and this is the fact The Joker is desperate to contest. Bruce Wayne’s view of reality changed when he saw his parents murdered; he saw that life was unfair and that justice was not forthcoming without a shove, and he took radical measures to ensure that shove was given and given repeatedly. But he did not lose the essence of himself, simply because he now saw Life in a broader and darker spectrum. Bruce Wayne changed, but he remained Bruce Wayne; the man the Joker had been was obliterated so thoroughly we are fated never to know his name. Deep down, the Joker senses and despises his own weakness almost as much as he fears that his view of life is wrong.

It’s not that Batman doesn’t get the joke. He just ain’t laughing.