Delighting in serenity

Another gem from Letter III of Tom Paine's Letters to the Citizens of the United States, in which the great freedom advocate sounded the alarm about those who wanted to convert the US of A into an Old World monarchy/dictatorship in 1802-03 (and later, some might say, succeeded beyond their wildest dreams):

There is a general and striking difference between the genuine effects of truth itself, and the effects of falsehood believed to be truth. Truth is naturally benign; but false-hood believed to be truth is always furious. The former delights in serenity, is mild and persuasive, and seeks not the auxiliary aid of invention. The latter sticks at nothing.

It has naturally no morals. Every lie is welcome that suits its purpose. It is the innate character of the thing to act in this manner, and the criterion by which it may be known, whether in politics or religion. When any thing is attempted to be supported by lying, it is presumptive evidence that the thing so supported is a lie also. The stock on which a lie can be grafted must be of the same species as the graft.

What's especially striking about Paine's letters is that, although the specific circumstances are different, the tactics of those who would assault individual freedoms haven't changed a whit. This is another example.

It seems to me that when you've touched on the basic truth of a thing, you experience the serenity Paine mentions. Any anxiety you might feel is more like an excitement of wanting or needing to share the truth. Truth does indeed have a "mild and persuasive" nature to it.

"Falsehood believed to be truth" is a different beast altogether. An intensity and even rage accompanies the demeanor of those who know they're right but maintain a sliver (or even a plank or two) of doubt. In its extreme, this is the anger of "We gotta round up them illegals and ship 'em back to Mexico before they finish ruinin' our country" or "That smoker over there in the corner is poisoning my air" and "The fight against climate change requires you to submit to the state, and how can you even doubt?"

Self-evident truth settles into the heart and takes up residence. Falsehood believed to be truth is the proverbial resounding gong or clanging cymbal. Again, it's Malcolm Reynolds and "I got no need to beat you; I just want to go my way."

The holder of truth knows that at some point, the truth will become self-evident even to the hardest to convince. The holder of the falsehood-believed-to-be-truth needs to convince, because maybe if he can find enough other people to believe the falsehood it really will be true. But a falsehood believed to be true by a vast majority is still false; that's the underlying frustration and the root of the fervor.

The truth "delights in serenity." What a wonderful phrase!

Won't get fooled again

I have a couple of reasons for not getting too excited over the Ron Paul for President phenomenon.

One is that I'm fresh from the one-two punch of Murray N. Rothbard and Frank Chodorov, so my faith in the American system of elections is at a low ebb. Even if a miracle were to occur and he became President Paul, there's only so much he could do. Ronald Reagan was the closest thing to a limited-government Constitution-respecting president we'll probably have in my lifetime, and the government got bigger, more intrusive and more imperial under his watch. However, a strong showing by Paul could give a boost to the notion that Americans have begun to notice how un-American our State has become over the past 100 years or so.

The other reason is Serenity. No, really. I remember the huge Internet buzz that accompanied the pending release of the best movie of the 21st century so far. I remember telling my friends that Firefly/Serenity was the next big science-fiction franchise, based on the incredible enthusiasm I found everywhere I turned on the Internet. I was astonished and disappointed when the film's actual box office numbers weren't good enough to debut at No. 1, couldn't even beat a lame Jodie Foster movie. (Hey, I love Jodie Foster sometimes, but this wasn't her finest hour.)

So I do not put a lot of stock in the huge Internet buzz for Ron Paul. I'm glad he's out there making noise, and it's fun watching the grass-roots volunteers at work, holding signs at highway overpasses and such. But after Serenity flew in on all that Web buzz and barely earned back its cost, I'll need more than Web buzz to be optimistic.

An internal gut check and reformation is going to have to happen before the United States becomes a free country again. Ron Paul can be a catalyst, but politics isn't going to solve what ails us.

To Be Giddy or Not To Be Giddy

... Now there's a question.

According to moviehole.net, copies of the Serenity Special DVD Edition have been flying off the shelves to the point where a second Firefly movie is not out of the question.

"Tudyk agrees that even if it was a direct-to-DVD movie, it’d still be worthwhile." And apparently all nine actors are excited about maybe coming back, even though, well, you know. And if you still haven't seen the best movie of the 21st century so far, I'm not going to spoil it for you.

This got me all a-twitter, needless to say. It would be disappointing not to see Serenity 2 on the big screen, but better direct-to-DVD than nothing, as long as Joss Whedon and friends keep the quality coming.

So I'm choosing to be more than a tad excited about the possibility. Just as Rick and Ilsa will always have Paris, though, the consolation in all this is that these folks did leave us with 17 hours of great, great work. Every so often I will pull out the Firefly set or the movie and we'll watch something over again. The other night it was "Out of Gas." The ending gets me every time. That reminds me, we're out of Kleenex ...

Long live Dystopia

I meant to get back sooner than this to the list of the Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time as chosen by the folks at Snarkerati. The fact that I own (or at least have seen) more than half of these flicks probably says much about me. Like most good science fiction, a dystopian movie succeeds because it says something about the "real" world in which we live - speculating on where our current trends may take us if we don't watch out.

The interesting thing is almost all of these movies show the struggle of one individual against the grain of a society where conformity is very important - usually because the conformity is enforced by a brutal government. (Wait - is "brutal government" one of those phrases from the Department of Redundancy Department?) (And isn't it interesting how many dystopias portray a world where the individual is unimportant? Of course that's the opposite of utopia!)

Sometimes the individual wins a victory, large or small, and sometimes the film does not have a very happy ending - but it's the struggle that counts, the moment when the individual breaks loose and says, to quote from a great dystopian work that is not a movie, "I am not a number - I am a free man!"

For the record - somewhere in my piles of DVDs and VHSs I believe I will find 14 of these flicks for sure (#1 Metropolis (1927), #3 Brazil, #5 Blade Runner, #9 Minority Report, #14 Twelve Monkeys, #15 Serenity [YAYYYYY!], #22 Planet of the Apes (1968), #23 V for Vendetta, #25 Gattaca, #26 Fahrenheit 451, #27 On the Beach, #29 Total Recall, #31 War of the Worlds (1953), #44 Strange Days) and maybe more ... I have seen and (in most cases) loved a majority of them, and I have loaded up the Netflix queue with the missing films. The ones you may be most surprised I've never seen would be the Mad Max movies - everyone has seen those by now, wouldn't you think?

I'm going to sound like the proverbial broken record - this list really, really ought to include The Lives of Others, the incredible 2006 German film I've written about here and here. Maybe because it's set in the reality of the past, in 1984 East Germany, it didn't qualify under Snarkerati's definition of a dystopian film. But if you enjoy the movies on this list, you gotta, gotta see The Lives of Others.

INSTANT UPDATE: I just noticed the update where they mention their definition of dystopia: "An imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror." (my emphasis) That does exclude The Lives of Others. Just thought of one glaring omission (at least in my humble opinion): Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the original 1956 film with Kevin McCarthy, natch. That would go into my top 10 dystopian movies, I think - maybe the top 5!

Blowing people up without the residual fuss

Isn't this nice, a bomb with the ability to do nuclear-style damage without all that nasty radioactive fallout stuff. That's sort of what I was shooting for, in a grander way, in my little novel The Imaginary Bomb.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has tested the world's most powerful vacuum bomb, which unleashes a destructive shockwave with the power of a nuclear blast, the military said on Tuesday, dubbing it the "father of all bombs." ...

Such devices generally detonate in two stages. First a small blast disperses a main load of explosive material into a cloud, which then either spontaneously ignites in air or is set off by a second charge.

This explosion generates a pressure wave that reaches much further than that from a conventional explosive. The consumption of gases in the blast also generates a partial vacuum that can compound damage and injuries caused by the explosion itself.

Oh, no. How can "they" have developed a weapon more powerful than what "we" have? Ah, but what's this down near the end?

U.S. forces have used a "thermobaric" bomb, which works on similar principles, in their campaign against al-Qaida and Taliban forces in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

I'm sure it's comforting to someone that governments continue to seek bigger and better ways to reduce people and buildings to dust. It is, on the other hand, a reminder that this is the only thing that governments are really good at.

I don't spend a lot of time checking TV news channels and such, but I haven't heard much about this on the puppet theater. I guess no one wants to give "the masses" something to shake them out of their lethargy and get them worried about what the maniacs in charge are up to. It's the new TV season, after all, doncha know. (Not that there's anything wrong with that - I confess to be looking forward to Sept. 24 and the season 2 premiere of Heroes.)

Just a reminder: They can kill us, but short of that we are still free. If a large number of individuals ever wrapped their minds around that fact, governments would become crippled. That's why they need, well, weapons of mass destruction.

Big Damn Decision looms

According to the folks at a site called Big Damn Sequel.com, the actors' contract options for doing a second Firefly/Serenity movie expire in September 2007, so if a decision hasn't been made soon, it's about to be made: Fish or cut bait on an entertainment franchise that has drawn a passionate fan following.

There's no questioning the passion of us browncoats - but do we have enough numbers to make Serenity 2 a potential profit-maker? Apparently much depends on the success of the new "collector's edition" of the best movie of 2005. That seems silly; if the last two years haven't shown there's a demand, then the demand's not there. Something must be happening - I keep seeing Firefly stocked up at stores that mostly stock recent popular TV shows. Not many shows on their shelves that are five years old, unless they're Friends or The Simpsons - and if Firefly is in that category sales-wise, then a sequel seems like a good idea.

It'll be interesting to see what happens next. For what it's worth, the set is #10 among DVDs on Amazon.com this morning. So far so good?

She's pointing at me

Every so often I emerge from the haze and say, "This isn't the way I planned to live my life," down on my knees while the robbers circle around us. I reach back, trying not to be noticed, so that I can take action, but then one of them cocks a gun in my face and says, "You know what the definition of a hero is? It's someone who gets other people killed. You can look it up later." So I back down.

Then I hear Johnny Cash singing Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down," and so I run after the robbers screaming, "Take me with you!" But it's too late. And on top of that, they shoot me.

Then I wake up, thankfully, and I get up and go to work. But there, I realize, I work on my knees while the robbers circle us ...