Murtha in Iraq.
COLONEL: You write “Born to Kill” on your helmet and you wear a peace button. What’s that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?!
JOKER: No, sir.
COLONEL: You’d better get your head and your *ss wired together, or I will take a giant sh*t on you!
JOKER: Yes, sir.
COLONEL: Now answer my question or you’ll be standing tall before the man.
JOKER: I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.
COLONEL: The what?
JOKER: The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir.
COLONEL: Whose side are you on, son?
JOKER: Our side, sir.
COLONEL: Don’t you love your country?
JOKER: Yes, sir.
COLONEL: Then how about getting with the program? Why don’t you jump on the team and come on in for the big win?
JOKER: Yes, sir!
I know in the original, Kubrick was trying to make this [not so] fine point about how the super-intellectual Private Joker could see nuances that the Colonel couldn’t, but I always sympathized with the Colonel in that scene. Of the two men, I always admired the Colonel, who was trying to do the right thing, over the oh-so-conflicted Private Joker.
While I don’t expect Murtha to change his tune—which is the sweet, siren song of surrender— I hope he has a few run-ins as unpleasant as Private Joker’s. Maybe even he can learn something.
But I’m betting he’ll have even fewer mess hall lunch dates than John Kerry did.
Anyone know if John “Okinawa” Murtha has visited any troops while he’s in Iraq with Nancy “Big Tuna” Pelosi?
You left out the best line, Col.
Why leave out such a timely punchline?
Am I the only one that finds it funny & a little disturbing that Alf can follow movie quotes well, but no recorded history not all?
You mean the whole
part?
Because I felt that the gratuitous racism of the line didn’t benefit the discussion. It was Kubrick’s way of telling the viewer who was right in the scene (Clearly, Private Joker, who expressed no such racist sympathies in text). And frankly, that line just never rang true to me.
History is less kind to Kubrick’s anti-war interpretation. Had his (gratuitously racist) Colonel been allowed to win the war, or at least to keep fighting, a lot of lives would have been saved. IMHO.
I’ve been in the Army long enough to see that the case now is the complete opposite. The enlisted guys are kind middle-of-America NASCAR fans with some college and the Senior Officers are weirdo Rhodes Scholar Peace and Nuance guys. In the modern army it would read like this:
There. That’s the Army I know.
Gray,
Standing before the woman. Now that made me laugh. Well put.
And, in your version, we end up sympathizing with Joker. As we should.
I’m not a-scared of the Racial Police:
Have I said lately that you, alphie, are a total dumbass who spends waaaaay do much time watching movies? It’s affected your view of reality and caused you to engage in magical thinking.
Can’t let a Jungian reference just pass by. A lack of understanding of the “duality of man,” particularly Bush’s inability to think in those terms is exactly what got us into this mess. Good and evil, no in between – “The Commander-in-Chief must not waver.” This kind of absolute thinking might actually be helpful for a guy in Joker’s position and maybe even a Colonel could get by with it, but certainly not the guys making the major decisions.
Colossus,
WOW!
That picture is the cat’s ass! Is that for real, or did it visit Photo Shop before it was posted? In a really perverse way, I love John Murtha.
He is just so outre…
TW: piece85
Jeff, did you do this on purpose? He is a piece of work, and if he’s not 85, he should be…
The duality of man? Glad you keep up with this malarky. Let me guess. This crap colors your “worldview”? The word “enough” seems to be lacking in your vocabulary. Have you ever heard that your vocabulary defines your life?
I hope you are posting from France, double-X.
Wait. We were supposed to sympathize with Joker?
Oh, that explains a lot.
Lost Dog,
“The duality of man” referred to the post. It was a quote of Joker. As to my worldview, posting right from California, I would say that it has more to do with my view of the human mind. Carl Jung was a psychiatrist who had some interesting ideas about good and evil in men as well as a lot of other ideas about the human mind. Having a good understanding of the mind, or at least a willingness to explore it is an important part of human development, in my opinion. Bush does not seem to have the least bit of interest in introspection of any kind.
Understanding the “duality of man” at the expense of self-preservation is that liberal nihilism I talked about before that you didn’t understand.
Can I see the other guy’s point if his point is that I should stop living because I don’t share his weltanschaaung?
PS My god! My god! You’re an absolute imbecile!
Yep. So what happened to you along the way?
I’m not sure America has ever had “feckless hippy navel-gazer” stated in the job position of “president”.
Now you’re just winding us up. Nobody can be that hippy-dippy loopy left. Besides, why can’t you just be tolerant of Bush?
I think you have an image of a one-dimensional robot who just walks around saying that he hates you and wants you to stop living, because of his “weltanschaaung.” Yes, that is the kind of thinking we get from the Bush Administration, but in reality, no such person or country actually exists. People and cultures are complex and their motivations evolve over a long period of time. This is probably more true of war than anything else. Are you familiar with “The Art of War”? That is kind of the point of the whole book. Instead of Sun Tzu, unfortunately, we get Rumsfeld.
I would offer up a few Republican presidents who I think had a very strong ability for introspection: Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln. I would hardly call any of them hippy navel-gazers.
I think you have an image of a one-dimensional robot who just walks around saying that he hates you and wants you to stop living, because of his “weltanschaaung.â€Â
Steve, have you ever heard about a gathering that took place at a locale called Wannsee sometime in the last century? Or, more recently, about certain decisions taken regarding the viability of members of society’s continued existence in a place called Cambodia?
Well, except for Republicans, apparently.
How much personal time have you spent with the President, by the way, to come up with such a diagnosis, Dr.?
B. Moe,
Isn’t it kind of hedging your bets to simultaneously argue that introspection is for hippies and not presidents and that I might be wrong about Bush’s lack of introspection? Are you suggesting that Bush is introspective?
Here’s a quote from Pelosi today, after meeting with al-Maliki:
This is why, when doing carpentry, you measure twice, then cut once. As opposed to the above quote, the essence of which can be best expressed by wuzzadem’s current predicament:
Although you do make a good point about my opinion of Bush being too black and white (as for Republicans in general see my post a few up).
When did I argue anything about hippies? I pointed out that while accusing Bush of not recognizing duality and assuming his enemies are one-dimensional, you are doing the same thing about him. I am having a hard time believing your claims to education giving your difficulties with reading comprehension.
B. Moe,
I was referring to posts by other people, sorry. So you think that introspection is good and Bush is introspective?
I do think a certain amount of introspection is good, as long as one doesn’t get paralyzed by it. As to President Bush, I think it would be presumptious to say based on what little bit I know of him personally. He is a very private man, he is said by many who know him to be very personable and engaging. I do not mistake his inarticulateness for a lack of intelligence as many do, for people who know him say he is well read and intelligent. Based on all this I would not assume he lacks introspection. Once again, on what do you base you opinion he lacks introspection and sophistication?
Dat Carl, he vas doped to ze gills most uff the time, nicht wahr? Alvays mit der “duality” schisse…
But I’m betting he’ll have even fewer mess hall lunch dates than John Kerry did.
Another perpetuated lie.
Or let me turn it around on you Collostemy, how many people lunch with you?
Such a silly thread, really. Just another rabbit.
Sometimes nuance doesn’t mean shit. As typical Kubrick revealed much more than he ever thought possible. When you want draw a contrast but need to put a cartoon next to your ant-hero you reveal alot about the weakness of your apparent ideal. Say what you will about the Colonel, but least he had priorities, and they included the Jokerman.
Sophistication without utility is just sophistry.
Hey, I’m just going by what they say and do. Why can’t you?
You can bet your life on that, but would you bet other people’s life on that?
True, but so what? Y’know, ‘complex’ and ‘evolve’ aren’t synonyms for ‘peaceful’ and ‘harmless’…
Are you familiar with “The Art of War� That is kind of the point of the whole book. Instead of Sun Tzu, unfortunately, we get Rumsfeld.<blockquote>
Very familiar. I’ve read it more than a few times and have done reports on it.
It is the military equivalent of Nostradamus’ Prophesies–It can be interpreted to mean, or not mean, anything the reader wants it to mean, or not mean. Like the Book of Revelations….
The Art of War when not contradictory or inscrutable (you know those chinese) is just trite.
See, you just made it mean that Rumsfeld did <i> something not all Sun-Tzuey….
But, it’s chinese, and thus not western so it has instant credence with you.
Michelle, even you can’t be naive enough to believe that treasonous, backstabbing bastard has any friends in the military.
Quotes like: “You’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.” Defining countries as part of an “Axis of Evil”, “The Commander in Chief must not waver”, etc. By the way, hasn’t Bush openly stated that he is not very introspective? I’ll try to find a quote. Anyway, This kind of black and white, all-or-nothing thinking generally implies a lack of introspection. It is a refusal to look at grey areas that usually begins with one’s own internal conflicts. This is what Jung referred to as the “shadow.”
Nevertheless, Clinton won.
Yeah, it was a good post, but I fucked it all up.
It’s Bush’s fault.
That’s a p-shop. Murtha on “Meet the Press” p-shopped onto Matthew Modine.
I was going to do another one with Pelosi as the R. Lee Ermey gunnery sergeant character, but it just didn’t work.
On the whole subject of Jung and “duality”, I don’t think Jung was about duality at all. He was about archetypes, and the unification of opposites, not limited to two, but rather including four distinct qualities of mind, spirit, emotion, and body.
So, while the Colonel may be a little simple-minded, he is not enough of a jackass to imagine himself the intellectual that Private Joker does. The joke is not ultimately on the Colonel, who imagines that inside every “g–k” there is an American trying to get out, but on Private Joker, who oversimplifies Jung into fitting his own cynical preconceptions.
Or, at least, that’s what I was trying to explain to my date in the movie theater in 1987, before she passed out on me.
Gray,
Of course, but that doesn’t mean you go after them without considering their side. Bush acts like a beginning chess player who moves his queen all over the board and keeps trying to put you in check. Players like that usually meet an obvious fate.
Do you think Jung would have urged that advice if someone came at him with a knife?
I’ve got a baseball bat here that says you’d scamper away or defend yourself before you got all introspective and shit.
Either you’ve got some kind of a congenital blindspot when it comes to the danger of radical Islam to your own profligate hedonistic hippy lifestyle or your are on their side.
It is bizarre to watch you twist yourself into philosophical knots to avoid admitting that Mussulmen are bent to convert or kill you and ‘globalization’ has brought them to your doorstep.
You can understand the grey areas and still be decisive, steve, most of us do are required to do it daily.
Indeed, we can all learn from Teh Left’s nuanced reading of the President.
BECAUSE OF THE INTROSPECTION !!!
It also implies decisiveness.
I see that next time someone attacks you with a 2 by 4, you’ll throw yourself at the arresting officer and adjure him to examine the gray areas for internal conflict as the perp drives away. How very noble of you.
Yeah, they get elected President of the United States, fucking losers.
People who spend too much time studying their inner-shadow apparently miss little details like that about the outside world, huh.
I’ll consider his side all you want after I’m done defending myself.
Stick with me here–maybe the only real difference between a Conservative and Soldier and a Left Coast Hippy is in deciding the order of events.
I wanna defend myself and my society and then consider their side while I’m still alive.
You wanna ‘consider their side’ while their hands are around your neck until you are dead.
And you lectured me about nihilism!?
But all you are really going to learn is that they wanted you dead.
Well, not everybody can spend their time dicking around being a hippy and playing chess, some people actually have things to do.
Colossus,
I would consider “opposites” and “duality” as basically synonymous terms in this context. (Good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, etc.). I agree that Joker is not making a good soldier. A soldier has to have the mindset that Bush has. A soldier needs to think in terms of kill or be killed. A guy like Joker probably doesn’t belong on the battlefield. A president, however, needs to have a better understanding of the big picture.
Gotta go,
I’m going to see the “Peking Acrobats”. You guys win again.
Folks,
I think you’re all reading way too much into this.
I really just wanted to get a laugh by putting Murtha in the “Born to Kill” helmet.
In other words, sometimes a p-shop is just a p-shop.
Let’s not project onto this more than there really is.
Said by the same guy on the same thread.
See, US soldiers have an inflexible mindset that only sees in black-or-white, kill-or-be-killed, with no introspection and not even the intellectual ability to play a good game of chess.
The terrorists, on the other hand, are ‘complex’, ‘evolved’, and able to see the ‘duality of man’.
This guy cannot be real. This has got to be some kind of Psych experiment to Explore Conservative Reaction to Confirmed Liberal Stereotypes.
Are you aware that most of the people handing you your ass on the Big Philosophical Questions on this site are/were soldiers?
When you get back, steve, answer a couple of questions for me:
Do you understand AlQaada and the Taliban?
Do you consider them evil?
Did you understand Saddam Hussein?
Did you consider him evil?
What grey areas regarding these guys do you think Bush was missing?
See, I’m not buying your horseshit for one minute, steve-xx. If someone did attack you with a 2 by 4 and the local policeman failed to act decisively–with moral clarity, as it were–you’d be the first in line to sue him for incompetence and dereliction of duty.
Admit it. You would. because you can see quite clearly the moral issues that attend to your own physical well-being and comfort. Unfortunately, you can’t extend that empathy to anyone else.
You’re confusing your own lack of moral clarity with subtlety of thought. The correspondence is a phoney one.
Sorry, Colos. Steve’s a douche. Have to rinse him off. Happy Friday.
Not even they can twist themselves into a philosophical knot like Stevemedinejad can….
Aw, give Stevie a break. He’s just an order-loving guy who doesn’t like it when things turn all messy and instictive, he prefers an orderly world. War is chaos let loose in the world (or hell, if you like Sherman’s view), there are no real rules, despite conventions, and it’s devil take the hindmost until the after-action report and the lawyers get involved. Nasty and brutal and, mercifully, usually short.
War, that is. Not the lawyers.
Well, ok – some of them, too.
Anyway, to continue:
It’s messy. It offends him. I understand that, being a sentient being capable of introspection and empathy, the inheritor of all the slow and painful time-binder learning of my species, built up over hundreds of thousands of years.
I am also an animal, a being of instinct and mindless drives. I will kill to protect myself (among other reasons), instinctively and without remorse. The ancestors who didn’t died, you see. I’m the product of a long line of bad-asses, eons long and not all human by a long shot.
Hence the “duality”.
But the world doesn’t share those qualities. It doesn’t care, cannot care about any of that. Those are mental artifacts, products of sentience. The world is not sentient, no matter what some whacked-out Gaia worshipper believes.
It’s a hunk of rock orbiting a big bright gasbag.
So, y’know – cool it.
Gray wrote:
You’d think the ex-pat would keep notes or something…
…and handing out candy to children.
Excuse me, I just thought stevexx could use a little white, to go with all that black he sees.
I’ve considered their side Steve. It requires buying a compass, a prayer mat and submission (or loss of head).
If you’re sympathetic to that end, you can start practicing five times a day right now and read Jung at night under the covers with a mini-maglite, that is, until you get caught with infidel material.
Folks,
I think you’re all reading way too much into this.
I really just wanted to get a laugh by putting Murtha in the “Born to Kill†helmet.
In other words, sometimes a p-shop is just a p-shop.
Let’s not project onto this more than there really is.
Certainly not, since Murtha could still rip your head off and still shit down your stateside-deferred neck, you silly poseur.
Then again, that might be your kind of thing…
Where did you get that quote from… Let me guess, Albert Gore & John Kerry’s campaign managers?
It’s late.
I couldn’t help it.
With his mind.
From Okinawa.
after he’s done splitting atoms, of course.
What interests me about a self confessed psychiatrist with a thing about Jung and duality, is that he chooses to define himself, by the name he adopts to post his ‘thoughts’, by what he may once have been but no longer is.
How dissatisfied with your progress in life do you have to be to define yourself as an “ex expat”? I suppose in his case, anything beats “Current American.”
Sad.
He should get together with Michelle, they could bring each other out.
I assume you mean to say Mothra could still rip your head off, etc., MyPetGloat?
Beyond that,
My Pet Gloat,
I thought Murtha was on the side of peace . . .
Must be that whole “duality of man” thing. Good Murtha/Bad Murtha.
Then why is it that American soldiers are currently protecting Iraqis and teaching them to protect themselves? Where’s the “Kill ‘em all, let God sort them out.” mentality? Where’s my wanton slaughter?
You say this cat Shaft is a baaad Murtha?
Still trying to figure out how Bush is supposed to grok bin Laden by gazing at his own navel.
True. But he needs his keeper to remove the Depend® undergarment first.
I think Steve that the point that you are missing is that people can consider the other guy’s side and still decide to “go after them”. Once you’ve decided, you act. Unless the situation materially changes, you don’t keep “considering”. That is a recipe for inaction or half-measures that solve nothing – ie the typical lefty problem.
In my case, the more I learn about their side, meaning the Islamists, the more willing I am to go after them.
I think you assume that, because after consideration, you came to different conclusions than the President and most Republicans that they couldn’t have considered it at all. That is where you are wrong.
You have got to be shitting me, Pyle!! That’s *pogue* colonel, you grabasstic piece of amphibian whale shit!
tw: near24. Near twice that age is more like it…
Pablo,
Bingo!
That scene actually makes me laugh hard every single time, it’s just brilliant. But the problem is it doesn’t make the point that the writers meant it to (another such scene is the climactic trial scene in A Few Good Men, where Nicholson schools the feeble Tom Cruise). Sure, the Colonal comes off a bit unstable and odd, but at least he knows what he’s doing and why. Joker comes off as confused, goofy, and pointlessly laughing at life. He is aimless, confused, and unable to grasp even what he’s trying to say.
He’s the kid who likes horrible tv shows and movies because they are “ironic.” The kid who holds two totally contradictory positions and insists that he’s being nuanced and subtle, while absolutists are scary and idiotic. The farmer might not be able to discuss Jung’s goofy theories, but he knows how to put food on the table and why.
And when these two guys clash, the farmer always comes off as being the better man. In the end, Joker stands for nothing and means nothing, he’s Neitzsche’s ubermensch, the man who thinks the world means nothing, so he doesn’t care about anything like Neo. We’re supposed to admire him because he laughs at horror and is able to do what others can’t bring themselves to do because he realizes how empty and meaningless life is.
Instead he comes across as a child, someone full of ideas, but no wisdom, as someone unprepared to face and deal with life.
Instead he comes across as a child, someone full of ideas, but no wisdom, as someone unprepared to face and deal with life.
Eeeeeeeeexactly.
“A Few Good Men” – I know I’m not supposed to like Nicholson’s character, but I already despise Cruise’s so much that Sorkin & Reiner really give me no where else to go. And then he rips out that courtroom speech – beautiful. But then, I’ve never understood why Tom Cruise is a movie star, and he was in “Tiger Beat” when I was a teenager. (Of course, I didn’t read “Tiger Beat” either, maybe that’s my problem.)
Colossus – as a stand-alone joke, the pic is great, I have to say.
In my mind a recovering alcoholic has done quite a bit of introspection. Probably more than most.
Our ally’s head of state is the “other?”
Good News Everybody! Although the doddering Jack Murtha is not likely to be with us much longer, Jim Webb is following closely in his footsteps…
Now, Tom Cruise is a movie star because he’s actually pretty good. It hurts to say this, really, it does, but he’s actually a decent actor. Not, like, Areck Barwin good, but he doesn’t suck.
I think the point of that scene was that the duality of man doesn’t mean shit. A bunch of people were killed and dumped in a mass grave for being non-communists. It’s a telling scene, not for what passes between Joker and the Colonel, but for the situation.
As for the “Peking Acrobats”, are you in Beijing? ‘Cause those guys are impressive. Me, I’m in South China, and I’m nobody’s “ex-pat”. Meiguo uber allles.
Are you?
I ask, because this leads me to think you are not.
Perhaps you should offer some examples?
He knows the title, and that Sun Tzu was a brilliant military strategist! Why should our oh-so-brilliant ex-pat bother actually reading what Sun Tzu wrote and just use the name as a club to beat anyone he deems foolish in military matters over the head with?
RTO I think he missed the whole point of “The Art of War”
Having read the Art of War in several translations, I actually see a lot of it in Rumsfeld’s decisions. Some of it is just not applicable in the present situation, and some of it, if applied, would be considered horrific and wrong by leftist twits and assorted anti-war chestless men.