ROGER'S ANGLE: April 2013

Monday, April 15, 2013

IS AMERICA SICK?

Why are there so many creepy people in TV dramas and in the movies?

TV shows that seem sick to me:

GAME OF THRONES
DEXTER
CRIMINAL MINDS
THE FOLLOWING

I have tried to watch these shows and they seem to wallow in human pathology.

"Criminal Minds" usually starts out with innocent people being assaulted by depraved criminals. Do we really need to see that? What is the purpose? To show us that the bad guys are really bad? Or are we supposed to get turned on by the violence?

"Game of Thrones" is about people who sell their souls for power. Seems sick to me. It's about manipulation and depravity. I liked the opening of the first episode, in the great white north, but after that, it lost me. Turned my stomach.

"Dexter" is about a sick man, a serial killer who kills other killers. I didn't last long. I watched part of one episode. Yuck.

"The Following" features a psychopath who is admired and followed by other sickos who imitate him. We are treated to rooms full of slaughtered women, some hanging upside down with their throats cut and their eyes gouged out. What could be sicker than that?

What is the purpose of all this depravity? To turn our stomachs? It certainly is not uplifting and offers no insight into human nature, except perhaps into the nature of the audience.

Have we become like ancient Rome, where powerless citizens cheered actual violence, mayhem and murder? Where demented people got off on violence done to others?

That is what it looks like. After years of pointless, stupid wars and senseless slaughter, have our sick politics crept deeply into our souls and turned us into parasites that feed off violence?

I think so.

Welcome to Sick America.

-- Roger

Monday, April 1, 2013

UPDATE ON LOVE & LIT CONTEST

To update an earlier blog post, I am even more in love, if that is possible, and I did enter the Inkubate contest. The deadline was yesterday. The website was confusing, but with some help from my GF, we got it done. It's nice to have help.

This whole love thing is a lot more profound and moving than I thought. I opted out of it for about 15 years. But now I am back into it, deeper than ever before. At least, that is the way it feels. So far, so good. Very good.

-- Roger

A GOOD REPUBLICAN

Here is an article in the L.A. Times about a good Republican, former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.):

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-alan-simpson-gores-gop-on-immigration-obama-on-budget-20130327,0,1336372.story

This dude tells it like it is. Pulls no punches. Takes no prisoners. Calls it like he sees it. All the good cliches apply.

Why aren't there more Republicans like this?

I don't know, but I suspect there are two reasons:

They don't have the guts.
Their political future is tied to big business of some kind, most likely oil or finance. They have been bought and paid for. Some Democrats are like that, too.

The solution to gutless politicians, I think, is to get the money out of politics, as much as possible.

Get rid of Citizens United, the shockingly unfair Supreme Court decision that declared, irrationally, that corporations have the same legal status as people and that there are no limits to political spending.

Right on, Alan Simpson.

We may not see your like again.

-- Roger