For the Fourth: the Great Escape

The New Neo Posted on by

[This is a repeat of an old post.]

I was thinking about memorable Fourth of Julys (Fourths of July?), and the first thing that came to mind was this:


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Fans of the movie “The Great Escape” (and I must confess that I am one, big-time) will recognize this photo as the Fourth of July celebration scene, featuring the incomparable Steve McQueen on the left, playing the flute; James Garner on the right with the drum; and I-don’t-know-who in the middle (help, anyone?). I consider it astounding that I could locate a still of the scene–isn’t the Internet great?

Anyone who hasn’t already seen the classic 1963 action movie should rent it and settle in with some popcorn for the long haul. I was a teenage girl in 1963 when I saw it on the widescreen, a stirring combination of male pulchritude (not a female in the cast, and what a cast!), suspense, wit, ingenuity, and tragedy. It’s long, but not overlong, and the score is memorable, too.

Amazingly enough, although the film merges a number of actual people into single characters, and takes a few liberties with time (and invents the fabulous motorcycle chase in which McQueen gets to strut his stuff), it is historically accurate in the extreme, especially for a Hollywood flick. Oliver Stone, it ain’t–fortunately. The makers of the film were dedicated to making it as true to actual events as possible. The screenwriter had been a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp, and a former prisoner and expert tunneler from the actual prison camp depicted in the movie worked as an advisor to the director. Follow the link to read just how much of the film was actually true to life.

Donald Pleasence, who played the going-blind forger Blyth, had been a prisoner of war in a German camp. Hannes Messemer, the German actor who managed to bring an extraordinary humanity to the role of the Kommandant of the camp (a person who in real life was apparently well-liked and respected by the prisoners), had been a prisoner of war in a Russian camp, as had several of the other German actors in the film (these facts are to be found here).

“The Great Escape” was one of the first films I ever saw that defied my expectations. There was so much humor in it, so many likeable characters, and so much Hollywood-type action that I assumed it would have a Hollywood-type ending, too, in which all turned out well. It doesn’t.

But the Fourth of July scene is delightful. Watch McQueen and Garner and that other nameless guy, the only three Americans in the camp, drink the booze they’ve distilled, react appropriately, and then celebrate (with a bunch of mostly Brits) that long-ago American victory over the Brits. Apparently, all is forgiven, but not forgotten.

Fourth of July weekend: assimilation at the park

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I’ve written before (here and here) about the park near my house, where I so often walk.

Fourth of July weekend is a big holiday there, especially when the weather is lovely, as it has been this year (and, after all the rain we’ve had lately, it seems almost miraculous). Not only is it a beautiful vista–ocean and rocks and lighthouses and waves and boats and islands–but there are picnic tables and spots to barbecue, and the park is big enough that it never really seems very crowded, even on holidays.

Saturday I was walking there, and when I got to the picnic area I saw that there were at least seventy people there, an unusual but not-unheard-of number. I couldn’t tell whether they were all part of one big group or whether they represented a series of unrelated groups. But almost every picnic table was in use, and there were fires going in the grills and the luscious smell of cooking wafted across my path as I fast-walked by, making me want to stop, sit down, and beg for a bite.

I noticed that all the people there seemed to be foreign, but not all from the same country or even area of the world. There were vaguely Mideastern-looking people, a well as some who seemed to be from Eastern Europe; others undoubtedly hailing from Africa, as well as Asians of different persuasions. I could hear language after language, none of them recognizable to me, and the smells of the grilling meat contained spices and herbs that seemed especially exotic and alluring.

And children–lots and lots of children. There were bikes and frisbees, laughter and shouting, smiling parents watching fondly, older teenagers looking standoffish and cool. As I passed the younger people, I noticed they were all speaking unaccented English, and even their body language was different than that conveyed by their parents–less constrained. You might say they seemed more free. Of course, part of that is the difference between children and adults. But part of it seemed to be something more.

Who were these people, and why were they all here at the same time? Was it a coincidence, or had they been bused in together, members of some society for immigrants? I have no idea, but it struck me that the group was an especially appropriate one for Fourth of July weekend.

We’re a nation of immigrants, as it’s often said. Lately, immigration has become far more controversial, but we forget that it’s often been so. Each new wave encountered some antagonism, especially beginning in the latter part of the nineteenth century, when the country was getting more crowded and there was increasing arrivals from countries that seemed especially “foreign” to the predominantly Western Europeans who were the earlier settlers.

In those days, immigrants faced the dilemma of assimilation, as they do today. But back then most people who came to this country were eager to assimilate–or at least they thought they were. The process might have been difficult, and they didn’t like all the changes that occurred when their children dropped the old ways and became Americans, but it’s my impression that there was a certain widespread acceptance that this was almost inevitable.

The parents didn’t always manage to learn English all that well–in most families, we know of tales of children translating for parents who never really did make the full transition. And the older generation had to deal–sometimes with great difficulty–with the intermarriage of the children, and their dropping of the old ways.

I remember an incident I observed many years ago. I was sitting in an Indian restaurant, waiting for my food, and noticed a family group nearby. The parents were clearly from India–I could tell by their accents–but the two children seemed to have been born in this country. There was a girl of about six and a boy of about eight. The boy was wearing his baseball mitt on one hand and throwing a ball into it with a little repetitive thwack! with the other while he waited for his food.

When the dinner finally came, he started whining. “I don’t like this stuff!” he said, although I must say the restaurant was fabulous and the food especially delicious. “I want a hamburger!”–the refrain of the American-born child of immigrant parents.

And this age-old process of acculturation and assimilation continues apace. I could see it in the park the other day. But it seems to me that, for many immigrants lately, it’s been arrested and stunted by programs intending to respect cultural diversity that discourage the transition to a new language by making it too easy to cling to the old.

There’s another relatively new factor, as well. Although I’m not aware of any statistics on the matter, it appears that more of today’s immigrants (and/or illegal aliens, who are growing in number) consider their move to this country to be either temporary or conditional or both. The goal is not necessarily assimilation at all, but sometimes the establishment of a sort of “separate but equal” enclave in which the cultural mores (and even traditional dress) are retained intact at the same time the economic benefits of being in this country are reaped.

You might say that was always the case–new immigrants would cluster in certain neighborhoods when they first arrived, and stick to their own. But it’s my impression, at least, that it used to be considered more of a practical and temporary situation, and not the ultimate goal of the immigrant experience.

If I were to have taken a poll of that group on the grass and under the tall shade trees at the park the other day, I wonder what I would have found. How many of the adults were in basic acceptance that their children would become part of American culture? How many were hoping–and taking strong steps to ensure–that their children would resist? How many of the adults were determined to learn English? How many were legal, how many illegal; how many expected a temporary stay, how many a permanent one? How many were happy to be here, how many not?

I don’t know the answers. What I do know is that they looked happy–but of course, it was a lovely day, and a vacation time at that–and the children were all speaking unaccented English. And I know that the vista, to me at least, was a pleasant one, and part of what I consider to be the age-old American dream, on this Fourth of July weekend.

Making a mockery: terrorism in Iraq

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Today there was a car bomb attack in Iraq characterized as the largest terrorist act there since May, when the new government took office. Over sixty people were killed in the blast, which occurred in a street market located in the troublesome and poverty-stricken Shiite area of Baghdad known as Sadr City.

This is just business as usual for the terrorist “insurgents” of Iraq. And no one should be the least bit surprised, for it’s been said time and again that these attacks will continue for a very long time.

What struck me–other than the tragic human cost of the ongoing struggle to set up a relatively democratic government in Iraq–is the fact that attacks of this magnitude used to be much more common. That seems to represent progress, although I have no illusions that the situation couldn’t reverse itself. The truth is that car bombs are relatively easy to set and difficult to intercept. The fledgling government and security forces in Iraq are up against a group that is not going to go gentle into that good night; and so we can expect more of this. I say “we” but, of course, it’s the Iraqi people who suffer.

Terrorists themselves know that the odds are in their favor as far as successfully mounting an attack: those who defend against terrorism have to be lucky (and smart) all the time, and terrorists only have to get lucky once, or occasionally. That’s one of the appeals of terrorism, and one of the reasons it’s called asymmetrical warfare. And it doesn’t take a giant brain to figure that out.

Those who would fight against terrorists have to–they must–keep this in mind. But when I read the linked Reuters article that began this post, I wondered about what the journalists at Reuters are keeping in mind when I saw the following sentence [my emphasis], “No one claimed responsibility for the attack but it had the stamp of al Qaeda and made a mockery of a three week-old security clampdown in Baghdad.”

The increase in the sort of editorializing represented by the phrase “made a mockery,” occurring in a straight news article, is one of the reasons many of us criticize the MSM, including Reuters. And it’s not just that the statement seems out of place; it seems unintelligent and simplistic, at best. A security clampdown in the sort of atmosphere that is present-day Baghdad is, by definition, not going to be perfect, and anyone who expects it to be is naive and unrealistic.

Yes, it would be wonderful if no bombs were ever to kill innocents in Iraq again. But to call this particular attack a “mockery” of security efforts is precisely the sort of thing the terrorists are aiming at, and represents an almost hysterical overreaction that, unfortunately, makes a mockery of coalition and Iraqi efforts to reverse the situation–efforts that have been showing some slow, difficult progress lately.

Blog talk

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Last night I went to a meeting of the Boston bloggers.

It’s really the New England bloggers, since not all of us live in Boston (I don’t, for example). We’ve gotten together a couple of times before and it’s always been fun. Because, you know what? We bloggers are fun people. Strange perhaps, but fun.

I’ve written before on the topic of meeting bloggers. The New England group shares the general blogger characteristic of being a bunch of talkers. Two things in particular seem to be the most salient characteristics of bloggers: ideaphoria, and an especially energetic way of expressing themselves.

Some, no doubt, would call us a bunch of blowhards. But I say no; we are intense and thoughtful, as well as articulate.

For many of us, I suspect, we’ve been this way our entire lives, and never found a really good outlet for the type of thinking we do and the personalities we seem to have. For many of us, I suspect as well that the minute we discovered blogs we realized that it was a good match. And so that’s why, when bloggers get together, there’s often a certain “here I am, with my peeps at last” feeling wafting through the air; a real zest and zing.

I’ve been a writer of sorts for many years, and I’ve participated in writing groups for about fifteen of those years. I remember a similar feeling when I first joined one: here were people who, if not of exactly like mind, were somehow of a slant of mind that was akin to mine.

This doesn’t always happen in life; for instance, I only sometimes feel it among fellow therapists. But when the feeling does come, it often means you’re in the right place, doing what you were meant to do, with people who understand and share that feeling.

Is blogging a calling? That’s way too pretentious a way to look at it. But sometimes I feel that, for most bloggers, we didn’t choose blogging so much as blogging chose us. And, for most of us, it’s a labor of love, requiring us to do work without a great deal of remuneration–except, of course, for the wonderful rewards of saying one’s piece and even being heard and responded to in thoughtful and meaningful ways.

My guess is that many of the commenters here may share some of the same traits as bloggers: lots of ideas and the need to express them. And now, with blogs, we don’t have to bore our friends and relatives silly–we can entertain each other.

[Whoops–forgot the links. Present and accounted for were: Sissy Willis of sisu, Richard Landes of Second Draft, Sol of Solomnia, Teresa of Technicalities, Harry of Squaring the Globe, Marybeth of Miss Kelly, New England Republican of blog of same name, and special guest Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe. Regretfully absent but ordinarily a regular: Daniel in Brookline.]

Out of the Republican closet: Black Like Me

The New Neo Posted on by

Reginald Bohannon is a Republican.

That in and of itself is not remarkable. But what is unusual–although certainly not unheard of–is that he is a black Republican, raised in a culture in which 90-95% of the ethnic group to which he belongs is Democrat, and in a family with a politically active Democrat mother.

Not altogether unlike myself, actually, come to think of it (although I’m not a Republican; I’m an Independent).

And, in another similarity, Bohannon has written about his “change” experience, in a book entitled Coming Out of the Republican Closet: Coming to Terms With Being Black, Patriotic, and Conservative (it could be subtitled: not an oxymoron.)

Here’s a recent interview with Mr. Bohannon. His “coming out of the closet” metaphor is especially apt, I believe. It’s one that has come up quite often on threads on this blog that discuss the experience “changers” have had (see this, for example).

As you all no doubt know, “coming out” is a phrase that previously had been used primarily to describe the experience of gays who’d been hiding their sexual identities for fear of discrimination and recrimination, and who finally decide they can no longer live the secret life. They tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may; sometimes they fall hard and painfully.

Before my own change experience, I would not have believed in any possible comparison to the experience of gays; I actually might even have considered it preposterous if someone had asserted discrimination from liberals because of “turning” in a conservative–or a neocon–direction.

But now I’m a believer. Personal experience, and being the recipient of emails from all over the world describing the phenomenon, have convinced me. And yet I still feel some amount of shock at the depth and breadth of it all. I like to think–and really, I know, since I always had a few conservative friends–that in my liberal days I would never have had this reaction to a “changer.” After all, doesn’t it seem especially antithetical to the openmindedness and respect for opinions of others that liberals profess to feel?

But, as I’ve written before, a political identity is much more than that: it often becomes a moral and personal identity, and there are groupthink aspects that lead to ostracism of the apostate. Zell Miller likens political identity to a birthmark, and in a way it is.

In his interview, Bohannon discusses the tagline to his book, “Not wanting to disappoint his family and bring ill-repute on them, Bohannon chose to keep his political viewpoints to himself.” He feared name-calling and anger directed not only at him, but at his family.

But over time he gained the courage of his convictions, bolstered by the history of the Republican party’s support of freedom for blacks during and after the Civil War. An especially interesting aspect of his position is that he believes black people to actually already be more conservative on many issues than they themselves know. He sees himself as a person willing to point this out and make it easier for more of them to cross over into formerly-dreaded Republicanism. Bohannon sees the scarcity of blacks in the Republican Party as a function of lack of education as to what Republicans really stand for–now, and historically–and an incorrect perception of the Party as racist.

Bohannon says:

…it takes some intelligence to be a black Republican because you have to do your homework. …To be a Democrat, you just have to join the Party that your family belongs to and you don’t have to learn anything at all.

No, it’s not true that black Democrats–or Jewish Democrats, or any other ethnic or socioeconomic group that’s predominantly and overwhelmingly Democratic, for that matter–are unintelligent. Not at all, and I would strongly quarrel with Bohannon’s use of the word.

But I do identify with Bohannon’s larger message–which is that, as I grew more interested in reading about political events, both domestic and international, as well as historical–I grew away from the Democratic Party and more to the right.

That certainly is not an inevitability; I know that some people go in the opposite direction. But, as I’ve written here, it appears to be a trend. Reginald Bohannon is part of it–and, if he has his way, more black people will join him.

First step

The New Neo Posted on by

After a certain amount of research and thought, I have decided to institute the simplest possible change to the blog. I have now closed Blogger comments and installed Haloscan.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to use; I think the instructions are self-explanatory. We’ll see how this goes.

Rewatching movies

The New Neo Posted on by

Ann Althouse has written a post about rewatching movies.

She says:

To watch something the first time is to respond to some mysterious mix of your own imagination and the various things you’ve heard. Maybe something about a poster or some feeling about a movie star pulls you in. Then you find out if it was what you thought it would be or if you’re surprised in a good way. But rewatching a movie, you know basically what’s there, and you’re making a choice to relive what you know or you have a sense that there are places in there where new things can be found. It’s a richer, deeper experience. Oh, that reminds me of what Andre says about marriage — as opposed to an affair — at the end of my most rewatched movie, “My Dinner With Andre.”

Ann and I part company there–I wasn’t all that keen on “Andre” the first time I saw it–although perhaps if I watched it now I’d like it. But her remarks resonate nevertheless, reminding me of my own earlier comments on love, the theme and variations vs. the symphony.

It’s true that rewatching a movie involves a type of love. Same for rereading a book, or going to a play we’ve already seen. We know what to expect in the general sense, just as we know the character of the beloved. But there’s always some sort of surprise amidst the repetition, and part of the surprise is that we ourselves bring new knowledge and experience to it.

One of my favorite authors, Jorge Luis Borges, wrote a story entitled “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” about a writer who set about re-experiencing and recreating Cervantes’s writing of his novel Don Quixote. Borges’s story is a gently humorous dig at, among other things, literary criticism; but it also makes the interesting point that a work can be exactly the same, but if the context is different the work itself changes for the reader.

With film rewatchings, the context is never the same. I watched familiar favorites of mine post-9/11 and often saw something new and different in them than before (see this for a recent reassessment of “High Noon,” for example). The same is true of the romantic movies I loved as a teenager, although this has nothing to do with 9/11 but more to do with age; the old Zefferelli “Romeo and Juliet” says one thing to a nineteen-year-old and another to a fifty-something-year old, although it speaks volumes to both.

It turns out, now that I think of it, that my favorite rewatchings over the years don’t include many new movies. The only one I can think of is “Groundhog Day.” But that seems appropriate; isn’t it what that movie is about? Keep doing it till you get it right, with deepening understanding every time.

Construction has begun #2

The New Neo Posted on by

[Construction has begun #1]

Last night I was up late, working. I went to bed very late, fully expecting to sleep in; I didn’t have any early commitments.

Ah, but the best laid schemes….

I was awakened at around 7 AM by the sounds of blasting. Rock blasting. Just outside my bedroom window, it seemed. I hunkered down and covered my head with every piece of bedding I could muster, determined to squeeze a few more drops of sleep out of the morning. Which I managed to do, although not for long enough to suit me.

When I got up and looked outside, I saw that the end of my small driveway was no more. Instead, there was a twelve-foot-deep trench, and three workmen next to two enormous gray concrete pipes.

Yes, I knew they’d been working on the sewers lately in my neighborhood–but, till now, nowhere near me, and rather quietly at that.

I asked them why they hadn’t at least warned me this was going to happen, since it would have been a simple matter to have taken my car out of the driveway before they started and parked it a little ways down the street. Now I was trapped here. Their answer was that this was their first day on the job, and they hadn’t thought of it. I politely suggested it might be something they should consider adding to their job description in the future whenever were about to obliterate someone’s driveway.

Fortunately, today was a rare day when there was no place I absolutely had to be; I was able to jettison the things I’d scheduled. It’s actually been sort of fun to have an enforced day in the house, although I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it. I’ve even been getting a few–just a few–long-postponed tasks accomplished. I’ve been able to notice just how very excellently the new gutter performs during a deluge–because, like almost all the other days here since I’ve returned, we’ve had rain. I’ve wondered just how much more rain we can stand. I’ve been grateful I live on a hill and therefore don’t have to worry–yet–about my basement flooding.

The workmen promised me that this would be done by late afternoon, the hole miraculously filled in as though it never had happened, and that I’d be liberated to use my car once again. But the rain has made the workers stop and start periodically, and so I wonder–and then, at the very moment I’m typing this sentence, I realize the noise itself has stopped just a few moments ago.

And so I stop as well, look out the window again–and voila!

Fixed:

Construction has begun

The New Neo Posted on by

My “technical advisor” has started work on the changes to the blog, since the nuts and bolts of this type of thing is not my forte. It will take a while, probably as much as a week, but I wanted to let you know that it’s at least a work in progress. Patience.

Islamist totalitarianism

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written before about the dilemma of choosing a term to describe our enemies in this war.

Islamofascists? No, not exact enough; and misleading, hearkening back to our World War II enemies who had different political ideologies and methods. Islamic fundamentalists? Incorrect as well; not all Islamic fundamentalists have adopted violence as a way of life. “Jihadis” is too inclusive and not specific enough.

Austin Bay has called attention to a recent article appearing in the London Times, written by Michael Gove. Well worth reading, it is a good summary of the aims and ideology of the enemy, as well as offering the useful and descriptive term “Islamist totalitarians” to refer to the movement.

The piece is an excerpt from Gove’s recently published book, Celsius 7/7. The thrust of Gove’s article is that the enemy we face is, first and foremost, our old nemesis: totalitarianism. The jihadis are at war not only with the West, but with most of their co-religionists, whose version of Islam they consider fatally compromised and in need of revision, violent if necessary (and they deem violence to be necessary).

“Islamist totalitarianism” may indeed be the very best name of all for those who adhere to this vision, since it places the movement firmly in the twentieth/twenty-first century context in which it belongs, which is one of world dominance through force, and the negation of human freedom. That is why all totalitarian movements are, in their dark hearts, a reaction to and a profound rejection of the Enlightenment. Islamist totalitariansim is no exeption to this rule.

As Gove writes:

Islamism is a twentieth-century phenomenon. Like its sibling ideologies, fascism and communism, it offers followers a form of redemption through violence. Like fascism, Islamism envisages the creation of a purified realm purged of toxic outside influences and internal corruption. Like communism, Islamism is not ethnically exclusive, it seeks to enlist new converts through proselytisation, political education and military advances. Like both, it reserves a special hatred for the West, for political freedom the separation of the public and private realms, dissent, sexual tolerance and a belief in the sanctity of individual life. And like both it finds a dark and furious energy in hatred towards the Jewish people.

Politically correct thinking dictates that we respect all religions. When Islamist totalitarianism is described as the enemy, many have a kneejerk response that such thinking as anti-Moslem or racist in some way. But it is not. Make no mistake about it. The war the Islamist totalitarians have decreed is every bit as much against the everyday, garden-variety Moslem as it is against all the rest of us.