Arlington's Dialectic

I do not know if Mark Pellington earned his directorial skills on Oliver Stone's knee, but his transitional Arlington Road is a dangerous film in ways that have nothing to do with the orchestrated plausibility of collusion. It opens with a riveting bracket of Mason Gamble as a child, hobbling along the road, minimally lucid, with voice overs by the scout troop Robbins and Cusack use for indoctrination that seem to suggest the Fenimore's were going to sacrifice the boy as collateral damage, or that the boy got caught in the explosion of a terrorist act. Pellington may have wanted to depict Brady as an evocative Holocaust victim, or he may have wanted to reclaim traumatic war images, for those of us with long memories. The burn injury to the arm suggests as much. When it comes to Ruby Ridge, my memory is as obligatory as the next, and whitewashed the tragic turn of events, though the congressional inquisition that litigated the event was as much strum and drag as any other congressional inquisition before or since: the impeachment over an ejaculation stain, the sexual harassment allegations of Anita Hill, the deposing of Oliver North, and now, the latest boffing of David Petraeus may have led to compromised intelligence. Well, hello Dolly. I do remember Oklahoma City and Timothy McVeigh vividly, and Bridges' character is damaged by the consequences of federal overreach, then destabilized by conspirators more proficient than the federal agents trained to police such reactionaries, and then he was sacrificed to the truth, and both Pellington and Phoebe Hoban, writing about Mia and Woody, intimate this truth can elude the most rigorous public exposure. Do I believe in the Tim Robbins character? Not for a second; if he was that good, why not just run for office and put tea party conservatives in charge, but I do believe in Pellington's contention that human ineptitude leads to institutional burrowing. I do not believe in Petraeus. He salvaged, rather than saved, a war in Iraq that should never have been fought, and despite the fact that he is probably a competent manager modeled on Eisenhower, we all know Afghanistan will wind up as a travesty of blood and treasure. In hyperbolic mode in the first year on my other account, I suggested this sorry excuse of a country be nuked, but in more brutalist fashion, if you really want to pacify a territory, then you not only occupy it, but divide and govern it, much like fascist Germany became East and West until the collapse of Stalinism. W43, the cowboy cheese puff, wasn't going to waltz that bride to the altar, and Obama underestimates the tenacity of zealots. Extremists put Afghan girls in my high school class in the latter days of the Carter Administration in 79. By 2020 my sister's younger children will be spoon fed the same refugee dosage, because we have lost the stomach for ruthlessness. Paula Broadwell seemingly put all her passion into a belief, and much as I did thirteen years ago, lost her composure when that idealist bubble seemed about to be pierced. I am sitting here laughing because not 72 hours after Messiah Obama seals his legacy, his new term is rocked by a cat fight over who possesses the rights to sexually feast the American Achilles.

Earlier in the summer, I reacted to Greg Zacharias admonishing me on the James list when I was trying to be witty about spam. He wrote, in context, that the spam filter was not a conspiracy against me, most likely because I used the phrase "collusion of peers" in factual innocence, but the subtext in the public transmission between us was this: I was riffing the man, playfully, subversively perhaps, to suggest, "well, I am a Jamesian and belong in this club". And the subtext of his retort, that what I wrote was silly, was, "no you don't; you forget your place." My brother used the same rebuff, that the family was in a conspiracy against me, because I saw a united front, uncle aunt, sister and grandmother, telling me I belong in a home, as something from which I needed legal protection, and much like the stalwart Bridges in the film, I am damaged, but I am not wrong. If I stop fighting, if I lay down my head and do not force Liberty to accept responsibility for bad acts, and some denial, as well, I'll be as burned as this besotted woman, who is evidently about to be torched, but I also want centers like Liberty eliminated. They waste your time and your money. You don't have to trust me on that, simply look at the evidence. Romney may have been a poor candidate, a shoddy conservative, but liberalism is just as eroded. How inflammatory do I have to be for the FBI to give me a file? Thrilling notion, isn't it?