I really like movies, especially the ones that surprise me unexpectedly. There are many things in life that surprise us. Some of them are good surprises, while others are not. I’ve been told that I was a “surprise” for my parents. Some of us are dismayed to find out that they were not born from the grand designs of their parents, but personally, I’m quite content to be a “love child.” Seems a bit more romantic than entering this world as a planned decision. Often, surprises occur because they run counter to our expectations. Many find great discomfort when reality runs afoul of their preconceived notions. Over the years, I have learned to just roll with the punches and take life as it comes. There are times when I get upset by having expectations that far exceed the reality of experience, but I mostly try to maintain an even keel.
Recent weeks have seen the release of many highly advertised films for home consumption on DVD (I’m not high tech enough to go Blu-Ray just yet). I like movies almost as much as I like books, and while I prefer the full cinema experience, there are various reasons why viewing movies at home makes more sense for me, so that’s where I usually watch them these days. Recent events at movie theaters are troubling, and I like to see movies without the fear that some nut job is going to open fire on everyone there. Last week, I got five movies that I really wanted to see, with Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln topping the list. I love learning about history; this film is filled with recreations of important events from our past and it’s supposed to be mainly accurate from an historical perspective.
Also included in my bounty of films was the Robert Zemeckis film Flight starring Denzel Washington. I knew the film had a great action sequence involving a plane crash, and I’ve enjoyed Denzel’s work since his days playing a doctor on TV’s “St. Elsewhere.” I watched this movie first and although I didn’t really expect too much from it in comparison with the others I had seen or were about to view, I really enjoyed it. In fact, I liked it better than Lincoln.
I learned how to fly an airplane while I was a student in college. One of the perks of going to a really big university like Ohio State is that they have their own airport and fleet of aircraft. Of course I also learned that in order to become a really good pilot one would have to invest more time and concentration into the endeavor than I was prepared to give. So I abandoned it to the experts. In the film, Washington’s character is an extremely talented pilot, sort of like the real-life pilot, “Sully” Sullenberger, who heroically landed his powerless jet on the Hudson River and saved everyone on board. But unlike the clean-cut Sully, Denzel’s character is an alcoholic who uses cocaine to keep him alert enough to fly. But because he is also an exceptionally talented flyer, he is able to pilot his damaged aircraft to a controlled crash landing and saves almost everyone on board.
If you’ve ever known an alcoholic or drug addict, watching Flight was all the more realistic, because you know that it is tough to overcome those demons, and backsliding occurs frequently in real life as it did in the film. But eventually goodness triumphs in the film, although at a great cost to the main character. Likewise in Lincoln, the goal of passing the 13th Amendment that permanently outlawed slavery in this country was achieved. Goodness triumphed, but the main character was lost shortly after his goal was achieved. But we all knew that was going to happen. Maybe that’s why the film was a bit of a disappointment; we all knew how it had to end.
I’ve also been trying to finish a book that I picked up at the library throughout all of this movie watching. I mentioned it in a previous post, Smuggler Nation by Peter Andreas. The book details the influence of smuggling on our country from Colonial times through the present. It’s a very interesting book that reveals a side of history we seem to have little desire to confront, but has had an enormous impact on us all. I usually race through most books, but lately I find this one difficult to pick up, even though I’m almost finished with it. The first part of the book was entertaining and informative. I learned aspects of history that I didn’t really know before. But as the book touches on more current problems, it becomes more and more frustrating as I read about how our government’s reaction to smuggling has caused more problems, and escalated other problems to the point where things seem totally out of proportion.
Perhaps that was the problem that I had watching Lincoln. Observing the political process that was required to pass the amendment was a sickening experience. There’s an old saying that the two things you should never watch being made are laws and sausages. They’re both messy procedures.
In our nation’s effort to control drug smuggling, we first attacked the problem by focusing on the drug user, and increased criminal penalties as we outlawed the drugs. Then we tried to go after the smugglers. But since the desired drugs were now illegal, it became much more profitable to smuggle. Every time our country has success in slowing one source of smuggling, or one route used by smugglers, another took its place. The smugglers also gained more power and more wealth as a result, causing an upward spiral that continues to this day. We’ve become the world’s biggest jailer, and expended billions of dollars to stop the flow of drugs. It hasn’t worked.
We would be much better off if we completely decriminalized drugs. We could then divert the resources used to fight smuggling to the treatment of the drug addicts. It would be much cheaper than the amount we spend to imprison everyone involved. But our politicians are too weak and our process too messy for this to ever happen. As we were shown in Spielberg’s film, our political process was an ugly thing. It’s probably even worse now than it was in 1865. No one has the intestinal fortitude to stand up in Congress and say that they want to decriminalize drugs because most of their constituents are too uneducated to understand why this should be done, and the truth is that most of our politicians are too stupid to understand the overall concept as well. It’s much easier to say that a drug addict is a criminal than to admit that they have an illness that is treatable.
One problem is that smuggling creates a lot of wealth for those with the balls to get involved. Some of our nation’s major family fortunes were started by the proceeds from smuggling. Wealth buys votes, now as it did in the past. Lots of people are profiting from the legal efforts to stop smuggling. However, they would profit much less if smuggling were actually ended. That’s the other problem. Despite the fact that voters think of stopping smuggling as a desirable outcome, those involved in the process actually want it to continue. That’s because they are making profits from the process, not the end result.
It’s a problem in other areas as well. As I write this, the gun lobby is paying, in one form or another but usually within the boundaries of the law, for amendments to be added to unrelated legislation that will make the enforcement of any future gun control legislation to be more difficult, or even impossible. This is happening as polls show that the majority of Americans favor gun control legislation, especially in areas of background checks and limits to magazine capacity. Several states have already passed their own gun control laws, and federal action of some sort may even pass someday. But is it going to have the desired result? Probably not. The rich people are inciting the uninformed to resist, not because it is in the people’s best interest to have assault rifles and handguns with high capacity magazines, but because it will allow the rich people to gain even greater wealth. They will then retreat behind the fortified walls of their gated communities while the rest of us dodge bullets.
Personally, I’d like to have a machine gun. Something that could fire several hundred rounds per minute would be just fine. While we’re at it, I would also like an F/A-18 Super Hornet jet fighter, fully armed. After all, I have the constitutionally protected right to bear arms for my own personal protection, do I not? If having an extra 5 shots in the clip of my AR-15 is something that we should allow, why isn’t it possible for me to get my machine gun, or that jet? The fact is that someone wisely decided that it would be foolish for a civilian like me to have a fully armed military jet, or even a machine gun. In reality, I’m fine with those laws. I have no desire to get into a fire fight with my neighbors (although the idiot next door has tempted me at times) or to patrol the skies for enemy insurgents (I quit flying over 30 years ago, remember?). Those are actually reasonable constraints on my personal freedom designed for everyone’s safety. Just like having functional breaks on the car I drive is a reasonable law. Passing reasonable gun control laws is in the best interest of everyone, except the merchants of death that profit from gun sales. They’ll find other ways to make more money, they always do. As for me, maybe I’ll feel safe enough to go see a movie in a theater again. After all, I really like movies.
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