So I am re-reading Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy. OK, sure it’s Tom Clancy (bust out your holier than thou literary critique and get it out of the way). I like Tom Clancy; his books are like trashy romance novels for men. But I digress. If you don’t know the story, it goes something like this:
- Arab terrorists blow up a Soviet oil refinery
- Soviets decide to invade the Middle East to get more oil
- NATO must stop them
- World War III ensues
Now there are some interesting parallels in the story to our current situation in the world… except not as absurd.
- Arab terrorists blow up American buildings
- Americans decide to invade the Middle East to get even
- The rest of world can’t stop them
- World War III ensues (pending)
This book was published in 1986, one full year after Rocky defeated communism. This was back before Ronald Reagan personally dismantled the Berlin Wall brick by brick with his bare hands. If you don’t remember these heady days of nuclear détente and MAD -- not to be confused with MADD (Mothers Against Everything) – this is back when we were on the brink of thermonuclear annihilation. The shit we were dealing with then made global climate change look like a day at the beach without an umbrella. Back then, worrying about “climate change” was like putting on sunscreen while being attacked by wild dogs and killer bees. You’ve got more immediate issues you should be focusing on.
With all that going on, the stories had to be larger than life. We needed good guys and bad guys. It needed to be simple. The complexities of political brinksmanship were too terrifying to contemplate. So in our fiction, we needed to identify the bad guy, kill him and live safely ever after. It was the purpose of fiction to provide that simple release.
In other words, our reality was terrifying and our fiction simple. Fast forward 20 years and what do we have? Reality that’s simple and fiction that is terrifying. Naturally, our reaction (at least that of our government) has been to simplify reality and scare the hell out of us. It’s not our fiction that is simplifying life into good guys and bad guys, it’s the Army. Find the bad guy, kill him and we’ll all be safe.
Ever get the sense that we are totally fucked?
mal•a•prop n. - the unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar
Example: You need an altitude adjustment, you’re too self-defecating.”
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prop•o•si•tion (prp-zshn) n.
1. A Subject for discussion or analysis.
2. A statement that affirms or denies something.
Example: “I think you should go play a nice game of hide-and-go-fuck-yourself.”
Friday, September 21, 2007
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