THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : The Drumpf Affair and Little Bill Maher's Power Fetish

ESTIMATED READING TIME: 10 MINUTES

This is the second article in our new series THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST, where we monitor tv's political comedians and hold them accountable. The original article, Court Jester as Propaganda Tool, can be found HERE.

There has been a great deal of chatter about John Oliver's latest episode of his HBO show Last Week Tonight and Oliver's "masterful takedown" of all things Donald Trump. I think the episode is noteworthy, but not for the same reason others seem to think so. I believe the episode is noteworthy because it lays bare, not just the vacuousness of Donald Trump, but also the vapidity of Brave Sir John and his flaccid humor.

The problem with Oliver's Drumpfening, is not that he attacked Donald Trump, who has been a boil on the ass of America for over thirty years, but rather that he only diagnosed the symptom (the boil) and not the disease (the corrupt establishment) from which it sprang. This is John Oliver's modus operandi, he zeros in on a very specific, and frankly, insignificant issue, and self-aggrandizingly beats it death, all the while whistling past the graveyard of the bigger looming issue. It is this larger issue, the disease if you will, that needs to be addressed, ridiculed and dissected, not the superficial symptom. 

Oliver's Trump episode exposes his adamant and willful ignorance of the larger, more pressing issues from which these smaller issues come. The Egyptian economic crisis is a perfect example. Oliver made fun of Egyptian President el-Sisi and his opulent arrival via a $200,000 red carpet to an event where he tells Egyptians that there must be spending cuts to basic services in  order to save money as the country goes through economic hardship. Oliver followed up with a scathing attack on a tongue-in-cheek el-Sisi speech where he tells Egyptians that they can "sell him" in order to raise money. It was funny because it is such an obvious display of corruption and narcissism on the part of El-Sisi. Oliver rightly took the leader to task for such nonsense. What Oliver didn't do…was take the United States to task for being the ones behind putting El-Sisi into power and keeping him there.

A brief history lesson shows us that the U.S. backed the brutal dictator Hosni Mubarek for decades until he was overthrown by the "Arab Spring" protests. A democratic election followed that put the Muslim Brotherhood in charge of Egypt. This was unacceptable to the U.S. and it's ally Israel, so the U.S. quickly went about undermining the Muslim Brotherhood's government and supported a coup by another military leader in the vein of Mubarek, this time with the aforementioned nefarious narcissist General el-Sisi. So Oliver shows what a venal and delusional leader el-Sisi is but ignores how and why he got into power in the first place. Brave Sir John also fails to mention that the US is backing el-Sisi, who besides being corrupt, is a savage tyrant who tortures and brutalizes the same democratic forces we once praised in Egypt. Because if Oliver pulled that particular string of inquiry into el-Sisi and Egypt, then he begins questioning the U.S. and the establishment, and Brave Sir John  has proven that he will never, under any circumstances, take on or stand up to, the U.S. establishment in general, and its foreign policy in particular. Even though Brave Sir John wears the mask of the fearless rebel, he is actually a chickenshit sycophant whose actual job is to protect authority, never attack it.

Oliver followed the el-Sisi bit with his much adored Trump rampage. It was a very effective evisceration of the unscrupulously hollow man behind the Trump brand. But, regardless of whether you like Trump or not, there is a much deeper, and more relevant story behind him and his political rise than his obvious lies and despicable behavior. That story is…how in the hell did the Trump phenomenon even become possible in the first place?

The answer to that question is obvious to anyone with eyes to see. The political, media, financial, and corporate establishment of this country has spent years demeaning, belittling, exploiting and deceiving the populace for their own personal wealth and gain. No one trusts or should trust politicians, the government, the media, Wall Street or corporate America. The failure across the board of the establishment and its exploitation of the working class, is the fertile ground upon which the demagogue Trump gained his foothold and blossomed into a most unlikely voice for the forgotten. 

It is not without a tremendous amount of irony that a silver-spooned, self-serving billionaire has become the symbol of the exploited. As Oliver points out, Trump's whole game is just pure bullshit, but so is John Oliver's, as Trumps lies are lies of commission, while Oliver's lies are lies of omission. Oliver never even attempts to pull the Trump weed at its root, instead preferring to pluck the dandelion by its Orange-haired head, insuring that the ground from which this toxic flower blossoms will never be held to account, guaranteeing that another, maybe even more repugnant, weed will bloom from the same soil the next time around. 

Oliver's target audience, those on the political left and in the establishment, already loathe Trump with a fiery passion, so by simply taking down Trump, Oliver is just doing what he always does, reassuring his audience that they are really, really smart and superior, all the while making sure they never actually question the root causes of such problems, only their superficial existence.

Those...and please pardon the pun...Trumpeting Oliver's masterful annihilation of all things Trump are really only buttressing the trivial type of thinking from which a man like Trump can gain traction. It is a strange bit of political and intellectual Jiu Jitsu, but the reality is that Oliver's empty attack on Trump's shallowness will only reinforce the type of thinking, or more accurately, the shortcuts to thinking, that brought a man like Trump to political prominence in the first place. I doubt Oliver's minions will be self aware enough to break through their own sense of self-satisfaction to see that they are just as vacuous and mindless as the buffoons who praise and follow Trump. Both groups, those who love Trump and those who love Oliver, are embracing the easy, the simple and the thoughtless at the expense of the meaningful, the important and the sophisticated.

LITTLE BILL MAHER LOVES FELLATIO!!

A brief note on another impotent clown who wears the rebel mask but refuses to actually take on the powerful…Little Bill Maher. On Friday nights Realtime with Bill Maher, Maher shamelessly interviewed former NSA and CIA chief General Michael Hayden. The interview touched upon Hayden's new book, thoughts on surveillance and on the Apple/FBI battle over the iPhone of the San Bernadino shooters.

Little Bill Maher is, on his very best day, a third rate hack of a comedian and an intellectual dwarf. To his credit, Maher is very good at hosting "Realtime" and at keeping the show moving as his panels are usually populated by a collection of dullards so lacking in wit and insight as to be mind numbing. Watching a chimp smelling his own poop would be a vastly more entertaining and intellectually stimulating exercise.  

In keeping with Little Bill's patty cake interview style that he used with propagandists Judith Miller and Kathryn Bigelow, Maher went the extra mile last week. Fridays interview with Hayden was nothing short of pornographic as Maher spent the entire interview fellating General Hayden on live television. Little Bill empathized with Hayden for doing such a hard job and never getting credit for it. BOO-HOO. Maher said that Americans demand better intelligence after a terror attack but then want less surveillance when no attacks have occurred. To Maher this showed how Americans are coddled and stupid, something Little Bill would know a lot about since he is a spoiled pampered dipshit. Little Bill even chastised his audience for cheering Apple for taking on the FBI.

What was really great was that Maher told his audience that they have no idea what a dangerous and scary world we live in because terrorists REALLY want a nuclear bomb and to set it off in America. OH NO….WITTEW BIWW IS SCAWED!!!!  Maher sounded more like Dick Cheney's fluffer than an insurgent comedian.

Little Bill went on to say that the intelligence services only make the news when they don't stop an attack. He claimed that the NSA, CIA et al have stopped attacks, but that all of the attacks that they have stopped, and how they have "kept us safe" since 9-11, are not front page news. Maybe it isn't front page news because it isn't even remotely true. The idea that the NSA has kept us safe from any attacks and that is why they need such vast surveillance on regular Americans is a piece of steaming horse shit that has been debunked many times. Little Bill repeating that lie proves he is out to deceive, either his audience, himself, or both.

The NSA and other intelligence agencies have regularly lied to Congress and undermined our democracy by spying on ordinary Americans and on the U.S. Congress that is tasked with oversight of that same intelligence community that is doing the spying. Little Bill knows these things, but he chooses to ignore them in order to leave his pre-concoeved worldview unchallenged. Instead Maher lets his irrational hatred and fear of Muslims override the rational, easily observable facts on the subject of surveillance and the intelligence agencies.

Little Bill finished Fridays interview with the most egregious form of bootlicking imaginable when he gushed to General Hayden…"Thank you for you service." Thank you for your service? This to a man, General Hayden, who is an agent of tyranny, who has lied to congress about torture and committed numerous war crimes,  one more heinous than the next.

Little Bill Maher is a shill for the establishment elite, who uses his position to fortify authoritarians and war criminals. It is amusing that Maher is so in lock step with the intelligence community in regards to surveillance since the most animated and aggressive he has ever been on television was when he physically ejected a bunch of 9-11 Truthers from his studio audience. Maybe someone should remind Little Bill that the intelligence agencies had lots and lots of surveillance on the 9-11 hijackers, yet did nothing to stop the attacks. 

Someone should also tell Little Bill that more surveillance won't keep us safe. Being smarter about our foreign policy, and keeping our nose out of other people's business most certainly will. But that line of thinking doesn't mesh with Little Bill's nuanced world view which is Islam = Bad, US establishment = Good.  

It is mealy-mouthed cowards like Little Bill Maher that make despots like Bush, Cheney and yes, even Donald Trump possible. Brownnosing Little Bill is willing to give up all of our liberties for the straw man of perfect security. What a wonderful couple…the straw man of perfect security and the boogie man of scary Muslim terrorists, maybe Little Bill can blow both of them when he's done with General Hayden. Little Bill Maher should grow a pair of balls and stop playing the rebel while he kisses establishment ass, and start actually being the rebel by kicking the establishment in the ass.

©2016

THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : Court Jester As Propaganda Tool

****ESTIMATED READING TIME : 15 MINUTES****

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS QUESTIONABLE LANGAUGE. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED!! CONSIDER THIS YOUR OFFICIAL TRIGGER WARNING…MOTHERFUCKERS!!

On a Sunday night last April, after finishing a session with my final client of the day (yes, I work on Sundays!!), I heated up some chicken and pasta, plopped myself down on the couch and tuned in to John Oliver's HBO weekly comedy show "Last Week Tonight". Oliver's main topic was the Internal Revenue Service, which makes sense since this was that most dreaded time of the year, tax time. Oliver's premise was that the I.R.S. is hated, but desperately needed, and terribly underfunded. He made the analogy that the I.R.S. is the "anus of the country", saying "you may not like to talk about it but you really need it to work." It's a clever anal-ogy*, which was no surprise since John Oliver is nothing if not clever…and an asshole.

*anal-ology…GET IT? See how clever I was there?

To start at the beginning, I am one of those rare people who through the years have not religiously watched Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show". Nor did I watch much of Stephen Colbert's "The Colbert Report". I am in a tiny minority in the world I inhabit when it comes to my viewing habits of Comedy Central political shows, I readily admit that. I'm not sure exactly sure why, I have nothing against either man, but I just never thought, or remembered, to watch their shows. Regardless, I only rarely watched, and because of that I was not familiar with John Oliver.

When John Oliver's HBO show came out, I missed the entire first season. The biggest reason I missed it is probably the same reason I didn't watch "The Daily Show", namely, because it never occurred to me to watch. Coming in a very close second for why I missed it is…I didn't have HBO at the time, so I was incapable of watching. I was aware of the show though because the media was gushing in its praise of the program and of Oliver. Nearly every media outlet did glowing pieces on Oliver, ebullient in their praise of him and the show, calling it, "smart, funny and insightful!" 

In no time at all, "Last Week Tonight" became a big hit and Oliver the darling of the hipster/intellectual/cool kid set. The mainstream media slobbered all over him, adorning him with the type of praise once only reserved for Saint Jon Stewart, the Patron Saint of Thinking People Everywhere™.  It was at this point that I got HBO, so the John Oliver option was suddenly on the table. So, I decided to check out "This Week Tonight" and see what all the fuss was about.

Season two of "Last Week Tonight"  started off innocuously enough, or so I thought. Oliver made fun of some racist tweets made by the Argentinian president while on her trip to China. He also talked about the closing of Radio Shack and the Republican congressman who decorated his office like Downton Abbey. It was clever enough if not a bit cloying, but as expected it was funny in a "man shooting fish in a barrel", substance-free way. In my opinion it was amusing enough, but not very "insightful". Oliver finished the show by doing a seemingly mundane bit about Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa. The bit included a video of Correa hosting a live talk show where he answers questions from the audience and pontificates on whatever topic he feels like. In the video, Correa (in Spanish, or as they say in Spanish, En Espanol) singled out a young Ecuadorian man who had tweeted that he wished President Correa were dead. Correa gave out the young man's name to his audience and told people to flood the mans Facebook and Twitter accounts. John Oliver excoriated Correa for bullying the poor, young man. He then showed a funny, weird and completely out of context clip of a creepy clown embracing Correa during one of these live talk shows. Oliver relentlessly mocked Correa, and he did it very, very well.  

After the show ended, out of pure curiosity, I looked Correa up on the internet. I knew nothing about him and frankly, very little about Ecuador. I was pretty shocked too see what kind of a man Correa was and what he had accomplished in his life. Correa isn't the tin-pot dictator and bully Oliver made him out to be, not in the least. Here are some of the highlights of Correa's public life. After resigning in protest over corruption as finance minister from the previous administration and being widely regarded as the most respected and trusted person in the country, he was voted into the Presidency in 2006 and took office in 2007. Upon becoming President, Correa immediately poked his finger into the eye of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), The World Bank, and the U.S. He declared Ecuador's national debt illegitimate since it was contracted by corrupt and despotic prior regimes. Correa then said that Ecuador would default on $3 Billion worth of bonds. He pledged to fight creditors in international court and reduced the price of outstanding bonds by 60%. He then refused to renew the U.S. lease of Eloy Alfaro Air Base in Manta, Ecuador, thus ending the U.S. military presence in the country. If Correa wanted to make enemies, he certainly succeeded. He not only made enemies, he made enemies with the most powerful country, military and financial institutions in the world. To make matters worse, for the U.S. anyway, Correa greatly reduced Ecuador's rampant unemployment and poverty, solidifying his popularity in the country. 

In addition to all that, Correa also took on foreign oil companies because they failed to meet environmental and investment regulations. He restructured the country's finances in order to increase spending on social programs, rather than on foreign debt, and set out to protect and support the indigenous Quechua Indians of Ecuador, a long brutalized people. In other words, Correa was a champion for justice and for the people of Ecuador. These might be things that John Oliver's audience might want to know about the man, but Brave Sir John Oliver had no interest in informing his audience, only propagandizing them.

If you still think Brave Sir John was doing the right thing by calling out Correa for his "bullying" of a citizen who was wishing him dead, you should look more closely at the historical context of Correa's comments. A brief perusal of South and Central American history shows us that colonialism has devastated the continent. Up to and including this century, the U.S. has been behind some of the most brutal and insidious policies in the region. Correa is an Ecuadorean nationalist, which means the U.S. government, military, Wall Street and Oil companies hate him, because he puts the Ecuadorian people first. When you see John Oliver ridiculing Rafael Correa for being a "bully" when someone publicly states they want to see him dead, keep in mind the history of U.S. backed assassination of people like fellow Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos and Panamanian President Omar Torrijos to name just two of many, or the U.S. backed coups and wars that litter South and Central American history (Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras to name a few). Then keep in mind it is not Correa who is the bully.

John Oliver is the weapon used those by those in power to ridicule Correa in the eyes of the mostly liberal Americans who, if they knew anything about him, would, or should, greatly admire him. But now Correa is little more than a punchline, and if and when he is 'killed in a plane crash', or 'overthrown by a popular revolt', or 'hangs himself in his jail cell'* or a civil war or coup breaks out in Ecuador, Americans, liberal Americans in particular, will just nod and say "hey, thats that despotic clown we saw on John Oliver". The man who stood up for his country and the weakest of its people, and wouldn't be bullied by military or corporate empire is now a joke. Mission accomplished John Oliver, true dissent from the American establishment group-think, is now strangled in the cradle.

Oliver is just the newest propaganda tool of the American Empire, at home and abroad. So when Oliver was mocking Correa, he was intentionally doing the IMF's, World Bank's, U.S. Government's, Military's, Wall Street's and the Oil Company's dirty work. Way to go Brave Sir John, instead of bullying the bullies, you are bullying for the Bullies. Good work. 

John Oliver's greatest skill as host of "Last Week Tonight" is in reassuring his audience that they are, in fact, as smart as they think they are, and most definitely smarter than everyone else. What Oliver is really doing with his show is inoculating his audience from thinking critically. Oliver serves up the very bitter pill of American Empire and Citizen Subservience wrapped in a delicious serving of liberal red meat. His audience is too enamored with it's own delusions of superiority to realize that they are, in fact, just like those ridiculous Fox News viewers they love to hate, in that they too are gullible rubes lapping up gobs of American Imperialism by the bucketload. What the hell am I talking about? How can everyone's favorite, goofy, Brit really be a propaganda tool? That's how propaganda works. If it is obvious, it isn't any good. "Last Week Tonight" is really good propaganda because the show, and its host John Oliver pretend to be truth tellers against propaganda.

Oliver sells himself as the brave and noble truth teller, a much needed check to the power of the mainstream media. But Oliver only mimics speaking truth to power and standing up for the little guy. He appears to plant his flag on the high ground of rational thought, moral superiority and common sense, and waves it with a robust sense of self-satisfaction. This is all little more than theatrics though, because the reality is that John Oliver doesn't speak truth to power, he is merely a puppet of power, a useful idiot, a weapon they use to pacify and control those who believe themselves to be well informed and deeply critical thinkers. The stark truth is that John Oliver doesn't stand up for the little guy, he consistently kisses up and kicks down. And as for being a symbol of rational thinking, Oliver instead waves a red flag of emotion in front of liberals in order to get them on his side and then feeds them misinformation, disinformation and propaganda while they are in their highly emotional state.

"Last Week Tonight's" formula is obvious to any one with a nose for media manipulation, and it executes that formula with a surgical precision week in and week out. Oliver lures 'intellectuals' in with a wonkish bit on a very specific topic, be it infrastructure, the I.R.S., FIFA, NCAA, voting rights in U.S. territories or patents, and then, like a pied piper, once he gets the viewer hooked, he leads them to the establishment narrative he really wants to sell them, usually in the form of a foreign policy or intelligence issue, and they, wanting to not be seen as stupid, unquestioningly accept the story he is selling. If you also notice, when Brave Sir John does critique something "American", it is always and every time a critique of a that very specific thing, and never a critique of America. 

Another thing to take notice of are what type of targets and topics Brave Sir John decides to take on. Just as a quick example of how Brave Sir John earned that nickname...he has taken on both FIFA and the NCAA, two organizations that are universally loathed by every single person who has even the most remote knowledge of them, with the handful of corrupt men running them being the lone exceptions. Another example of Brave Sir John's tremendous, steadfast courage was when he took on both racism (he literally said "fuck racism!!" in regards to Ferguson, Missouri, I shit you not) and cigarette companies. Taking on racism and cigarette companies!! What truly brave stance to take…IN 1964.

Regardless of Brave Sir John's weak kneed choices in segment topics, he never fails to to be a propaganda tool when it comes to the issues that really count. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. So let's take a taste of John Oliver's rotten and rancid pudding, shall we, and see what we come up with. 

On episode two of season two, Oliver followed up his initial mocking of Correa with another flurry of attacks prompted by Correa actually defending himself against Oliver's baseless buffoonery the week before.

Episode three had Oliver belittling another countries finance minister, this time Greece, who had the temerity to take on the IMF. What a strange coincidence? Three episodes into season three and John Oliver had attacked enemies of the IMF on all three episodes. In this episode, he said Greece's finance minister looked like "Pitbull's uncle", looked "slimy" and probably smelled like "scented lube". All very funny stuff, but once again he was attacking the underdog, not the big bad bully of colonialism and empire. There is comedy to be found in the horror of the Greek economy, but it isn't the cheap kind at the expense of its finance minister. Why didn't Oliver make fun of Goldman Sachs engineering the whole Greek fiasco and then looting the public coffers once Greece was bailed out? Or JP Morgan? Why not make fun of the IMF, which basically ran an extortion racket that oversaw the entire Greek collapse? Is that not funny to John Oliver? Would his self described intellectual audience not "get it", like they "get" his making fun of the way the finance minister dresses and looks? Why not make fun of Germany for accomplishing what Hitler never did, conquering and ruling all of Europe without having to fire a single shot, by bailing out their reckless banks at the expense of the Greeks? The reason why Oliver wouldn't take that approach to the issue is obvious, it is contrary to the narrative the establishment is feeding the populace. Oliver's job is not to challenge the establishment narrative, but to reinforce it.

Episode three turned out to be a propaganda tour-de-force, as it also gave us Oliver's brave and cutting edge stance on Ukraine. His stance, not surprisingly, is identical to the mainstream media's and U.S. governments official stance…that EVIL PUTIN™ started that horrific war. What a brave and shocking stance to take!! The real comedy here is that anyone with the slightest bit of sense, curiosity and courage knows that the U.S. intelligence community started the Maidan protests and the civil war in Ukraine. The U.S. planned, funded and executed the whole thing, from soup to nuts. In a genuine piece of comedy completely ignored by Brave Sir John, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was caught on tape during one of her phone calls saying as much. Even some Government-friendly media outlets like the BBC have reported that the snipers on rooftops at the Maidan who shot and killed protestors, weren't government forces, but rather some shadowy group attached to the protesters who were trying to start a revolution.

A great way to smell an establishment rat is to listen to them when they speak of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The U.S. has been at war with Russia for at least the bunch of years. The war started out purely in the form of propaganda (remember the Socchi Olympics and the media assault on all things Russian?), and has now morhped into a proxy shooting war in Ukraine and Syria. As many people who have senselessly died in these terrible wars, one of the greatest casualties has been the truth. There is, believe it or not, comedy to be found in Ukraine, Syria, Putin et al, but it is in the way the establishment group-think has to contort reality in order to make it fit their preconceived narrative. John Oliver is more than happy to ignore the contorting, and just mouth the same old party line in regards to these deadly serious issues. 

Now, you may be thinking, wait, Putin is a tyrant and a monster!! He wants the Soviet Union to come back and he wants to dominate Europe!! Look, I am not making the case that Putin is some saint, but like Correa, he is a true nationalist, and he is certainly not half of what the U.S. media and officialdom have painted him to be. For instance, there have been multiple accusations by the powers that be here in the U.S. that Putin has sent Russian troops into Ukraine. The problem is that there is no proof of this. It would be nice to have proof, because, as I am fond of saying, "proof proves things." But the charge has been made so often that it is now taken for granted that it is reality. It isn't reality, it is establishment fiction and propaganda.

The same is true of MH- 17, the plane shot down over Ukraine, killing all aboard. The U.S. said in the immediate aftermath of the shoot down that it had proof that Russia or Russian backed separatists shot down the plane. Again, there is no proof of this, and for some strange reason, the U.S. seems to have lost it's evidence because out hasn't released it. Maybe Russians did shoot the plane down, but there is no PROOF that they did. "Proof proves things!"  But again, this charge has been repeated so often by the media and establishment that it is taken as completely true.

The charge that Putin had a second rate political rival, Boris Nemtsov, assassinated in Moscow also became a part of the establishment narrative, and not surprisingly, there is no proof that is true ( Remember..."Proof proves things!!"), nor is there much logical sense to the accusation when you take Nemtsov's lack of political standing or threat to Putin into the equation. That didn't stop John Oliver on episode 4, from doing an entirely predictable bit about it though, that was completely uncritical of the U.S. official narrative. John Oliver, if he so wished, could have a field day holding the U.S. government's feet to the fire regarding their statements and actions in regards to Russia and Putin, but he has no interest in doing that. His only interest is in buttressing the story being told by those in power because he is not a truth teller, he is a lap-dog to power.

The most glaring example of Oliver being an incurious lap-dog for the establishment, was when he travelled to Russia and interviewed whistleblower Edward Snowden. The interview was so confrontational, and so obviously a piece of contrived propaganda that I was left slack jawed at the audacity of it. The propaganda script was easy to see from the get-go as Oliver started off the bit by playing like he was scared to death by just being in Russia. He was, in particular, very frightened because…shudder...across the way was the old KGB building from back in the Soviet Union days. He quivered like a nubile starlet in a horror film at the thought that the KGB, which has been defunct for over twenty years, might come and get him. He also was worried that they were 'eavesdropping'  and 'listening' to his conversations, even going so far as to talk to the imaginary microphones hidden in the room. This was particularly odd since the Russians aren't the ones who are proven to eavesdrop, THE U.S.. is the country that does that!! "Proof proves things…like NSA spying!!"

For some reason, Oliver also played up the drama that Snowden was an hour late for the interview. This was so strange as Oliver made it seem like a huge piece of intrigue, but the reality is that people sometimes get stuck in traffic, it happens. But Oliver made it out to be an intensely dramatic moment which was odd in and of itself. When Snowden showed, Oliver proved himself to be an even bigger douchebag than I had already thought he was. He proceeded to be completely adversarial, and frankly rude, to Snowden, even holding him accountable for the New York Times screwing up an article and putting out some classified information on ISIS in Mosul. He blamed Snowden for the mistake and called the situation a "major fuck up". This is just the most twisted and tortured sort of anti-logic imaginable, but it is right in line with the contortions propaganda salesmen routinely peddle. You see…according to Oliver, the U.S. government reads all our emails and listens to our phone calls, but Snowden is the bad guy because THE NEW YORK TIMES FUCKED UP. Got it, thanks again Brave Sir John for the "insight".

Things went downhill from there as Oliver proceeded to minimize the importance of the information Snowden released because it was "too complex" for regular people to really understand. He also dropped in a beauty of a throw away statement, namely that Julian Assange, creator of Wikileaks, was a "bad" guy and not likable. Good to know, Brave Sir John, thanks again for that nearly subliminal "insight" that is devoid of any context. He then proceeded to say it is hard to "wrap your head around perfect privacy vs perfect security."  Great straw man from Brave Sir John, as that is an entirely false argument. "Perfect security" is an impossibility, while "perfect privacy" is not.

Brave Sir John then followed this up by showing videos of people interviewed in Times Square who had no idea who Snowden was or what information he released. Oliver assured the viewer that these interviews were COMPLETELY representative!! Trust him!! Brave Sir John would never lie!! This is the oldest trick in the book in order to bolster your preconceived opinion…go and watch, if you dare, Bill O'Reilly's segment, "Water's World",  if you don't believe me. Or any "man on the street" segment on any two-bit show anywhere. This nonsense was followed by Oliver undermining the vital importance of the NSA survelience issue by reducing it to a bit on "dick pics". That is some solid, top notch, "insightful" comedy from America's favorite rat-faced, establishment lap-dog. Oliver succeeded in doing what Snowden himself said in the film Citizenfour the media would do to him to obfuscate the NSA spying issue, they would make the story about him and not about the NSA spying. Brave Sir John played that game plan perfectly. 

In response to the Oliver piece, all the cable channels, officialdom's own public relations department, did stories on the interview and sure enough, they all took shots at Snowden and diminished his truly brave work and service. On Chris Matthews reliably revolting show, he had a group of guests on, each more repugnant than the next, who all took the same courageous stance that John Oliver took, that Edward Snowden was a "leaker", and not a "whistleblower". Washington Post Establishment shill extraordinaire, the achingly ambitious yet utterly vacuous Jonathon Capehart, ended the Chris Mathews show segment by declaring Edward Snowden was "smug". Thanks for the thoughtful analysis Jonathon, have you ever heard of the phrase, "pot calling the kettle black?"

The most disturbing part of the entire Snowden affair happened a few days later, when I overheard some very liberal friends talking about Oliver's interview with Snowden. These true- blue liberals lapped up everything John Oliver had fed them. One of them kept mis-stating that Snowden "was the 'wiki-leaks' guy", showing that Oliver's disinformation and obfuscation campaign was a huge success with his target audience. Of course my liberal friends, like the rest of Brave Sir John's audience, think they are astoundingly well informed, but are, in reality, really dangerously mis-informed.

Oliver has proven, with his constant regurgitation of establishment narratives, on Putin, Snowden and Correa in particular, that he is a propaganda tool for the powers that be. If you watch his show closely enough, you will notice that John Oliver never, ever questions the things the Establishment holds dear... U.S. foreign policy, the Intelligence community, Israel, capitalism, The War on Terror, or the establishment itself. Brave Sir John is, at heart, a corporatist and Imperialist, which should come as no surprise since he is currently an employee of Time-Warner. 

It is important to understand that John Oliver is the symptom, not the disease, which is ironic because Brave Sir John only feels comfortable pointing out very specific symptoms on his show, and never the bigger disease. This is what the intelligence community does, they co-opt popular culture to their benefit in order to shape opinion. They manipulate, dominate, and misinform people through pop culture, media and film. It isn't just Brave Sir John, it is Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert and even...gasp…Jon Stewart!! I know people will have a tough time swallowing the charge against Jon Stewart, but go take a look at his interview with Kathryn Bigelow, director of Zero Dark Thirty, a well known propaganda piece, the day after the Senate Torture report came out showing that her film was filled with convenient lies for the intelligence community. Stewart and Bill Maher both had the same reaction to Bigelow when they interviewed her in the same week, they both ignored the torture and propaganda issue and instead let Bigelow plug her work involving African elephants. Stewart started his interview by bringing up the torture topic and asking her thoughts, and Bigelow simply replied, "it's been a tough week"...End of discussion, Stewart dropped the subject…NOW let's talk elephants!! It was truly bizarre on Stewarts part, but at least he asked her thoughts, Bill Maher ignored the topic altogether when Bigelow was on his show later in the week.

These "clowns", Oliver, Stewart, Colbert and Maher shape and form public opinion and thought, particularly on the political left. These guys and their imitators are insidious because they use the ruse of being rebellious comedians who scrutinize authority to actually cover their vehement defense and cultural enforcement of all things establishment. It is all the more insipid because these men are held up, and hold themselves up, as a vital check and balance to establishment authority. These clowns only play the role of court jester, but never have the courage to actually speak the truth to the ruling powers or challenge their authority. They are less like the court jesters of old and more like the court eunuchs. They are more interested in staying relevant and in good graces with the establishment than in growing a pair of balls and telling the truth.

Do I think that CIA operatives are sitting in the writers room at HBO or Comedy Central…no…well..probably not. That is not necessarily how it works. But I would say that John Oliver, Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert wouldn't have their jobs on television if they weren't vociferous establishmentarians. Would some corporate entity with a television channel have given a weekly or daily show to George Carlin or Bill Hicks when they were alive or if they were alive today? Not in a million years, because those guys directly challenged the establishment, their foundation of power and their false narratives. They didn't dance and giggle around specific symptoms like John Oliver, they punched hard and often by diagnosing the whole god-damned disease. And where are the Carlin's and Hick's of this new generation of comedians? They might be out there, but they won't be getting work on corporate television anytime soon. Guys like Carlin and Hicks are anathema to the corporatist, imperial system and the powers that be who run it. Dangerous comedians will be frozen out of the process entirely. That's how the game works.

In a normal world, comedy is found in being contrarian. But not with the comedy or propaganda we get from Brave Sir John and his ilk. Brave Sir John just tells people what they want to hear…that they are really, really smart!! That what they read in the New York Times and Washington Post is true!! Oh…and they are really smart BECAUSE they read the NY Times and Washington Post and can regurgitate the establishment party line on all matters big and small!! In reality, John Oliver and his ilk are cowards. They won't take on true power, which makes John Oliver in particular…and I'll use a British term here he will definitely be able to understand…a fecking twat.

"Last Week Tonight" begins its third season tonight, Sunday, February 14. I will be tuning in to watch if only to observe and note the propaganda that Brave Sir John will be selling. I will try and keep a running tally as season three progresses. If you watch the show, and if you like the show, watch it with a sharply critical eye. Watch how Brave Sir John lulls you into a false sense of liberal camaraderie and superiority, and then pay attention when he sells you the Establishment line. 

I know some of you may think I'm crazy, or an idiot, or both, well rest assured, you are in good and crowded company. But understand, I am not asking that you agree with me in thinking that John Oliver is a propaganda tool for the establishment, I am simply asking you to BE CONSCIOUS AND AWARE when you watch his show. There is more going with on with "Last Week Tonight" than meets the eye. Wake up and see through the bullshit you're being fed, whether it's the mainstream media or an "alternative" comedian who is feeding it to you.

I leave you know with a relevant quote from the wonderful writer and intellectual Chris Hedges.

"Those few who acknowledge the death of our democracy, the needless suffering inflicted on the poor and the working class in the name of austerity, and the crimes of empire—in short those who name our present and past reality—are whitewashed out of the public sphere. If you pay homage to the fiction of the democratic state and the supposed “virtues” of the nation, including its right to wage endless imperial war, you get huge fees, tenure, a television perch, book, film or recording contracts, grants and prizes, investors for your theater project or praise as an pundit, artist or public intellectual. The pseudo-politicians, pseudo-intellectuals and pseudo-artists know what to say and what not to say. They offer the veneer of criticism—comedians such as Stephen Colbert do this—without naming the cause of our malaise. And they are used by the elites as attack dogs to discredit and destroy genuine dissent. This is not, as James Madison warned, the prologue to a farce or a tragedy; we are living both farce and tragedy." - Chris Hedges, The Great Forgetting 1/10/2016

EPISODE 2 : THE JOHN OLVIER TWIST : THE DRUMPF AFFAIR AND LITTLE BILL MAHER'S POWER FETISH

EPISODE 3 : THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : WAXING BRAZILIAN AND WANING CREDIBILITY

EPISODE 4 : THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : OUT-TRUMPING TRUMP ON THE GREAT WALL OF TRUMP

EPISODE 5 : THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : THINGS SAID AND UNSAID

©2016

American Sniper: A Review

***** WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!! THIS IS YOUR ONE AND ONLY SPOILER ALERT!!****

American Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper, is the story of the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, and is loosely based on his book American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History.  The film follows Chris Kyle's exploits on the battlefield in Iraq and his struggles with his family and PTSD back on the homeland.

I admit that after seeing the trailer for American Sniper I was excited to see the film. The trailer was really well made and brought with it a palpable tension. But, as with many films, the trailer is considerably better than the actual film. The film itself, just like the trailer, starts off with Chris Kyle prone atop a building in Iraq, contemplating whether or not he should use his sniper rifle to shoot a young boy and woman who threaten US Marines with a Russian grenade off in the distance. The film then deviates from the trailer and we go into  extended flash back scenes which show Kyle's boyhood, his young adult life, his work as a cowboy, his joining the Navy, his SEAL training, his meeting his wife and then his wedding. This is all shown to us in order to give us context for who Chris is and how he got to be that way. After twenty minutes of this exposition, we come back to Kyle atop the roof with his sniper rifle and his pending decision. He shoots and kills both the boy and his mother, his first ever kills. 

Bradley Cooper stars as Chris Kyle and is as good as he's ever been. He fully inhabits the role from top to bottom. His physicality, his Texas drawl and his energy are all spot on. Cooper's performance, without question, carries the film. There are two scenes in particular, where Cooper rises above his already very good performance to be truly transcendent. The first scene is where he has another Iraqi boy in his sniper sights as the boy picks up an RPG and points it at unsuspecting US troops. Kyle talks to himself telling the kid to drop the weapon, he doesn't want to kill another child. Just as the boy is aiming the RPG and Kyle readies to squeeze the trigger, the boy drops the weapon and runs off. Cooper's use of breath once he no longer has to decide whether to shoot or not, is brilliant. He lets out a guttural grunt of relief at being spared the damage to his psyche and soul that most assuredly would have come with killing another child, justified or not. The second scene is when Chris has returned from the war for the last time but has not told his family yet. His wife calls his cell phone and Chris answers sitting by himself in a bar in the states. He is detached and shut down, but his wife Taya tells him his kids miss him and want to see him, and once again Cooper masterfully uses his breath to show the torment and grief that lives deep in Kyle's soul, as he lets out an uncontained weep and wail and tells Taya that he is coming home. These are easily the two best scenes in the film and are highlights of not only the film, but of Bradley Cooper's career. That is the good news about American Sniper. The bad news is that the rest of the film never lives up to the at-times stellar work Bradley Cooper does in it. Sadly, the film never rises above being a standard biopic and run-of-the-mill war movie. Besides Cooper's strong performance, there is nothing remarkable about the film at all. Visually the film is dull and generic. The script is tedious and unoriginal, the dialogue stilted and occasionally cringe-worthy and the supporting actors are, for the most part, considerably below par. The end result is the film looks rushed and cheap.

For any war movie, the battle scenes need to shine in order for the film to distinguish itself. With American Sniper, the battle scenes all look flat, stagnant and lack any texture at all. The battle scenes look like something you'd see any night of the week on an episodic television show. When you consider some of the great war films that have been made, whether it be Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line or Black Hawk Down, just to name a few, and how visually creative, powerful and unique those films are, American Sniper is so visually listless as to be embarrassing in comparison.

Another thing that needs to be done for a war film to be successful is that it must attach us to a group of warriors and accurately describe and detail the unique camaraderie inherent in the warrior culture. The camaraderie in American Sniper rings false and feels contrived. Eastwood attempts to create a sense of familiarity in order for us to feel we know and care about the other SEALs in Kyle's graduating class and on his team, but we never really connect because these characters are nothing more than indistinguishable blurs. We may care about them as US servicemen, but we don't care about them as individuals or in relationship to Chris Kyle. They end up being simply cannon fodder for the film.

As for the script and the story, director Eastwood chose to use standard Hollywood narrative tools to make the story more palatable for American audiences. For instance, he chose to make an enemy sniper named "Mustafa" Chris Kyle's main foil throughout the battlefield parts of the film. The Mustafa character is only mentioned in passing in one paragraph in Chris Kyle's book, so this is a distinct creative decision to make him such a prominent character in the film. Eastwood also uses a character named "The Butcher" as another foil and symbol for the evil and brutality of America's enemy in the war. In the book, the "Butcher" character doesn't exist at all. Eastwood must have felt he needed to give the enemy in Iraq a face and a name in order to make the Iraq war segments more coherent and digestible for American audiences, not unlike what the Bush administration did in selling the actual war to the American public by making it about "Saddam and Osama". It worked for Bush and company in persuading the American public, but it fails Eastwood because he isn't selling a product (war), he is trying to create a great piece of intimate art and you can't do that by rolling out tired Hollywood storytelling devices, stereotypes and cliches.

There are two other fatal errors by Eastwood in the film. They both deal with endings. The first is the final battle scene and the second is how he ends the film itself. The final battlefield scene is nothing short of an artistic debacle, and seems to be transplanted from another film, and it certainly isn't from Kyle's book. In the sequence, Kyle takes a near impossible sniper shot from over a mile away that takes out his nemesis, Mustafa. Here Eastwood, for the first time in the film, uses a visual effect, a slow motion of the bullet as it leaves the rifle, which feels like it is taken from any number of hokey action movies from the last ten years (I am thinking of Wanted et al).  All of this happens while a sand storm and jihadis close in on Kyle and his squad. In the heat of this dire battle Chris decides to use a satellite phone to call Taya and tell her he is done with war and is coming home.  This sequence is so unwieldy and preposterous as to be comical. It belongs in a Mission: Impossible sequel and not in an allegedly true to life, gritty war movie. And instead of the sandstorm being symbolic of the loss of our national bearings in Iraq, it just comes across as being optically muddled and metaphorically befuddling. There are much more visually coherent and impactful ways to make that important point, which gets lost with Eastwood's approach.

Then there is the final scene of the film, which is very manipulative and grating. In it Kyle says goodbye to his family as he heads out to help a former Marine suffering from PTSD. In reality, this former Marine would tragically shoot and kill Chris Kyle and his friend at a shooting range that day (this is not shown in the film). In the movie scene, Taya Kyle tells Chris how proud she is of him, his kids all love him and he is finally healed and whole. It is obviously a fantasy sequence where everyone gets to say what they had hoped to say and hear what they hoped to hear and Chris' journey is neatly tied up, his martyrdom awaiting him in the form of a shady looking veteran right outside the door. Taya Kyle even has a feeling, call it a sixth sense, about this nefarious fellow waiting for her husband…then we fade to black. I understand wanting to do all that for the family, but this isn't a home movie. The final scene rings so hollow, phony and forced that it could have come right out of a Lifetime movie of the week. It is all too neat and clean and perfect (and also not how events actually played out in real life), so much so that it actually diminishes the impact of Chris Kyle's tragic death. How much more gut wrenching would it be if Taya Kyle didn't get to say all those things to her husband? What if Chris wasn't healed and whole before his death? What if he wasn't finished yet? What if he didn't get to say goodbye to his kids? That would have been a way to really emphasize the shock and horror and tragedy of Chris Kyle being so unexpectedly killed in suburban Texas after having survived four combat tours in Iraq.

Those two critical scenes are not well done, but they aren't the only missteps. There is a scene, the 'garage' scene, where a former Marine approaches Kyle back in America while his car is getting fixed and thanks Kyle for saving him back in Iraq. This could have been a really great scene, and Cooper is wondrously uncomfortable in it which is really interesting to watch, but the other actor's work is so disastrously abominable and false that it is cringe-worthy, and because of that the scene loses any dramatic impact it might have had with even a mediocre actor in that role.

Which brings me to the supporting acting. The work of the supporting actors, particularly in the 'stateside' scenes, is positively dreadful. The actor (whom I will not name) playing Chris Kyle's father is absolutely appalling, and the actor (whom I will also not name) playing Kyle's brother is so unconscionably atrocious it is downright shocking. I kept wondering, why does Chris Kyle's brother not have a Texas drawl when his father and Chris do? Also, why couldn't they find the brother a dress blue uniform that actually fit instead of being three sizes too big? The child actors who play Chris and his brother when they were young, well, they are just children, so at least they have an excuse…but boy, they are not good at acting.

So the question becomes: why are all of these supporting and smaller roles so poorly done? Well, Clint Eastwood is well known for being a minimalist in regards to how many takes he will do. That is a good and bad thing. It is good because when you do fewer takes you stay on schedule, and when you stay on schedule, you stay on budget, and when you stay on budget they let you keep making movies. The bad part is, the acting suffers. So when you are giving great actors, like Sean Penn for instance in Mystic River, or Bradley Cooper in American Sniper, or Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, Richard Harris and Eastwood himself in Unforgiven, fewer takes, they are able to adjust their approach and keep knocking it out of the park due to their talent and skill, but with lesser talents, their performances flounder and feel rushed and out of rhythm with the rest of the film. The supporting actors in American Sniper are really abysmal, and it is not all their fault. They weren't there everyday getting the feel for the pace of the work (like Cooper was), they weren't getting the rhythm down, they showed up and had to shoot and then did two takes and it was over and they go home. It is a tough gig, but man, regardless of the reason or who is to blame, the supporting cast did a very poor job and the film suffers greatly for it.

There is one exception in regards to the supporting acting, and that is Sienna Miller. Sienna Miller does her best to bring life to the terribly written character of Taya Kyle, Chris Kyle's wife. Her work is admirable, and her American accent is very well done (which is not always the case when the Brits take it on) but the part only allows her to hit two notes: sassy and weepy. It is such a hollow and empty character that Miller should be credited for giving her all to it in a Quixotic attempt to bring some semblance of life to the character, but sadly there just isn't enough there for life to exist.

One issue which may have been a major reason why the film turned out the way it did, is that Eastwood didn't set out to make a great piece of drama, he set out to canonize Chris Kyle. This canonization of St. Chris Kyle, patron saint of 'Merica, is an example of deification, which is an all too common problem when making a biopic, particularly a biopic of someone who has died and who's family is involved in the making of the film. (I have written two previous blog posts on deification which you might find of interest. The Great Man Theory and the Dangers of Deification Part Two, is more relevant to the American Sniper conversation, but feel free to read them both. Links :  The Great Man Theory and the Dangers of Deification Part Two  , The Great Man Theory and the Dangers of Deification Part One  ) I recently read where Chris Kyle's father told Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper that if they dishonored his son he would "bring hell down on them". I understand Mr. Kyle's desire to protect his son's legacy, which has been called into question for some dubious claims his son had made, not the least of which was that he claimed to have punched Jesse Ventura out for making disparaging remarks about SEALs. That tale was adjudicated in the courts and found to be untrue, but Eastwood and Cooper needed to be more loyal to artistic truth than to any man, alive or dead. A great failure of the film is that it really is nothing more than propaganda (propaganda being defined as "the spreading of ideas, information or rumors for the purpose of helping a cause or person"), not just propaganda for a distinct version of America, the war and a certain view of the world, but more specifically it is personal propaganda for Chris Kyle and his 'legacy'. That isn't a bad thing in and of itself, some people love propaganda and some propaganda can be terrifically entertaining. But you can't make great art and propaganda at the same time. So American Sniper is not great art because it is propaganda, and it isn't great propaganda because as a film it isn't even remotely well crafted, either in the directing, the writing, or besides Bradley Cooper, in the acting. 

As a result of this creative 'deification' of Chris Kyle, a lot of really compelling issues and ideas get pushed aside in order to maintain an agreed upon version of Kyle's legacy. For instance, in the film when Chris Kyle is a young boy, his father tells him that there are three types of people in the world..sheep, wolves, and sheep dogs. The sheep are too weak or stupid to protect themselves or even admit that there is evil in the world, the wolves are evil and prey upon the sheep, and the sheep dog protects the sheep from the wolves. Mr. Kyle tells Chris that he raises only sheep dogs. This story propels Chris Kyle through his life and his Navy career. An interesting topic to explore would be that it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf. If the sheepdog goes to someone else's country and kills people, is he still a sheep dog or is he a wolf? Does Kyle's film nemesis Mustafa think of himself as a sheepdog and Kyle as the wolf? Don't all the people fighting for the enemy tell themselves the same story about sheepdogs and wolves and see themselves as sheepdogs? And don't they have a stronger case for being the sheepdogs since they are the ones being attacked and invaded? That brings up another topic which would be intriguing to explore which is that Chris Kyle never ever has any doubt, be it in his mission or the justness of his cause. His faith is entirely in his own virtue and the righteousness of his country. Something that obviously eluded him in his lifetime, is that this faith, this lack of any doubt, is something he has in common with his enemy. The jihadi, whether it be "The Butcher" or Mustafa, is blindingly positive he is righteous and sees any doubt of the righteousness of his cause, by himself or anyone else, as a crime against his faith, his mission, his God. In the film, Chris Kyle's fellow SEAL (a one-time seminarian) had creeping doubts about the mission in Iraq, and after this SEAL is killed, Chris Kyle tells his wife that the SEAL's doubt in the mission is what got him killed. This conviction and lack of doubt is most assuredly an asset in a war zone, but how well does that certitude translate to peace time and a normal, functioning family life? That would have been a fascinating issue to explore.

Someone once said, 'Without doubt, there can be no true faith'. This struggle to hold onto surety is dramatically fertile ground which I wish the film had explored more deeply. For instance, there is a scene in the film where Chris Kyle is interviewed by a psychologist about his PTSD and the doctor asks him if he has any regrets. Kyle quickly answers that he only wishes he could have saved more Marines. I found this an interesting answer, only because there isn't the slightest bit of introspection from Kyle, and he seems blind to an obvious solution to protecting Marines which Kyle has never contemplated. If he had just stopped to think about it, one good and undeniable way to save more Marines would be to not send them into Iraq in the first place. Though that thought would never have occurred to Chris Kyle because he could not allow doubt about the mission to enter his mind. For Chris Kyle, doubt is death. In this way, Chris Kyle was like the jihadis he so masterfully killed in Iraq, he was a 'true believer'. The thing about the 'true believer' is that deep down, his faith isn't so true, because he cannot grapple with doubt. Thus his faith is one of compulsion and force, not one of reason and logic. American Sniper never had the artistic courage for this, and other deeper explorations and that is a shame because it could have been so much more than it was.

Regardless of what American Sniper isn't and what topics it avoids, it still could have been a great and entertaining movie as it was, a straight up biopic and war film. Sadly, it fails at this attempt because it gets the basics wrong. The basics being the visuals which look pedestrian and cheap, the script which is clumsily written and the acting, which, with the notable exception of Bradley Cooper, is amateurish. After the heart pounding trailer, I went into American Sniper with elevated expectations which the film was unable to meet and so I left the theatre exceedingly disappointed with the film.

Once upon a time, Clint Eastwood directed one of my favorite films of all time, Unforgiven, which would have been an excellent blue print to follow in making American Sniper. The regrets and impact of a life of violence upon the human psyche and soul is a vast and rich topic on which to meditate for an artist, which Eastwood proved in Unforgiven, but with American Sniper he chooses to avoid those difficult questions and instead makes a garden variety biopic that is little more than a commercial for the family approved legacy of Chris Kyle. It certainly isn't the worst film ever made, so if you are a fan boy or a flag waver, and there is nothing wrong with being either of those things, then this film might be for you. But if you are a cinephile or thinking patriot, then your time would be better spent elsewhere.

FOR FURTHER READING ON THE TOPIC OF THE REAL-LIFE CHRIS KYLE, PLEASE CLICK ON THIS LINK TO MY BLOG POSTING Truth, Justice and the Curious Case of Chris Kyle

ADDENDUM: THE FILM WHISPERER SPEAKS...

After reviewing a film, I am often asked…"okay smart guy, if you are such a god damn genius, then how would you make the film?" So… here is the answer to that question...how could they have made American Sniper (as a straight forward biopic war movie) a better film? Here is my prescription: you start the film with Chris and Taya Kyle's wedding. You have about five to seven minutes of wedding stuff (The Godfather starts with a wedding…remember!?!?). You meet his family and in the form of toasts at the wedding they tell stories of Chris' childhood. You have his SEAL classmates give toasts telling of Kyle's SEAL training and friendships with team members. You have an intimate scene of Chris and Taya having a quiet and profound moment together. Then after establishing the people in Chris's life, and his relationship to them, you put him on the roof in Iraq behind his sniper rifle aiming at the woman and her son. Then you spend the next hour of the film showing every single confirmed kill, all 160 of them, that Chris Kyle ever made. These are not elaborate set-ups and wouldn't bust the budget. Quite the opposite. You just have a shot of Kyle in various locales and then have a shot through his scope at what he sees and you see each person he shoots drop and Kyle's reaction to it. You do this over and over and over, with some interactions with Marines and soldiers he is protecting thrown in, and his 'door to door' work as well, until his first tour is over. Then you show him back home with Taya as she is pregnant and then with the newborn. Chris never speaks in these 'at home' segments, he is detached and preoccupied. The Iraq segments of the film should be especially vibrant, both visually and with sound, in direct contrast to the 'at home' sections, which are washed out and nearly silent. Then back to Iraq for tour two and more sniper kills from Kyle, interspersed with his lively interactions with fellow SEALs and Marines. Then back home for more detached domesticity…and so on and so forth until his final kill at the end of tour four and his return home for good. 

This approach would show how grinding and relentless the work of war is for the men who wage it, and the true impact of that assault on Chris Kyle's psyche, senses and soul. The audience would be rubbed raw from watching an hour of non-stop, methodical killing of 160 men, women and children. Then we transition to back home permanence and the struggle to get back to normal. It would seem as foreign to the viewer as it must have been for Chris Kyle. We then spend the next twenty minutes having very tight and intense scenes between Chris and Taya as they do the hard work of recovering their marriage, family and a sense of normalcy. These would be great scenes for Cooper and Miller to really dig in and have some fantastic acting moments as they fight for their relationship and family. This conflict is resolved when Kyle relents and goes to a psychiatrist who diagnoses him with PTSD and then tells him how he can help other servicemen suffering from the same ailment. Now we get into the final forty minutes or so of the film, which should be spent showing Kyle having very deep and meaningful conversations and interactions with PTSD sufferers. You have one or two guys in particular who we get to know and we see how Kyle's work impacts them and transforms them. So we see the tangible good Kyle did for others and how he helped himself by helping them. This gives us a true picture of Chris Kyle being healed and whole. Then you have Kyle and his close friend leave an empty house, Taya and the kids are out and Kyle has to leave the house without saying goodbye, and they go and meet a another young man with PTSD and they have a long drive to a shooting range and we see Kyle helping this guy as he has helped the other men we've met. At the end of this long drive and a profound conversation, Chris, his friend and the young man get out of the truck at a shooting range and you see from a long distance the young man pull a gun and kill both Kyle and his friend. Then, in the final scene, we see Taya with the kids, out at the mall or something, and her cell phone rings, we see her answer but don't hear anything. We see her crumble in horror and grief as she obviously gets the news of her husband's murder. Fade to black, scroll the news footage of Chris Kyle's funeral procession and memorial at Texas stadium.

Doing the film this way maintains Kyle's 'legacy' much more than the Eastwood film does. It doesn't make him another action hero, it makes him an actual human being, who excelled at war, struggled to recover his balance once returning from war, and then found himself once again being of service to others. That is how you make a financially and artistically successful Chris Kyle biopic. Back up the Brinks truck and prepare your Oscar speech Mr. Cooper and Mr. Eastwood and maybe even Ms. Miller. Sadly, this isn't what happened. Oh…and Hollywood studios, please wise up and contact me, The Film Whisperer, BEFORE you shoot these films,  and you will save yourself a lot of trouble, and make yourself a lot of money and win yourself a lot of Oscars. I am currently available and my rates are reasonable…for now.

© 2014

FOR REVIEWS OF OTHER FILMS RELEASED DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON, PLEASE CLICK ON THESE LINKS TO THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING , WHIPLASH , BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) , FOXCATCHER , WILD , THE IMITATION GAME , A MOST VIOLENT YEAR , NIGHTCRAWLER , STILL ALICE , INHERENT VICE , SELMA , MR. TURNER , CAKE .

Truth, Justice and the Curious Case of Chris Kyle

"Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night" - Bette Davis

A few weeks ago I was reading online about the defamation lawsuit filed by Jesse Ventura against former Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle. The case sounded pretty interesting, so, I borrowed from a friend a copy of American Sniper, the autobiography of Chris Kyle, and read it. It was a very compelling read.

Here is a little background on Chris Kyle and his story:  Kyle was a Navy SEAL sniper from Texas. He claims to be the deadliest sniper in American history with over 160 'confirmed' kills. Confirmed kills are defined as kills with at least one other witness besides the shooter. Kyle served four tours of duty in Iraq and was awarded two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars for Valor for his actions during the war. Upon returning to Texas after his tours of duty were over, he settled down with his wife and two kids, started a security firm and wrote a book about his experiences as a sniper. The book, American Sniper, became an instant success and propelled Chris Kyle into a sort of celebrity status. Kyle also worked helping other war veterans deal with PTSD when they returned from the war. On February 2, 2013, Chris brought a vet suffering from PTSD to a shooting range where the vet shot and killed both Chris Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield.  

The Court Case

In the lead up to the defamation case going to trial, all of the legal experts on television and in print said that it was highly unlikely that Jesse Ventura could win the case because the bar was set very high in defamation cases concerning celebrities. According to these various experts, in order for Ventura to win he would need to prove that not only did Chris Kyle lie about him, but also prove that he did so maliciously and that he prospered from it.

Despite the very high burden of proof, on July 19, 2014, Jesse Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota, WWF wrestler, TV show host and Former Navy SEAL (technically he was in the pre-cursor to SEALs, the UDT) won a defamation lawsuit against deceased former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, author of American Sniper to the tune of $1.8 million. In the book, Chris Kyle, claimed to have punched 'Scruff-face', later identified by Kyle on both the The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel and The Opie and Anthony radio show as Jesse Ventura, in a SEAL bar in California after Ventura said some nasty things. Here is the passage in question from the book:

After the funeral, we went to a local bar for the wake proper. (for Navy SEAL and Medal of Honor winner Mike Monsoor who was killed in action in Iraq)

As always, there were a bunch of different things going on at our favorite nightspot, including a small party for some older SEALs and UDT members who were celebrating the anniversary of their graduation. Among them was a celebrity I'll call Scruff Face.

Scruff served in the military; most people seem to believe he was a SEAL. As far as I know, he was in service during the Vietnam conflict but not the actual war.

I was sitting with Ryan (a SEAL who was wounded and blinded in the Iraq war) and told him that Scruff was holding court with some of his buddies.

"I'd really like to meet him, " Ryan said.

"Sure". I got up and went over to Scruff and introduced myself. "Mr. Scruff Face, I have a young SEAL over here who's just come back from Iraq. He's been injured but he'd really like to meet you."

Well, Scruff kind of blew us off. Still, Ryan really wanted to meet him, so I brought him over. Scruff acted like he couldn't be bothered.

All right.

We went back over to our side of the bar and had a few more drinks. In the meantime, Scruff started running his mouth about the war and everything and anything he could connect to it. President Bush was an asshole. We were only over there because Bush wanted to show up his father. We were doing the wrong thing, killing men, woman and children and murdering.

And on and on. Scruff said he hates America and that's why he moved to Baja California. 9/11 was a conspiracy.

And on some more.

The guys were getting upset. Finally, I went over and tried to get him to cool it.

"We're all here in mourning." I told him. "Can you just cool it? Keep it down."

"You deserve to lose a few," he told me.

I was uncharacteristically level-headed at that moment.

"Look," I told him, "why don't we just step away from each other and go on our way?"

Scruff bowed up again. This time he swung. 

Being level-headed and calm can last only so long. I laid him out.

Tables flew. Stuff happened. Scruff face ended up on the floor. 

I left.

Quickly. 

I have no way of knowing for sure, but rumor has it he showed up at the BUD/S graduation with a black eye.

That is the story that was proven to be untrue in the court proceedings. Jesse Ventura didn't say those things to Chris Kyle or any other SEAL.  Chris Kyle did not hit Jesse Ventura. The entire episode never occurred. Or to put it another way, Chris Kyle lied. To put an even finer point on it, Chris Kyle lied to make himself look good.

Chris Kyle, The Hero Archetype and Fantastical Tales of Wonder

Having read the book, I went and did some more research of Chris Kyle and his life. The things I found were pretty astounding. If you thought the Jesse Ventura fight was a hell of a yarn, wait until you get a load of some of the other stories Chris Kyle told about himself but left out of his book. 

Chris told many people, and some reporters, that just after his return from Iraq in 2009, he was carjacked by two men at a gas station on a remote Texas highway. Chris asked the men if he could reach into his truck to get his keys, and as he did he pulled a pistol from his waistband and shot both men in the chest from under his armpit. The two men were killed instantly. Chris called the police and waited for them while leaning against his truck. The police came, Chris handed them a phone number to call at the Pentagon. The cops called the number, and the people at the Pentagon told the cops that Chris Kyle was a war hero and a Navy SEAL. The police also went inside and watched the gas station surveillance video of the incident. The cops then let Chris go on his way. Chris claimed he got emails from cops all across the country after the incident thanking him for "keeping the streets clean". Great story. Except none of it is true.  Not a word. There were no carjackers, no dead bodies, no cops, none of it. He made the whole thing up. His big mistake was then telling the story to his SEAL friend, Marcus Lutrell, author of Lone Survivor, and Marcus put the story in his second book, Service: A Navy SEAL at Work. Now it wasn't just a tall-tale, it was in the public record, and it is demonstrably a lie. The New Yorker magazine and other journalists have investigated the story. They all come to the same conclusion. There were no carjackers. There were no dead bodies. There were no cops. None of it happened. No police departments know anything about it, no coroner ever saw the bodies, no gas station had any surveillance video or ever heard of such a thing and no cops ever responded to the scene and called the Pentagon. 

The second story that was told by Chris Kyle was that he and another SEAL were sent by the government to New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Once they got to New Orleans, Chris and another sniper went to the roof of the Superdome, and started shooting looters in the city. Chris Kyle said this to many people, he also said this on tape. Chris claims to have killed thirty looters all on his own. Helluva story. Only problem is…there's not a speck of truth in it. Once again this is a total fabrication, or to put it less delicately, a complete, bold faced lie. Chris Kyle never went to New Orleans after Katrina. He never shot 'looters'. Just like with the carjackers, there are no bodies and no documentary or corroborating evidence it occurred. None. Chris Kyle lied. Again. 

Don't take my word for it...Here are two links to in-depth articles about these two stories. (New Yorker-  LINK     Washington Post -   LINK)

Taya Kyle, Chris's wife, fought in court to make sure that both of those stories were kept out of the Jesse Ventura defamation lawsuit because she didn't want her husband to be "labelled a liar". Smart woman. The stories were kept out of the lawsuit, and yet, incredibly, Ventura still proved Kyle was lying about the bar room fight (or non-fight, as it turned out).

These stories are so fantastical that only a true believer could ever think them anything other than fairy tales. So the question becomes, why would Chris Kyle tell such patently absurd stories? 

Rambo, Red Meat, and the Spitting Protestors Canard

Chris Kyle told other lies as well, but these he put in his book. They are smaller lies compared to the car jacking and Katrina stories, but they are important nonetheless because they show a pattern of lies and embellishment that is troubling. One lie is about when Chris first went to deploy for Iraq. Here is the passage from the book:

Generally, when SEALs go out for a deployment or come back, we do so very quietly - that's the nature of special operations. There are usually few people around except for our immediate families; sometimes not even them. In this case, because of when I was heading out, it happened that I passed a small group of protestors demonstrating against the war. They had signs about baby killers and whatever, protesting the troops who were going over to fight.

Great story. It really is. We have poor Chris Kyle was going off to war to fight for our freedoms and he had to go past these assholes calling him a baby killer. That would be pretty infuriating…except…it isn't true. It never happened. There may have been protestors, but none of them had "baby killer" signs or were protesting the troops. This is at worst pure fantasy, at best a great embellishment. San Diego and Coronado, California are very pro-military areas. There are huge populations of active service and retired military people living there. A protestor with a "baby killer" sign would stick out like a sore thumb. That would also make not only the local news, but national news. And other vets would have reported the same thing on their own websites or chat rooms. None of that happened. There is no reporting, or evidence that there were ever any protestors with "baby killer" signs anywhere near San Diego or Coronado California. Or anywhere else for that matter.  Never. Nor were there any pictures taken of those signs or news reports about them. Chris Kyle lied again. 

This lie is not a new one, it is really just an urban myth from the Vietnam era, popularized by a monologue in the Sylvester Stallone film, First Blood. In his speech Stallone's character, Vietnam veteran John Rambo says, "And I come back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport, protesting me, spitting. Calling me baby killer!" Sound familiar? Yes, just like American hero, John Rambo, Chris Kyle was called baby killer by protestors. This doesn't pass the smell test. It didn't happen to John Rambo because he isn't a real person, and it didn't happen to Chris Kyle either because it is factually untrue. As for the spitting protestor canard, please read the book The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and Legacy of Vietnam by Jerry Lembcke. His book dismantles the myth of the vicious Vietnam war protestor spitting on the poor, returning vet. Here is a link-  LINK.

We Found Them!!

Another lie Chris Kyle tells in his book is about those pesky missing WMDs. Here is the passage:

At another location, we found barrels of chemical material that was intended for use as biochemical weapons. Everyone talks about there being no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but they seem to be referring to completed nuclear bombs, not the many deadly chemical weapons or precursors that Saddam had stockpiled.

Maybe the reason is that the writing on the barrels showed that the chemicals came from France and Germany, our supposed Western allies.

What a groundbreaking story. This is interesting insight from someone who was there and can tell us first hand. Except of course, it is all a lie. Completely fabricated. Totally untrue. There were no barrels of WMD, and the story wasn't covered up because it would offend our allies France and Germany. The story couldn't be covered up because it never happened. This is something that can be easily checked and verified. You can do it yourself. I did. It is a lie. There is no proof or evidence that this incident occurred. Even if you simply apply logic and reason, this story crumbles. The US would gladly embarrass the French over WMDs. Remember the "Freedom Fries" nonsense? The French were our national punching bags for years because they didn't "back us in Iraq". If we had the chance to rub their "cheese-eating-surrender-monkey" noses in it, we certainly would have taken it.

So why would Chris Kyle lie about shooting car jackers and looters, and "baby killer" signs and WMDs? The answer is two-fold. Firstly, he did it to reinforce his status as a hero. Chris Kyle embodied the Hero Archetype. His fans would be the first to tell you this. He was a hero for fighting for his country, he was a hero for killing so many Iraqis, he was a hero for saving American lives. This is his story, and it's the story he tells in American Sniper, and it is why he is beloved by so many. But, like all archetypes, the Hero Archetype has a life of its own. Chris Kyle was submerged in it and overcome by it. He even says in his book that he felt "invincible". It could be easy to see how he would be swept away by all the hype and praise and glory. He knew he didn't kill any car jackers or looters, but he could have…and that was all that mattered in his mind. He BELIEVED that he did, even while he KNEW that he didn't. The archetype made him BELIEVE it, his rational mind KNEW it was false, but the rational mind almost always takes a back seat when the archetype is in town.

The following is the definition of the Hero Archetype: "HERO: He is a character who predominantly exhibits goodness and struggles against evil in order to restore harmony and justice to society".  That is the Rambo story. That is also the story of Chris Kyle, or to be more exact, that is the story Chris Kyle tells, to us and, more importantly, to himself.

So why the other lies about the "baby killer" signs and the WMDs? This is simply, in a storytelling and narrative sense, to reinforce the hero's struggle by giving him multiple foils and also to give context to his journey. As a storytelling device, these lies do two things for Chris. One, they make him a sympathetic figure who overcomes not only physical danger in the form of enemies on the battlefield, but also gives him a spiritual strength by making him a martyr for fighting to protect people who hate him. Secondly, the stories make him out to be 'The Truthteller'. Chris Kyle knows the REAL truth, and he is the only one brave enough to actually tell it.  Kyle's 'Hero journey' was not only against the evil hordes of Iraqis and Muslims, both of whom he calls "savages" in his book, but against the evil opposition back home in the form of anti-war people, Jesse Ventura being a prime example. The protestor and WMD lies are about feeding red meat to a certain segment of the population, people who are not only pro-war, but anti-liberal. These folks buy a lot of books, as Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly can attest. The stories and lies Chris Kyle told were the juicy, delicious red meat of which they dream. Chris Kyle became a hero to them not only because he killed lots of Iraqis, but also because he had slain all sorts of uncomfortable factual dragons as well. In other words, Chris Kyle told people what they wanted to hear, and those people loved him for it. How many people heard Kyle tell the story of punching Ventura and thought, "Yes, finally somebody shut that loud mouth up!". He proved to these folks that, "Yes! Anti-war people DO hate the troops, just like I thought all along". And "Yes, there WERE WMDs in Iraq…SEE…BUSH WAS RIGHT!!! I WAS RIGHT!!" Except, of course, they weren't, and we know that now. But Chris Kyle let these people live in a world of fantasy and call it reality. He was very good at doing that sort of thing, especially with himself.

The Usual Suspects

What has been interesting in the aftermath of the verdict against Chris Kyle is that the media has gone into hyper-drive in attacking Jesse Ventura, and not Chris Kyle. Kyle is a proven liar, yet no one talks about that. They all talk about how could Jesse Ventura sue a poor widow. I find this baffling. What is even more baffling, and frankly appalling, is how they so thoroughly misrepresent the facts of the case and misinform the populace.

Anderson Cooper, of CNN, proved once again there is no depth so low that his journalistic integrity won't sink to it, when he said of Ventura, "Has he no shame?" Cooper had nothing at all to say about Chris Kyle and his lying, and made no mention of the very public and provable other lies Kyle told besides his Ventura lie. Shouldn't the question be, "Chris Kyle, have you no shame?", but it isn't. Proving once more, that truth has no meaning for Anderson Cooper. 

The question becomes…why isn't the media up in arms over Chris bullshitting them? Remember when Oprah had a conniption when she discovered author James Frey had lied to her about his book A Million Little Pieces? Why aren't the media directing their venom at Chris Kyle for having lied to make himself out to be more than he was, rather than attacking Jesse Ventura? The answer, of course, is that the media is in the same business as Chris Kyle…the "giving people what they want" business. Watch and listen, if you dare, to these three fine examples of journalistic integrity over at "Fox and Friends". WARNING: Steve Doocey Alert .

Every media outlet, all the cable channels and every other talking head, is saying how disgusting Ventura is, and not saying a word about Chris Kyle except to call him a hero. The question from everyone is, "Jesse…why won't you give the money back to this widow?" As opposed to being, why did Chris Kyle lie about this incident to enrich himself and what other lies has he told? Everyone is up in arms that Ventura would "sue a widow". The facts of the case are, he sued Chris Kyle, and then Kyle died in the lead up to the trial. All along Ventura said he'd drop the suit if Kyle just retracted the statement. Kyle wouldn't do that. He decided to stick to the lie, then tragically, Kyle was killed. Why is that Ventura's problem? Ventura didn't lie, Kyle did.

Watch this CBS This Morning interview with Ventura the day after the court decision. Notice how dismissive and oppositional all the questioners are.

Notice in particular the "journalist" , and I use that term very very loosely, Norah O'Donnell, being intentionally obtuse and misstating the facts of the case…"there WAS an argument... correct?". No Norah, there wasn't, THAT IS WHY WE HAD A TRIAL!! You beautiful, yet vacuous dipshit!

Heads I win, Tails You Lose and the Magic of the Rearview Mirror

The other thing talking heads and writers have been saying of Jesse Ventura is that he should have "dropped the lawsuit when Chris Kyle died, then he could have saved his reputation!" Or "Ventura sued to save his reputation but has damaged it by winning the lawsuit against a widow!". This sort of logic is a shortcut to thinking. If Ventura had dropped the lawsuit people wouldn't say "Oh, what a great guy", instead they wouldn't say anything at all and would still despise Ventura for his 'conspiracy theories'. Then they would recall how Chris Kyle punched him out for bad-mouthing America, and when Ventura would say that wasn't true, these same talking heads would say, "Well, if it weren't true you should have sued for defamation!!" This is how the game works. Heads they win, tails you lose. As my grandmother used to say, "damned if you do, damned if you don't." The same thing would have happened if Ventura dropped the suit when Chris Kyle was killed. The media likes to play the game of hindsight with everyone except themselves.

Charity Begins at Home and The Money Trail

One final lie that has been told ad nauseam, is that Chris Kyle and his family donated all the proceeds from the sale of the book American Sniper to families of vets. The Kyle's say that 100% has gone to charities that support other vet families. This is an out and out lie, and a really despicable one that is repeated constantly by the corporate media. The truth is…the family has only given 2% of the profits to charity. The profits from the book belong to the Kyle family, and they should do with them what they please, but what they shouldn't do is tell people they are giving the money away in order to look good, while they in fact keep the money. The Kyle family has made over $6 million from the book, and that number will increase with further book sales and from an upcoming movie starring Bradley Cooper and directed by Clint Eastwood. So why isn't the corporate media up in arms over Chris Kyle and his wife lying repeatedly about the profits and proceeds from the book? Instead of asking Jesse Ventura why he doesn't give the money he is owed back to the Kyle family, why not ask the Kyle family why they keep lying about giving money to vets when they don't?

To further inform yourself, please read this really thoughtful and smart article over at The New Republic that give the facts of the case and dispel the myths that the media is selling. LINK

I Come To Bury Truth, Not To Praise It

Truth has become the enemy in America. It is hated and despised. The people who hate the truth the most are the ones who are in power. That is why the media is so quick to heap vitriol upon Ventura and not question the legacy of Kyle. Lies are celebrated. Lies are tonic for the ills that truth reveals. You never saw anyone taken to task for lying about the Iraq war. No one, not a government official, or a pundit or a journalist or a media personality, lost their job over lying about or being wrong about Iraq.

The lies that the media has wrapped itself in for the sake of ingratiating itself to power are easily observed. In regards to the Iraq war alone, the fellating of power by the media, and by the public, is amazing and easy to see. First we had the march to war…the lies Bush and company told about WMDs and Iraq's involvement in 9-11. Then we had the farce of the Jessica Lynch story, which Chris Kyle repeats in his book without the slightest regard to the truth. Then we have the charade of the death of Pat Tillman, a true American hero, who is violated and desecrated in death by the same government and media that duped him into serving in the first place.

This is why the media hates Jesse Ventura in particular. Ventura was vociferously against the Iraq war. He was right, and the corporate media, and most of the public, were wrong. They were either duped or complicit, but Ventura saw through the smokescreens. He is also a 9-11 Truther. This drives the corporate media and establishment types batty. It is a direct assault on their authority. It is sort of amusing and ironic that the term "Truther" has become derogatory in the media and in America. Telling the truth, or asking questions looking for it, is a sure fire way to get on the wrong side of the corporate media, Jesse Ventura is living proof of that.

Watch the news clips above, and search out others, and notice something…no one…not a single person, is interested in the truth. The truth is never mentioned, never alluded to, never a consideration. Truth is the real victim in this case. Truth is the forgotten one. The old Superman slogan was , "Truth, Justice and the American Way". Notice how, if you look closely at that saying, it is clear that "truth and justice" are not the same thing as the "American Way". And so it is.

The Righteous Mind, Cognitive Dissonance and The Suspension of Disbelief

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who wrote an interesting book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. In it, he describes the things that people believe are their greatest moral priorities. The six categories are Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Liberty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation. For example, liberals may think that Fairness is the most important thing to them morally and conservatives may think that Loyalty is the most important thing to them morally. It is an interesting idea, and it comes into play with the Chris Kyle story. The one thing that does not appear on the Moral Foundations category list is…The Truth (honesty). 

If The Truth were an option for moral priorities, it would not come in first for either liberals or conservatives. Try having a discussion with a liberal about Obama or race, for instance, and you will quickly find out that The Truth comes in a very distant third to fairness and care. Conservatives, at least in my experience, put both authority and loyalty above The Truth. I spoke with a conservative friend of mine recently and he talked about wanting to talk in public about some semblance of The Truth, but in the next breath he said he could "never bad mouth his country". This sort of thinking and struggle is too common, people have an interest in The Truth, just not when The Truth conflicts with another, more importantly held belief, and most certainly not when The Truth can make them either uncomfortable or unpopular, which it often can. People will do all sorts of logical and moral gymnastics to maintain their belief system and world view and to keep The Truth at arms length. 

Cognitive Dissonance is "psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously". People will contort in all sorts of ways to avoid seeing the uncomfortable truth that is right in front of their eyes and facing that conflict. So we have an American war hero who you may feel is beyond reproach because of his service, and yet he is proven a liar in a court of law. So you lash out, either at Ventura, or the jury, in order to reject the new information that clashes with your strongly held belief in Chris Kyle. What usually occurs when people are presented with new information that clashes with their strongly held belief, is that they "seek to preserve their current understanding of the world by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding the new information or by convincing themselves that no conflict really exists." 

A personal example, years ago in the 1990's, I was having a conversation with an older friend, someone twice my age. We were talking politics and he was talking about how much he respected and admired George H.W. Bush (The 41st President, not Dubya, the 43rd). I asked why he admired him and he said "because he is a self made man!". I thought this strange, and told him that George H.W. Bush was a lot of things, but a "self-made man" was not one of them. He vehemently disagreed and asked what proof I had of that. I told him that George H.W. Bush was the son of a senator, and not just any senator, but Prescott Bush, one of the most powerful senators of his time, and also a very powerful banker. I also told him that the Bush family was one of the most powerful and richest families in the country and had been for a long time. I told him that calling George H.W. Bush a self made man was like calling John F. Kennedy a self made man, or better yet, Teddy Kennedy. The man gave me a look of disdain and told me in not so many words, that I was full of it (he hated the Kennedy family no end). "Bush wasn't the son of a senator, he came up the hard way and made a life for himself", the man told me. The guy got pretty indignant about the whole thing and was positive he was right. A little more background on this friend, he wasn't a Johnny come lately to the Bush train, he had supported Bush back in 1980 in the republican primary against Reagan. He was a huge Bush supporter. So I told him I'd go home and look it up. So I looked it up and sure enough, George H.W. Bush is the son of a powerful senator who was also a banker. I told my friend the news, and his response was fascinating, he simply said…"but Bush is a self made man". I was left scratching my head. First off, how could such a strong supporter of Bush (41) not know he was the son of a senator? Secondly, how could that same person simply ignore the evidence of that fact and continue to believe what he believed before? The answer is obvious, it is the power of cognitive dissonance. The man didn't know that fact because it didn't fit into his narrative of who Bush (41) was (his strongly held belief) and was an inconvenient fact (new information that challenged his strongly held belief), so he was unconsciously blind to it in order to avoid or reduce his mental and emotional conflict. Secondly, he didn't want to change his narrative once the new information was blatantly obvious because that would take some great effort, so he simply ignored it again, this time consciously, and went back to his previously held belief in order to avoid mental and emotional angst. This man should fear not though, he is not alone, for we all have our blind spots, and as the term 'blind spots' suggests, we can see them in other people, but rarely see them in ourselves.

Suspension of disbelief is "a willingness to suspend ones critical faculties and believe the unbelievable, sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment." Suspension of disbelief is usually spoken of in reference to watching a movie, for instance, we know that Sandra Bullock isn't really in danger in outer space, but we suspend our disbelief in order to enjoy it for entertainment purposes. People do this constantly and consistently in regards to real life as well. Read the stories Chris Kyle told in his book and elsewhere. Read the alleged 'Jesse Ventura fight'. If you are a fair minded, independent observer of those stories, don't they come across as absolutely, and obviously false? Don't they seem to be blatantly made up and absurd? When I first read the Ventura part of the book, I thought…"well, that story is a hunk of horseshit". I've been in a few bar fights and seen a few more. That story is such blatant, self-serving nonsense that only the most die-hard true believer could ever buy it. People suspend their critical thinking, or 'suspend their disbelief' in order to 'preserve their current understanding of the world' and 'reject the conflicting information'.

For instance, if you think it is totally believable that Chris Kyle was sent to New Orleans by the US government and ordered to shoot US citizens, and yet you think Jesse Ventura is a loon for saying the US government capable of killing its own citizens on 9-11, then you may suffer from a form of cognitive dissonance. In order to diminish the mental conflict of these opposing beliefs, you will suspend your disbelief for the story about Chris Kyle yet maintain what you consider 'critical thinking' about the Jesse Ventura story. Another example might be if you believe that Chris Kyle shot two car jackers and officials made the bodies disappear and there is no record of it at all, yet you think that it is impossible for any conspiracy to prosper because 'no one would keep their mouths shut', then you may suffer from cognitive dissonance, and you might treat the malady with a small dose of suspension of disbelief applied in just the right area, the 'car jackers' story, in order to maintain your previously held worldview.

People need to believe, because without that belief, whether it be in their heroes, their country, their church, their world view, their ideology, their political party, or their own goodness, they will crumble. They MUST believe in order to be able to face the day. If their belief system is shown to be a fraud, they wouldn't have anything to stand upon, and everything about them would be a lie, and that would mean they would be mentally and emotionally obliterated. Their identity would be shattered. They would cease to exist. Without their belief system/identity, they are nothing, they are cast into the dark abyss, the void of 'not knowing'. That is a frightening prospect for most people.

We as humans need to bend reality in all sorts of bizarre ways in order to be able to survive and keep our psyche in tact. We ignore some things, and focus on others, all in an attempt to make 'reality' fit what we want it to be. We suspend our disbelief so that we can be loyal to our country, or our president or whatever is important to us. We hold contrasting beliefs and attitudes simultaneously in order to make our belief system make some sort of sense to us internally, even when it makes no sense externally. This is the human condition. It is not a disease that only infects those of a certain political party or religion, it is a disease that infects mankind, and it is epidemic.

So we create American Heroes to convince ourselves that we, as a country and as a people, are good. We are the moral ones in the world. Bush wouldn't lie because he's the type of guy you want to have a beer with. Jessica Lynch was held hostage by those filthy, Iraqi, Muslim hordes who are savages…except she wasn't. She was saved by Iraqis who saw a young woman terribly injured and brought her to a hospital and cared for her. Pat Tillman was a true American hero who gave his life saving his comrades and fighting for America and against Al-Qaeda, except he really was gunned down in a terrible case of friendly fire and had serious doubts about the missions in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Chris Kyle punched that no good 9-11 truther Jesse Ventura out in a bar because he badmouthed America and the troops. Except Ventura never said those things and Chris Kyle never did those things. Just like there were no filthy hippie protestors with "baby killer" signs, and there were no WMDs that Chris Kyle and Chris Kyle alone found in a basement in Iraq. Just like he didn't shoot two car jackers in the middle of nowhere Texas, and he didn't shoot looters in the aftermath of Katrina. None of those things are true…but that doesn't mean there aren't people who desperately need them to be true.

The Manichean and the Search for Empathy

A Manichean philosophy is one that sees the world in black and white. With the Manichean there is no gray area. Things are either good or evil, you are either with us or against us. Chris Kyle spells out very clearly in his book that he sees the world in black and white. This is a sensible and logical way to look at the world for a soldier in combat. You are trying to kill your enemy, your enemy is trying to kill you. I am good, he is bad. A war zone is a tough place for nuance to make a living. So for Chris Kyle, all the Iraqis are savages and evil. He doesn't like Muslims either. To make things clearer he gets a crusader cross tattooed on his arm. Message sent and received. He is good, his enemies are bad. Black and white. While a Manichean philosophy can serve you well in wartime, it can have its drawbacks in peace time. For instance, if you view the world as black and white, that means if someone tells a lie, then they are a liar. Liars are bad people because lying is wrong. If we hold Chris Kyle to the same standard he holds the rest of the world then some uncomfortable things come into question.

The Jesse Ventura story Chris Kyle told is a lie. I have also pointed out the other lies he has told. The uncomfortable question about Chris Kyle now is…did he lie about anything else? We don't know the answer to that question. Kyle claims to be the deadliest sniper in American history. He claims to have 160 'confirmed' kills (as stated before, 'confirmed' kills are kills witnessed by another soldier besides the shooter). That statistic has not been confirmed in any way by the US Navy or Pentagon. It would be very helpful if the Navy at least released some information about the kills and whether they really happened or not. There are other uncomfortable questions that we can probably never get the answer to. Namely, of the kills Chris Kyle actually does have, how many of them were "good" kills. Did he kill innocent people. He was questioned about shooting an Iraqi man who Chris claims had a weapon, but who witnesses claim only had a Koran. Maybe Chris was telling the truth about that incident, but as we have seen, Chris' version of the truth, and the actual Truth can often times be two totally contradictory things.

It has been proven in court that Chris Kyle lied about someone else to make himself look good and to enrich himself. Does that mean he was a bad father? A bad husband? A bad son? Does it mean the work he did with fellow veterans suffering from PTSD wasn't a good, kind and noble thing to do? Does it mean he wasn't a good friend and comrade to his brothers in arms? Does Chris Kyle being a liar mean that Chris Kyle is a bad person? If Chris Kyle answered that question about someone else, he would say "Yes", at least according to his own acknowledged Manichean world view. I see things differently. I don't think people are the worst thing they have ever done. I think we are all deeply flawed human beings struggling to make our way in a confusing and frightening world. I think Chris Kyle lied about a lot of things. I also think Chris Kyle did a lot of good for veterans who were suffering and struggling upon their return to 'the world'. I think Chris Kyle was probably a great dad, and a great husband, a fantastic son and a terrific comrade in arms. I don't think he was a terrible human being…I think, like all of us, he was a terribly human - being. I wish Chris had lived long enough to be able spend some time in the 'gray area', and to see others in all their contradictions and complexity.

Truth is Beauty, Beauty Truth

The uproar over the last few days, the knee-jerk reaction to the verdict, the vitriol spat on Jesse Ventura and the national sainthood bestowed upon Chris Kyle were all very predictable. In America emotion rules the day. Instant gratification means we have an impulse and we have to follow it. Facts, truth and reason have no place in our current culture, except as objects of ridicule and scorn. We know what we know and we know it is right because we FEEL it is right. We would rather shout someone down than go inward and question ourselves, our beliefs, our worldview, because God forbid we are wrong, then the whole house of cards will tumble and no one wants that.

I've been wrong many, many times in my life. I don't mean kind of wrong, or misspoke a fact or something. I mean spectacularly, horrifically and catastrophically wrong. There have been a few times in my life when I have discovered, much to my chagrin, that everything I know is wrong. Everything. It is a pretty disconcerting thing to find that out. Truth be told it is earth shattering. It leaves you seriously out of balance and frankly in a state of despair. The one benefit of having been through those experiences though, is that it has left me with a hunger for the Truth above all else. The Truth about the world and the Truth about myself. I cherish Truth over loyalty, authority, fairness and care. Which I guess makes me neither a liberal or a conservative.  Having survived the 'everything you know is wrong'  apocalypse also helps you see through the bullshit that is often being sold to you, particularly by the media.  The bullshit the media spews out piles up so fast you need wings to stay above it.* If your loyalty is only to the Truth, you will see the world in a vastly different way. It can be a pretty isolating and difficult thing to do, but it is better than lying to yourself. Or at least it is to me. That is not to say that I have some ownership of the Truth, not at all, believe me. The Truth is just as elusive to me as it is to anyone else. And it can be just as uncomfortable to me as it for anyone else. Hell, I didn't want to write a blog piece talking bad about Chris Kyle. I'm sure I'll get a bunch of angry emails from his fans calling me all sorts of names. But the truth is the Truth, and I feel like I need to speak it, even when it is unpopular, or maybe particularly when it is unpopular.

My one hope is that the people who are attacking Jesse Ventura, and who are reflexively defending Chris Kyle, can step back and not only take a closer looks at the facts of the case and facts about the man himself, but also take a deeper look into themselves, and let their loyalty be to the Truth and not to their preconceived notions.

Final Thoughts

The fans of Chris Kyle say he is an American Hero. They say he is the embodiment of all that is good about this country. I actually slightly disagree with that. I think Chris Kyle is not the perfect American, but rather the perfect embodiment of America. He was brave, yet a bully. He was selfless, yet selfish. He was humble, yet a braggart. He was brilliant, yet dense. He was a bullshitter, yet sincere. He was heroic, yet cowardly. He was the perfect embodiment of America in all of its manic contradictions and hypocrisies. And as the court case has proven, Chris, in the true American fashion, was more interested in marketing himself than in telling the Truth.

So I sincerely ask you to keep Chris Kyle, his comrades, both fallen and those still with us, and their families in your thoughts and prayers. And also keep the millions of Iraqis, both friend and foe, alive and dead, in your thoughts and prayers as well. But also try and take time to stop and remember...the Truth.

One Final Final Thought

I realize that many people may be upset, or angry or offended by this piece. This is a topic which causes emotions to run very high and for people to take great offense. You may not like what I have written and you may hate me for having written it. That is your prerogative.

You may also think that Chris Kyle and I have nothing at all in common. You would be wrong about that. A few days before Chris was tragically killed, he posted this on his Facebook page, "If you don't like what I have to say or post, you forget one thing, I don't give a shit what you think. LOL".

Couldn't have said it better myself, Chris. Rest in Peace.

*Apocalypse Now

© 2014

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