Pixar does it again

Or, I should say, "did" it again. I just noticed the other day that the film "Bug's Life" is a story that ought to be analyzed through political eyes.

I've mentioned before that I felt the movie "The Incredibles" was a takeoff of Ayn Rand's objectivist epistemology. Indeed I believe it fits very well with her ideologies, specifically as they are told in Atlas Shrugged. But Pixar probably incorporated Rand's ideologies intentionally, whereas the message embedded in "Bug's Life" I believe to be coincidental.

The setting for Bug's Life is key to understanding its political message. The story takes place on "Ant Island," where the colony of ants rule the whole of a small island in the middle of a small creek in a meadow. They have their own system of government, ruled by the queen ant (naturally) and several underlings who assist in maintaining balance and order. Like many insects, the ants go underground for the winter to wait out the cold. Prior to their descent, they gather food from the island and store it below the soil for nourishment while the weather is rough outside.

Most stories have a protagonist or problem, with a climax and resolution. The problem for the ants of Ant Island is the Grasshoppers, ruled by a despot named Hopper. At some point in the past (we're not given the details), the Grasshoppers extorted food from the ants, so in addition to gathering for themselves, the ants have to also gather food for the Grasshoppers in order to keep them at bay.

Several very revealing dialogs take place between the Grasshoppers and the ants. At one point, Hopper reminds the ant colony that "there are a lot of mean bugs out there," and that the ants feed the Grasshoppers in order to "protect themselves" from potentially dangerous outsiders. The ants refer to the portion of their gathering that goes to the Grasshoppers as "The Offering." So in a way, Hopper insists that there is an unforeseen or unperceived enemy looming in the shadows just waiting to come and make life worse for the ants, and that "The Offering" is really some form of a pseudo-insurance policy the ants pay to keep themselves safe.

I find distinct parallels between many elements of Bug's Life and the current American government. For one, Hopper is much like President Bush in that he constantly reminds us of looming threats which may or may not be real (probably not). Next, the ants refer to the tax burden as an "Offering," when it is anything but. It is extortion, and I believe represents an unapportioned tax upon their labor. When the ants fail to pay enough of their "Offering" to the Grasshoppers, serious trouble (even unlawful detainment!) ensues. The "rules" the Grasshoppers invent about the potential dangers of the outsiders in the insect world are much like the rules by which our government plays its war games. Furthermore, the Grasshoppers have many powerful recruits who scour the island looking for dissidents who wish to rebel against them. Lastly, the Grasshoppers do not live on Ant Island, but are represented as foreign occupants (or invaders) when they come to collect their "Offering," as if to suggest that Ant Island is not really the legal territory of the Grasshoppers, much like America's military presence throughout the world.

There is hope, however. The ending of the film depicts a colony of ants that are fed up with the despotism and tyranny of the Grasshoppers. The ants rise up united against their occupants and throw them out for good. Perhaps the day will come when we the American people can stand no more and throw the bastards out who now raid our paychecks with their (supposedly required) "Offering," who scour the land for dissidents (the Patriot Act), and who illegally and unlawfully detain its own citizens (Detainee Bill), and who occupy foreign lands for interests beyond its own control.

CUFI, eschatology, and one of the main reasons that...

...America is so widely hated in the Middle East. In line with some of my previous posts, this video below sums up a lot - America's underlying theological beliefs gets it into trouble throughout the globe. This brings us to CUFI, which is the organization of "Christians United For Israel." In a nutshell, they say that naughty Jews brought upon themselves, through their rejection of Jesus, their persecution, and that God will smite them down for it in the end. Fine. What's interesting is that they are fierce supporters of the nation of Israel, linking their salvation to the eschatological (end-times theology) "prophecies" of the Christian Bible and how they relate to the Jewish people and the nation of Israel.

Max Blumenthal, a Jew, attended a CUFI convention on July 16 and has released some footage (video below). This is truly amazing. Some shocking discoveries: that the Jews are to blame for their own persecution, that a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran is the only way to usher in salvation in the Middle East, and of course general hatred (and misunderstanding) of all things political, especially relationships with Muslim states.

Watch the video. I hope it makes you as uncomfortable as it made me. These people are wacked.

right wing fear-mongering

For the next year, the Republicans will most likely try to scare you into voting for them. Don't fall for it.

the 5th 911 option

I’ve thought about this plenty before reading it. It’s a valid mixture of theories, in my opinion. For one, the media tells us that the Middle East hates us because A) we’re rich, B) we’re free, C) we don’t pray to Allah. What’s strange is that 16 year old Arabs bounce around the Middle East in their own personal private jets and drive Lamborghinis when they get where they’re going. They have a ton of oil money (not all, of course, but many of them do). So “A” is out. “B” is absolutely ridiculous, all people want freedom, not just the US. “C” might be somewhat true, but that’s not the whole story, which is where this option works.

 

The US blindly supports Israel in all it says and does. It’s as if the US is afraid of a domestic Jewish revolt if we oppose what Israel wants in the Middle East. The radical Islam guys are not so much opposed to capitalism and freedom as they are to blind allegiance to their arch-enemy in the Middle East: Israel. Their sacred shrine sits atop the mount that Israel supposedly thinks it owns, and this is source for major conflict. Both books (the Koran and the OT) tell its followers that they must kill the other for fidelity to the wrong deity (Deut. 17, and portions of Joshua and Judges). The real strife in the Middle East is between Zionist Israel and Islam.

 

Is religion a problem in the world? Gee, I don’t know.

 

Anyway, for Israel to really fight back at these guys would require amassing an army larger than their own, and with virtually unlimited funding. So who always has Israel’s back, no matter what? Who has a large, empirical army that is capable of asserting its presence throughout the world? Who has fallen victim to the wiles of central banking and credit? And most importantly, who wishes to promote and assert is Zionist agenda throughout the globe? The US government, of course. And wouldn’t the timing just be perfect if, only 1 year into his presidency and with a Republican-controlled Congress/House, several prominent members of the PNAC were to find themselves in decision-making leadership roles in the US government? The time would be impeccable. So why would the US even care? Again, possibly because of our rich Judeo-Christian (i.e. Zionist) heritage, or perhaps we’re saying “sorry” for the atrocities of WW2 (which isn’t really ours to apologize for), who knows. It would seem ideal for Israel to drag the US into a war (or for the US to concur with the Mesopotamian wars) in order to fulfill its theological goals and ideals. What’s in it for the US government? As the PNAC’s mission statement claims, greater power and control throughout the world in order to pre-emptively stop any future attackers or offenders toward the US. Not only that, but the Mesopotamian valley is a hotbed for oil (greater than 50% of the world’s reserves are there), and control over the region would certainly benefit the US’s fierce economic demand (strain?) on the oil supply.

 

Again, as the anti-neo-cons have demonstrated, lining up the blind allegiance to Zionist propaganda in the Middle East with the PNAC’s intrusive and assertive global military presence (the short term for all that is “empire”) reveals much. Both Israel and the US appear to gain from 911 – the one proliferating its theological position in the Middle East, the other obtaining and sustaining its hand in the commodities of the region.

 

Is the defense of one’s religion worth it all? Hmmm… not sure.

 

On top of that, the stockholders of the world’s largest debt and credit cabal on the planet (the Federal Reserve) are absolutely thrilled with the war effort. Especially now that the US outsources nearly everything. The war has already dipped into the nation’s central bank for credit totaling nearly $500 billion; that’s half a trillion dollars. And because no politician (other than Ron Paul) cares about paying down that debt, the interest on this war is perpetual and compounded daily. That means that in as little as 7 years, the cost for the Iraq war will exceed its now current value. It will cost more than $1 trillion with interest.

 

One thing I like about Ron Paul is his foreign policy – let the US go back to isolationism and let the economics of international trade become our standard for intervention. No more idealistic crusades. No more un-ending wars on intangibles like drugs, hunger, or terror. Let’s go back to the US of the late 1800s – we had no enemies, we deserved no enemies, and we imported and exported what we needed, and that’s all. It is simpler to manage, and affordable from a debt perspective.

 

Things brings me to my last point. Gov. Mitt Romney is the worst possible presidential candidate from a foreign relations standpoint. First, as a Mormon, he probably falls in line perfectly with the ideals of Zionist Israel. BYU even has a “Jerusalem Center” for the indoctrination of some of its “choicer” students. He would likely back Israel no matter what Israel wanted, which would only solidify and entrench the US further into the quagmire of the Mesopotamian Wars. Secondly, his ideas about the war on terror are careless. He recently said that he’d like to double the capacity of the Guantanamo Bay prison (read: proto-concentration camp), which represents the exact opposite in foreign policy isolationism, and actually incites in my mind a presidential hopeful who will ensure that the un-ending idealistic wars continue, that illegal capture and torture of terror suspects continues, and that the Constitution is “just a piece of paper.” (Oddly, Mormon doctrine tries to elevate the status of the Constitution, even calling it “scripture,” yet the Mormon Church cranks out idiots like senator Orrin Hatch, one of the foremost defenders of the unconstitutional and illegal Patriot Act).

 

Is religion really a problem in today’s world? Ummm… yes?

the irack

This is one of the funniest skits I have ever seen in my entire life. Enjoy!

Ron Paul on the Daily Show

My cousin forwarded me this, and it's great. Ron Paul is my guy. The picture is a little crappy, but the dialogue is what counts. Enjoy.

Dependence Day

It’s been a while. Sorry. Work has been extremely busy, but successful.

 

I’ve been contemplating lately our nation’s “independence,” in light of tomorrow being Independence Day. We’ve come a long way since that summer day in the late 1700s in many ways: socially, spiritually, and politically. The latter I believe is the most radical reversal of all.

 

We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. We fought for independence and obtained it, and it wasn’t too many years later that we turned around and bound ourselves all over again. No, this time we didn’t bow to the throne of England, but instead we fettered ourselves with an illegally created national central banking system, the outgrowth of which is now costing this country approximately $9,000,000,000,000 in debt, not to mention domestic liabilities (some experts say we’re close to $50 trillion in total liabilities). If you were to exact a tax upon the American people to pay down that debt today, you would need to collect nearly $30,000 from every single person in this country, illegal or not. This includes the elderly who can’t pay it, the poor who can’t pay it, as well as infants and children who can’t pay it. Fact: we’re bankrupt. We are a slave to our creditors who are the primary stockholders in the Federal Reserve banks of the United States.

 

We’re enslaved by the behemoth we call the Internal Revenue Service, who enacts an unapportioned and illegally ratified income tax upon our labor. If you make over $70,000/year, chances are you fork out nearly half of the wages you earned on your labor to the IRS (depending upon one’s allowable “deductions/itemizations”), who in turn indiscriminately dolls it out in ways they see fit, which are not entirely prudent. Much of our income tax goes to pay down the national deficit, which is the interest that is collected on the $9 trillion mentioned above. That’s another thing politicians need to stop discussing – paying down deficits and balancing budgets is meaningless with a 9 trillion ton elephant in the room. The deficit will always exist and torment us forever so long as we allow the principal on that debt, the $9 trillion national debt, to survive. Imagine trying to pay off your credit card or home without ever paying down any principal (in recent times, it has become trendy to obtain a mortgage that doesn’t pay any principal, the same pitfall in which our government now finds itself). That’s what our country’s leadership is doing with the national debt – totally ignoring it. Our government has repeatedly avoided all remonstrance to show that the income tax is legal – their actions (or lack thereof) should speak volumes.

 

We’re an empire in all but name. We have an active military presence of over 400,000 US troops throughout the world. Some of those locations include Germany, which hasn’t been problematic for US foreign interests in over 60 years; Japan, which hasn’t been a problem for the same amount of time; Guam, another 60 year old by-gone problem; Saudi Arabia, where the real terrorists are from; and Israel, one of the US’s most ridiculous political alliances on the planet. Our military is spread throughout the globe even beyond these locations, all in effort to “preserve liberty” and “freedom” for others. We bully the UN into doing our will in effort to declare that our actions are “sanctioned” by some higher authority. Our president feels he is above the law (any and all law!), and has no accountability to any other entity, especially congress and the courts. He uses the military as he sees fit, and has no compunction about unwarranted domestic spying and illegal detainment and torture. All of this smacks of empire.

 

So while we’re in our driveways blowing shit up with delight on July 4^th, let’s remember what we celebrate (hint: it’s not what you think!). Let’s remember that we might just need a new independence day before too long. Independence from ourselves, that is.

 

Perhaps British rule wouldn’t have been all that bad, eh mate?