Went to see V for Vendetta last night. I always thought the graphic novel was a classic, and was eager to see the movie version. It didn't let me down. If you are left of center, you should go see it. If you are right of center, you still should go see it.
Many right wingers who have never read V for Vendetta or seen the movie have and will continue to pan it, because of the idea of a guy who is more or less a terrorist is portrayed as a hero.
Of course, the England in V for Vendetta is not the England or US of today. But can anyone say that if our nation became an intolerable tyranny, that the proper remedy wouldn't be revolution? V for Vendetta advocates a drastic solution to a drastic problem.
When did the idea of radical remedy to a tyrannical government become such a non-starter in this country? During the Clinton years, all I could do is hear gun-rights advocates saying how we'll take guns from their cold dead hands, and quoting the founding fathers, who basically believed that when government ceases to be the agent of justice and rightness, and drifts into tyranny, that the only solution - the virtual duty of every patriotic citizen - is to remove that government, by force if necessary. Look at the quotes from the most revered Americans and founders:
Thomas Jefferson:
"[If] the King can model the constitution at will... his government is a pure despotism. The question then arising is, whether a pure despotism in a single head, or one which is divided among a king, nobles, priesthood, and numerous magistracy, is the least bad. I should be puzzled to decide." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison.
And what was Thomas Jefferson's solution to such a government?
"A single good government becomes... a blessing to the whole earth, its welcome to the oppressed restraining within certain limits the measure of their oppressions. But should even this be counteracted by violence on the right of expatriation, the other branch of our example then presents itself for imitation: to rise on their rulers and do as we have done."
"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."
"I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
(source: various)
Paine. Adams. Franklin. In later years, Thoreau, who argued that if the law required that you be an agent of injustice against another, then you should break the law (as opposed to being that agent of injustice). These men who were so freely quoted during the Clinton years have gone into remission, it seems.
But the character of V is just such a person. A person who believes that society has drifted into tyrannical despotism (which, in the novel and movie, it has). And his solution is a drastic remedy, designed to do one thing - not to kill innocents, but to set forth the dominoes in motion of popular revolt and revolution.
And if our society gets to that point, it undeniably would be a good thing.
For now, we still have the ability to make change. Sure, the law requires us to be agents of injustice against one another, even in the realm of social justice, where gay and lesbian neighbors are deprived of the same rights because a bunch of people who think the world is about 6,000 years old have an unverified and unverifiable text that they have perverted into meaning that gays and lesbians are committing sin and their marriages must be stopped... The wheels of social injustice and economic depravity may be in motion, but the reality is, we can stop them whenever we want. The biggest question is, why don't we want to?
Many people, sadly, do not understand where they fit in the game. Thus, we have people who are poor - dirt poor - living in trailer parks and barely getting by, arguing in favor of repealing the inheritance tax. We've got college republicans going to state subsidized universities, using state subsidized computers and federal tuition aid, arguing that government shouldn't be in THAT business. We've got the middle class who isn't really a middle class anymore, when you look at net asset balance (ie, sure, you've got niceties, but you are now in debt that you will never pay off). We've got a populace that has been tricked into this "if you have nothing to hide, then you will not mind a search..." mentality - never mind the fact that the constitution protects the innocent with the guilty. Maybe I don't want you looking through my stuff because I simply do not want you looking through my stuff, invading my privacy, and rummaging through my life for your fishing expedition? When this country turns a blind eye to torture, economic and social malaise and constitutional give-aways, it does so because it doesn't think that these things will affect them. Bad news, fellas. It will. It does. You just don't know it yet. But when your ARM mortgage kicks in and ratchets your mortgage payments, or as gas drifts back to $3.00 a gallon, and your credit card payments exceed your ability to pay, maybe you will wake up and wonder how you got there.
Wake up, America - November is coming soon. And that's your first chance to make change (assuming the Democrats can do any better).
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