ITP: I Discuss Male Territorial Instinct.

Those who have known me for a long enough time know that I am, at heart, a creature of instinct. I am deeply in touch with my animal side, and that manifests, at times, in verbalizing and analyzing animal behaviors, sometimes in ways that you might not expect.

Hopefully, when I do this strange thing, it takes the form to my readers of something which they have always known, but never spelled out; an unwritten rule, written and (hopefully accurately) explained.

So tonight, I was talking to Lovely Wife about territoriality.

I am very aware of my territorial instincts, and those of other men; and to some degree, the ways in which those same instincts both exist, and differ, in women.

Accordingly, I behave in ways that agree with my understanding - my conscious understanding - of what the "rules" generated by those instincts are.

What we were discussing specifically, was a time when a dear friend and much-loved frequent guest to our house made a particular misstep that roused her territorial instincts, and by extension, mine; it resulted in an argument that went a lot farther than it should.

I will note that the breach was repaired almost immediately.

But that discussion led us to territoriality in general, and in specific, the frequently unwritten customs between men that have evolved as a result.

So, one rule: when you are contacting a female who is mated (boyfriend, husband, such distinctions do not matter to the lizard brain, you see, once it is mate it is she who must be protected and other, lesser things are of no consequence,) you contact the man first.

It does not matter if you have an independent friendship with the female; outside her domicile, contacting her is fine, but when she is at home, you contact the male first.

This establishes (to him) that you respect his relationship with her, and also that you intend neither intrusion nor harm; it permits him a veto, with the implication that such a veto will be respected, on your contact with her at home, because there may be factors in his thinking, or their plans or environment, of which you are unaware, and it demonstrates that you respect the boundaries of their house. (Which is both her safe space, and his.)

...At which point Lovely Wife says, "But that means you're just seeing the woman as property!"

And thus, this post.

You see, the female interpretation of that paragraph is exactly as she said it, and yet that interpretation is utterly, completely wrong.

But clearing up what, precisely, is wrong with it, and why, is more than a simple sentence or two.

I will try, here.

First, you must understand that with the exception of men who have been in some way traumatized, or obviously those who do not sexually orient on females, the male mind treats women as a special case.

There are not one, but many, associations tied to the concept of "mate."

Safety.

Comfort - a place of rest; sanctuary, however temporary, from the efforts and trials of the day.

Sex, obviously.

Offspring. The very nature of our species is that - without significant interference from science - females determine the future of our existence. They determine whose genetic legacy carries onward; how far it spreads; how much support those offspring receive; they determine literally the care and feeding of offspring; they are our only immortality.

They are partner, confidant, the one person who can be trusted when all males are competition; the only person for whom all the masks can be let down, the only person who can know your feelings, the only person who can be let behind the defenses.

They are not an object; and at the same time, I used the phrase before, they are she who must be protected.

There is literally nothing more important. Offspring - no offense, kids - can be replaced. The mate cannot. Even if you find a new mate, it will not be the same. It can never, will never, be the same.

I know that women don't, and can't, understand this on the kind of visceral level on which men understand it.

Women, as a gender, tend to form groups of people who fulfill most of those functions I listed above; the mate, to them, is protector - provider - source of offspring, but most of the other associations men have in that relationship are either not there, or not nearly as high priority. Friends, instead, act as confidantes, and while women have the same protective instincts men do, they are primarily focused on their children, not their men. Men are expected to be able to handle themselves, dammit. Why do you big babies need us to take care of you, anyway?

It never seems to occur to the women that it's because literally no-one else does. Males tend to view requests for help as weakness; they are, I assure you, conscious of this. Making a request for help lowers your status in the silent pecking order; fulfilling it implies not only higher status, but obligation for a return of favors, regardless of difficulty. Men simply do not, and cannot, turn to their peers as a source of support for the kind of day-to-day needs that women can, because they would be inviting in the jackals.

When women suffer an emotional upset, they turn to their friends, often before their mate has any idea anything's wrong, and they particularly double down on this behavior when their mate is the source of the upset.

Men have only one person to whom they turn, and that's their mate.

She who must be protected.

Literally nothing will cause a fight faster than interference with one's mate. Nothing. Yo' momma jokes might get there if you really, really push it, but cause the mate distress? Even the world's biggest Caspar Milquetoast will try - maybe ineffectually, but try - to get violent in her defense.

Because she who must be protected is in danger. Distress.

Literally nothing could be more important than that.

The worst guy out there - lazy, drunk, jobless, doped-up, wasted bum - will leap to his woman's defense if he recognizes that she is in danger.

Girls, here's a tip: if you're upset, and he's not behaving like a highly aggressive guard dog, he doesn't see you as his mate. He may see you as a sex object, but there's no goddamn way he sees you as his mate, because - I keep using this phrasing because I want you to really internalize it - his mate is she who must be protected and nothing in the male brain outranks that in order of priority.

It's one of the big arguments against women in infantry combat; the Army can't come right out and say what I'm saying, here, but if a male soldier, who has formed an attachment to a female soldier, sees her in danger or injured, his instincts will be triggered in an actual sense; he will react according to his protective instincts, regardless of reason, intelligence, planning or forethought, and most likely cause a whole lot of deaths that could otherwise have been avoided.

Having this conversation - among many - with Lovely Wife indicates to me that women, whose instincts react very differently, don't really understand how this feels.

Imagine, ladies, if you saw your child about to be attacked by a bear.

Women have literally fought bears, to save children.

Now imagine if every single person who comes by is a bear.

A potentially hungry bear.

A potentially angry and dangerous bear.

Men have come a long way.

We're far from perfect, and we have a long way yet to go.

But at least we no longer leap at each other on sight with pointy sticks.

We need you to bear in mind that that - evolutionarily speaking - wasn't that long ago. Sometimes keeping calm is a challenge.

Perhaps with greater understanding of our respective burdens of instinct, we can get better communication between the genders.

But that will never happen as long as you make the assumption, about us, that the concept of she who must be protected equates to seeing you as property.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

When you see some guy saying "she's mine!" or "that's my girl / wife / woman / whatever" that's not ownership.

That's a statement, to the world, that this is the person in whom all your dreams, your hopes for the future, your legacy, your immortality, your love, your very best that you have to give the world resides...

And that you are her protector.

If you want her, you're going to have to go through me.

You best bring a lunch.

The First Step On A Long Road

I'm going to begin in a way that makes a part - a very large part, if you have any familiarity with my writing on the subject - of my feelings about today's events perfectly clear.

CONGRATULATIONS, MY FRIENDS!!!

For those of you who aren't following the news, or are living with your head under a rock, today was a landmark day.

It was the first step on a long road.

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed that denying recognition of a legally recognized marriage from another state, on the basis of the genders of the participants, is unconstitutional.

They then went farther than that, and flatly affirmed that denying people the right to marry based on their choice of partner directly contravenes the Due Process clause, inherently constitutes unequal treatment under the law, and as such is also unconstitutional.

"This analysis compels the conclusion that same-sex couples may exercise the right to marry. The four principles and traditions to be discussed demonstrate that the reasons marriage is fundamental under the Constitution apply with equal force to same-sex couples.

A first premise of the Court’s relevant precedents is that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy. This abiding connection between marriage and liberty is why Loving invalidated interracial marriage bans under the Due Process Clause. See 388 U. S., at 12; see also Zablocki, supra, at 384 (observing Loving held “the right to marry is of fundamental importance for all individuals”). Like choices concerning contraception, family relationships, procreation, and childrearing, all of which are protected by the Constitution, decisions concerning marriage are among the most intimate that an individual can make."

In other words, the Supreme Court just legalized gay marriage.

Celebrate!

And then, with sober deliberation, once the party hats are off and the beer has gone flat, remember that the job isn't finished.

The job has only just begun.

Because the same legal structure - the same Constitutional protections that led to this decision - also demands further action.

Note the first line of that second paragraph.

The right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy.

And the last line, as well.

Like choices concerning contraception, family relationships, procreation, and childrearing, all of which are protected by the Constitution...

Those two lines mean there's more work to do.

Because the fundamental premise is that your relationships are yours.

They do not belong to your peers.

They do not belong to your government.

They belong, rightly, exclusively, and inherently, to you.

Now, I know as I get rolling here, there will be, with the inevitability of the tides, questions.

"B-b-b-but adoption law!"

"B-b-b-but child custody!"

"B-b-b-but medical decisions!"

I am hereby assuring you that there is, in fact, a simple way to address those concerns, so I will get to them when I get there, ok?

So.

First and foremost, among human rights, are two bedrock principles inherent in the very concept of sentient life.

First, you have the right to your life.

From this right descend the right to property, the right to self-defense, and the right to pursue (though not to succeed; nothing guarantees that) self-advancement, provided only that your quest to do so does not infringe on anyone else.

And second, you have the right to freedom. 

From freedom descend all other rights, and those rights, as with freedom, contain only one solitary caveat: "so long as it does not infringe on anyone else."

An it harm none, do as thou wilt.

Freedom is inherent in the human condition in the same way that breathing is; the two cannot be separated if the organism is to survive.

The court case today was a huge step in the right direction.

It was worthy of the celebration that will inevitably be carried out.

It wasn't the whole journey.

In this country, for many years, we've mistaken custom, tradition, and comfort for the "right."

We've accorded many things over this country's history the weight of moral approval, only to have later generations realize the many ways in which those beliefs were mistaken.

Because, ultimately, there are only two fundamental rights: the right to your life, and the right to do anything you want to do that doesn't harm anyone else.

And that second one applies.

Even if you belong to a religion that says you should marry more than one partner.

Even if you are sexually oriented towards the same biological gender and want to marry accordingly.

Even if you wish to have a child without a partner.

Even if you wish to have multiple partners of multiple genders.

The government does not, and cannot - and by the last line of that opinion I quoted above, the Supremes agree with me - have the right to tell you that those choices are rightly the place of "society" to make for you.

Because they are not.

Those choices are, and must be, yours.

ONLY yours.

The government got into the business of marriage for one reason: tradition. It literally never occurred to the Founders that they didn't have to do that.

Woops.

But here's the thing: reading their letters, reading the things they had to say about liberty, freedom, and what it meant to them, it is - or should be - obvious that they would totally agree with the reasoning; it is not society's place to make those decisions on behalf of a citizen.

Society CAN say, for example - since I know this will get brought up - that it would be "harm" to marry below a certain age, because people under that age are not yet ready for that kind of responsibility.

Society CAN say that you cannot marry an animal.

Society CAN say that you cannot marry a tree.

Do you know why those three things are within the purview of society?

Consent.

Agency.

The free exercise of free will.

Children, animals, and plants, cannot give informed consent, because they lack the ability to do so.

Any such relationship is therefore inherently harmful; it requires an absence of consent. This is what statutory rape means, guys; one person involved is unable to provide consent and therefore the relationship is inherently harmful.

But guess what?

If everyone involved in the relationship is a consenting adult, the government has no right to be involved outside of the function of recording its existence.

Which leads me to the "b-b-b-but inheritance law!" questions.

There is no good reason why the government cannot simply permit you to record a legal next of kin, who is then responsible for making those decisions of inheritance, medical care, and child custody when you are incapacitated. In strict point of fact, the government already does this; the typical document used to register as next of kin is a marriage certificate recorded by the clerk of court, but a legal declaration of kinship is just as binding and could be whipped up in OpenOffice in minutes.

Marriage law, as it exists, is contract law. A contract having more than two signatories is no less valid, and no less enforceable. There is no valid reason that contract law cannot continue to cover the situations human relationships produce.

Just because you, and I, and everyone else, are used to it being one way, is no reason for it to stay that way.

The government has no rightful place in human relationships. Human relationships belong only to those participating in them, and nothing more.

But tradition, right?

Custom, right?

How do you think those things feel when an immigrant comes from a polygamous society to America?

It feels like we don't have a great regard for their traditions, I'm sure.

"You have one wife now." 

"What? But I have three."

"No. You're in America. You have one. The other two are social outcasts who we look down on."

"I'msorrywhat?"

This is no way to run a country.

The thing is, everyone is really caught up in their own personal facet of a much larger issue.

I have a friend, for whom I have tremendous personal respect, who is no doubt celebrating with her wife quite thoroughly tonight.

I'm hoping I can convince her to side with me after their party is done.

Because the same moral principles that apply to gay marriage apply to all other human relationships, as well.

This is a wonderful day.

It should be celebrated.

It should be recorded in history.

But the fact that it is a first step should not be forgotten. 

A long, beautiful, long-overdue first step, yes.

A righteous, empowering, rejoicing first step, yes.

But the first of a long journey.

Keep fighting. Reclaim our freedom from the government, just this way, one step at a time, always moving forward.

The government rightly exists to protect you, not to control you.

Do not mistake one for the other, and never quit until the government doesn't either.

[As a footnote, if you want to read the actual text of the Court's opinions, the majority opinion, by Justice Kennedy, can be found on page 6, while the dissent, by Justice Roberts can be found on page 40, and by Justice Scalia on page 69. The link opens in a new window.]

Seething, Boiling, Burning, Hysterical! (Mad Max: Fury Road, With Spoilers Galore)

So, yesterday, I had the chance to see Mad Max: Fury Road.

Prior to that, I had heard that there was a bit of uproar surrounding the movie.

So, for background, I own the original three Mad Max movies, and have watched them many times. These are films I grew up with, a franchise for which I hold a deep, abiding affection.

Accordingly, I was going to see this movie whether or not there was controversy.

Now, I said in my spoiler-free review of the movie that it was perhaps the best action movie I've ever seen, and I will stand by that.

I talked about pacing, cinematography, scripting, and all of those things are true and relevant.

But I didn't talk about anything that would give away the storyline. I'm going to do that, extensively,  not only for Fury Road but for the entire series here, so if you haven't seen it, stop now and go somewhere else.

So.

After watching Fury Road, I was even more mystified by the reports of people being upset about the movie.

Upon finding out it was a small but apparently vocal men's rights group, I was even more mystified. Then I actually read what they were complaining about, and then I was actually angry.

You douchebags, you haven't even seen the other movies! Or you didn't bother paying attention, either way.

So let me clear things up in context of reviewing the movie.

This group's complaints, as a whole, revolve around the fact that Max Rockatansky is not the main character of the movie. He is the viewpoint character, true, and his is the narrative voice relating the story, but he is not the prime driver of the action; that honor belongs to Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron.

How dare George Miller write a sequel in which there is a strong female lead! This is MAD MAX, his name's right on it!

How dare they make a movie where Max shares the title card with a person with a vagina!

Let me first begin by saying that "cars exploding are only cool when there are only dudes in them" is a ridiculous, stupid statement.

Cars exploding are always cool unless YOU'RE in them.

It has nothing to do with plumbing and everything to do with explosions.

Especially since George Miller has always focused on practical effects wherever possible, using legions of stuntmen (and women) and spending the massive majority of the film's budget on 150 post-apocalyptic dieselpunk nightmare cars that all actually work.

This group of idiots was especially incensed by the fact that at one point, Furiosa yells at Max, something that is apparently on a par with anal rape of a chicken in Times Square for offense value; you just don't yell at MAD GODDAMN MAX.

So, returning to my original point: you just haven't actually watched the rest of the series, have you?

Mad Max is an everyman. In the first movie, he is explicitly offered the hero role by his boss, MFP captain "Fifi" Macaffee, and explicitly turns it down. He's not an anti-hero; he simply rejects the role of hero entirely.

In the eponymous movie, Max is brought into opposition to a sadistic, drug-crazed biker gang run by a lunatic known as the Toecutter (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also plays Immortan Joe, the main antagonist in Fury Road.) The true driver of the action in the movie is clearly Toecutter; Max's actions are entirely reactive.

And this brings me to my several points about Max.

Max is a cipher. As the viewpoint character and narrative voice of all four movies (with the exception of a small voiceover at the tail end of each movie,) he is essentially a passive character. He acts, but he either acts in response to someone else, or in furtherance of someone else's plans; his own agency in the movies is very subdued. Max exists in a kind of twilight world of survival, and Fury Road spells this out in a way the earlier movies didn't.

Now, those of you who have watched these movies may be scratching your heads a bit, at this point, but think.

The only reason Max took direct action against Toecutter's gang is that they killed his family. If they had simply ridden on, he wouldn't have pursued them; despite his friends' anger at seeing Johnny the Boy released from jail, Max was the voice of calm, the voice of reason and restraint, right up until Toecutter killed Jessie and Sprog.

At that point, Max kills Bubba Zanetti, Toecutter, and Johnny the Boy, and runs several other members of the gang off a bridge, and then disappears into the wasteland.

But Max doesn't actively pursue the gang, doesn't act in any way heroic; he simply responds with violence to the deaths of his family.

Move forward to The Road Warrior, and Max is existing as a scavenger in the desert; he's not a hero, or a wandering vigilante, he's a guilt-wracked, hollow shell of a man who simply exists.

He's scavenging, and staying clear of the skirmish, as he watches an attempt at escape by the crew of a besieged oil refinery by the forces of The Humungus; he only steps in to rescue one of the survivors as a means of trading for a tank of gas.

Once inside the compound, the survivor dies, and the leader of the compound's forces, Pappagallo, reneges on the deal; Max offers to retrieve a big rig he saw abandoned on the road at the beginning of the movie in exchange for fuel.

He retrieves the rig, then attempts to escape, and is caught and nearly killed; he is rescued on the way back to the refinery by the Gyro Pilot, and once in the compound agrees to drive the rig as it is the only way for him to escape the forces of The Humungus.

The Humungus and his forces pursue the rig, allowing the rest of the refinery personnel to escape in a caravan. After the rig's defenders are killed, Max is able to destroy the Humungus's vehicle, but this overturns the rig, at which point it becomes clear that the entire run was a sham; the rig is filled with sand, not oil, and Max was strictly an unknowing decoy. Max wanders off into the desert.

In Beyond Thunderdome, the entire first half of the movie is orchestrated by Tina Turner's Aunty Entity character; once again promising Max fuel and resupply in exchange for a task, this time killing off a political rival in single combat. Max agrees, but once he actually confronts Master and Blaster, he realizes that Blaster is developmentally retarded and not responsible, and refuses to kill him, resulting in banishment from Bartertown by Aunty Entity.

Max then encounters a group of lost children, stranded by a plane crash, and attempts to lead them to safety, but is forced to steal vehicles from Bartertown to do so; he runs interference to allow the children to escape, and at the end of the story wanders again into the desert, once again alone, after Aunty Entity - victorious - allows him to live.

Which is the whole point. At what point, in any of that, is Max the primary driver of the story? He is the window through which the audience experiences the story, clearly, but at no point is he the primary actor; his exercise of agency, throughout the series, is only to ensure his own survival.

As Fury Road begins, Max is wandering the desert as a scavenger, haunted by his past - stop me if you've heard this - and is captured by the forces of Immortan Joe, a despot who rules The Citadel, the only source of water for miles around. Immortan Joe has created a pseudoreligious cult called the Warboys, all of whom have been taught that Immortan Joe is the arbiter of the afterlife, and the guardian of the gates of Valhalla.

Joe happens to have a harem - the Wives - who are unwilling to continue to exist as objects.

Which brings us to Furiosa.

Imperator Furiosa is Joe's most trusted lieutenant, and she is entrusted with the task of taking a tanker truck to a nearby refinery for refueling and supplies. In fact, this is a ruse on her part; her intent is to smuggle the Wives out using the rig, and once Joe figures out the trick, he rouses the entire army of the Citadel in pursuit. Max is carried along, literally chained to a car, as he is being used as a blood donor for a Warboy named Nux.

As Furiosa's run continues, the escort forces become suspicious, and then attack her, and the pursuit forces catch up enough to engage in combat; Max is freed when Nux's vehicle is destroyed in an attempt to stop the rig. Max then hijacks the rig, but as the pursuit forces catch up, he joins forces with Furiosa, supporting her in the escape attempt.

Nux also eventually joins with Max and Furiosa, after seeing how cavalierly his efforts are dismissed by Immortan Joe, and how the Wives react to him and to Max.

The story turns when Furiosa finally makes contact with the forces guarding the place she had planned to use as a safe haven, only to find that the haven itself has been destroyed, and only a few warriors remain; at that point, Max makes his first actual plan of the entire series, convincing Furiosa that it's possible to block off the Warboys from returning to The Citadel long enough for Furiosa to actually take it over; they return to The Citadel by reversing the chase right back through Joe's forces, ultimately succeeding in returning to The Citadel; Max then disappears into the desert again.

In Mad Max, the primary narrative driver is Toecutter.

In The Road Warrior, the primary narrative driver is Pappagallo.

In Beyond Thunderdome, the primary narrative driver is Aunty Entity.

In Fury Road, the primary narrative driver is Furiosa.

Notice something in common?

Max isn't the primary actor in any of them.

Sure, his name's on the door, but that's because he's telling the story; these are things that happened to him, but he's not the motivating force behind any of those stories. In that way, Miller is able to draw in the audience, letting them identify with this ragged, desperate survivor, who is unable to control the events around him, and merely clings to survival when nothing else matters.

So, in fifty percent of the Mad Max films, the primary narrative driver is a villain.

In fifty percent of the Mad Max films, the primary narrative driver is a woman.

Why are we suddenly pissed about this?

I can tell you why.

It's because Fury Road is a much, much better movie than the ones that went before.

It's better scripted, tighter, better paced; it's Mad Max stripped to its bare essentials and painted chrome.

The script draws you in; the characters each experience noticeable growth, in particular Max, Furiosa, and Nux; you invest in these characters, in their situation, in their hopes; the moment when Furiosa discovers her long-lost haven is gone forever is a crushing blow, especially since Miller drove the narrative right past the location of the fallen haven without taking particular note of it.

That past is gone so thoroughly that you drove right through the middle of it without ever noticing, Furiosa.

Do you feel that?

That's pain.

That's loss.

That's despair.

And that's the moment - the first time in the series, really - when Max himself steps forward as a driver of the narrative, when he becomes more than a passenger, more than a bystander, more than only a survivor.

That's redemption.

That's hope.

What about that do you find to be negative?

You're mad because a girl yells at Max?

You didn't get mad when a girl yelled at Max in The Road Warrior, did you.

You didn't get mad when a girl yelled at Max in Beyond Thunderdome, did you.

So what's different now?

Furiosa is the difference.

From start to finish, it's really her movie, and she sells it completely, believably, and you invest in her, in her hopes and her success, because of it.

You care about her.

Max is the shell you use to ride along with her.

And for the first time in the series, Max lets you be more than a passenger.

There is nothing wrong with this movie, and everything right with it. I'm not going to try to deconstruct tropes, or break down gender roles, or talk about how the movie itself uses the story as a vehicle for reversing everyone's expectations...

...Wait, at least for a bit, I will.

You invest in this movie.

It's that moment when Splendid goes under the wheels of Immortan Joe's car, and you see the fury and heartbreak as he carries her body out of the wreckage. It's so, so much worse, knowing that he cares as much as he knows how to.

It's that moment when Rictus stands up, with tears in his eyes, and announces to the waiting Warboys that he had a baby brother. One perfect in every respect.

It's the moment when Nux realizes his only way to redemption is death. "Witness."

It's the moment when Furiosa knows her past is lost.

It's the moment when...

...you know that even if they're wrong, even if they're crazy, there's no-one in this movie who doesn't care.

And that makes you buy into it.

That makes YOU care.

That's a level of heart rarely seen in any movie, much less in an action movie; much less in a two-hour car chase.

I know why those peabrains are protesting the movie, and it has nothing to do with it being bad.

It has to do with it being fucking artwork. And making you care.

I can't wait to see what George Miller does next.

Fury Road, Spoiler-Free!

I will be writing a much more in-depth article about this movie later today, which I will link when I'm done. That article will be spoiler-tastic, so be aware of that before clicking. (The spoilerriffic version is available here.)

Having said that, I felt like I should say something about it for the no-spoilers people who haven't seen it.

So here it is..

GO.

FUCKING.

SEE.

IT.

Ahhhhh, that feels better.

So, Fury Road is the best action movie I've seen, maybe ever.

The cinematography is astonishing - it conveys vast expanses of post-apocalyptic landscape with wide, sweeping shots, while keeping the action sequences tight, focused, and personal.

It's utterly relentless in pacing; literally thirty seconds into the movie, a chase starts, and after that point, there is never more than five minutes of the two hour runtime at once where there's no action.

Brace yourself.

The screenwriters did a stellar job in developing character with minimal dialogue, and Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron absolutely knocked it out of the park; both their characters are fully realized, fully voiced, and neither of them has over a hundred lines of dialogue in the entire movie. The smaller characters have in some cases as few as six lines, and yet carry distinct personalities; this is professional-grade screenwriting.

The story is cohesive, intelligent, and compelling - and there is one, which may surprise people not familiar with this franchise.

But nothing matters more, in this movie, than the stunts, and I want to say something here.

CGI is great for fire.

CGI is great for backgrounds or artwork.

CGI is not great for stunts.

The Kennedy / Miller production team just proved that in a defining way.

If your eye looks at a fire effect and sees CGI, it doesn't take you out of the story; you look, realize it's augmented, and go "ok, but there's fire there."

If your eye sees someone catapulted out of the back of a moving vehicle and you detect CGI, your brain rejects the impact of the whole scene.

Doing the stunts for real makes the whole movie have far more dramatic impact, and draws much more visceral response from the audience. When someone falls under the wheels, your whole body clenches in sympathy.

Prepare yourself.

Because nobody, nobody, ever, has done a car chase the way George Miller does car chases.

This movie is twenty minutes of story, character growth, and high-concept discussion of how to regain a foothold for civilization in a world gone insane, and an hour and forty minutes of the most screamingly testicle-or-ovary-as-applicable-shivering car chase ever filmed.

I expect that nobody will ever do it better.

Go see this movie, even if you're not into action movies.

It's worth your $8.

"What Just Happened?!" (The UK Election)

So, as many of these articles do, this begins with Lovely Wife asking me a question. In this case, "why is everyone so upset after the election in the UK?"

Now that's a complicated one, but to give off a good TL: DR; for everybody, it comes down to surprise, and sore losers.

The British government works differently than does the government of the United States. Superficially, they're similar, in that Parliament has two houses, like Congress, and an executive, but the similarities stop there.

Parliament has two houses, the house of Lords, and the house of Commons.

Those names are mightily descriptive.

The Commons are the "Members of Parliament" that make up the bulk of the government. They are elected.

The House of Lords has two types of members: the senior bishops of the Church of England, known as the Lords Spiritual, and members of the peerage appointed by the ruling monarch, known as the Lords Temporal.

All government ministers must come from Parliament; they can't simply be brought in from the outside.

Like the United States, ministerial positions are generally taken by the members of the coalition currently in power in the UK.

Now, in the U.S., that doesn't mean a whole lot, as there are only two significant political parties, which means that whoever won the last election controls all the cabinet positions. But in the UK, where there are four parties big enough that their results mattered in this election, ministerial positions are typically put together from a coalition between two or more of the existing parties.

But this election was a weird one.

See, the UK has weathered some financial crises, as well as diplomatic ones, over the last few years. (Their biggest ally, the U.S., spying on them being high among that number.) Accordingly, the coalition government made up of Conservative and Liberal Democrat members that has been serving, has become steadily more unpopular, and the left wing of British politics has been getting louder and louder in their determination to take over.

Don't get bent out of shape. The British "conservatives" are center-rightish in American terms, while the Liberal Democrats are centrists. They're not nearly as far apart in the UK as the groups living under the same labels do here.

At any rate, the Labour party, specifically, has been agitating heavily, and was openly predicting a huge victory in the elections.

Since the BBC and most of the British media outlets available to the U.S. are also pretty solidly left-wing, they were too.

And that's not what happened.

To understand the true depth of the upset, there are a couple of other factors that need to be brought in.

Scotland is one.

Labour has traditionally counted on Scotland as a bastion of votes. Scotland, however, has experienced a strong upswing in nationalism just recently, going so far as to have a losing, but hotly contested, plebiscite in September; a vote that would have split Scotland off into an independent nation.

The Scotland National Party or SNP, which had previously held 6 seats in Parliament, took the Scots' Parliamentary seats by storm, leaving Scotland represented by one Conservative, one Liberal Democrat, one Labour, and 56 SNP members. Scotland sent a powerful message that while they may not be ready to exit the UK yet, they're very unhappy with Labour and its representation of their constituencies.

That right there was a disaster for Labour; previously, they would have been able to count on another 46 members in Parliament, seated and voting for their agenda, but the loss of Scotland's seats was crushing.

The end results of the election were that the Conservatives won, not only over Labour, but enough of a majority to form a government all by themselves, which is very rare.

To put in perspective how rare, only one other Prime Minister in history has been re-elected after a full term with even more seats under their control than in the previous term; that was Margaret Thatcher, who was also a Conservative.

The problem for the media in the UK, and the Labour Party, is that the majority held by the Conservative Party is a definite mandate from the people. They put their hopes and dreams behind the idea of removing Prime Minister Cameron, and failed miserably, as well as potentially losing Scotland for Labour permanently.

But in fact it is worse than it at first appears, because it wasn't so much the fact that the UK government is now 330 Conservatives, 232 Labour, 59 SNP, 8 Democratic Unionists, and 8 Liberal Democrats; it was the fact that of the 46 seats Labour lost, and the 48 seats the Liberal Democrats lost, they lost several of their parties' major leaders.

Labour lost the party leader from Scotland, Jim Murphy; the party campaign manager (who seems to have been the wrong man for that specific job,) Douglas Alexander, and Ed Balls, former Chancellor for the Exchequer. (Treasury, in the U.S.)

The Liberal Democrats lost Danny Alexander, their Treasury Secretary; Vince Cable, the Business Secretary; Charles Kennedy, a former party leader; and Simon Hughes, their deputy party leader.

Apparently - and who knew this from their tv shows, media, fiction, and every other cultural touchpoint - British citizens prefer to keep their views private except at the actual election booth; the polls showed a much more even split between Labour and Conservative right up until Election Day.

And this whole thing has made many, many people who are really invested in the success of the political left very upset.

Predictably, they're screaming that there must have been some kind of fraud.

Not so much, guys. You had 66% voter turnout, and of the voters, the Conservatives got slightly over 11 million votes, versus the Labour Party's 9 million.

So...

I understand that it stings.

I know losing a cherished belief hurts.

But unfortunately, a wiser course, instead of bewailing your fate, is to adjust to the new circumstances and move forward.

The new circumstances are that the Conservatives have an all-Conservative government for the first time in 18 years.

They will be responsible for the formation and operation of policy for the UK until the next election at least.

They will, however, be responsible; if you want success going forward, hold them to it.

Biting Down Viciously With Teeth Like A Lion...

So, I'm gonna get all kinds of spoilery talking about something old enough that spoilers shouldn't matter.

Have any of you ever read the book "IT" by Stephen King?

If you have not, you're going to get a bit of an education about it today.

See, the powers that be in Hollyweird have decided to "remake" IT into a pair of theatrical, hard-R-rated movies.

And suddenly there was an outcry, because "No Tim Curry? Booooooo!"

Wait, wait, back up.

OK.

So, the book came out in 1986.

In 1990, there was a TV miniseries, adapted from the book, that starred Tim Curry in the role of...

Wait, wait, back up.

OK, so the book, at its base, is about a small town built on top of an extraterrestrial crash site. The creature - otherwise known as "IT" - which came to earth in prehistoric times, is a psychic predator, which is able to shapeshift, control minds, and project hallucinations, among other things.

It likes children, as they are easy prey.

Kids are scared of clowns.

So, one of ITs favorite forms is "Pennywise," the most terrifying clown in, well, ever.

No, really.

In the TV miniseries, Tim Curry plays Pennywise, and does so quite well.

But it's important to distinguish that from playing "IT," as in the book, IT takes on many, many forms.

So, I'm going to delve into the book a bit, and in the process, explain a bit about why the miniseries, while enjoyable in its own right, was a fucking terrible adaptation of the book, and why A remake is a great idea. (Emphasis because I have no idea how THIS remake will turn out.)

I will note that at this point, there isn't enough information available to know whether this remake will be what's needed, or any good at all, although the hard-R and runtime makes me think it at least has a shot.

So.

In the book, the eponymous creature wakes every 27 years, feeds, and returns to slumber. During its waking periods, the town of Derry, Maine, undergoes a series of disasters, disappearances, bizarre murders, and general mayhem...

...And then IT goes back to sleep, and the town forgets.

The novel heavily implies, but doesn't state outright, that the alien projects forgetfulness of its attacks onto the townspeople as part of protecting itself while it sleeps.

The novel is quite rightly considered a classic of horror, but for those of you who have never read the book, you may not understand quite why it was, and is, such a big deal.

So here goes.

The book is constructed as a paired narrative; following a group of kids who call themselves "The Losers' Club," during one of IT's waking periods, in 1957, and then following those same people as adults, during IT's next waking phase, as they try to finish what they tried and failed to do as kids - killing the creature and ending its cycle forever.

As such, it acts as both a coming-of-age novel, and as a parable about returning home; finding both in a single narrative is already a step above most novels full stop, much less above most horror novels.

But beyond that, the shifting, fear-based nature of the creature gives King an opportunity that maybe no other single narrative could have, which is that it let him create vignette after vignette of wildly different horror, and present them all in the context of a single story.

Human fears are often irrational; often unconnected; often simply nonsensical.

And IT appears as whatever you fear.

For a small child, it may be a clown hiding in a storm drain, with teeth like a lion.

For a teenage pyromaniac who kills animals by suffocating them inside an abandoned refrigerator, it may be a cloud of flying leech-wasps that drain you of blood.

For a young man unsure of his sexuality it might appear as a leper, propositioning him in a way he doesn't even understand yet.

For another kid, the Mummy.

For another person, the werewolf.

For another, a giant, hungry bird.

For another, an abusive husband who is utterly unstoppable.

And IT gives King the opportunity to tell all those stories at once.

As an anecdotal aside, I used to have a good friend whose daughter Katie, at age 12, was quite intelligent and precocious. Said kiddo decided to tackle this book, and I advised against it, and told her and her mom that I thought it was a bit above her readiness. She insisted, and I volunteered to act as a sounding board if she needed to talk about anything she read in the book.

She got her copy from the school library, and dived in, and a few days later, told me "I don't see what all the fuss was about."

Upon my inquiries ("Seriously? You weren't bothered by the flying leechwasps?" "What flying leechwasps?") I got to witness a truly epic tantrum, as it turned out that the school library had a heavily sanitized, heavily abridged edition that was deemed "safe" for the kids.

After a fairly extended bout of screaming at the school librarian, Katie procured an unabridged, complete edition of the book.

Three days later, she gave up and told us she thought she would never sleep again.

Never even made it to the leechwasps.

So.

As kids, the Losers' Club face the indifference - and baffling lack of involvement - of adults; powerlessness; other kids, who can be manipulated not only by their environment but by the creature as well, and the built-in trials of growing up.

As adults, returning to Derry years later, they face middle age; the knowledge that they tried and failed to kill this thing once before; the fear of the consequences of returning, which as kids they never had to face; they face greater doubt, no less fear, and a firm awareness that this is their last chance, because in 27 more years they will simply be victims.

It is a magnificently, brilliantly constructed, hallucinatory meditation on the nature of fear itself, on friendship, loyalty, sacrifice, and the meaning of courage, and it's one of the greatest novels ever written.

When the miniseries was made, it was constrained tremendously by network TV. If it had been released as a movie, it would mayyyyybe have managed a PG rating.

"They left out a lot," to put it mildly. Being on TV meant that virtually all of the really scary bits, and a huge majority of the story, were simply abandoned as unsuitable for family audiences.

The novel's enormously controversial sex scene - in which the Losers' Club's one girl, Beverly Marsh, "bonds" the club together by having sex with each male member, in sequence, in a sewer tunnel, just before they confront the creature in its lair, at age 12 - was removed entirely for obvious reasons. (And likely will be in the remake, as well.)

The majority of the monster's appearances were also removed.

As a result, the miniseries is left with one face, for the "ultimate faceless monster that can be anything" - Pennywise.

It's no wonder the fans of the miniseries think Pennywise is super-de-duper important.

But in the book, Pennywise is a minor part; primarily, the creature uses Pennywise as a way of appearing to the kids when it isn't going to directly attack them.

I understand that you can't really represent IT - a being composed of several glowing orbs of sickly orange light that drive people instantly insane to see them - in its "natural" form, and that Pennywise is a recognizable face to put on the villain.

But this is a creature of immense power; a villain of subtlety, terror, and mystery; a creature that is thousands if not millions of years old and comes from a place outside our universe.

The most important thing about IT is not the actor playing the fucking clown.

A proper treatment, with more of the story intact, more of the monster itself intact, more of the scares intact, and a generally improved sense of fidelity to the original, could be amazing.

No offense, guys, but as much as I also think Tim Curry is awesome, I'm totally not going to miss him for this one.

Perspectives And Viewpoint (Possibly Part One, If I Can Organize This Mess Better Later)

This is likely to be a bit unorganized utterly chaotic and without any internal logic that will make sense to anyone, and will almost certainly make people angry.

So, having said that, fair warning: if you are incensed with anger upon reading this article, congratulations; you're perfectly normal. I expect no other response, because I know that viewpoint bias is a stone-cold sonofabitch to overcome. And this will likely be quite long.

That said, here goes.

It's really hard to walk in someone else's shoes, either literally or figuratively.

I mean, I have damn big feet. Trying on other people's shoes hurts.

I know, obvious, groan-worthy bad joke, but it will become relevant later, I promise.

See, something I think about a lot - a lot more than you might expect - is how to do that in a figurative sense.

For example, I have a fairly gruff set of features, and a similarly gruff voice. Despite that, I am basically a pretty laid-back guy, most of the time. This blog may not give that impression - in fact I am certain it gives the impression of endless, fulminating fury - but that's because I use this forum to vent, when something really bothers me; it's not what I'm like all the time. Shut up, Thomas, I am not.

Because of my face, and voice, most people, meeting me the first time, have a really difficult time parsing my sense of humor. They tend to react to me as though I am verbally assaulting them, especially when I open with stuff like "good morning," or "how are you today," or even a fist bump.

So, I have developed habits to compensate for that. Pretty routinely, when I meet someone new, I will tell a joke that relies on comical, stupendous exaggeration of some obviously minor thing, and then conspiratorially tell my hopefully new friend, "You can laugh. That's a joke. I know I look scary, but I came from the factory like this. They didn't give me an option package."

I'm pretty sure most of the people I meet have no idea how honest I'm being right there.

So, in the past I have written articles about a host of sensitive topics, and some with a fairly rough tone.

Rape.

Racism.

Gay marriage.

Abortion.

I'm not exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to tough conversations to have, ok?

But here's the thing. Regardless of my opinion, regardless of your opinion, one thing needs to be perfectly clear, in everything I write, everything I say:

I am not you.

Watching the way the discourse on practically everything has changed over the last ten years, as I have been blogging that long and goddamn does that make me feel old, I am keenly aware that we've forgotten that critical point.

I am not you.

You are not me.

We share commonalities; we're both people, fifty percent or so of us are the same gender, most of those people have the same orientation and gender identity I do within that subset, many of them are the same race I am, a lot of those people are from similar economic circumstances, some of those people are even from the same town, and share similar early family life.

You know what?

With all that in common, they're still not me, and I'm not them.

Some of those people from my same town, who grew up in a split, sometimes abusive home in greater poverty than they knew, who are the same race, gender, and orientation I am, also like the same music I do, eat the same kinds of food I enjoy, and like the same movies I do.

You know what?

They're still not me, and I'm not them.

And generalizing experience is a fool's game.

It seems these days, every issue has to come with an endless, heckling circlejerk about the "correct" viewpoint.

So, I'm here to break that myth.

There isn't one.

The "correct" viewpoint, does not exist. If you think it does, you are simply wrong.

There are, for example, perfectly valid arguments on either side of virtually any point of politics, social life, religious belief, or literally any other human experience you can have.

What viewpoint any individual expresses, and supports, depends almost entirely on that person's individual human experience.

I tend to disagree with some kinds of ideas fairly violently. I do so because my experiences, and my understanding of those experiences, leads me to seeing those things in a negative way.

I'm not you; you may not see those things in that way.

Ronald Reagan once said, in a speech, "facts are stupid things."

He was right, because facts don't contain a moral component. They don't make decisions; they simply exist. Something either is a fact, or it is not. No amount of argument turns an opinion into a fact, and no amount of argument turns a fact into an opinion.

You can, for example, say that something is categorically wrong when it comes to the legitimacy of the facts.

Anthropogenic Global Warming is a case of this; and frankly as long as the world takes its climate data from the NOAA, there's going to be significant argument about whether or not the facts support the idea, or don't.

You can argue facts.

What you cannot do is argue viewpoint.

I see a lot of that, and it's stupid, and needs to stop.

For example, you have white people, who have not grown up black (obviously,) saying "all lives matter!" in support of protests against police brutality.

And black people, who have not grown up white, telling those white people to shut up because they don't understand the struggle.

Fair enough. I'm not black, and I'm 100% sure that I never will be, either. It's not like I was suddenly dipped in bleach on my 18th birthday and magically thereby made immune to jackbooted thugs.

But you know what? I'm also 100% sure those black people telling white people to shut up are also not white. They have totally different life experiences, and you don't get to, in the same conversation, say "you don't know my life experiences so shut the fuck up," while blithely ignoring the fact that you also don't know theirs.

That particular example is funny to me, because the anger over "#alllivesmatter" is so badly misplaced.

Do you seriously not get the irony of your own anger, here?

Let me break it down, black people.

You go on about how white people are immune to police brutality, and unaware of your life experiences, all the time. It's literally impossible to be on Facebook or Reddit these days without seeing something about how white folks just don't get it.

So, these people, who have lived in this magical immunity bubble their entire lives, not sharing your experiences and not suffering the same circumstances, are aware there's a problem, and have stepped outside of their life experiences enough to agree with you that something is deeply wrong and needs to be fixed, and your response is to tell them to shut up because they're not angry enough?

Not focused enough on you?

Guess what? They're not. Because - just like you said - they don't have your life experiences. They have different ones, instead, but they've managed to step outside that just enough, and just long enough, to at least try to identify with you.

Don't tell them to shut up. If you want to educate, educate. But don't tell them to shut up. When you do that, you confirm the exact type of negative stereotypes you're telling them they have in the first place.

When you've fallen, and you're lying in the mud, and someone offers you a hand up, you don't bat their hand aside indignantly because they don't also want to hear your entire life story after you're on your feet.

You gratefully accept the help, and maybe you can engage them in dialogue.

Maybe get a new friend. That'd be awesome.

This happens a lot with gender identity, too.

"Shut up, cis-people! You're just a shitlord!"

Way to educate a huge swath of society that doesn't really understand your experiences because they fucking can't.

Transgendered people have an opportunity to take life experience from the other side that is literally unparalleled in human terms.

It's not TRUE transformation - until genetic engineering and genetic surgery gets a bit better, anyway - but at least you can try out the other team's hormone loads.

Try this out, womenfolks.

Think of how many times you have said, of a male you know, that he cannot understand you because he doesn't have your plumbing.

Do you honestly think that doesn't apply in the other direction?

I assure you it does.

I see, a lot, women complaining about being "overly sexualized" by men while wearing perfectly innocent clothing that reveals most of their bodies.

I hate to break it to you, but to most men, the act of looking past your sexuality when you are dressed in revealing clothes is either a constant effort, or flatly impossible. It has nothing to do with your clothing, and everything to do with our hormones; but that doesn't actually change the fact that no matter how offended you are that someone stares you in the cleavage, your cleavage is a fucking eye magnet that is practically impossible to resist - and the act of resisting that magnetism is such an effort for most guys that if they put in the effort to manage it, it actively detracts from their enjoyment of their time with you.

You are thinking that I am just a complete idiot, right now.

Surely it's not like that!

We're not just great swarthy beasts, unable to control ourselves!

This is true, we're not. But this is why rape is a crime that draws some very different responses from people. Rapists make men furious in very different ways, and for very different reasons, than they do women.

See, for a woman, or at least most women, this is a tremendous trauma. Your autonomy has been violated; your sense of safety in your person has been violated; your body has been possibly injured, and in a lot more cases than people admit to has betrayed you by responding sexually to the act of rape, which can double down on the emotional trauma and damage; you could be facing an std, or an unwanted pregnancy; you could - most likely will - suffer tremendous difficulty with intimacy with your partner going forward, not to mention nightmares, panic attacks, and years of therapy.

Compounded by which, you have - and I am using this term advisedly, as you will soon see - people who are not you - offering advice, unwanted "comfort," and intentional or unintentional offense in a myriad of ways as they try to comfort you.

Not fun.

Of course, to be fair to them, a lot of those people are trying to reach across that divide in experience, trying to offer you support in any way they can find that they think you will take positively.

They may be absolutely wrong in their assessment of your needs. But they're trying to support you.

"Fuck off!"

For most men, there are three primary traumas associated with rape.

You have the obvious health risks; you have the obvious potential monetary risks - because courts will quite happily award child support to a woman who got pregnant by raping a man - your autonomy has been violated, as a result of the actions of someone you and other men perceive as weaker than you. This does catastrophic, horrifying damage to your internal concept of autonomy and self, and literally every interaction you have from then on with other males who have not had a similar experience is tainted; on their end if they know about the event, or on yours, if they don't, by shame.

How could you have been raped?

What, did that 100-pound girl overwhelm you?

How did you get it up, if you didn't want it?

See, if these things happen to a woman, the assumption is that she was unable to protect herself.

You're welcome to think that every person on earth who thinks that is a condescending douchenozzle.

But that's the assumption, nevertheless.

And you know what? Guys, who have an organ that quite visibly responds to such stimuli as a passing pretty girl, a vague daydream while distracted, a stiff breeze, being in a pool, being out of a pool, standing up, sitting down, or seeing new eye shadow on your wife, will assume that you couldn't have had a physiological response that you could not control.

So, when these things happen to a guy, other guys, who have that same organ, will sympathize with that aspect alone, and totally bowl you over with how utter their contempt is for the idea of you having been overpowered by a mere girl.

And girls, who have an organ that responds with much less visibility but no less demand to such stimuli as "two hot guys in a movie kissing," that cologne some rando on the sidewalk is wearing, or someone firmly gripping your upper arms (or, as Lovely Wife just said a second ago while looking at houses, "that kitchen almost gave me an orgasm,") will assume that you have perfect control over that organ of yours at all times and therefore you must have wanted it.

Because none of us, not one, can step outside our experiences to see what, in that, we share with others.

And we mostly don't try.

And we mostly don't think about it.

How fucked is that?

Stepping outside your experiences is hard.

Think about what people call "the cycle of abuse," because the label makes it easy to reduce. Someone gets beaten as a kid. They grow up, they have kids...

...And most of the time, they beat their kids.

Does anyone here honestly believe that those people, when they found out they were going to have a child, said to themselves "I can't wait to whip my kid's ass until they go to the hospital!"?

Of course they didn't. But that's the example of parental discipline they had, and it takes years of therapy to overcome it.

Years of effort, to change that response.

Viewpoint is a hard goddamn thing to break.

I have big feet. If you have more normal feet, you don't know my struggle. I have to go to a very limited number of stores, and buy custom-fitted shoes, for my giant-assed feet. Normal shoe stores always, always, always try to suggest smaller sizes, because after 40 fucking years I have no idea what size my feet are, and must be making it up. It's so outside their experience, as people who don't have similarly-sized pontoons on the ends of their legs, that they not only don't understand but can't believe it's real.

I have a hard time imagining what life would be like without feet this big.

And that's something minor.

Something simple.

Something, relatively speaking, that's easy to look past.

None of us is exactly alike.

We're not supposed to be.

We're not capable of being exactly alike.

We shouldn't want to be.

What we should do, and mostly don't, is two things.

We should, always, try to step outside the cage of our experience and see things as much as we can from the viewpoints of others.

And we should, always, try to accept people's efforts in that regard no matter how successful they are. 

Or aren't.

Thank You, Anonymous Tumblrina! (College Tuition)

So, as is usual for the cause-heads of Tumblr, there's a post going around cheering for some Tweet from some jackoff who thinks Republicans oppose Obama's "free community college" giant cartload of horseshit empty symbolic gesture because, you know, they hate the poor.

After all, those rich folks, they're not paying their fair share.

I mean, they're paying 92.5% of all the taxes paid in this country, but fuck, why settle for 92.5% when they could just pay for everything and you can just have a free ride everywhere, right?

But at any rate, Free community college!

Yaaaaay!

After all, poor people should get to go to poor people college, right? But why should they get to go to real schools?

I'm pretty sure, at some point here, people will begin to take offense and defend the honor of their awesome community college.

And that's fine and good, but if you have any shreds of honesty you know good and goddamn well that if your community college is so awesome, it's a huge, glaring exception.

So, here's the thing that makes me burst into flames when I read something as goddamn ignorant as that Tumblr post, which Lovely Wife conveniently saved for me. (Fair warning: Lovely Wife is a fanfic writer. Learn to cope.) 

That is, we already pay for college. You, me, the pimply teenager at Burger King, all of us, pay taxes, and a goodly portion of that to the states we live in, whether as income tax or sales taxes. And guess what's publicly funded? State colleges.

So, University of Minnesota? University of Pennsylvania? Texas A&M, University of Texas, FSU... All of those are great schools, and they're also ALREADY TAX FUNDED.

It's not like there's a giant rich people conspiracy. There's a giant government which wants you firmly under their thumb. That's not - quite - the same thing, although boy are the government wonks trying to turn it into the same thing.

As a side note, that thing would be called a "hereditary aristocracy," and was a big part of what the Revolutionary War was all about, but who studies history? History is for squares, and, like, conservatives.

So.

The current apparatus is miserable. The public universities take taxpayer funds, and then charge astronomical tuitions, which the government will happily give the student funds for, provided the student is willing to enter perpetual debt peonage; the student then finds out that they also have to pay astronomical prices for textbooks "because publishing textbooks is really expensive" as opposed to, you know, how-to books on computer programming which are a dime a dozen in any bookstore and teach at least as much as a college course on computer programming.

At least that trend is starting to reverse itself with regard to the books; more and more schools are putting the textbooks up as a free download for the students, which is a step in the right direction.

But the question needs to be asked:

What,

Directly,

The FUCK,

Are Student Loans,

Even About?

I mean, I'd love to know.

Remember that these are schools funded by tax dollars. I'm not talking about private schools; private schools can charge astronomical tuitions if they really want to, and if your family can afford it, or you are willing to take on that kind of debt, awesome for you.

But public universities have no such justification.

There is no good reason - none whatsoever - that public, and publicly funded, universities should not be free to attend for residents, full stop.

Obama is making an empty symbolic gesture, by saying that he wants the worst schools in the country to be available for free. Yes! Give me the worst education I could have, for free, instead of the education I have been paying for all of my adult life through tax dollars and therefore should already receive for free, and I will cheer for you, because...

...Well...

"OMG FREE SHIT YAY!"

And then when someone points out that maybe instead of lustily tackling the shitty free thing, you should be going after the much better thing that you already also deserve for free...

...Well...

"WHY DON'T YOU LIKE FREE SHIT, YOU MUST HATE THE POOR!

...

SHITLORD!"

...Only because I find "shitlord" to be a hilarious insult and one so devoid of meaning or importance that the only reason I don't shoehorn it into conversation at work is because I'd get fired.

I guess what I'm getting at, O nameless Tumblrina, is that you're misdirecting your angst and concern for the poor against Republicans, when you should be aiming it at Obama, for trying to sell you a deliberately chosen shitty thing, instead of what you actually already earned.

But thanks for spurring me to write this.

Lovely Wife interjected, to warn me to add that we're not rich, because "they will accuse you of being rich."

"I don't give a fuck what some random Tumblrina thinks. If they don't read this blog, or yours, enough to know we're not rich, then they have no right to expect us to care about their opinions."

But since she mentioned that...

Hey, Nameless Tumblrina, you're gonna get another whole post tomorrow, just for you. I doubt Lovely Wife will link it, but just in case, I'll make sure I title it appropriately.

Using Game Of Thrones To Make A Point (SPOILER WARNING / S05E02) (Societal Trust)

First, I will begin here by briefly discussing the recent episode of Game of Thrones without spoilers, so that the preview on Facebook doesn't spoil anything. Further, I am going to discuss the events of the episode (I hope,) without spoiling anything later on. I will try to remain within the context of the episode as much as I can.

Since I watch GoT two days after everybody else, but I've read the books, I have a strange dichotomy when it comes to new episodes. My friends will all come talk to me about it, wanting to know if I've seen it yet, and of course the answer's no, but at the same time I know most of the events that will have happened.

Fun.

So, this most recent episode, "The House Of Black And White," featured pivotal moments in the lives of five characters, although their effects in a couple of cases are a long way off.

Have we gone far enough beyond the preview now?

I wonder.

Without anything that isn't given away in last week's preview, Arya Stark's pivotal event is the most obvious; she finally arrives in Braavos, and thus at the eponymous House, which you may have guessed to be an assassin school. It's more than that, but we'll leave that for later.

The characters whose pivotal moments were the most immediately apparent were Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen; he becoming Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, and she making a political mistake so vast that it warrants this entire post.

So.

The build-up for the mistake is that one of her loyalists, Mossador, murders a prisoner awaiting trial; the prisoner was a Son of the Harpy, and a pawn of the former slavemasters of Mereen. Having chosen to give the prisoner a trial, however, Daenerys knows that the rule of law cannot be subverted by simple emotion if true justice and freedom is to prevail in her domain, and accordingly, she brings Mossador before the people, denounces him, and has him executed in accordance with the law.

The mistake she makes in doing this, of course, is that she doesn't make the case for law to her audience; the former slavemasters don't care, and the former slaves see only that she has killed one of their own. In an instant, she goes from beloved leader, to threatening despot.

It's an awful moment, and one I'd been waiting for, because I wanted to see how it would play out on TV.

But watching it, I felt that not everyone would take the message that I took from it. Accordingly, I felt the need to explain.

A while back, I wrote an article entitled Tribalism, in which I discussed the idea of trust in a society, and the ways tyrants control their populations by splintering them into smaller, more easily controlled groups.

What I didn't do, there, was include the value of the rule of law itself in that discussion.

So.

As I said, the true error Daenerys Targaryen made was that she didn't make her case to the public. 

Her audience consisted of her loyalists, most of whom remain so dependent on her continued success, as with any ruler; the freed slaves, who see her as a symbol of their freedom, but also as a symbol of their fight against the oppressors who had ruled them before; and the former rulers, who see her not as a new ruler, but as an obstruction.

She has a strong, fine sense of justice. But very little in the way of political instinct.

What really happened there was an opportunity to demonstrate herself as a just ruler for all; not merely a figurehead, not merely a liberator, not merely a usurper, but a valid, worthy leader in her own right. And she failed because she didn't want to make a speech, or didn't think she had to.

In any society, the rule of law must be universal or it has no value.

In other words, for the law to have meaning to anyone, it must apply to everyone.

In the United States, we're seeing a gradual dissolution of that idea, as the very rich, the famous, and the politically connected move farther and farther away from law, and accountability, while the law is most stringently enforced against those who have no means of recourse.

Nobody is liking the consequences of that, regardless of whether or not they connect the dots between that dissolution and the results.

Riots against the police. Police shooting innocent people. Police killing suspects regardless; their job is to detain and arrest, so that the courts can do their job. It is not assassination.

And whether you believe the cops are 100% innocent and pure as the driven snow, or 100% literal Satan and Hitler love babies, or like me, think they're likely humans and therefore subject to having both good and bad amongst their number, you have to acknowledge that the popular opinion of the police in this country is rapidly turning more and more negative.

What do you imagine happens to the rule of law when the trust of the average citizen in the apparatus built to sustain that rule fails?

First, the citizens stop believing.

Then they stop participating.

Then, the rule of law itself fails.

Then the society fails.

No force can bring down a society more quickly or thoroughly than a lapse in the trust of its citizens for the legitimacy of its government and laws.

It does not, and cannot, matter to the law who broke it; only the transgression, and mitigating factors.

It does not, and cannot, matter to the law how connected or wealthy the transgressor is; only that the crime was committed.

And it cannot matter to a ruler, either.

In the case of Daenerys Targaryen, Mossador's actions had to bring death.

But they should not have occasioned the collapse of societal trust we witnessed in that episode.

She should have given Mossador a trial.

She should have said something.

I'll say it for her, since she didn't.

"I am your queen. You call me Mhysa, your mother. But even mothers have the duty of justice.

For Mereen to stand, to be a place for freedom, justice must prevail. The law must prevail.

A prisoner was taken; a murderer. 

But a citizen of Mereen.

If I am your Mhysa, he was my child as you are.

All my children deserve no less than a fair trial, no matter what they have done; this law applies to all, and it must apply to all, or none are safe.

Mossador took it upon himself to steal that right from my prisoner. He killed him, and in so doing, denied that prisoner my protection under the law.

But the law applies to him no less than to my prisoner, or any of you, or me.

Murder brings death.

That is the law.

Mossador is my friend. He is one of you. He has been a trusted ally and an advisor.

But for all of that, and no matter how it wounds my heart to do this, none of those things can be permitted to place him above the law.

The law must have meaning for all of us, must protect all of us, or it protects none of us.

Mossador committed murder of a prisoner in captivity.

For that, his sentence is death.

Forgive my tears, my children. I am strong enough to keep the law, but I bleed today with all of you."

I suspect that if Daenerys had said that, or something similar, things would not have gone the way they did.

Because she would have been showing the public - her enemies, her allies, and the unconvinced - that she stood for the law even when it hurt her to do so.

In doing so, she would be showing them a leader, a ruler, to follow.

Our government, in the real world, is failing on that charge.

It is failing faster than most of us suspect.

I hope that trend reverses itself, as past a certain point, the fall becomes inevitable.

I don't want to walk past and see your faces on the other side of the wire.

So, Lovely Wife Asked A Question... (Taxation)

From time to time, since we share most but not all of our views, Lovely Wife will ask me to explain why I see things the way I do.

She asked me last night why I despise so many forms of taxation, and what I support instead.

So, here goes. Please note that this is about taxation, and not intended to be an exploration of overreach of government.

First, there are currently three primary forms of taxation, and three secondary forms of taxation, used by the government of the United States to fund its operations.

Those are, individual and corporate income taxes, property taxes, fees for specific functions, fees for regulatory compliance certifications, and sales taxes, respectively.

While I primarily want to talk about the federal level, since the differences at a state level are notable, I will annotate those as I go.

First, there is a base premise that gets misunderstood a lot, or is something of which most citizens are simply ignorant, which is that in order for a tax to be justifiable, regardless of any other factor, all entities paying the tax must derive benefit from its use. This is important when it comes to state and local taxes specifically, because the argument can be made that all federal taxes benefit all citizens, thanks to the use of a general fund for all expenditures.

I personally find that argument a bit disingenuous, since the federal government routinely gives out money from that general fund in favor of things that don't benefit anywhere near everyone, but the argument itself isn't totally unsound, if the government actually operated as it was intended to.

With states and localities, however, this premise becomes more crucially important. An example of a justifiable secondary tax would be charging a fee for a dog license, which is then used to provide veterinary care for local dogs. Everyone who pays it benefits from it; nobody is required to participate. Note here that I am not suggesting such a program; merely using it as a hypothetical example.

But forging ahead, there are some major problems with each of the primary methods of taxation used in the United States. And the arguments used to justify those taxes are annoyingly, frustratingly persistent, despite being entirely specious and without merit.

Primary among those being the so-called "social contract" theory, which states that since all the things you have are things that exist in part due to the society, the fact that you live in the society means you enter your life in debt to that society for permitting you to exist.

This argument falls apart on the grounds of volition; in order for a debt to be valid, there must be a means of avoiding incurring that debt, and there must be a way to pay it off. Neither of those exists in our current system. You cannot leave the country and simply emigrate elsewhere without great difficulty and expense, which is simply beyond the means of most citizens; without means of escape, or the ability to reject the contract, the contract itself is inherently null and void. Coercion cannot carry moral authority.

As it stands, as well, there is no means by which a citizen may give such great service to the country that they are deemed to have paid their debt to society; nobody is entirely exempt from taxation, and there is no means in place to permit citizens to become so. A sane means of doing this would be to trade a period of service - military or civil, but with a risk-based premium for hazardous duty - for tax-exempt status; no such system exists in our society.

The social contract theory is invalid in its entirety, simply because it is the age-old argument of original sin revamped; because you are born, it says, you owe a debt from the moment you draw breath, through no fault of you own; that debt can never be retired, can never be relieved, except for the benevolent if condescending gesture of a higher power, and for most citizens, there is no means of escape from it.

...In other words, involuntary, uncompensated labor...

So.

Property taxes and income taxes suffer from the same flaw, and corporate income taxes do as well, but at one level removed. That being, all three primary methods of taxation assume total ownership by the government of all assets, real or intellectual, in the United States.

This directly contradicts the base premise upon which our government is founded; your right to your life. Without the right to own property - and by "own," I mean "can dispose of or use in any way which doesn't directly harm others or infringe on their rights without interference," - you cannot sustain your life. Without the right to own property, the right to life is meaningless.

So. Income taxes, whether individual or corporate, and property taxes, all assume that property, and money, belong to the government first; you have "earned," on payday, only the right to keep what the government permits you to keep.

...Otherwise known as involuntary, uncompensated labor...

Corporate taxes are a bit trickier to explain for most people, but I will cut through the morass.

Corporations do not pay taxes. Their customers and shareholders do. All of those people - those individuals - are the ones paying any tax levied on corporations; those taxes are only "corporate" in name. In actual effect they come directly out of your wallet, as a consumer, in the form of increased prices - effectively a second, sneakier income tax on you.

This, incidentally, is also the reason I hate it so much when people crow about one candidate running a budget surplus, and lambast another for running a deficit. In a free society, where you have the right to own property, a budget surplus cannot be morally justified; if the government has more money than they need, it is their bound duty to return it to the citizens from whom they took it. You will note that this, in fact, does not happen; instead, each year the budget grows, until it consumes any surplus. I'd far rather have a government run at a slight deficit (although the current deficit unquestionably does not qualify under any definition of the word "slight,") than one in which the government steals too much of my money and then finds things to spend it on.

Now, regulatory fees are a whole different ballgame. It is actually fair for the government to require a fee for an inspector to verify that regulations have been followed; however, most of those regulations are absurdly specific for the simple reason that it allows for higher fees, and for no other meaningful reason. This is actually a means for a smaller body of government to fund itself, provided that the fees are not unreasonable and the regulations not unnecessary. (Delving further into this, however, calls for an entirely separate blog post.)

Fees for specific functions are risky. A good example is driver licensing; at heart, it is a simple regulatory compliance inspection. Can you drive well enough to be permitted to join other drivers, or are you a huge danger to all and sundry? However, the immense machinery that has grown up around it has turned renewing your license into a much more expensive proposition than it should be, which makes it unduly expensive for many citizens.

As well, the ever-growing insistence on using it as a means of primary identification makes the growing price of that identification a risk of disfranchisement; a voter cannot be prevented from coming to the polls by means of a mandatory fee, or the entire idea of representative democracy is false. (This is the flaw in most voter ID plans; they propose a series of good ideas, and then want to charge a prohibitively high fee. The only way it's justifiable is if it's available to everyone eligible to vote.)

And then we get to sales taxes.

Sales taxes are entirely justifiable, and come in two forms: the classic "sales" tax, or the European-style "Value-added Tax," or VAT.

You may be a bit on your heels after seeing my flat statement that these taxes are justifiable. So I will add one more comment, and then explain both.

Sales taxes are justifiable but stupid.

One of the primary functions of any duly constituted and morally legitimate government is that it protects its citizens against - what's that phrase - "all enemies, both foreign and domestic."

That seems oddly familiar, somehow.

*Ahem*

So, the government, by performing its primary task, has provided a venue for commerce that could otherwise not exist. As a free citizen, you are protected both from foreign invaders, and from robbers, con artists, fraudsters, and other such predators. (Granted, the government's performance in that regard has not been all that stellar. But it hasn't crossed the line into illegitimacy on that front yet.)

Accordingly, you are able to engage in trade. Sales and VAT taxes are, effectively, paying the government directly for having provided that protection; as such they are justifiable.

Sales taxes and VAT taxes, however, differ widely in the burden they place on the economy.

A sales tax, applied fairly, adds a certain percentage to the price of every transaction full stop.

As a product moves through its development stages to the market, this application happens repeatedly, and causes the total cost of that product to balloon beyond measure, until it simply becomes unaffordable.

This is one of the primary drawbacks of the so-called "FairTax Initiative," which purports to be a flat, fair, across the board tax, until the authors of the plan figure out that the way they designed it absolutely destroys any hope the poor have of ever escaping poverty, and probably of staying alive; at that point they devolve into ever-stranger methods to contort their tax plan around so that it doesn't do exactly what it's designed to do, ultimately finishing in a form that is ruthlessly unfair, lays a gargantuan burden on the rich while allowing the poor to evade it entirely, and demolishes the economy through massive cost inflation (or, in an alternate version, doesn't, but also doesn't provide enough revenue for the government to stay even marginally solvent.)

VAT taxes, however, add a fixed percentage to the full cost on the first transaction, but on subsequent transactions only tax the difference in value. In other words, selling copper ore to the smelter gets taxed; selling the ingots of copper to the wire factory taxes only the increase in value; selling wire to the ISP taxes only the increase in value. Accordingly, its impact on price inflation is much less dramatic than a sales tax, and it can be applied easily across the board without being unfair to anyone.

In fact, a VAT tax is inherently, voluntarily progressive. Luxury goods go through far more stages of improvement than do common ones; accordingly, they are far more heavily taxed, and yet...

...

...And yet, nobody is required to buy a sports car. 

Fresh produce, for example, goes through hardly any taxable stages between the farmer and the supermarket; food ingredients in general are much less developed and refined than more recreational property. A VAT tax would greatly impact the poor, by making fresh produce and less-refined, more healthy foods actually less expensive, just through the process of development and refinement, than today's endlessly processed junk foods.

And on any product, the more steps taken to improve it, the higher the tax burden becomes, while remaining entirely voluntary. Nobody is required to spend the extra money; nobody is statutorily required to undertake a higher share of the tax burden, and yet...

...

...And yet, because rich people have the ability to do so, they will tend to buy luxury goods anyway; thus voluntarily assuming a higher share of the tax burden of the nation, which both satisfies the angry poor (or it would if they thought their way through it, anyway,) and lends the tax the force of moral authority.

Another plan that has been offered, and is quite popular, is a flat tax. This type of thing is typically accompanied with a great outcry about fairness; "everybody pays the same!"

Riiiiight. Except for the fact that poor people use a far higher percentage of their income on subsistence than rich people do, which means that a flat tax has a needlessly, disproportionately high effect on poor people. Rich people love the idea of flat taxes, by the way; it means they can shrug and say "I paid the same as you, what's the problem?" and then fly away in their private jet, secure in their moral justification, while their poorer neighbors still struggle to put food on the table.

I do not support income, property, flat, or sales taxes as a means of financially supporting a government.

I do, however, support a system of primary VAT taxation supplemented with regulatory compliance certification fees limited by some sort of separate blog post about how to set that up, and direct fees for optional  services.

I do not believe in involuntary, uncompensated labor, guys.

And you may have noted my use of that specific phrase.

That's because it is the definition of slavery. And that's what most taxes are: a means of reducing your population into slavery.

Calling someone "slave" in the bedroom is hot.

Calling someone slave when you mean it is as far from hot as you can get and still be in our galaxy.

Instead of trying to justify systems of taxation that have been used for hundreds if not thousands of years as a means of controlling the population, let's think about the concept of a tax permitting voluntary association and commerce to fund the government.

Imagine a social contract in which the government provides you a safe place to exist, and in exchange, you are asked to participate only so far as you want to.

I would sign that.