Disproving V for Vendetta.

“Writers tell lies to uncover the truth.” Evey Hammond the female lead of the movie says her father said this to her growing up. This is of course the point of all fiction, to uncover truth about our society, our religion, our government, and most importantly ourselves. She follows it up by saying, “politicians use lies to hide it.”

The story of V is, presumably, meant to be a fiction meant to uncover truth. Unfortunately it is the opposite. While it does uncover many “truths” throughout the tale it furthers the great myth, the great myth of violence and a violent revolution.

It is not hard to see why anti-authoritarians flock to the show. It is fundamentally a story of the lowest of low, a guy who lives in the shadows and is the ultimate outcast rising up and starting a movement that throws down the overly-authoritarian structure above him. It is the ultimate underdog story. The story of how the lowest rose to be the highest, and how all the evil people at the top were not only stopped, but killed. It is a story of ultimate vengeance.

Anyone who has ever felt cheated or tricked or oppressed by an authoritarian structure is bound to start cheering for this man. And who hasn't at one time been hurt by authority? Whether it was a parent falsely accusing you of something your sibling did, or a teacher who went out of their way to make your life miserable. In some way, in some often extremely painful and personal ways, we have all been cheated by “the man” and deep down have some urge to get back.

The character who plays the high chancellor and spews constant anger and irrational hate makes everyone hate him. Everyone watching wants him punished in some way to bring justice. When I learned about Hitler, Stalin, and Ne Win in history the temptation is to think, oh if someone just would have killed them then imagine how many lives would have been saved! Imagine how much better the world would be. It is as if the dictator is the one wholly and completely responsible for the mess. This is of course a lie.

The dictator is just a symbol, a symbol of the character of the people. No one rises to power, except on the backs of other people. If at any moment the Russian people as a whole were like, nope, I am not going to do anything this person says, then Stalin would have been on the streets in a week. V talks about this in his “revolutionary speech.” One of the truly great pieces of writing from modern movies:

And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.”

It isn't always “their fault.” Of course those that rise to power are more guilty than we, but if we are singing their victory, praising their name, voting for them or in anyway acknowledging their legitimacy to rule, then we are part of their rise to power, we are to blame.

Government is a creation of language. It only exists in our minds, and only exists because we allow it to. V points out this power of language in his revolutionary speech:

I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?

Just as language is the tool to build government, language is the tool that can destroy it. Notice how he talks about talking. “taking some time out of our daily lives to have a little chat.” “Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.”

Words are used to create meaning, but only to those who are willing to listen do they offer truth. Only those willing to go through rigorous debate, those willing to be challenged, will ever know truth, but whether we are willing to listen to not, words do create meaning.

It is simple to see how this happens in real life. I say something like “I am the king, you must serve me.” This is of course a completely false statement. However, if I get everyone to repeat it, and if I can somehow enforce punishment if anyone says otherwise, then it becomes a maxim. A “truth” that is accepted without any thought. Particularly when it becomes so accepted that if anyone dares to question it they are laughed at and ridiculed and viewed as “crazy” “extreme” “fringe” or a “conspiracy theorist.”

In the relentless repeating of the lie, the lie becomes truth and anyone who doesn't believe it is insane. However deep down we know it to be a lie because it is obvious. How am I fundamentally any different than any one else? What would make me a king on a different moral level? Even to ask these questions is to expose the myth. In an “Emperor's new clothes” fashion, the whole thing crumbles.

Wherever you see this sort of Fight Club oppression you know there is an accepted “truth” that is a lie. The first rule of fight club is you cannot talk about fight club. The first rule of an abusive relationship is you cannot talk about that abusive relationship. The first rule of the family club is you do not talk about the family club. An abusive husband knows he is being an abusive. An abused wife knows she is being abused. To talk about it, is to end it. No abusive husband wants his wife going around the neighborhood saying, “my husband beats me.”

The movie is startling accurate in its portrayal of many aspects of the world, though significantly different than our own. In the movie a member of the media team says, “It is our job to report the news, not to fabricate it, that is the government's job.” How incredibly accurate a description of the mainstream media's relationship to the government. The media simply churns out whatever the most recent press release is from the government and puts some analysis and spin on it and calls it good.

However despite the fact that I love the movie and shows much truth, its ultimate "truth" is indeed a lie.

It propagates the biggest lie of all: that violence is useful. That somehow we can make up for the sins of violence with more violence. That somehow killing those bad guys in power is a great good. “Violence can be used for good.” Is the claim that V makes to Evey.

We want violence to be used of good. We want the bad guys to die, the bad guys to pay for their crimes and for the good guys to win. It jives with our sense of justice. Our sense of right and wrong. But guess what, it doesn't work.

 

Every violent revolution in history from the French to the Russian to the Chinese has inevitelby led to the removal of the bad guys and the replacement with a worse guy. The Russians removed the oppressive Tsar to be replaced with the most murderous man in history, Stalin. The French took down the king and replaced him with Robespierre who killed more than the king ever did. Violent revolutions always fail because it takes an even more violent person to remove a violent one. Violence can not beat violence because it does not take down the lie of the ruler, it enforces it.

As stated already, the government's power does not come from guns, it comes from language. It comes from saying that it is right, from saying that violence is the answer. The way to destroy that is not with violence. If you try to conquer it with violence it is not tearing down the lie, it is enforcing it. It is saying that violence is indeed the way to solve problems. But the way to defeat the government is not to enforce the lie, but to question it.

You want to change the world? A violent uprising is not the way to do it as you will become the beast you are trying to destroy. The revolution happens in your mind. It happens here, right now and then it spreads from one mind to the next. Simply think of statements that we accept as unilaterally, unequivocally true.

Democracy is good. Public schools are good and necessary. Taxation is the foundation of civilization. Anarchy is chaos. Respect for authority is good. Obedience is a virtue.

Are these things really true? Or do we just assume they are because we have said them a million times and it is generally accepted as true? If examined it is not hard to realize the above statements hold about as much water as “I am the king and you should do what I say.”

What truisms do we say, but never live? For example Honesty is a virtue. Yet if a child is honest about his school class and says “My teacher is boring” is he praised or punished? Do we really value honesty? Or do we value obedience? Because you can't have both.

At one moment the police chief is beginning to question the government. He is beginning to realize that maybe he is working for the wrong team. He says to the liutennet: "If our own government was responsible for the deaths of over a hundred thousand people... would you really want to know?" That is the question everyone must ask themselves. To be honest the answer for most people is "no" which is why things continue as they do. Whether we want to know or not, the truth is that since WWII the u.s. military has killed over ten million people. Ten million. That is one hundred thousand... times a hundred. And the body count is much higher. But you can just ignore that. You can go back to your entertainment television and be happy. Or you can begin to ask some hard questions. You can begin to have some conversations that people are desperate for you not to have.

Despite its flaws the movie contains this great line, “Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.”

 

More Game Than Reality

Game of Thrones is an exciting, albeit violent, medieval fantasy novel and TV series. The special effects are incredible, the characters interesting as they are disturbing, and the story writers extremely good at getting you to watch the next episode. But behind the stunning visuals is a story that goes largely unseen by the viewers. Whether you are a die-hard fan, or a casual viewer, hopefully in the next few paragraphs I can open your mind to whole new levels of meaning in the epic fantasy Game of Thrones. I will divide my review into three parts, the magic and its meaning, the politics of thrones and the politics of today, and finally critiques and inconsistencies.

Part 1: The magic and its meaning.

Magic and the medieval era seem to always go hand in hand, but Game of Thrones is almost void of it except for a few elements, the white walkers in the north, and the dragons of Daenerys Targaryen and a few other minor elements.

Magic in literature can almost always be taken as a symbol of insanity. Probably the best example is the beloved children’s series Harry Potter, which is the imaginative re-telling of the trip of a severely abused and neglected boy (Harry) to a mental institution (Hogwarts).

The “White Walkers” are essentially a zombie army in the frozen land of the north. The only people who have seen the White Walkers are the “Night’s Watch” a group of men who through choice, or through force (mostly force) have given up everything, i.e. the company of the opposite sex, the chance to see or have a family, and more, in order to supposedly “protect the kingdom.” Many are there because of incredibly traumatic reasons, such as being abandoned by family or as part of a plea bargain. As seems to be rampant in all military situations, abuse, anger, and fighting are rampant.  

Now what if, after making all these sacrifices and living in this near hell, you realized that there was no real threat? The wall is ridiculously large, and no one would ever get in, and it is in the middle of a frozen desert. You will stay on the wall all your days, never have a family, never do anything meaningful, and not really be useful or create any value to anyone. The acceptance of that reality would be ridiculously difficult and painful. The desire to have a real enemy and a purpose for your existence would be enormous. Traumatized people are forced into alternate universes where the trauma and pain can, if nothing else, be meaningful.

“The White Walkers” are easily interpreted as nothing more than the creations of severely traumatized soldiers. The parallels to our own world and soldiers should be apparent, where imaginary white walkers are the least of our problems, but the men having the illusions could be.

The dragons follow a similar pattern. Khaleesi (among my favorite characters) is a girl whose only family member, her brother, is a complete sociopath who is happy to have a whole army rape her if it will be beneficial to him. After being told this absolutely horrific thing by her brother, that same brother essentially sells her to be the wife of a borderline rapist who for entertainment at their wedding watches women being raped and men being killed. If trauma exists, this is it. If this were your lot in life, suddenly being the “mother of dragons” who could birth all-powerful dragons that caused men to do whatever you pleased would sound pretty nice, especially since it is men who ruthlessly and harshly disregarded her life. Being able to control men with her family’s emblem, the dragon, would be almost infinitely appealing.

Magic makes movies fun and interesting, but often hides a lesson about trauma and coping mechanisms.

Part 2: The politics of Thrones and the politics of now.

Most everybody is appalled by Joffrey, the young boy king in the movie. He is brutal, he is mean, and he is a coward, unlikeable in every possible way.  But the people around him, such as his mother and the other kings vying for the throne, are not much better. Basically the show is about a bunch of sociopaths who go around ordering people around and killing whoever gets in their way or for whatever whim they have.  

It is kind of crazy that these characters are even relatable, because they are nothing like you or me.

A testament to the messed up nature of the show (and the world that cheers it on), is that deep down we are cheering for Ned Stark and his family. Ned Stark and his family seem to be the only good guys.

But remember something about Ned Stark. He opens the show by chopping off a head of a man he has barely met and only listens to for about 30 seconds of testimony/defense. Chops off his head! To make things worse, he forces his 10 year old son to watch. In what planet is that man a good guy? The political planet.

Ned Stark only seems like a good guy because next to Joffrey and the like he is a saint. Compared to prostitutes we may all seem like chaste virgins, but that does not make it so. It is not like our virtue is increased by being surrounded by people that lack any. Ned Stark, despite what virtues he may exude is a man who abandons family for power and who kills men without trial in front of his young son. 

This is the supposed good guy.

The parallels to today are painfully clear.

Ned Stark (and his family), are the “good politicians” The guys who are finally going to “fix the system.” They are loving, they are caring, they are compassionate. They will get rid of the bad guys and restore order, rule in justice, end the war, etc. etc. That may sound far-fetched and ridiculous, but listen to the rhetoric around any politician running for president this coming year: it will sound the same. If you are in team [enter candidates name] that candidate can do no evil. This is what we think. If only Rob Stark (i.e. Bernie Sanders or Ron Paul or Hillary Clinton) gets into power, then the system will be fixed. That is what we tell ourselves every single year. And just like in Game of Thrones, we keep watching hoping “Joffery” will be killed and the murders will stop, but just like in the show the murders, the killings, the rapes, the brutality never stop. The Ned Starks of the world keep the system going, by keeping us hoping a violent system can in some way become non-violent.  

The Game of Thrones, for ways I will discuss in the next section cannot be midlevel era, largely because of the large scale constant war which was impossible before the industrial revolution. No, Game of Thrones is not about medieval war, it is about the wars of the post-industrial western world. 

The Game of Thrones is the modern world in many ways. The U.S. government has been at war almost non-stop since World War II. They have propped up dozens of dictators around the world, set up governments to support their causes, and tear down any government that threatens their rule. The government today is the real life Game of Thrones, and it is every bit as bloody as the medieval drama. And as much as we would like to exonerate Ned Stark, no man’s (or woman’s) hands are clean.

We like to think our politicians are beyond the brutality of these medieval barbarians, but look at the drone strikes which kill school children and wedding guests. These are the people who will send down bombs on an innocent family gathering, and hardly feel remorse about it.

These are people who will send thousands of men into Iraq to die, and hardly flinch or worry about the validity/necessity of the war.

These are people who prop up dictators in foreign countries and sell weapons to brutal regimes around the world.

These are people who will take a mother from a child simply because they don’t have the proper piece of paper.

These are people who will throw thousands in prison because they don’t agree with the vegetation they keep.

And it all just keeps going because we keep believing it is somehow necessary, keep believing that somehow “the good guy” will finally come in and kill Joffery and all the bad guys, and there will be peace! This is the great fallacy of the human race, the belief that somehow we can destroy violence with violence. It never works. The violence will never stop, the wars will never cease. Just like Game of Thrones, as long as people keep watching, the violence continues, but the moment we turn away, is the moment it disappears and the show will cease to be aired.

Part 3: Critiques, irrationalities/inconsistencies, and economics

Game of Thrones has some compelling and well done story telling. There is a reason I got as far as I did. And as stated at the beginning, visually, aesthetically, etc. the movie is great.

The biggest problem is the show’s plot and premise are so completely irrational and inconsistent that the whole thing gets so utterly ridiculous that it requires too much suspension of the rational mind.

A story can contain magic and dragons and it is okay, as long as the movie is internally consistent. That is fire cannot move in one direction one minute, and a different the next, unless the rule is fire constantly moves (which would be interesting.)

First and foremost, Game of Thrones deals with human entities, so there are some basic rules that a storyteller must accept when using humans.

1. Humans do not like/want to die and will do most anything to avoid it. 

2. Humans need food to live

Not too complicated, and pretty indisputable. Sure there are some humans who want to die, but those are a very small fraction of society at any given moment. 

Game of Thrones breaks both of these rules almost constantly. Most of the characters are completely given over to the author’s whims to keep the plot going, without any sort sense of desire to survive, or any ability to get food.  Every level of the society is either irrational or ignored. The peasants and lower-classes are ignored and killed on whims by the other classes without any reference to the essential function they carry out in society. Kings, knights, soldiers all depended heavily on peasants and the lower-classes for everything, sure they could kill a few to make a point, but they were a valuable resource which the kings would not have been able to just slaughter at the drop of a hat.

The soldiers are assumed to have no sense of will or morality whatsoever. This is the stereotype and in many ways the reality of soldiers, but many soldiers do maintain some level of morality, and even more than that, the desire to survive. The show assumes that not only do soldiers have zero regard for the lives of other people (which is semi-believable), they also have zero regard for their own lives (which is not believable).

The ruling class does irrational things right and left because they want to, and because it makes the story last longer. The whole story is the story of the irrational decisions of the ruling class (much like our history books). But what makes this unbelievable (as opposed to the history books) is the rulers often act against their own self-interest in ways that would decrease their wealth or chance of survival.  Sure rulers do a lot of crazy and irrational things, like invading Iraq, but we can look back on that event and realize with Haliburton and all, there was a lot of self-interest driving that decisions (and bloody ruthlessness). What wouldn’t make sense if George Bush had instead decided to invade Uruguay, kill everyone in the country, burn all the resources in the country, have half the army kill themselves, take what was remaining of the army and send them into Indiana where they did the same thing. That would make no sense, but that is about the level of rationality that goes on among the Thrones rulers.

Like so many modern stories, the people who make them have no sense of technology or economics, or just the basic reality that people need food to survive.

People look at the medieval ages as a brutal time, but life expectancy actually took a small bump from Roman times, mostly because there weren’t so many wars. Yes you read that right, less fighting. Sure there were really long wars, but our conception of warfare is nothing like medieval warfare.

In modern (as in post-US Civil War) warfare the wars generally last 2-10 years with frequent fighting and battles. World War I lasted 4 years, with men constantly in the trenches and having battles every few months. By Korea and Vietnam wars soldiers faced near constant fighting. Compare this to medieval war. In the 100 years’ war, which was at the pinnacle of the medieval times (1337-1453) there was on average less than one battle every two years! A king would call for all the Lords, they would bring the men and they would go fight, for one day, and that would be it for the whole year. If the battle was particularly bloody there would be no battles for multiple years as the kingdoms recouped.

When people write these ridiculous stories they have no idea the crazy amount of resources it takes to go to war. In medieval times these resources were simply not available for large constant warfare. You could not have year-long wars because your soldiers would starve to death. There just was not enough food. This is the same reason that peasants did not go to war, and why you simply did not kill peasants willy nilly. Each peasant dead meant less food and resources for you and your army.   

Also another thing to note is the size of the battles. From the shows it is difficult to get clear statistics about the demographics of the “seven kingdoms.” To be fair, in Roman times larger armies and battles were able to be created simply because there was a larger government with a large kingdom. However, in the typical battle in the 100 years’ war there would be 5-10 thousand men on each side going into the battle. The winner would lose a few hundred men; the loser would lose a few thousand men. In other words all of France or England would be able to field one army of approximately 8000 men for one battle for a whole year. That was it. In all of England only 8000 men would be in battle for the whole year. Of those 200-2000 would likely be killed in any given year to war. And that is it. Why? Because they could not afford to go to war more, there was not enough food. One can only steal so much food from a farmer, before the farmer is on the verge of starvation himself; when it gets to this point, threats of violence become meaningless. As the ruler the option is to steal what is left of the food (and the farmer dies of starvation) or kill the farmer, either way this means less food the coming year because there is one less farmer.

It is these fundamental realities about life and economics that the writers of Thrones are completely oblivious of.

A king makes a calculation just like anyone else. Put yourself in their shoes. You are the Lord/King of the north. You control a large area where people pay tribute to you and you get food. What should you do? Take your huge army, loose thousands of men, and go attack the capital? Or a neighboring lordship? Maybe, if you could steal more resources than you would lose through the war, but the reality is that going to war takes TONS of resources, so one has to be pretty dang confident it is going to work, because it is a huge risk. This is why in medieval times the operations were generally small and calculated. Sure kings made mistakes and were even irrational and lost thousands of men at times on bad decisions, but their decisions were reined in by economic realities. Just this one rational thought makes much of Game of Thrones nonsensical. But unfortunately it does not stop there.

What is their motivation of the soldiers to fight? They are paid, so that keeps them going for the routine task, but when going to war, no amount of money is worth a person’s life (i.e. almost no one would say, “I’ll kill myself if you give me X dollars”) This is what people often don’t understand about war. Soldiers do not fight for love of country, or whatever B.S. propaganda says. Soldiers fight because they take a calculated risk about money and their chance of survival or (as is more often the case)  there are men standing behind them who will kill them if they do not fight.

The common soldier is stuck between two enemies: The enemy on the other side that is coming to destroy them, and their commanding officers who will kill them if they desert. Once again people, even most soldiers, care about their lives and will not risk it without some pretty compelling reasons, like getting killed.

This makes lots of the scenes with soldiers completely nonsensical, because the soldiers are treated as people without morals and the will to live.

There are many ridiculous scenes that could be analyzed, but just to look at one, the scene where King Joffery has all the bastard sons of the previous king killed. The scene is completely ridiculous (at least based on the information given). First off there is no way they could track down those sons. The previous king had sex with prostitutes regularly. These prostitutes had sex with tons of men regularly (they are prostitutes after all). It would be impossible to track down whose sons were whose, so that whole thing is ridiculous. Then to add on some ridiculous crème, a group of three soldiers go and search out this one bastard son, who has joined “the night’s watch.” The leader of “the night’s watch” group threatens them with violence. There are two or three soldiers. What would they do? They would leave and just say they couldn’t find the boy (or even that they found him and killed him, because honestly who is going to know?), that is the way that involves the least violence and risk to their own lives. The fact that they come back and try to fight for some random boy is just absurd. Also in this episode, soldiers literally pull babies from mother’s arms and kill them. I find it extremely difficult to believe that this would not lead to full-scale, all out revolution. People are not easily pushed to revolution, but seeing babies murdered by the king would probably do it if anything did.

The list could go on and on with irrationalities and inconsistencies and plot holes. The general problem is that people consistently act contrary to their own self-interest, which in real life rarely (if ever) happens. People make miscalculations and mistakes, but to consistently do opposite what any rational human being would do makes things real difficult to take seriously.

“I’m Ned Stark’s wife, I’m going to let Jayme Lannister go, because meh, no reason.” Then some random guy kills some kids for no good reason, then the Rob Stark kills the guy despite knowing he is going to lose half his army. Basically the author decided bad things needed to happen to Rob Stark’s army to keep things interesting, so let’s have everyone in his army go completely insane and irrationally killing each other.

No family is saved from the irrationality. I do not except people to be moral, in fact all the opposite, people in power rarely are moral, which is one thing the show actually does represent well. But what it does a horrible job of showing is people understanding the true economic cost of violence which in reality is what controls how kings and countries act in wars, how long the wars last, how many men fight etc. To just ignore the economic drivers behind war and assume everything (or even anything) is about sitting on some stupid throne, allegiances, loyalties, and other inconsequential matters is to completely misunderstand the very thing the show is supposed to be about. 

Slaughter House-Five's Deeper Layers

Title: Slaughterhouse-Five

Author: Kurt Vonnegut

Published: 1969

Rating: 4.5 (out of 5) 

The alternate title for the book is A Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death. At The beginning of the book the author claims to be writing a book about the battle of Dresden, a lesser known allied air-strike where more people died than at Hiroshima. A wife of one of the author’s friends is angry he is writing a war book because war books always glorify war. She says they were just children fighting in the war. He agrees to call it A Children’s Crusade. In many ways, modern wars are no different from the children’s crusades of the middle ages.  

In war we send out 18 or 19 year old men, but in many ways they are children, they do not know what they are doing. This sets the tone for the rest of the book which I find to be symbolic of war, even though the actual war is talked about very little.

Most the book is nonsensical. The story is told in a completely non-linear fashion. The first part which talks about the author, but the rest is about an optometrist named Billy Pilgrim. Billy claims to have been abducted by aliens that see in the fourth dimension. They teach him the “true nature” of time. They can all go to any moment at any time. They can look at moments in time like we look at the rocky mountains. This leads to the convoluted story telling. Billy believes this and can somehow jump from moment to moment. He tells about part of his story during the war when he is in Dresden, then he is back in the states before the war, then back in the war, then at another point in the war, then getting married after the war, then when he is old, then when he is in school, and so on. By the end the reader is able to piece together his whole life, but it is like putting a puzzle together.

This is in many ways like war. It doesn’t make sense. After we see destroyed buildings and bits of pieces of information from different survivors and with that a story is pieced together which eventually becomes the narrative thousands of school children will recite on tests. Yet it is not the story of the war. We learn a broad story of events that logically follow one another and culminate in victory for the good guys. The history of America’s wars in most history books read more like a Victorian novel or an epic Greek poem. For the actual soldiers, it doesn’t make sense. There are bombs, explosions, going here and there and they don’t even knowing why. There is a reason tons come back with PTSD and other ailments: they just went through hell, and the worst part about it is that it is senseless hell.  This is the reason the bombing of Dresden is not well known, because it does not fit the narrative. The good-guys don’t just bomb a completely unprotected city for no reason and kill thousands of civilians for no apparent reason. So what do we do, we skip over that. We get Hitler Bad, Hitler attack, Winston Churchill good, Churchill save day, American fighting men save the day, allies win, world saved! Yet this is not the story of war: this is the fantasy of those that don’t want to understand.

In this story Billy talks about visiting space aliens and going through time warps and all this stuff. It is all kind of crazy, but nothing compared to the craziness of sending bombs down on innocent people, but so it goes.

The aliens Billy meets are also very deterministic. There is no ability to change the course of events. Each moment happens because that is just how it is constructed. Billy knows when he is going to die, but he does nothing because that is just how it is. Throughout the book whenever someone dies (which is almost every other paragraph) it is followed by the sentence: So it goes. As if that is just how it is. Of course, to the man in the army this is how life feels, this is how war feels. You cannot choose where you go, or when you leave, or even when you go to the bathroom. It is all controlled by some external and seemingly arbitrary force. Life is completely controlled. You are a mere pawn in some scheme that you are completely incapable of fathoming.

And that is slaughterhouse five. It is not a story about a crazy optometrist who gets abducted by aliens. It is about some children, 18 and 19 year old children, sent on a crusade they didn’t understand. It is about the crazy stories they have to create to make sense of their lives. Billy Pilgrim is not insane for seeing aliens; the world around him is insane that escape to aliens is a better alternative than reality.

The book is definitely worth a read, so read it, or don't. This is the anarchist Review: reading without rulers.

The Fault In Our Stars: the Deeper Layer

Title: The Fault in Our Stars

Author: John Green

Published: Dutton  Books, 2012

Rating: 4.5 (out of 5) stars

First off I need to tell you: I am a teenage girl. Not in the anatomical way, but in the “I still believe in the happily ever after prince and princess story.” I guess most people would just call that the naïve way. But this is not regular naivete. I've been through my cynicism and heart break and all that, and have decided sometimes naivete is the best. This brings me to The Fault in Our Stars.

It is curious. The book prides itself on being non-ideal. This is the book about the “real story” not the romance story you see in the movies. This is the book where people have real sicknesses and are not pretty, and die and don’t have the typical happy love story. The irony is that it is the movie with the ideal love story, where the guy and girl love each other despite all obstacles. If we wanted a story that was not ideal we would just go talk to our neighbor or uncle or sister about how their boyfriend/girlfriend hooked up with them and then left/cheated/was not emotionally present. But those stories are cheap, you don’t pay for that. This story became popular because it is not  real, because it is incredible and beautiful in a way few actually experience and in many ways that no one will ever experience.  However, before we get into that, the best aspects of the book are its philosophical and thematic discussions.

The Meta Aspect

The book revolves around another book: An Imperial Affliction.  As it turns out, this is not a real book. We get glimpses of the book that binds Augustus and Hazel together and drives lots of the plot through the quotes that are shared from it and what Hazel tells us about it. Many of the best quotes in the book are actually quotes from An Imperial Affliction. It is a book about a girl with cancer and how she and her family deal with it. What is The Fault in Our Stars about? Well the same thing actually. AIA helps Hazel cope with life in many of the same ways as I am guessing John Green imagined TFIOS would help people understand and cope with life. Interestingly the author of AIA, Peter Van Houten, is not helpful at all to Hazel and Augustus. He doesn’t answer their questions and is a jerk to them. What is John Green trying to tell us? Perhaps that he as the author is not some sort of God or genius or miracle worker, but rather it is the power of fiction, the power of the story that can really help and heal people.

The levels and possible interpretations about the meaning  of the relationship between the real author and the fictional author created by the real author and the fictional book created in the real book that is fictional are virtually endless, and fascinating. The idea of the Author of a book as a character within a book has been explored in the Spanish tradition, but is not that common. AIA is a book within a book that is itself the book that it is in. It is like we are looking at one of those pictures of a guy holding the picture of the picture itself.  It is somewhat mind-bending. And awesome.

The Theme

The best part of the book, and movie, are the philosophical discussions. There is a lot about God and the afterlife, and the meaning or lack thereof of life. But what is the overall theme?

I make the case that the theme is the idea of “oblivion” versus meaning (maybe you disagree, so please, write your argument and send it to me). One of the first things we hear Augustus Waters say is, “I fear oblivion.” To which the protagonist, Hazel Grace replies: “There will come a time, when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught… If the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows, that's what everyone else does.”

This battle between meaning and senselessness continues throughout the book. These are young cancer patients predicted to die before they reach middle-age, who better to pose the question: Does my suffering mean anything? “Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made diversity of life on earth possible,” writes the protagonist, Hazel. She represents the position that it is all random chance, there is no glory or purpose in any of it, and she seems to stubbornly hold to her position, despite spending many afternoons in the “Literal Heart of Jesus” (the room in the church where she meets for her cancer support group). Augustus represents the optimism that there is a “purpose.” He, like many, is filled with the notion that his life should mean something. That when he dies newspapers will mark his passing and thousands of people will morn his death. I once thought this is what everyone wanted in life, because I did and assumed everyone thought the same. I was surprised when I met people who were satisfied with a few close relatives being present. This is likely the the healthier view, and what wins out in The Fault in Our Stars.

Therefore neither Hazel nor Augustus’s view has the day, but rather both. As Augustus laments his lack of notoriety, Hazel responds, “You say you’re not special because the world doesn’t know about you, but that’s an insult to me. I know about you.” He will not be known by thousands like Cleopatra or Aristotle, but will be known by all those that matter, the ones closest to him. His suffering and life meant something. It is put most beautifully by Hazel in Augustus’s “pre-funeral” the funeral Augustus holds for himself before he dies, because he always wanted to attend his own funeral. “Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”* “… There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity.” There love meant something. It meant infinitely much, even if it was only for a short time. And that is the most beautiful aspect and idea in the book.

Book Versus Movie

There is not much difference between the book and the movie. The movie’s plot is a little more succinct, as in some of the details are rearranged and some parts taken out.  I would go so far as to say the movie story line was superior to the book, but of course the book had some added emotion, and extra philosophical discussion. And obviously there is a visual aspect to the movie that is not in the book which tends to favor slightly better-looking people than the average person. Overall the movies follows the book about as closely as you see in a book to movie adaption.

The Departure From Reality

Every book has to obey by its own rules. A book can have any sort of crazy laws and physics and creatures, but it has to obey those established rules. Gravity can’t pull people up in the first chapter and down in the second chapter (unless of course the established rule is gravity is always changing, which would be an interesting concept for a book). This book chose our own world, the world we all know. In particular young cancer patients in Indiana, so the rules are set. John Green, the author, obviously knows what he is talking about; he lives in Indiana, and has spent lots of time working with kids who have cancer. So he gets it all right, with one flaw, one over-sight, one breach of reality.

The book (and particularly the movie) panders to teenage girls. This departure from reality explains my infatuation with the book, and likely the story’s success. Many movies pander to men by having girls who are incredibly gorgeous (and don’t know that they are) fall in love with the shy, awkward guy. This is of course the fantasy of thousands (if not millions) of men, and the key to the success of these stories. This book is simply the reverse. Here is a guy who is “hot” and athletic. He was a successful basketball player and has an excellent physique. Girls love him. He is happy and outgoing, charismatic charming, and did I mention, hot? Yet despite all this he falls in love with a girl of average (at best) looks who does not play sports or go to pool parties or wear sexy clothes. He loves her because of her intellect and personality. The guy is 17 years old. Pretty standard right? Sorry to burst your proverbial love bubbles my dear fellow teenage girls: But there is no such thing as an Augustus Waters. Hot guys know they are hot, and hot teenage guys who are good at sports are generally as into beauty as they themselves are beautiful. So despite the fact that you may have read Dickens, Hemingway, Voltaire, and all the other intellectual books, it still will not help you get the basketball captain with perfect muscles and face. There may be some exceptions, and maybe it has something to do with having cancer (though Augustus says in the book that cancer patients are just as vain, silly, and irrational as the rest of us), but I don’t think there are many high-school aged Augustus Waters out there, however I would like to think so. (To be completely honest, I don’t think there are many Hazel Grace’s out there either, but I keep hoping, and when I do find her, I plan on being her Augustus Waters, albeit minus the muscles and good-looks.)

That said, this ripple in reality, does not detract from the overall awesomeness of the book. This may be because I am a teenage girl, or it may be because it actually is a great book that most anyone with a heart will enjoy.

Have fun reading! Or don’t. This is the Anarchist Review: reading without rulers.

*A small note on the mathematics of set theory and Hazel Grace. Mathematically there are indeed infinities that are bigger than others. However, Hazel’s examples are bad ones. She chose infinities that are the same size. There are only two types of infinities, countable and uncountable. I actually think John Green knows the difference and the error, but chose to leave it in because it sounds better. Really she should have said something like: the natural numbers 1,2, 3, etc. go on forever and are infinite, but are smaller than the infinite number of real numbers between 0 and 1, but that is a tad complicated so instead Green just used between 0 and 1 and between 0 and 2, which is easier to grasp. However, in that strange twist of mathematical craziness, there are actually the same number of numbers between 0 and 1 as there are between 0 and 2. I know, weird. Math is not a tame lion.

Galdiator's Deeper Layer

There are really three aspects to the movie Gladiator, the religious, the political and the familial. The political aspect is interesting, but the familial aspect is really the driver behind the whole story. 

There are two families, that of Marcus Aurelius, and that of Maximus the general. (note: the movie has some historical flaws but for the sake of this review it will be taken has history.)

It starts with Emperor Aurelius overlooking the war, as he has spent 16 of his 20 years as emperor. The movie suggests he was war-like in his early years as emperor but then had an awaking. Of course the fact that he dies at war somewhat flies in the face of this. Furthermore it seems Rome is going to hell in a hand-basket during his tenure. However he did end the gladiator fights (not historically accurate) and wrote some good words down on paper. By empirical reality probably not the best of men, but emotionally we are supposed to identify and respect him in the movie, or at the very least not hate him.

Marcus Aurelius Overlooks the battlefield- a position he was used to.

Interestingly the man we are supposed to hate is Marcus Aurelius’ son, Commodus. This is a difficult task for the movie accomplish. The movie has to somehow make us love the father while hating the son, but deep down we know this cannot be. When Commodus is talking about his “bad” qualities, we know that he did not get them from watching Roman TV shows, he got them from his father. The movie even points Aurelius’ bad parenting out. He says to his daughter, “Let us pretend that you are a loving daughter and I am a good father.” To which his daughter responds, “This is a pleasant fiction, is it not?” More blatantly Aurelius says to Commodus, “Your faults as a son is my failings as a father.” Aurelius was of course away at war for 16 years. How could he be a good father? Or even a father for that matter. He was a sightseer and war monger who occasionally took a break to say hello to some children back at home. The movie attempts to make it appear as if Commodus is a bad egg that randomly hatched out of nowhere but deep down we know this is not true. We know instinctively that Commodus is who he is largely because of his father. It is apparent that Aurelius was gone during much of his children’s lives. He was likely gone during many of the most crucial years.  

This is the story of the movie: that national disasters and wars do not begin on the battlefield, in negotiation rooms, nor in state buildings. Wars begin in living rooms, kitchens, and classrooms. Particularly detrimental are the disastrous homes of the political elite. The horrors that happen in those living rooms are acted out in grand scale with bombs and soldiers. Furthermore the movie shows that not only do wars not begin in the battlefield, they do not end there either. All wars begin and end in the home. The war pulls fathers away and families apart and sews the seeds of further conflict, destruction, and sadness. This cycle is the story of the movie.

After the opening battle sequence that is there largely to draw us in, we are shot into the actual meat of the story, the familial dysfunction. The battle with all of its evils and flaming arrows and dying people are simply the bloody manifestations of the familial dysfunction juxtaposed in the movie just after the battle sequence. To make it more complete the movie should have opened with the familial politics and then gone to the battle scene, but cinematic demands make you come in with a more visual stunning bang (mad props to the special effects crew and all that, the battle scene does have some pretty breath-taking images.).

Of course the war itself makes no rational sense (as always). But wars are not rational, they never are they never were, they are emotional manifestations of familial dysfunction and are not based at all on their supposed political goals. The movie claims that after the Romans fight this final battle against the Germans the whole empire will be safe and at peace. So this was not the first, or last, “War to end all wars.” Every war is the war to end all wars. That is how politicians get people to fight “Just fight this war, and then there will be peace and all your children and grandchildren will be able to live in peace! Do it for your children and future generations! Fight for peace!” And so, people sign up. This is what they said during World War I. The war to end all wars. Fight for peace, so your children can live in peace. Was there peace for their children? No of course not. The children had to fight in the bloodiest conflict in human history, WWII. Politicians have been saying this is “the last war” since before ancient Rome, you think this time it will finally be true? Marcus Aurelius is of course aware of this; shortly after the battle he says “There will always be people to fight.”

Clearly, they did not need to fight this random Germanic tribe. “People need to know when they are conquered,” says one general. It is about being in charge, not actual threats or safety. What were a bunch of hairy men in the mountains really going to do to the Roman Empire? Indeed it makes about as much sense as our wars and military bases throughout the world that do not make us safer, but do give us a superiority complex. Did Rome really need the northern half of Germania to survive? Surely the Roman army could not think they were “helping them out?” Like we so daringly say about our wars in the Middle East, “We are there to help them out.” Say that to the Iraqi who is dead and to all of his family. How much did we “help them out?” Similarly the Germanic tribes who were slaughtered probably did not feel so “helped” by the Roman army.

The opening battle is great cinematography

The worst part about war is that it always lays the seeds for future wars and familial dysfunction.

It is not far into the movie when Commodus kills his father. He does this just after his father tells him that he does not trust him enough to be the next emperor. Commodus murders his father to become emperor. Is this not what his father taught him? Aurelius has “murdered” to maintain the empire, in fact he has sent thousands of young men to their deaths, as well as ordered the deaths of “barbarians.” So though we are supposed to hate Commodus for killing his father, and love Aurelius for his valor in battle, they are the same thing. Commodus is doing exactly what his father has taught him to do his whole life, or at least 16 years of it, to go out and kill anyone who threatens your hold on the empire.

What is more, the physical killing of Aurelius is his son’s retribution for his father’s killing of him. You cannot kill unless you have first been killed inside. Aurelius, through lack of love toward his child, through abandonment as he was off to war, killed his son inside, leading to his own eventual murder.

Most people see the villain and his lust for power as the drive behind the movie, but this is not the case, that is the mere outward manifestation of the abandonment because of the wars and ambitions of his father. This is the tragedy behind the horrors of the movie.

The war, as all wars, is fundamentally a war against families, not against Germanians. The Romans were told they were going to kill Germanians, but they were killing Roman families. Similarly when we go to Iraq or Afghanistan, or wherever else, the war is not against whoever the supposed bad guys are, the war is against American families and children who lose fathers for years or forever and who come back with PTSD and an inability to function in society. The war is caused by dysfunctional families and it then spreads that disease of dysfunction and violence to others. Maximus loved his family and his children. Apparently (as far as the movie showed) he had a good home. Then he had to leave for war, as he says he hasn’t seen his family for “2 years, 264 days and this morning.” His boy was only a few years old. During those crucial years he was left without a father. His family is fundamentally wounded. To make this clear the movie shows the Roman troops crucifying and burning Maximus’ wife and children. This is simply physically doing to his family what the Roman army had already done emotionally. 

No family involved in war can be spared this fate. They lose their father, or get a father severely wounded coming home. Many soldiers and families are able to survive and live well, but others’ lives are almost as that of Maximus, half-awake nightmares. This is shown by the fact that soldiers are more likely to commit suicide and about 20% of those involved in Iraq and Afghanistan have PTSD and/or depression.  

Maximus' family who he never sees again in the flesh. Family is the true cost of war.

After the death of Maximus’s family the story line splits. Maximus through some truly strange circumstances is picked up by slavers and becomes a gladiator, while Commodus is in the capitol scheming to eliminate the senate.

Here there are some interesting political discussions. Commodus talks to his sister about the need to get rid of the senate. Commodus is completely unable to negotiate or connect with people. This is seen in the scene at the senate where he simply plays with his sword and ignores the senators, then gets mad at them for nonsensical reasons and walks off in anger. This of course is a manifestation of his inability to connect with his father, but he extends that to everyone. He can’t make real connections or do real negotiations so for this reason he wants totalitarian power. If only there were not people in the way he could do what is right. If he just didn’t have to negotiate. This is also why he basically holds his sister captive. She becomes his “connection” the person he can relate to, even though she is completely scared of him.

She tells Commodus in her attempt to get him to step down from his ambitions, “leave the people their illusions, their traditions.” Isn’t that so fitting to what we see today? Princeton and Northwestern proved that the whole democracy thing is just that, a sham, an illusion, a tradition (at least in the United States). In reality “the people” have no control over what takes place in Washington. We are just like the people in Rome, kept with our “illusions.”

Commodus desperately wants the respect of the people, because he thinks it will fill that gaping hole in his soul where his father should be. He thinks being loved by the people will finally make him feel secure, complete, and not scared of being alone. “What do the people care about?” he yells. His sister suggests they care about the war, about the victory. “They never saw the battles – what do the people care about Germania?” Interesting because it is so true. What do they care about random fighting of people in a distant land they will never see. Yet that is war. It becomes important only because we are told it is. And so we grow to worship it as our defender when it is really all the opposite. “They care about the greatness of Rome.” Says his sister, which really just shows the lack of connection with people. People care about their families, they care about their businesses, they care about their hobbies, they care about their friends. It is these mere abstractions that people put up as important when they are unable to connect to those more important things.

The whole political section is extremely fascinating because it is so relevant to our current political condition, as well as for the fact of its slightly conservative bend which is almost non-existent in Hollywood.  All the politicians are represented, rightfully so, as out of touch, entitled jerks. There is of course an exception: The “good” politician. The existence of a “good” politician is more Hollywood fiction than reality, but I suppose relative to other politicians, some do look good. The good guy is Gracchus. He is wealthy (as all the senators were and are), intellectual, and well-read. When he shows up to the gladiator games, one of the other senators is surprised that he would show up to see the “mob.” “I never pretended to be a man of the people,” says Gracchus, “I do strive to be a man for the people.” In the Senate we see him discussing minutia such as how to fix the water supply and ward off a growing plague. He isn’t talking about grandiose ideas. He is an Edmund Burke politician, the intellectual father of conservatism. He has a pragmatic, gradual change, virtue to him. He is not pretentious, but straightforward and pragmatic. Ironically this is the opposite of all Hollywood stands for, which is why it is not often glorified.

Gracchus, the "good" politician (as if that existed).

In what Gracchus calls a “brilliant” move, Commodus brings back the gladiator games (his father had ended them for moral reasons). Gracchus doesn’t think the action is good or right, just politically brilliant. He knows how people think. The people are losing what little political control they have, so Commodus says, “here is some entertainment,” and everyone cheers. Is this any different than today? We all know we essentially have no political voice, and we all know the government is going to hell in hand basket, and the debt is a mess, and people are dying because of our facetious wars. And what do we do? We wonder what the last thing Miley Cyrus did at her concert. We get together and drink beer and watch some guys run into each other gladiator-like in stadiums modeled after the very coliseum where the gladiator games were held. Have we really advanced that much? We still fall for this stupid gag. Throw some games and put out some celebrity, and BAM they don’t even care or notice that we are financially raping them and they can do nothing about it.

It is also interesting that at the beginning of one of the games people go around the stadium throwing out bread; loafs of bread for all to share, a gift from the emperor. Well how about that for original? Using food and money as a way to buy popularity. This is of course exactly what politicians continue to do. Promise benefits and a constant stream of free food and goodies so that people will show up and vote for them. Humans have changed little since the days of Rome.

Throughout the movie we see poor Commodus in a desperate attempt to gather the love of the crowd. He thinks he must be everything and everyone must care about him. This narcissistic megalomania is what makes politicians. It is not about helping people or changing the world. They are up there searching for the praise and love to fill the void they cannot fill in their lives. Every vote they receive is one more badge on their ego to cover their empty souls. Look at politicians: a group of people who cheat on their wives and steel from the public purse to enforce their vision on the world. They are up their building their Utopia for us as if we did not know how to live our own lives and we need their superior knowledge on every subject imaginable to guide us. Nothing short of complete narcissistic megalomania leads you to that. Notice that there are two “i’s” in narcissist, and three “i’s” in politician.

In a vain attempt to gain approval of the crowd, Commodus brings back the gladiator games. 

In fact, the reason we like completely evil politicians and villains in our movies is because they make our sick system, our corrupted and evil leaders, seem less evil by comparison. This is why we like the Hunger Games and movies with emperors that kill their father. We can suddenly feel comforted that though our “leaders” lie to us, steal from us, start frivolous wars, sell off our children’s futures to foreign bankers, arrest people for carrying the wrong forms of vegetation in their pockets, and just about every other evil imaginable, at least they are not killing their own fathers. At least we are not that bad.

After being a movie that has so ingeniously and beautifully opened up our minds to truth, the movie ends with what I call the great myth. The movie shows evil after evil of political power, shows the horrific effects of violence and war, and then at the end, says that the good guy wins and he wins by using violence. This is the great myth that so many movies disseminate in the minds of people. Our minds for some reason identify it. We want the good guy to rise up and kill the bad guy and make everything right. We want the white knight to save the day. This is of course why society, keeps trying to use this same solution over and over again. We cannot see that this “solution” is the very cause of the problems in the first place.

Violence cannot solve the problems violence creates. I don’t know when Hollywood and society will catch on to this one, but that is the great myth. I will rewrite this statement in a few other ways that will maybe relate to leftists and rightists. All these statements are forms of the same thing: War cannot solve the problems war creates. Government cannot solve the problems government creates, Abuse cannot solve the problems abuse creates, rape cannot solve the problems rape creates. Take any one of those statements that resonates with you and simply universalize it. War is violence, and violence can’t solve violence because war cannot solve war. Government is violence, rape is violence, abuse is violence. All these things are different form of the same thing: violent and coercive force over people. For some reason we keep thinking some Maximus will come in and kill the emperor and make everything right. We think some Hero will ride to victory and kill all these violent oppressors. Guess what? It is never going to happen. You cannot play with evil at its own game and win. You can’t expect to walk onto a basketball court with Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, and Karl Malone and expect to come out as the winner. If you attempt to take down tyrants with violence, one of two things will happen: you will lose and get brutally killed either physically or emotionally, or you will become an even more horrible tyrant than the one you are trying to take down. This is a game you cannot win. The only way to win is to not play.

The Hollywood myth: being able to end violence with more violence. 

Stop waiting for Maximus. Be a hero today. Not with guns or violence. Guns and violence just create more guns and violence. The only solution is to first eliminate the desire for violence in us and spread love to others. We first must fix our homes before we can fix the world. Until we love our children and our wives and our husbands, we cannot spread love to others. We cannot expect to end war and end violence against other races and cultures when we cannot even love our very own children and neighbors. We cannot expect to expand tolerance of other world views when we do not even allow our children to view the world differently than we do. Until each child wakes up every day confident the he is loved regardless of his ideas. Until each child wakes up confident there are people around him protecting him, until that day comes, we have not seen the end of war. For war begins, and ends, in the home.

Not on historicity: Aurelius really did have a son named Commodus who succeeded him as emperor. Also it is generally considered that Aurelius was a "good" emperor and his son was a complete narcissistic failure.  However, there is no evidence to suggest that Aurelius appointed someone else besides his son to be emperor, though it has been speculated. Aurelius died of the plague, and was not assassinated, and his son had already been serving as emperor for multiple years. Furthermore Commodus ruled for 12 years, not just a short while as depicted. Furthermore Rome never returned to a Republic, as the movie suggests would happen. On an interesting note, Commodus was killed by a fighter, a wrestler not a gladiator, whose name was Narcissus.

The Hunger Games' Deeper Layer

The Hunger Games has captivated readers and audiences alike over the past years since its release. It has sold over a million copies and pulling in almost 700 million at the international box office. It is easy to guess why. The book is a fun and full of non-stop excitement. The read is well-paced and keeps you on edge. Love, romantic conflict, violence, beauty, sex, nostalgia, the book has it all. Here at The Anarchist Review the question we put forward to the reader is what does The Hunger Games mean to our society? That is a question we attempt to answer. (Note: this is a review of  The Hunger Games book not its sequels or the movie.)

There is no shortage of doom porn floating around libertarian circles. The Hunger Games feels like it could fit in nicely next to 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Brave New World  for a perfect libertarian doom salad. The common theme of such libertarian reviewers is that our future is held in these books unless we change something. 

Indeed, there are many parallels between Panem and our current situation, but first for the benefit of the .1% of the population who has not seen or read The Hunger Games let me give a recap of the scenario.  A country called Panem in North America is divided into 12 districts and the Capitol. Each district specializes in producing some item, most of which goes to the Capitol. The districts are varying in wealth, but are mostly poor. The closer the connections one has to the capital, the wealthier. The protagonist is from the coal-producing District 12 which is located in current Appalachia.  The Capitol is in the Rockies (Salt Lake City?).  The Capitol rules the citizenry with an iron fist. To further demonstrate its power over the districts and avoid rebellion, once a year they hold the Hunger Games. Basically two people (a boy and a girl) between the ages 12 and 18 are chosen from each district to battle to the death for the entertainment of the Capitol.  Every year 24 kids are thrown together and only one survives, the Victor, who is lavished with wealth and fame. Obviously going to the games is a death sentence, so it is dreaded in the districts.

As of now Washington D.C. does not hold gladiator type games between teenagers from the different states. Also, D.C. is much closer to Appalachia than to the Rockies. So not a perfect fit, however there are some very relevant comparisons between The Hunger Games and today’s society.

In Panem your wealth is tied not to your work ethic or good ideas, but rather where you were born, or rather how close to the capitol you were born. The Capitol controls who is wealthy, who succeeds, who is poor and who fails. With federal spending exceeding three trillion dollars, and billions more handed out to Wall-Street via QE and other monetary trickery of the Federal Reserve, the Panem system is not that much different than our own.  Maybe you are laughing at me saying this is a ridiculous comparison. But is it?

The U.S. government spends 40% of GDP. That means if you take everything that all 300 million people make, the government spends 40% of it. That is a load of money. Google had revenues of 15.7 billion last year, Wal-Mart did 469 billion. The U.S Government spent 3,455 billion dollars in 2013. That means the spending power of the largest company in the world was less than half, less than a seventh of what the U.S government unleashes in terms of spending power. Google, the supposed king of the internet can only unleash 0.5 % of what the Federal government can. Companies make or sell products that we choose to use. The U.S. government simply pulls the money out of our paychecks without permission. Imagine how much you can influence who is wealthy and who is poor when you can outspend any other single entity by seven times? Also when you are able to take arbitrary amounts of money from people’s pocket books and distribute it to whoever you wish?

The unfortunate reality is that so much of success is not based on a company’s ability to provide a good or cheap product. It is based on the company’s ability to get on the government’s good side. Look at the Sugar industry in the United States. In 2013 The Florida Sugar Cane League, the American Sugar Alliance, and American Crystal sugar spent over 3.5 million dollars in lobbying. As a result Sugar in the United States has a large protective tariff and over the past 40 years has cost as much as double in the U.S. as opposed to outside it. Every regular person in the United States is essentially paying for politicians to get wined and dined by the Sugar Lobby. They pay in higher sugar prices, increasing the price of all their food and increasing the wealth of lobbyists, politicians, and Sugar corporations.

Look at the successful business in the world. Look what industries are hiring and giving big bonuses to their CEOs? Go to job fair. What businesses are there? If it is a technical/engineering job fair I can almost guarantee who you will see: government supported monopolies (i.e. utilities) the government (bureau of land/water management), and government defense contractors (Boeing and Lockheed Martin). Why is that? It is because they have a steady stream of “guaranteed” dollars flowing in from the Capitol. 625 Billion dollars were spent last year alone on building the war machine. That is 625 billion dollars taken out of people’s pockets, people that actually produce something people use, like computers and software and hotels and houses, in order to pay for bombs and a bunch of engineers to sit around and make death machines.  If they produce a product that no person would ever buy, it matters not. The money is there.

Go to none-engineering career fair. There will be a large swab of companies from education, healthcare, and finance. Three industries which are heavily regulated and subsidized by federal and state governments. Once again the government has chosen who succeeds and who fails. 

In The Hunger Games, the people in the Capitol do not work at all; they spend all their time on frivolous activities. The people in the Districts have incredibly strict laws that they cannot leave their areas, and barely have enough food to live.

What about here? For the most part, the capitol is not filled with people who spend their time dying their hair other colors and getting plastic surgery. Washington D.C I have heard actually has a pretty hard working atmosphere; everyone is a busybody trying to get things done. Which is scary.  However, what do they really accomplish? They write words on a piece of paper. They make laws. The tell people well where to move their guns. They produce nothing. They produce nothing that people can use. Their paper-passing is just as frivolous as the lives of the hair and prep team from the Hunger Games. The protagonist says this of them “It’s funny, because even though they’re rattling on about the Games, it’s all about where they were or what they were doing or how they felt when a specific event occurred. ‘I was still in bed!’ ‘I had just had my eyebrows dyed!’ ‘I swear I nearly fainted!’ Everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena.” 

Is it too much of a stretch to assume that politicians may be just or even more callous than these hair-dressers? They get their money by looking good and sounding nice and not offending people. They get their money by getting donations from wealthy people in trade for special privileges that hurt everyone else. They send thousands of men and women to die in Iraq and Afghanistan and they sleep peacefully at night in their suburban homes paid for by the labor of productive Americans. They argue about laws and send papers around from one office to another while men are dying because of their actions. Is this any less frivolous, any less callous than the speech of the hair dressers?

True, we do not have most the country working to pay for the lavish lifestyle for the politically connected, except we do. We do not callously ignore the deaths of people who die in the name of the country, yet we do. Since 2004, when drone attacks begin, as many as 951 civilians, which includes 200 children, have been killed by drones in Pakistan alone. This does not include the wedding guests who died in Yemen and other deaths around the world

Are we that far from The Hunger Games? Is our society really that much different than the one we look upon with such abhorrence? We let over 4,000 of our own die in Iraq so we could be unified and patriotic. Are we that much different than a society that lets 24 of its own fight to the death to maintain peace and order in society? Is this not exactly what the deaths of all our military is all about? That is why we have parades and ceremonies for the survivors, for the Victors if you will. Is there a difference?

Hopefully by now the reader is questioning if we are not exactly who the Hunger Games is talking about. You may be convinced that The Hunger Games is the day after tomorrow for America. Well I hate to burst your doomsday bubble, but it is not. Despite my radical political opinions, I affirm that this will never happen. There will be no Hunger Games here. Ever. How can I say that? What evidence is there?

We are not at the base of state power, we are at the pinnacle of it. This three-thousand year-old paradigm of the state is fading with Slavery and other barbaric institutions of the past. Will the powers that be relinquish voluntarily? No, of course not. Evil will not relent. Evil people will hold on with all they have to the source of power and livelihood. The state has created millions of dependents. This is of course to the state’s advantage because it means millions are interested in keeping it alive and well. But in the end it cannot. The state is simply inefficient. Violence and evil do not help people, do not produce good results, and do not produce anything of value. The state cannot compete with ingenious and innovation and entrepreneurship. It just cannot. Despite all the taxes, all the regulation and other violent actions the state will raise against free people attempting to serve others, but in the end it will be to no avail. The progress of man cannot be stopped.

Generally the villain is not taken down by the good guy, the villain is taken down through his (or her) own vanity, pride, irrationality, lust for power, or whatever it be. His own arbitrary authority is what will implode and destroy the bad guy. And so it will be with the state. Technology will get better so that free-seeking people will be better able to escape the state. Bitcoin. Sea-steading. The internet. All sorts of things will help to set us free. And the state will be left alone, and all the evil it harbors, crumbling under its own complete inefficiency. There is no stopping the revolution. There is no stopping the revolution.

In these hunger games it will only be evil that will be starving. And I can’t wait.

Let the games begin.