The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘The Undefeated’ Will Be Attacked With The Usual Non-Falsifiable Proposition

Posted on | July 20, 2011 | 44 Comments

by Smitty

LEIPZIG, GERMANY Howard Towt identifies a direction that the country needs to move in: a dispassionate viewer of the discourse. As you read his review, he’s underwhelmed by The Undefeated.
Towt notes that TU is mostly built upon Going Rogue, which sold an awful lot of copies. If GR were fiction, there would be the question of the artistic tradeoffs of moving it to a screen. As we are talking about a political documentary, the proposition moves toward something like:

“They didn’t explain the background of the events sufficiently.”

We’ll see. Towt’s general criticism, as paraphrased above, seems non-falsifiable. That is, there was always more exposition that the film maker could have done. Except that you have to swing the editorial axe somewhere. The audience is near bursting with the run time as it is. Look for extended versions on sale, as Victory Films cashes in, with more fixes for the serious junkies out there.
More interesting to me is the second-hand smoke from the Democrat wife:

The film is inspirational, but my wife was completely put off by the whole experience. She sees Governor Palin as opportunistic and calculating, and thinks the governor is using politics as a “get rich quick” scheme. She believes Mrs. Palin is an inadequate mother to her children, and is a person who plays to a base of religious fundamentalists. Her take is that Sarah Palin as an affront to sensible women everywhere.
My wife is a testament to the power of our American culture. In a few short months, our culture has fashioned an extreme caricature of a female political figure, and has made it believable. Just three years ago, very few people outside of Alaska knew who Sarah Palin was. Now, a large number of Americans have been taught to despise her.

Fair enough, Mrs. Towt, but the last non-opportunistic and non-calculating U.S. political figure was. . .George Washington, maybe?
Can we get past Pavlovian training on both the Left and Right? If we’re worried about whether a candidate is black, or attractive, or equestrian, or pedigreed, or loquacious, we risk being lost in the superficialities that are at the root of the present crisis.
Now, I don’t want to badmouth Mrs. Towt, but I do know a couple of Leftys. I’m confident that they are, for all their purported liberality, incapable of any fair appraisal of Governor Sarah Palin. I had to move away from one of these Lefty chicks melting down at a breakfast table at the mention of her name a couple of months back, at Bagram. Admittedly, I’ve seen similar visceral (albeit non-racist) reactions to the sitting POTUS. I do think that the policies espoused of one of these figures are mostly daft, but I can’t understand directing emotion at the person, except as an admission that Alinsky was correct. Personalizing everything makes radicalism possible.
But really, let’s remember that this is not just a documentary; it’s not just a chance to line Sarah Palin’s wallet; it’s a running plebiscite on the screw-us quo of American politics. The Ruling Class Overlords on the Right and Left have been pissing down your back and telling you it’s raining for a century now. The GOP Ruling Class Overlords have been playing a nominally more Federalist hand over the last century; Governor Palin is cheerfully breaking that off where they sit.
It’s hyperbole to say that, if the people blow off this movie, and she sits out the 2012 campaign, that we’re doomed. We can’t have a meaningful Constitution if the salvation of the country boils down to any one person, family, clique, or union.
But the list of other hopefuls with significant charisma is painfully short.

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