Pointing the finger first at ourselves

We're living in a world that we've created and we have no one but ourselves to blame. Our politics, economy and environment are all suffering from a lack of collective goodwill. Committed to ourselves instead of others, we've become a mob. The planet's suffering grows increasingly urgent and obvious with every passing day.

We all want the freedom that comes from democracy but no one wants to do the work. Jefferson said eternal vigilance was the price of liberty.

Our nation has always heralded individual rights and we all firmly believe what is right, in our Bill of Rights. Today, those who claim to support the rule of law are referred to as Constitutionalists, who are relegated to representation not in either major party but the Tea Party.

The Establishment should heed the will of the populace, which increasingly goes ignored. I guess if we were a pure democracy, our nation's policies and actions of our government would reflect the popular will. In framing the Constitution, the Founders feared government run solely by popular opinion, as this could easily fall prey to hysteria and hatred.

There are a few persistent violations of our Constitutional rights looming today. Our privacy is routinely violated. Corporations rule. The legal premise that all men are created equal should mean something. Corporations can't be people. Only people can be people.

We're being challenged in a number of ways, with our individual rights and freedoms under attack. We were told in the beginning of the age of Terror that our way of life made us a target, and to this day we're instructed to give up freedoms for security.

A nation of laws abides by the law but recent examples have shown that those with the money make the rules, a belief held by Macchiavelli, a great mind who lived in an age of greed and deceit not too different from today's.

We can blame culture for much of our self-inflicted misery. In our society, the prevailing attitude puts "me" above "we. Cocooned in an tapestry rich with marketing messages, individualism has devolved into unrepentant hyper-consumption.

The Boomer generation's lifestyle obsesses over luxury, and shopping, which brings only transient happiness. Spending makes one feel good but a lack of savings mean few will be prepared for retirement. We all know how easy it is to defer tomorrow's problems until tomorrow. I worry sometimes that the generations that follow the Boomers--a group to which I belong--has been tainted by so much crass consumerism. These days, movements towards self-reliance and re-localization are resurgent though.

Hard economic limits have emerged out of unchecked consumption, when the crash of 2008-9 dried out access to credit. Maybe the change, shock therapy though it may be, isn't such a bad thing after all. Simple as it may sound, we need to not spend to spend.

Yet the financial pain will continue, particularly for the middle classes decimated by falling real estate values, outsourcing, and high unemployment. Dependent on consumption-oriented financing, our economy now flails, drained of its chief source of sustenance, more debt. Our spendthrift, high-borrowing ways are repeated by our government. Like a borrower, our government spends money we don't have.

The burden of repayment--plus interest--falls to future taxpayers. Also, our government's excessive borrowing has led investor funds away from other worthy investments. In economic terms, this is called crowding out, a process whereby investors avoid riskier forms of debt (corporate, municipal) and instead go into bonds issued by our government.

For our government and private individuals, overspending--and its twin, over-borrowing--have forged an unsustainable path. We know things will get worse but how much worse will things have to get before they change? Until we stop the misbehaviors that have led us into the predicament we all share, the problems will only worsen, though their impacts might be delayed.

Another trend we've seen is that of neglect. Too much in our nation has been deferred. We've neglected our responsibility to leave future Americans a country in as good a shape as the nation we inherited.

Any society or person who puts off what can be done in the present is prone to ignore the effects of its procrastination. In our always-on, 24/7/365 world we do have good reasons for neglecting the future in favor of the immediacy of the present. There's so much to do, so much we think we need but really only want.

Environmental health and economic growth

The environment has been neglected, and we've seen this in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as in the ravaged mountains of Appalachia which have succumbed to mountaintop removal. We've been told by our representatives that regulation is bad, even if the companies they really represent systematically plunder the earth and deplete resources at unsustainable rates.

For a long time, economic growth has been posed as an either/or to economic growth. Judging by the massive BP oil spill, most of the damage is economic in nature. The millions of people whose businesses have suffered are the victims, right alongside the Gulf region and its wildlife. So the price of environmental neglect and pollution is economic more than anything, which makes assumptions about economic growth vs. the environment obsolete.

To keep economic growth, a new paradigm is emerging: sustainable growth. The extractive industries like mining and drilling need to practice sustainability or be force to practice it. Otherwise companies like BP will take unacceptable risks and damage the rights of others to utilize the seas, which are a shared resource, not the exclusive property of any one corporation.

A reckoning might not be that far off. Global warming could shorten vastly the time between what we do to the Earth and the consequences. With the combustion engine spewing out so much CO2, it's only a matter of time before the impact of too much CO2--heating--is felt in the environment.

Another one goes in the Gulf

Recent events are an indication that more environmental destruction is on the way. I just saw today that another well had blown up in the Gulf of Mexico. Reports are sketchy at the present, but I believe we'll see a pattern of regulatory violations--coupled with inadequate enforcement by Fedgov--that preceded that event.

We've all heard that Gulf oil drilling goes deeper and deeper, and all the risks associated with that, but the Norwegians don't seem to lose their deep water wells like we do, at a rate of 2/year or more.

How much of the ecological damage could have been prevented by adequate enforcement? I'm not going to guess. I will tell you that I don't dwell on "could" scenarios. It's pointless speculation. I'd rather dwell in certainties and try to limit timeframes. It is certain global warming is occurring. We see the effects what I call Global Climate Radicalization frequently.

We can hardly decide on what to call it--it being this odd potpourri of droughts, floods, storms, and forest fires. The "climate change" label is more accurate than calling it "warming" as we can anticipate heat but not the effects of heat. You just get a sense that something bad is out there. {For readers of my review of the movie The Road, we get a sense of some troubles out the window, where The Man (played by Mortensen) is illuminated by fires burning outside and shuts the window.

To give a good example, the link between mismanagement of forests and flooding is strongly established. Cut down the trees upstream and, surprise, you get more flooding downstream. Until a big rain comes--an event more likely with climate change--people can ignore the loss of vegetation. It's only when flooding worsens to apocalyptic levels that people can guess the a major compounding contributor: deforestation.

Apparently the horrible situation in Pakistan was made possible not by too much rain (as likely as that is in the New Normal) but by clandestine cutting of forests. If the environmental axiom that fewer tree=more flooding holds, then the failure to protect Pakistan's forests is a big deal. Now, and only now, with so many homeless, can the people and government address the need to protect their forests. This new direction will clearly face reactionary forces which exploit the corruptibility of officials in the Third World.

How soon before they forget? Or, to be blunt, how bad does it have to get before people start taking environmental protection seriously? Well, if the politicians aren't accountable, they might choose to ignore illegal deforestation, which makes future flooding not only worse but entirely preventable.

Another area where decay is evident is our infrastructure. I've seen no mention of bridge repair despite the horrific collapse of a major bridge in Minneapolis three years ago. The problem might not be that things are going wrong, but rather no one seems to be taking responsibility with preventing tragedies. All our politicians want to pose as if they're helping once the disaster strikes, but where is the leadership (and media spotlight) when it comes to the little but vital improvements that need to be continually made?

Our image-conscious politicians don't see much gain in infrastructure. The American people seem unwilling to make repair of our nation's crumbling infrastructure a top priority. Yes, you could blame people in "high places" for not "being the ones who start...to mold a new reality...closer to the heart," to borrow the song by Rush. But ultimately we must take individual responsibility regardless of what we've become as a people. Failing to maintain an infrastructure is a collective failure but it's people, not their leaders, who will bear the consequences.

We all know it's true: pollute one area too much and the land show it, toxins kill off crops, the vitality of the land diminishes and remediation becomes necessary, like all those SuperFund sites littering the U.S.. The timeframe between cause and effect appears to be shortening, courtesy of climate change. Years of pollution and inadequate management of resources makes the time of reckoning that much sooner. It's like the Lakota Sioux medicine man, Floyds Looks For Buffalo, who speak of a revenge by Mother Nature who's been so abused by man (Part 4 on youtube here.)

Like Floyd, I believe I have a responsibility to tell people of a coming event. I guess you could call it the medicine man in me. I think many people like me have been labelled tree-huggers, or conspiracy theorists, in an effort to diminish not our credibility but the validity of the truths we present. It's simply easier for a society that wants convenience to ignore the inconvenient, to marginalize those who would dare tell it it's wrong, or facing doom.

I can tell you for sure that we're facing economic consequences for over-consumption, this is true. I can also tell you that things will get worse, far worse, if we don't change. I guess the effectiveness of my message depends on how badly as a people want to hear what it is I'm saying.

Back by popular demand: the post-apocalypse

Looking at the movies I reviewed last month, it doesn't really matter whether people were warned of a coming apocalypse. No mention is made in the movies Book of Eli and The Road of what caused things to go bad. Once the bombs fall and food runs out, I guess who or what started it really doesn't matter much.

The popularity of movies in this genre today suggests people intuitively assume we're due to receive some really nasty rebuke from God. People may just assume this. Heck, it's nothing new, people have been drawn to tales of earthly destruction since the first storyteller spoke in front of the fire, telling tales of unimaginable horror and mayhem, capturing spellbound his audience and cementing the place of the apocalyptic story in human history forever.

If it's true that we are all linked to one another, it would therefore hold that we share our misery and our pleasure. As much as we'd like to build castles for ourselves, man is a social animal. We really can't excel without other people, and as big of a pain as others may often be, I guess we all need to get along. Mother Nature plays a vital role in linking us not only to each other but to the space we all share. In limiting us to one physical place, we are forced to examine the metaphysical and spiritual dimensions of our existence.

No such evaluation of where we stand as a society can ignore the importance of preserving our common humanity. I guess these apocalyptic movies serve an important purpose to transcend whatever horrors we face, and show how we can emerge from the apocalypse changed but perhaps wiser for it.

In The Book of Eli, they destroy the Bible, blaming it as a source of problems. I don't know if this act of destruction creates a new order, although the villain thinks rediscovering the Bible will. And Eli eventually reaches a place where a restoration of pre-apocalyptic technology and civilization appear inevitable.

In The Road, a new life awaits at the end of the road. We can see what's happened to the earth, cannibalism, etc., and it may frighten us but simultaneously the idea of a new start gives us hope. And hope is the light that can steer us out of the darkness. Unfortunately mankind just seems destined to screw things up, causing the apocalypse. We seem almost destined to self-destruct. But slowly, these stories tell us, we can laugh again, and live once more in a world that gives us a second chance despite our failings.

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Movie Review: The Road and Book of Eli

Warning: This post contains plot spoilers for these movies

These two movies depict a future America a state phrased by survivalblog.com as TETWAWKI, The End of the World as We Know it.

I was struck by the dreary, stunning yet foreboding imagery of The Road. The Road stars Viggo Mortensen, who reduces his weight precipitously to play the role. He escorts his son along a road to some hopefully better place.

In one scene, Mortensen's character swims out into the sea to scavenge a cracked up old rusty freighter. The blue-gray (always gray) waters are rough, surprisingly so for a completely naked Mortensen to swim to in a real world way. His low body weight must've made the scene hard to shoot, and dangerous.

We're not exactly sure what's caused the apocalyptic North America in The Road. Earthquakes and forest fires create a scorched out landscape, which is caught in Director John Hillcoat's cameras as a gray, soggy existence. Food isn't found; nothing is growing, nothing alive at least. (A beetle emerges in a later scene, an indicator that perhaps the Earth is recovering.) The only breathing things appear to be the humans themselves, who are scurrying around the wasteland looking to feed on anything whose path they cross.

As the pair go down the road to some undefined location, they encounter all sorts of unpleasantries--foremost among them, cannibalism. Starvation on an epic scale justifies the smorgasbord of human flesh.

In The Road, a heavily disguised Robers Duvall plays a small role as an almost Kurosawa-type/Taoist old-man-walking-alone role. Blind, of course, Duvall's character can see into the past and future like some itinerant sage. He represents both what the world was, and what it will be. I guess Mortensen and his son are striving to escape Duvall's fate but need to embrace the old man, to learn from the past mistakes of humankind, to not go back, or along The road. They leave it and its many dangers soon after.

In Denzel Washington's Book of Eli, America is a far different kind of place, though in both movies, cannibalism and lawlessness rule, although Gary Oldman, playing the evil Carnegie, does organize a town providing water, security, and barter.

Barter becomes the chief means of trading, just like we saw in Mel Gibson's Mad Max series, which has become the granddaddy of this expanding genre. The first stage in all these dystopia/post-apocalyptic movies is a breakdown of order--what I call Mad Max Level One--then the rise of gangs, graduating through to reestablishment of order, the rebirth of small towns like the aptly named Bartertown. In Eli, Carnegie takes the place of Tina Turner's Aunty Entity ruling over his private domain.

Eli's style contrasts with Mortensen's. Eli is a hardy adventurer-turned-crusader/guardian of The Book. At some previous point, Eli had received a message from the Holy Spirit that he was to take the Holy Book to the west, and his enemies would part before him, or something like that, clearing the route for Eli down the road to salvation and rebirth.

An atmosphere of fear plagues The Road, while Denzel rises above it like some superhero invulnerable to the many evildoers plaguing the post-apocalyptic world. Mortensen is anything but the hero, hiding and scampering and only reluctantly killing. He retains his humanity--perhaps because of his son--even as he slowly dies from injury and starvation. Eli never dips below his moral principles, which have come to him in a supernatural (believers would call it "divinely inspired") way.

Mortensen's character seems more possessed with simple survival, scampering away even from a stocked shelter out of fear when he hears scampering above. Which survival methodology is more probable? Well, Mortensen's is realistic, while Denzel's is pure Hollywood.

I was struck by similarities in The Book of Eli's world and the popular computer game series Fallout. Both have nuclear war as the force majeure causing TETWAWKI. In scorched out flatlands we see craters caused by nuclear warheads pockmarking the ground.

Radiation doesn't seem to plague the survivors much in Denzel's world, which is one where the Holy Bible has becomes a much-treasured item sought by Oldman's dark hero Carnegie to control minds and exert power. The Bible, you see, is blamed for much of the destruction, and every last copy burned by survivors of the Holocaust. Implausible though it might seem, the Bible that Eli (Denzel) carries is the last in the world. {Personally I found this premise unlikely considering 1), the number of Bibles in use today, and 2) the value of the Bible as a source of spiritual strength, which would be more in demand after than before the apocalypse.}

The Road is scary because we don't know how much time passes between the beginning of the crisis, which begins softly, as Mortensen draws the blinds against a nighttime sky lit red with fire, and the time he and his son leave on the road. In The Book of Eli, a whole new generation comes of age, referring to Eli and Carnegie as "old timers," who are a shrinking group.

The Road makes the impending trip a scary but unavoidable tragedy-simply for lack of food they must travel the dangerous road. Some time into the calamity, the wife of the man--we don't learn the name of Mortensen's character, nor hers--played by the beautiful Charlize Theron can't handle the gloom and wanders off into it.

The Road is the darker of the two. You leave the film in a bit of a downer. I guess it's the cannibalism, or to be more accurate, the dark symbolic imagery of cannibalism, the skulls on stakes here, the human captives locked in the basement, the cold callousness of tortured calls felt as much as heard when Mortensen and his son wait out in the dark, nearly becoming captives themselves.

It hit me after the film that it's cannibalism rising in such a world that bothers you. In Book of Eli, cannibalism is brought up slyly, with dark humor: a couple invites Eli and Solara into their house, serving them tea in a shaking-like-a-leaf-if-there-were-any- left way, which is apparently a symptom of some disease I'd never heard of before where you eat too much lean, red meat. I guess if the cannibals could only devour hungry humans, their meal items would likely be starving as well as provide a food source lacking much fat.

In the Book of Eli, Eli is checked for shaking hands by a guard at the entrance to Carnegie's town, demonstrating that cannibalism was reviled even by the robbers and rapists who frequented the town. In this regard, Hughes' world reconciles itself to ours a little more; the instincts of the townspeople are still humanist at their core, despite all the inherent post-apocalyspe divisiveness and individualist nature of survivalism.

Hope, the greatest treasure

If the sole purpose of these movies were to warn, they'd have done that excellently, at perhaps the price of a depressive experience for the reader/viewer. Instead Hillcoat and Eli's Hughes push a ray of optimism into the inherently dark backdrop--if not for the characters trudging through the wasteland, then their offspring and followers (in the case of Book of Eli, it's the pretty yet overly-self-confident-for-such-a-time-and-place Solara, played by Mila Kunis.)

Both movies do cradle hope at their core.Like any dystopia movies, expressed vividly are the uglinesses of the post-apocalyptic world. More subtle, yet beckoning, are the little glimpses into a future less stained by violence and destruction, a world where reconciliation is possible.

In The Book of Eli, the Bible ends up getting delivered to Alcatraz Island, where a small but committed team of re-constructionists attempt to assemble the knowledge lost from the pre-apocalyptic world. It's an effort at re-humanization we can all appreciate.

I saw on a Discovery special not too long ago about what would happen during times of starvation. Apparently people have been documented traveling vast distances as they starve. Often spiritual leaders arise who promise to lead "their people" to a "promised land." We know also that extreme hunger can cause delirium, hallucinations, and the like. So the notion of a long-distance march may be quite plausible in a dystopic environment, especially one driven by mystical or religious experience.

Some inner motor must lead us on, blindly during these times of starvation. In that sense the Exodus-like wanderings are a demonstration of faith, the inner experience of belief in hope. Instead of confined to the spiritual world, our physical longings are brought to reality through the unifying event, the Apocalypse, and all the woes it spawns--including of course hope in the infallibility of Nature and faith in our fellow man.

Dark future fantasies

I've always been a fan of movies like The Omega Man with Charlton Heston. In that movie, Heston is the sole surviving human immune from a virus, at least he thinks so until discovering others like him. One aspect of these kinds of movies are the circumstances under which these scenarios which could occur, and how the concordant dystopia would unfold, or society unravel: "how did we get there." We think of these thinks mostly to prevent them, I guess, or perhaps better cope with them should they happen, though how someone will react is anyone's guess.

Trying to determine a time that TETWAWKI occurs has become can be a bit of a challenge. I guess when law and order break down, and laws can no longer be enforced, we've entered Mad Max Level One. Gangs will rise in such an environment. Interestingly, we don't need an apocalypse to cause TETWAWKI; nor do we need a nuclear winter nor zombie/vampire takeover to start the dystopia ball rolling. TETWAWKI is a subjective experience: a child leaving their home could mean and an end to all their expectation of the world outside--if it's limited to that. We've had plenty hells on earth; they need not require much space at all--heck a serial killer's basement could provide the setting.

Once started, the dystopia ball gets rolling, and further acts of depravity increase as civilization breaks down. This is the lesson of both movies, the dark specter of fear that colors the stories in each. We cringe at the the thought of losing what we hold dear: it's a threatening notion that strikes us on a personal level. It's not so much the actual apocalypse that gets us, and provides a compelling story line, but the shocking realities that ensue. We enter these movies not as voluntary Mary Poppins-style wanderers down the Yellow Brick Road of endless smiles but instead are pulled, dragged...unwilling prisoners to the dark side of our nature.

The idea of dystopia makes for good entertainment precisely because we want to see--deep down inside of some repressed part of ourselves--Nature exact some vengeance. George Carlin sums it upped magnificently in his video clip (from 3m15sec on), Saving the Planet as well as in his HBO special, Life Worth Losing, unavailable on youtube at the moment. People are drawn to natural disasters because they want to experience their mortality, or to contradict the arrogant notion that people are masters of their universe. Floods and calamities are Nature's way of getting back, or so Carlin iterated.

Deep down inside, we may all dread yet almost expect calamity to strike. Disaster films have grown more popular with scenarios of global warming, asteroid collisions, and similar issues, some of which humanity can endure. It's the purpose of a movie to entertain, so rare it is to see a movie where all the humans die off...I can't think of any titles. The Road comes close to killing all hope as you develop a personal attachment to the survivors. It's hard to wish anyone dead, but dying is a typical condition in a post-apocalyptic world. The movie 2012, which I saw recently as well, echoes the theme of worldwide calamity, yet even there Africa survives even if America doesn't.

The 70s saw a jolt of these movies: Airport7_, The Poseidon Adventure, etc. (see a list of here, about halfway down.) The idea of getting wiped out en masse has been central to entertainment for some time.

Perhaps there's some auto-response in our brains that let's us accept death, should it come through some wild event affecting us all simultaneously. Maybe the shock of the attack releases a surge of serotinin or some naturally biological response takes over, kind of like what's thought to happen to animals killed and eaten alive on the African savannah. Observing these victims in their death throes, the animals often seem quite docile despite what must be an immense desire to flail and kick.

Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) References:

The Book of Eli

The Road

The Omega Man

Complete synopses for the movies are available at all links.

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Hollywood fantasy or dark future reality? The movie Children of Men reviewed

I recently saw the movie Children of Men, based on a novel by P.D. James, directed by Alfonso Cuaron. For those interested in seeing the movie, you may want to avoid this review until you've seen Children of Men; I've tried to avoid spoiling surprise where I can.

The futuristic world is England in the year 2027. The future James paints is one of totalitarian-type governments. According to the plotline within the story, the world endures a series of cataclysmic events beginning with a flu pandemic in 2008.

War on terror themes run throughout in the sets. One banner reads: "Alone, Britain soldiers on."

Immigrants have lost their rights in the movie and are herded into refugee camps, one a converted coastal city reserved for immigrants. We do not know the extent to which citizens and non-citizens are treated once they've entered the system; we get the feeling the people simply disappear, regardless of nationality.

In the tradition of apocryphal works, Children of Men depicts a world that has given upon hope because it's lost its children.Children of Men is cast in a time when women can no longer have children.

The movie begins with media coverage of the death of the world's youngest man, "...Diego Ricardo, the youngest person on the planet, the youngest person on earth was 18 years, 4 months, 20 days, 16 hours, and 8 minutes old" represented the world's most recently born person, grown to adulthood.

The world's next youngest person--a woman--then assumes the title of world's youngest person and receives the accompanying celebrity.

Theo Faron (Clive Owen) tries to complete his mission--one not of his choosing but rather one assigned him by his former beau, played by Julianne Moore.

Retired (and well cast) Michael Caine, who plays a retired political writer Jasper Palmer, who's friends with Faron. There, in an isolated homestead which offers the solace of solitude, Caine grows pot while tending his catatonic wife.

A quick scan of Palmer's desk reveals a posted newspaper clipping of a 2008 Award as best political writer, and shows an article with a picture of a traumatized woman, accompanied by the headline "Woman Claims Torture." From the blank stare and silence of Palmer's wheelchair-bound wife throughout the movie, we are left wondering as to the cause of her condition.

Some past dark secret in their lives speaks of their lives spent in decline and isolation, yet they have each other. Dark skies brood over the English moors that surround the country cottage, evil encroaching from a society gone mad.

Children of Men is about a world that devalues human dignity, degrades the value of human life, and even supplies them with free Suicide Kits, advertised under the Quietus brand (a concoction of rat poison which is perfectly legal, according to Caine's character Palmer, although pot remains illegal).

What began as a national effort to expel immigrants ends up affecting all, citizen and non-citizen alike, who must contend with the savagery of the anti-government forces. In other words, no one is safe.

A movie like Children of Men succeeds by casting a compelling picture of a future of a dire and dying world.

The saddening picture probably won't brighten any viewer's day, but some among us do have a curiousity concerning end-of-times events and sequences and are drawn to these kinds of stories. Somewhat pathetically, we enjoy contemplating the possibilites that would have to concur in order to bring that world into being.

We skeptics tend to guard our disbelief, and view realism as a vital plot ingredient.

My Inner Omega Man

Cataclysmic compositions have long been a fascination of mine, and I feel drawn to the bittersweet isolation of one man or a few in a world of chaos, anarchy, or zombiefication. One of the first and best of these movies is Charleton Heston's The Omega Man; the Planet of the Apes series also helped plant the apocalyptic theme in me.

I'm not much into Costner's Waterworld and Postman or Romero's zombie movies, but I do respond to some of more plausible future scenarios like those painted in Children of Men, although a world like that depicted in the movie may be equally illusory when its main premises are considered. The fewer the number of implausible events in the futuristic society, the easier it is for me to enter into the escapism that I seek out of these kinds of films.

I don't want to dwell too long on the macabre elements in the movie, because many of these movies are sensationalized, in typical Hollywood style.

Hollywood is often tempted to take shortcuts and other deus ex machina plot devices which can stretch whatever realism might be there into the realm of fantasy. Unlike novelists, movie-makers do have the heavy burden of creating a visual pantheon in order to sustain the alternate world created out what were formerly just words.

I also just saw The Last King of Scotland, where a young Scottish doctor Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, played by James McAvoy, becomes Idi Amin's personal physician and adviser. No such doctor existed; still, the creation of the mythical doctor offers a bridge into Amin's personal life--a character with whom the audience can identify and sympathize not only with the doctor, but Amin as well.

To be credible as a form of entertainment for the skeptics among us, the movie's environment can be theoretical yet must also be plausible. Historical precedent might not matter to all or even most of the viewers, but plausibility is central to believability for fans of apocalyptic works like me.

It's hard for viewers like me to imagine the future world if lacks realism. In explanation of early effort to create a matrix from the second movie in that series, designers of the first matrix had lost entire "crops" because the world they'd created had been too full of love and happiness, and thus too unrealistic for those whose brains were wired into the Matrix.

The world of Children of Men is frighteningly plausible in all regards except perhaps the loss of children from our planet--a point made clear when main character Theo Faron (Owen) wanders through a rotting, vine-infested school barely recognizable save for long-idled student desks.

Plausibility of the Scenario

Premise #1 for the movie is deportation and sequestration of non-British nationals.

Raids are now taking place in the US by Immigration Customs Enforcement, which cast detainees in prisons awaiting deportation, separating them from loved ones over sometimes vast distances. In an article originally posted in American Prospect, David Beacon's "The Story of the Smithfield Raid" follows the enforcement crackdown.

One such workplace raid occured in the Smithfield meat processing plant in North Carolina. Beacon explains:

That day, the migra (agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Homeland Security Department) picked up 21 people while trying not to alert the rest of the plant's laborers. One by one, supervisors went to Mexicans on the line. You're needed in the front office, they'd say. The workers would put down their knives, take off their gloves and walk through the cavernous building to the human resources department. There, ICE agents took them into custody, put them in handcuffs and locked them up in a temporary detention area. Later, they were taken out in vans and sent to immigration jails as far away as Georgia.

Bacon goes on to talk about the possible motivations for the raid, which could well have been to bust up unionization efforts. He explains:

...organizing efforts, and not the 21 detained workers, were the real target of the raid. Mark Lauritsen, packinghouse director for the United Food and Commercial Workers, says the Department of Homeland Security and the company "were worried about people organizing a union, and the government said, 'Here are the tools to take care of them.'"

In the Smithfield case, union activity and efforts to raise awareness concerning worker rights and safety conflict with a corporate agenda.

Anti-immigration sentiments run strong in much of the far Right-wing. However, Republicans have been reluctant to heartily combat the flow of illegal immigrants.

Democrats are broadly thought to be more sympathetic to the plight of illegals; it's no coincidence that Hispanic voters are predomimantly Democratic voters: converting illegals into voters would likely create more Democrats, unless of course Republicans can outshine the potential new voters by offering amnesty or better terms, perhaps like a antiwar Republican might pander to the Democratic base.

Hispanic political influence dominates both parties. Xenophobic tendencies could be exacerbated in a time of economic chaos or catastrophe; whether a more radical approach might be the possible under Republican or Democratic leadership remains unclear.

Select immigration raids could well evolve into broader sweeps. Such a radical approach would reduce illegal immigration, but many corporations believe in the benefits to their bottom line of hiring illegals, saving on labor costs, and dodging pesky unionization.

It remains to be seen whether the corporate interests exploiting cheaper labor will continue to shape our immigration policy.

Often, corporate interests trump worker concerns; the two groups are on opposite ends of the burgeoning political divide in this country. Our government's willingness to let corporations dictate and influence policy also plays contrary to the interest of its citizens.

A big part of the corporate influence in American politics today is about protecting the financial interests of--as Marx would put it--"owners of the means of production."

Many corporations want the floodgates of America opened to cheaper labor, illegal or not. Many technology companies easily fill H1-NB Visa quotas and demand more, so they support immigration. Employers on the higher-end of the wage scale (at least for immigrant labor) are more legally bound to legitimatize the employee credentials through the organized worker importation program.

Lower skilled illegal immigrants go most likely to jobs where they can be paid in cash and made part of the invisible economy. The complexities of registering all US employees, as ICE intend to do under a new system, faces mammoth logistical issues in addition to privacy concerns, legal issues, and political obfuscation.

The Power of Race

Minorities disenfranchisement is nothing new, interesting in Bacon's article is the level of solidarity between blacks and Latinos, so the conjoined political influence of those groups cannot be underestimated by either party. Both have fought racism; the inherently anti-Mexican dictate of ICE actions makes the two groups natural allies, who between them would have a combined and rising 70 million people or so.

Terrorism could trigger round-ups, but the Mexicans aren't likely to commit such acts, nor would Mexicans be associated with terrorism. Far more likely is some economic chaos, which would exacerbate racial tensions. Even then, huge contingents of politically connected African Americans and Latinos would make politicians pay a huge price at the polls.

Economic issues could provide a pretext for deportation. In The Last King of Scotland, Amin expels all "Asians"--predominantly long-term residents from the Indian subcontinent, many of whom had been born in Uguanda.

Amin feared the political influence posed by the dominance of so-called "Asians" in the Uguandan economy. As a wealthier and better educated segment of society, Amin labelled exploitation of Africans by so-called Asians as the source of Uguanda's economic problems.

In effect, Western societies are made up by ethnic groups; destroying the immigrant communities would mean destroying members of similiar ethnicity. This isn't to say immigrants have been fully assimilated; it's simply hard to believe that legal immigrants would stand idly around as their illegal brethren are deported and/or hauled off to camps.

Even now Hispanic influence certainly impacts immigration policy. Under a new bill, citizenship has been offered as part of an amnesty would make illegal Latinos a potentially dangerous political enemy in the many regions of our nation with a large Hispanic presence.

Polls suggest anti-immigrant opinion lies in a good chunk of the population, but a majority appears to favor immigration reform that would allow citizenship and tolerate amnesty. Could the majority voice be quashed in favor of a broad immigration crackdown? Perhaps not, with the political influence Hispanics wield and would presumably exert on behalf of their illegal brethren.

Wholesale deportation would be difficult if not impossible as a result of logistical and moral challenges. Hispanics in the military would undoubtedly have problems following orders like the soldiers in Children of Men. Still the world has seen plenty of examples of inner-racial violence.

Large-scale deportation would have to be militarized, as Katrina has shown us that no one else in the Federal government is capable of managing a refugee crisis, much less engineering a "solution". Still, the prominence of minorities in our military limits the upper capabilities of effectiveness of any enforcement.

Artificially created disasters might be alllowed to purge one area of its inhabitants--like a neutron bomb, without the radioactivity. The wake of Katrina has seen a large increase in the numbers of Hispanics in New Orleans. African-Americans may make up less of the city's population, although it's not clear if the black economy is threatened by illegal immigrantion, or how many will return. We also don't know how thoroughly the city will be rebuilt, most notably how much the government appears willing to do to help predominantly African-American portions of the city which still lie devastated.

Hypothetically, inhabitants deemed more friendly to the regime (or more necessary to its recovery) could then be introduced while its former inhabitants languish in refugee camps, or are geographically dispersed. Numbers reduced, they lose political influence in the affected region or control over the land they formally inhabited: we say they've been ethnically cleansed.

Premise #2: Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing

Director/screenwriter Cuaron offers an ultra-realistic combat scene in the end, with an extraordinary munitions display. The superior camerawork envelops the viewer in the intense action sequences which are quite horrifying in their realism. Adjusting to the jiggling, hand-held camera was hard at first, until later action scenes where it immerses you into the intense violence.

This week has shown us violence coming from one such refugee camp in Lebanon, which are as I understand it, horrific and violent places not far removed from concentration camps of the Nazi era: except perhaps that the detained have guns. While there may be no genocide by the governments running the camps, the systematic rape of human dignity is a common element.

The treatment of Arabs stands out in Children of Men. We do see a "Allah Akbur" procession of angry Islamists in the movie, who actually carry a French flag in what must be some symbol of cross-channel significance.

The government's treatment of non-British nationals subsists on the premise that one group should be identified and cast out of British society. Muslims are in this respect the Jews of Nazi Europe, as they are easily stereotyped, already disenfranchised and seen as outside the mainstream cultural values of "citizens".

These examples are most troubling when viewed in their historical context: It's the progression that's frightening; what begins as a limited ethnic cleansing devolves into broader killing. "First, they came for the Jews," Pastor Niemoller's saying goes.

Jews were purged at first, with more mainstream sources of resistance targetted for elimination later, after the regime had begun its genocide. Next were the trade unionists, homosexuals, priests, gypsies, mentally ill, not in any particular order, though that too may have been carefully orchestrated in order to reduce discalm that would certainly accompany any ethnic cleansing as the number of persecuted groups expanded to reflect whatever the twisted objective sought through the genocide.

In The Last King of Scotland, Idi Amin is driven ever deeper into genocide, thrust onward by his paranoia, which builds during the course of the movie. Towards the climax, Amin is killing entire villages of rival tribes, women and childen too.

There's no denying governments can go to extremes, so the historical precedent is there. Yet it's virtually impossible for a government to kill off vast numbers of people, with a few exceptions, notable in Rwanda and Cambodia--both more primitive societies than ours or England's.

The Nazis rose to power in a German democracy, so the ascent of genocidal regimes is possible in the secular West. But if the Nazis are taken as an example of ruthless efficiency in their genocidal campaign, even they failed to rid themselves of all Jews and they had years to do it. We don't know how long the deportations have been going on in Children of Men.

For the US or Britain to root out their illegals would be a multi-year task, and certainly lack the efficiency of the Nazi death machines. As resistance to the deportation and confinement of immigrants rose, a larger body of persons classified as undesirables or enemies of the state would grow and compound the logistical problems involved in finding and transporting victims, even if ovens were waiting for them.

The instant emptying of Phnom Phen by the Khmer Rouge upon their seizure of that city in 1975 provides an extreme example of instanteous genocide, herding the people out of the city, giving them an hour, as I heard said while I was there. Starvation over the long-term contributed to a large proportion of the fatalities--the re-education camps were mismanaged collectives first and killing fields second; in the eyes of the Khmer Rouge, starvation saved a bullet.

Governments are open to extreme measures in an attempt to identify potential counter-revolutionaries. Extremists on the fringe left like Maoists may possess an even more paranoid vision of a new order. As Nicholas Cage says in Merchant of Death, the worst groups were those with the name "Liberation" in their title; these guerillas take their violent solutions with them into government.

Few regimes could commit genocide on a scale of the Khmer Rouge; still the callous objectivity and flippant decision by which boy soldiers determined who of the newly conquered lived and died reminds us of Holocaust movies. In Schindler's List, the Nazi death camp officer played by Ralph Fiennes executes camp prisoners from afar with a sniper rifle--an arbitrary act of execution meant on establishing the alternate reality that all in the camp laboring below must be constantly working, and not idle, which could be result in execution; a twisted code but a code based on logic nonetheless, perverse as it might be.

History has seen constant purges, and we see this behavior worldwide. Western governments have a tradition of leniency on immigration, so the capacity for ethnic cleansing appears quite low.

Premise #3: Government Abuse of Authority

In Children of Men, what begins as a national effort to expel immigrants ends up affecting all, citizen and non-citizen alike, who must contend with the savagery of both pro- and anti-government forces. In other words, no one is safe.

It's not what may happen in the future that makes us fear Children of Men's world, but rather the plausibility of what we already know our governments to be doing.

A Children of Men world is indeed possible, and the War on Terror provides us a present-day bridge into an Orwellian future.

Opposition to torture and the mistreatment of minorities and immigrants stands out in the movie. The abuse of authority has becomes a rationale for violence against government, which perpetuates the cycle of violence.

Early in the movie, we can only guess how badly the State mistreats its citizens. Later, as the plot unfolds we get a fuller picture of an Orwellian state ethnically cleansing its population; we come to doubt that the purge is limited to immigrants.

I suppose this slow parting of the curtains of secrecy is a dramatic device meant to gradually expose the deep and dark functionings of government, only after government extremism is put in context of revoultionary actions taken by anti-government partisans, whose bombings and violence demonstrate inhumanity to their fellow man on a standard of morality no better than the soldiers and police.

Resistance to mistreatment and disenfranchisement is a popular theme for anti-establishment movies, which Children of Men must be considered. It's against the totality of the state's power and the subjugation of the individual to it that the movie viewer must revolt.

State power makes an old familiar target, and anarchist and revolutionary types will certainly revel in the resistance to the imposition of State power upon the individual as it is depicted in the Children of Men. Yet by going into the hearts of partisans, we see no virtue--the self-defined revolutionaries are shown to be power-hungry and vicious, as cold and calculating as the organ of any government body could ever hope to be.

The Terror War has increased the probability of a Children of Men world. Civil liberties have been restricted, wiretapping arbitraily conducted. Perhaps the frightening part isn't necessarily how far our State has become in the measures of totalitarianism, but instead the direction which the war on terror and attack on individual rights are taking us, towards a society ruled by racism, fear, and paranoia.

England has wired its cities with integrated Closed Circuit cameras which undoubtedly fuel fear of a police state. In the US, distinctions between citizens and non-citizen are increasingly ignored in the surveillance society of today. 9/11 became both motive and opportunity to impose restrictions on Constitutional liberties in the name of fighting terror.

Here or in Britain, both nations are headed in a direction where minorities and terrorism suspect have lost legal rights which be a first timid step towards the wholesale dismantling of our legal system.

Bush's use of signing statements, the politicization of the Iraq War, and the continuing illegal eavesdropping have sent obvious signals that the Executive seeks to assert its supremacy. Congress would be turned into a debating society. Our laws have become subject to limitations, exceptions, and circumventions at the whim of the Executive solely responsible for enforcing the law.

Coupled with acts of terrorism, there is a potential for declaration of martial law. Post-Katrina, we've seen a federalization of our states' National Guards and the passage of the Military Commissions Act, which basically codifies the President's right to control any military element in any way he sees fit.

A change in the form of government and complete breakdown in the rule of law has not come. We simply aren't there yet, and the advance of time cannot bring a Children of Men world to us, at least not without more undermining of our legal codes.

Premise #4 - Breakdown in Order; Abuses of Human Dignity

Economic collapse and anarchy are rather ordinary expectations in cataclysmic literature. Advancing to a post-apocalyptic scenario requires breakdowns in law and society, or a precipitating event like terrorism or the ever popular experiment-gone-wrong.

Starting a string of unfortunate events in Children of Men was a global flu pandemic in 2008, an event certainly within the realm of possibility.

Economic woes provide a necessary context for the anarchy that ensues to make the threat credible. To be specific, the threat must be real in the present, and foreseeable in the not too distant future.

Mel Gibson's Mad Max is a good example of a downward spiral from the first movie's simply ineffectual Halls of Justice, introducing the need for vigilanteism, followed by groups fighting over resources for their survival in the second movie. The third, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome issues in an alternate society with rules forged by the brutality of survival in a post-apocalyptic world.

Children of Men lets us imagine the events that led to the genesis of its world, flashes of horrific visions of violence and destruction. Children of Men leaves most of the breakdowns in society to the imagination of the viewer.

I thought back to the "experimental aversion therapy" (imdb.com review) dispensed upon Alex de Large (Malcolm McDowell) in Clockwork Orange, whose eyelids are forced apart as he's forced to view for hours on end in a twisted effort to purge young Alex of his inner evil.

Children of Men speaks for the frailty of human dignity. Viewers might be enraged by the treatment of detainees in the movie, which parallels the prisoner abuse at the hands of our government in the War on Terror.

In one scene of overpowering force, a devoutly Christian woman, Miriam, is confronted, then "detained" as their bus passes through security into a refugee camp. The bus stop is a surrealist, Auschwitz-type environment. The scene ends with the bus pulling out as a black sack is cast around Miriam's head.

The cruelty Miriam faces forces reexamination of viewer reactions to the treatment of enemy combatants in Guanatamo and Abu Ghraib.

The movie advocates sympathy for the problem of prisoner abuse here and now, in places like Guantanamo, and with the treatment of terrorism suspects like Jose Padilla.

By thrusting the viewer in a future world of hopelessness, or chaos, and evil, we can better recognize the slippery path which we've taken. Anticipate the evils we could face in the future, encourages actions here and now, and leaves us less inclined to remain detached from our all-too-possible fate.

I would say the movie's purpose is not to show the world as it might be, but rather to warn us what it could become, and show that love for one another can eclipse even the darkest hate that life might bring us.

By showing the depths to which society can depreciate, we feel compelled to take action now, to confront the threat of dehumanizing each other with racism, which is the dark root of ethnic cleansing, a systematic process of depopulating a region based on its ethnic makeup.

Dismantling the Children of Men world before it comes becomes an moral imperative. If we tolerate the rise of an oppressive government, we're collectively guilty--ultimately we will all pay consequences.

In the end, the movie sends morally uplifting messaging in its embrace of hope for the human race, representing the return of child-birth and -rearing to the world. There is hope, even in the depravity of the future world created in Children of Men.

One of my initial reactions to Children of Men was that I should prepare for the worst case scenario laid out in the movie--a sort of reaction similar to that motivating builders of bomb shelters. Yet before too long I realized I couldn't hide from such a world, were it to come true. Who can remain preserved indefinitely in a cocoon of safety when a civilization starts to unravel? No one is safe, not even the Omega Man. We all get bitten.

At a certain point, it matters little to ordinary citizens whether by society had broken down through neglect, Nazi-like totalitarianism or simply fanaticism like that of the Khmer Rouge. Eventually all the citizenry suffers regardless of their status within the State.

The more I thought about the plausibility of massive deportations, the less plausible I imagined the Children of Men to be in the United States, which removed some of the movie's plausibility and thus it's impact. Still, who's to say what's possible, considering the current trend towards government abuse of authority, extralegality, and militarism, which coupled with some economic catastrophe, pandemic, and/or acts of terror could bring such a world much closer.

Other Sources

A 2007 documentary titled "Children of Men; Visions of the Future" is available; I plan to see it as well.


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