I once had this dream about these kids who had formed a kind of cult where they set themselves on fire to prove how cool they were. The dream had a profound effect on me, resulting in years of writing and research. It ended in what I call a “theatrical essay” called Burned. Much of that time, I was obsessed with Thich Quang Duc: the first Buddhist monk to self-immolate in protest over the South Vietnamese government headed by Ngo Dinh Diem.

This came up because I spend a couple of hours this afternoon watching Seven Psychopaths. The ending of the film tells a fictional story of Thich Quang Duc’s thinking while preparing for his ritual suicide. And it bugged me for a number of reasons. They didn’t seem to be interested in getting it right. Worst of all was this repeated refrain, “This will not help our cause.” (That’s rough; I didn’t write it down.) Finally, he responds, “It might.” The truth is that Thich Quang Duc’s act had a profound effect on events. Diem was gone less than 5 months later as a direct result.[1]

In a sense, I was glad that the story included Thich Quang Duc. He is a great man and he deserves to be remembered. Here is David Halberstam’s report at the time:

But this was included in a film that played very loose with people torturing others with fire—and other things that were hard to take like sawing a live man’s head off with a hacksaw. So the tribute to Thich Quang Duc was less compelling than it could have been.

By saying this, I don’t mean to say the film is bad. It is actually quite good. And funny. I laughed a lot. And parts of the movie were kind of deep. For example, Billy Bickle (Sam Rockwell) is a clear psychopath, but all of his acts of violence are done out of his love of his friends. (I could have done without the Taxi Driver gag.) And after all the dark comedy throughout the film, the Thich Quang Duc ending was touching.

Afterword

Seven Psychopaths has a very grainy look. Watching it, I thought it had been filmed on Super-16. This appears not to be the case, because I didn’t see it mentioned anywhere. But it didn’t look processed—just bad. If anyone knows anything, let me know.

[1] There were many other problems. Some were minor: his corpse did not fall over like they showed. Others were profound: the idea that Thich Quang Duc’s suicide was an act of vengeance—and even worse: vengeance against America. Yes, I’m making too much out of this.

[2] Halberstam is wrong about this. Humans have a lot of water in them and so tend to burn poorly. However, drenched in gasoline, human beings burn surprisingly quickly.

I honor the service that individuals make to the collective. However, when Veterans Day rolls around, I have a hard time thinking of service. Instead, I think about sacrifice—even more: useless sacrifice. Almost without exception (and even those exceptions are muddled), wars are nothing but turf battles where weak men die for the sake of powerful men’s interests. When I think of war, I don’t think of heroic men in a life-and-death struggle; I think of two ant colonies destroying themselves because it is in their DNA.

Thus, I think of Veterans Day as a somber occasion. It is a time to remember those victims who have been harmed by our pathological sociology. The normal kinds of Veterans Day celebrations of hubristic nationalism are part of the problem and only lead to more victims.

On this day it seems natural to salute all those who have been harmed by our war making. It doesn’t matter to me whether they did so voluntarily or not. The truth is that I don’t think anyone really does this voluntarily. (Of course, I don’t believe in free will either.)

In honor of all these people, I offer you a poem by Wilfred Owen—himself a victim of war: World War I. He was killed just one week before the end of that war. And as you see in the poem, he understood the nature of war. (For the record, “Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori” means, “It is sweet and right to die for your country.” It is from one of Horace’s Odes, which are often lovely but from time to time nationalistic and horrible.)

Afterword

Without life, there is no chance for justice.

This morning, Paul Krugman has an article, Squirming Hawks, about a Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget report fear trolling over the upcoming fiscal cliff. The problem with people like this is that for years they’ve been claiming that the federal debt burden is going to destroy our economy, but suddenly when concrete policy comes up that will greatly slash the budget deficit, they aren’t for it. Why could that be?

Krugman has a good idea: they only want to balance the budget in such a way that it hurts the poor and enriches the wealthy. This is not an overstatement; I’ve been complaining about this for a while. In general, the fiscal austerity crowd are made up of people on the right. Calling for a balanced budget isn’t about budgetary matters at all: it is just about using budgetary fear to make the changes the right always wants. This is basically Naomi Klein’s shock treatment theory: use a disaster for political gain.

The CRFB report is revealing.

Where have I heard that before? I know: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan! Note the contradiction here. They want to “generate new revenue,” but the best thing would be to reduced that new revenue by lowering tax rates. Krugman speculates that by “low-priority spending” they mean, “Spending on the poor.” Of course they do!

Let me discuss this idea of lowering the marginal tax rates but broadening the base. By “base broadening” they mean closing loopholes. An obvious question comes to mind: if you are going to lower tax rates but offset this with fewer deductions, why do it at all? The answer given is that the current tax code creates distortions. This is undoubtedly true. But by far the biggest distortion is the earned income tax rate and the capital gains income tax rate. And these people have no interest in getting rid of that distortion. I think this is a bait and switch. If they can get lower marginal tax rates passed, it will be relatively easy to put deductions back into the tax code later. But it will be very hard to raise tax rates later as we see with the big deal it has been to raise the top rate from 35% to 39.6%.

My biggest complaint with conservatives is that they are dishonest. And this takes place at every level. What most people focus on are the arguments. When they claim that Job Creators must have their taxes slashed so they will look kindly on the peons and hire them, we know this is wrong. But it could be they are just deluding themselves. Unfortunately, the problem is much worse than this. We see this quite clearly in this idea that we must balance the budget by doing things that will not balance the budget. This is just madness and in a sane world, the mainstream media would say so. But instead it is all he said/she said coverage.

Some people claim the sky is blue while others claim it is paisley. It’s just a matter of opinion; who can say?!