I can't do it.

To my dearest daughters,

I tried. We all did. I don't know when you'll read this or if you'll even understand it when you do, but accept that we tried. We played the game according to the rules, and really, if we are honest with ourselves, we must believe that the other guys did as well.

I hope everything is okay where you are. I don't know if you'll be dating a man or a woman when you read this, but I hope wherever you are it's not a felony to be in love in the privacy of your own home. I hope that you have access to birth control. I hope that, if you need them, you can find social services that don't demand you pray to a god you don't believe in before you can receive help. I hope that you can buy a book without wondering if some government database somewhere has flagged you as a troublemaker. I hope you can listen to music at home and wherever you work without having to pay for it twice. I hope you can say what you want in your own blog without being afraid.

I hope that the taxes you're paying to cover the debts my generation accrued aren't so burdensome. I hope you can afford fresh fruits and vegetables even so. I hope there's more than one brand available in your neighborhood. I hope you have access to health care and insurance where you work.

Every nation has its day and then the curtains begin to drop. In 2004, we elected the stagehand with the drawstring. The slow, inevitable slide into national extinction began on my watch. The flame of liberty guttered before my eyes.

I hope someday, you'll forgive us all for not doing more.

Nothing made me want to puke more...

Then reading Bill "I don't know when to hold 'em" Bennett crowing that Bush's re-election is "a mandate for cultural change," and then reading his statement (which NPR repeatead) that "more than half of the people who voted for Bush cited moral values as their reason for voting for him." Bennett claims that Bush "restored decency to the White House."

What a narrow, horrible notion of dencency. Apparently, "decency" means not screwing with an intern, but screwing a country instead. Bush has pandered like a two-dollar-whore to every pressure group with the finances necessary to make its voice heard. The steel folks got what they wanted until the automakers were getting screwed, then Bush backed off. The farmers are still getting subsidies. Drug and insurance companies are getting their subsidies. The day before the election, Bush signed a bill defining engineering contractors as "manufacturers" for tax-break purposes. Other than those getting the benefits, there is not a single voice calling the bill "good policy."

And so on. It is indecent when our tax codes are not neutral to all parties. It is indecent when our intellectual property laws are not neutral towards the commons. It is indecent when our civil rights laws are abrogated in the name of some nebulous but ineffective security. It is indecent when the Supreme Court is on the verge of adopting the Bork principle that "the moral gratification of the many outweighs the personal gratification of the individual." It is indecent that we left in office a man who prosecuted and continues to prosecute an unjust war.

[Review] Ghost In The Shell: Innocence

Okay, so last night, rather than stay tense and watch the election returns, I watched Ghost In The Shell: Innocence And my principle reaction was: WTF‽

Innocence is a beautiful movie. It is a combination of CGI and traditional animation that is set about a year after the incidents in Ghost In The Shell, which is itself set a few years after Stand Alone Complex. Although all of the production teams involved claim that GitS, SAC, and the comic aren't related, it's clear that the characters of Ishikawa and Aramaki in the movie are heavily informed by the SAC series. There's also some material from the comics, but revealing what would be a spoiler.

This movie is heavily into philosophy. The characters argue with each other about what it means to be human, to be a robot, to be on the verge of the one with the other. In Shirow's universe there is a soul, an identifiable but irreproducible and unfathomable thing within the human being that grants us our free will. There are arguments about whether or not a robot would or should want such a thing, and there are discussions about whether or not you can be human without it. All around, for me at least, an utterly fascinating summation of everything I've been writing about for the past four years. I plan to watch it again very soon, this time with my finger on the pause button and a notebook in my lap.

The movie does have its slow movements. The filmmakers went a bit overboard with the "see how gorgeous CGI can be!" pauses. Remember in the first movie when Kusanagi went for a walk in the rain, and the scene was all about her trying to "find herself," her own identity, in amongst all the creatures who had the label "Kusanagi"? The core of that scene was the soundtrack, which was a reprise of the chant opening, and the scene was thematically important to the movie. That scene is lavishly reproduced in Innocence, but instead of being about anything it's just a CGI showcase of a parade through which Batou and Tosuga have to pass. Nifty, but thematically insignificant to the whole of the film.

Deep, rich, beautiful, and perplexing, with a simple police procedural plot driving the question of "who are we?", Innocence is either a love-it or hate-it film. I give it four out of five.

Ah, the Onion laughs shrilly

After all of the recriminations, infighting, and general madness before the election, the people of this fractured nation still found the courage to show up at the polls," said Anas Salman, an Afghan U.N. official who was in New York during the American electoral experiment. "More than half of America's citizens-- a large portion of them women-- made a valiant attempt to choose their own leader, even though there was no guarantee their votes would be counted. It was truly inspirational.

U.S. Inspires World with Attempt at Democratic Election

I needed that.

Two quotes of the day

Bill Hicks once told a story about an American friend of his who complained about the USA. When told, "well, if you don't like it then move somewhere else" the friend's reply would be, "What? And become a victim of our foreign policy?" (via BoingBoing)

And from Lawrence Lessig comes this quote: "I'm going to spend time these next few days looking for the America in my heart. It may be a while before I see it anywhere else."