commenti halfbakedi deal with itti

i made a bad choice and rewatched rendition last night. it's not an enjoyable flick, it's too ghastly in it's implications, because everyone knows this shit goes on. all the frickin time. i know how those 'brave' soldiers behave to the locals in iraq and afghanistan. it just makes me dislike america. i won't say hate because it's not hate.

but the film made me feel in a real way, how arrogant the entity is. should i say 'america'? well it won't be far from the truth, but not being far from the truth is not the same as the truth is it. i am nauseated by american patriotism though. i have had a lifetime of trying to understand it. i've had enough of trying to.

well, it wouldn't be true either, to say 'the american administration', because all the past administrations have been similar, this blinding baffling arrogance that does not see anyone as their equal, as worthy of anything more than torture, invasion, mass murder, abuse.

i've been pretty hopeful about obama. i love obama. but i don't know how i feel about him now. i think he has a lot of power that a great many would acknowledge, but he's too busy trying to get elected, he's too busy trying to get a grip on power and politics and he's playing along too much now to see any 'hope' that i had earlier.

i suppose i thought he was like me in a way. i have no ethnic identity that keys me into the american headspace. i am not white or any other than 'other', and i thought he identified himself, as american, but definitely 'other'.

i thought that meant more than apparently it did. i don't know now. but being 'other' is a key to an awareness that those who are not have a hard time identifying with, and with that, i had this idea that obama meant that americans were willing now, to embrace a broader humanity, and that the majority were now willing to own up to the idea that their collective self was bigger and broader than previously.

maybe i just should not have watched that flick again. i mean, he's still the best thing going at the moment. but best being a relative thing, it doesn't mean a lot now.

'embracing a broader humanity', a broader identity, would imply that perhaps the majority now felt that torturing and suspecting people of being an enemy would now become an uncool thing. there really is no other way to see others as humans except by going to them and seeing how they could possibly be. but even that, it's a struggle. but of course it needs to be seen. americans won't be hopping on planes en masse to check out the people they have assigned enemyship to anytime soon.

so i thought obama was the closest thing yet to a world leader, someone that a great many millions of people would be able to identify with and not automatically see as someone who was going to stomp on them, invade them, consent to their torture and murder, or belittle them as odd and strange and less than. maybe he still will be. maybe he will more than not condone human rights abuses in the name of national security.

ya ya ya they all they say it, they all pay lipservice to decency and respect, but it's not been forthcoming. i dont know. america is rooted in my consciousness and i'm not american, so it's not as though it's just going to be less of an issue in my life. but in my little forum world here, with a population of one, america might get talked about a lot, but it's not numba one. not here. lol.

but if american friends do stumble upon this little space, i hope they turn up as friends and humanitarians, and not what the stereotype is forever trying to assert.

well ya gotta just let it go. it's nature to always let some impulse get ahead of others. i let the impulse of hope get past the reality of what can happen. i think we see a miracle when we see, in some inchoate way, the future unfolding when we witness some phenomenal appearance of a kind of person we always wished could emerge as stronger or more desirable.

obama is more desirable than what's been on the menu far as leadership goes, he is a new thing, even though the disappointment of the past week weighs heavy. it's a bit of a stretch, but i had these 'feelings' i guess you could call them, when hollywood guys like matt damon started to appear. genuine people who wore their genuineness as their peg. from a big eighties hair type idea of EVERYONE trying to be something they weren't, along comes this novel approach to celebrity, or the public eye in general, of people being themselves, a bit vulnerable, not quite beautiful, not quite incredible, but decent enough, and willing to expose their real selves.

or maybe i just grew into a really twisted uncomfortable unreal sense of what actually constitutes a public identity.

more on that in a bit.

but it is a new thing, even if it's been growing for a long time. i know there are black people and brown people and every other colour in america. i know they aren't all white and 'christian' and sadistic and bloodthirsty and imperialistic and arrogant and abusive, but that's been the thing for a long time since we 'other's have given ourselves permission to own our thoughts.

i grew up under a racist regime, canada. lol. in small town canada, in the 60's and 70's, being nonwhite meant only one thing, that you were an indian. whatever, listen. that meant above all that you were not white and had no business being there, in that school or that shop or on that street or in that person's home. kind of like being black in america, a little, but of course not the same at all.

that was one side of it, and the other side was the people who made you. you grow up with low expectations and a boatload of negative self-perceptions, of low self-value and a heaping helping of inarticulate toxic anger that helps you fulfill your negative expectations.


just so you don't get uncomfortable, i'm well past it. but this is not just something that informs me, but many millions of people who labour under the yoke a collective dream that has been far from well.

there's a great segment of the genpop that wants to shriek, 'get over it', and their voice is loud. yes, well, likely anyone who is under that spell, of feeling victim, outsiderly, disenfranchised, etc. anyone who is fortunate enough to formulate proper thought under such duress surely would like more than anything to 'get over it'.


i am well aware that there are many more ways of being outsider or 'other' than ethnicity or appearance. but this is one thing that is difficult to erase when you consider the reality portrayed in rendition. you can't 'pass', when you are egyptian or native american or have a funny name or whatever that pegs you to the genpop or their alleged protectors, so the evil continues. i don't care to apologize for a phenomenon that i had no part in. if that's okay with you of course. lol.

disclaimer:

i say some stupid things sometimes, make unqualified statements, and shit on certain groups of people unfairly, or besmirch characters on occasion by way of not being completely clear who or what i'm talking about. call me out on shit and i will withdraw statements and issue apologies where necessary, i aspire to being non jackassy, but my internal censors aren't the sharpest.

cam on nhieu. lol.

welp i'm still sitting up here at 3 friggin 30am from an accidental coffee jag i went on like, 12 hours ago. i just idly reread this posting which i plum forgot about, and golly gee wiz, i'm ruminating over the same thoughts for months and months now!

funny how i keep thinking i'm thinking new thoughts, but really, i'm always thinking the same thoughts! hysterical.