the 90s were pretty crucial as a pretext to our current misadventures and, don't forget, 9/11. or have you already forgotten.
― omar little, Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:28 (eleven years ago) link
"pretext" isn't correct there, but anyway
― omar little, Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:29 (eleven years ago) link
yeah those weren't wars sorry guys
― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:30 (eleven years ago) link
he did. he forgot. crank up that darryl worley
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:31 (eleven years ago) link
at least, not any moreso than whatever hijinks we were up to between the end of WWII and the beginning of the Korean War
xp
― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:31 (eleven years ago) link
presaging of events is what i meant. but really all of that was collectively a vast collection of military actions that may as well have been a "real" war, for how it led to what we're up to now and for how it affected the world's view of us.
― omar little, Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:32 (eleven years ago) link
like all of us Gore Vidal isn't immune to mythologizing his past
― the ones that I'm near most: fellow outcasts and ilxors (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:33 (eleven years ago) link
'we weren't at WAR, we just bombed a bunch of other countries. how could you possibly confuse the two?'
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:35 (eleven years ago) link
i think sometimes what we don't view as war, what we view as a minor action and something we can just go and forget, is viewed by our adversary as war. which is maybe more important to take into consideration than whether or not we viewed it as such.
― omar little, Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:37 (eleven years ago) link
the serbia thing was pretty crucial in re-legitimizing the idea of 'humanitarian intervention,' and hence played a fairly important role in the leadup to the iraq war.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:41 (eleven years ago) link
people not thinking that list constitutes "war" (it's an unnatural thought for 90s-kid me, too!) is the only piece of evidence future anthropologists will need to come to a working understanding of post-ww2 american life
― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:42 (eleven years ago) link
otm. that older definition of war as event has changed its utility has diminished but it's still war and there's more of it than ever. xxp
― We demand justice: who murdered Chanel? (Matt P), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:42 (eleven years ago) link
as its utility
― We demand justice: who murdered Chanel? (Matt P), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:43 (eleven years ago) link
you guys are nuts
― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:44 (eleven years ago) link
the military evacuating some diplomats from Albania /= firebombing of Dresden
let's keep some perspective here
― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:45 (eleven years ago) link
it would be excessive to say that everything there counts as 'war' but come on, a 'four-day bombing campaign'?
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:47 (eleven years ago) link
barely got their hair mussed, those pissant little countries!
SMC finally comes out as a neolib/neocon whatever warpig-enabler label you wanna use
― cancer, kizz my hairy irish azz (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:47 (eleven years ago) link
didn't Billy Blythe ejaculate some bombs immediately after his dress-stain indictment?
― cancer, kizz my hairy irish azz (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:49 (eleven years ago) link
I don't deny that you can clearly see the US military "war machine" (as Morbz puts it) in action behind all of those actions when you take them all together, primarily because the scope and scale that they encompass (ie, globe-spanning) requires a functioning military industry. The only distinction I was trying to make was that the US has not been on the unbroken, unending mission of imperialist genocide that Morbz' rhetoric implies. There are gaps, there are peaks and valleys, and they weren't all encapsulated within Gore Vidal's halcyon days of youth.
― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:51 (eleven years ago) link
the least violent episode on that list is indeed /= one of the most violent from the largest war in human history
― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:51 (eleven years ago) link
yeah and I thought this was disgusting in its transparent cynicism, I said so at the time, I am no fan of Clinton etc
― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:52 (eleven years ago) link
ftr I think this was even less violent dlh:
1998 – Liberia: On September 27, 1998, America deployed a stand-by response and evacuation force of 30 U.S. military personnel to increase the security force at the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia.
yeah, Dresden, I didn't realize every NBA star hadda be Michael Jordan.
Sotosyn, what will be your book mythologizing your past be like?
― cancer, kizz my hairy irish azz (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:52 (eleven years ago) link
thx for playing tho yes lets all keep encouraging Morbsian hysteria
― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:53 (eleven years ago) link
Billy also took the Concorde down to Little Rock to pump electricity into a retarded man.
― the ones that I'm near most: fellow outcasts and ilxors (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:54 (eleven years ago) link
reads like a line from some 70s AM radio country hit
― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:55 (eleven years ago) link
that was the night the lights went out in Arkansas
― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:56 (eleven years ago) link
My memoir will be told from multiple points of view, one of which will be an unreliable female narrator.
― the ones that I'm near most: fellow outcasts and ilxors (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:56 (eleven years ago) link
do we have a chart of US military spending btwn GHW Bush and Clinton? I'm pretty sure it didn't go down by any standard.
― cancer, kizz my hairy irish azz (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:57 (eleven years ago) link
has it ever?
― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 20:58 (eleven years ago) link
hmm this is not what I was expecting tbh
http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/infographics/2011/11/myth-of-isolationism-defense-spending_1200.jpg
― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 21:00 (eleven years ago) link
clear downward trend during Clinton's terms there btw
partially because the economy/GNP was booming during Clinton's terms
― Technology of the Big Muff (DJP), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 21:01 (eleven years ago) link
I forgot that the death of the USSR prob played its legendary "peace dividend" role there.
Also the feds have only been paying a lot for education/ infrastructure/ healthcare etc for the last 80 years, right? So arms would've been a bigger slice of a smaller pie.
― cancer, kizz my hairy irish azz (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 21:04 (eleven years ago) link
(before the New Deal, that is)
― cancer, kizz my hairy irish azz (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 21:05 (eleven years ago) link
and the Great Society, moreso? bcz it appears to dip under 50% for the last time just as Vietnam is revving up.
― cancer, kizz my hairy irish azz (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 21:07 (eleven years ago) link
not gonna be mean to shakey about that chart being from the heritage foundation since i'm sure the numbers are fine but it's still funny
http://nationalpriorities.org/media/uploads/publications/talking-about-military-spending/chart_1.jpg
defense spending has gone down plenty of times, and they're pretty much the times you'd expect (cf the sharp rise between 1965 and 1970, and then the drop) but this graph that takes it as a straight number and not as a percentage of the budget p much lines up w vidal's narrative, right? plummets (like you'd expect) between 1945 and 1950 and gradually rises (on average) from then on. anyway i am not calling anyone a neocon i am just saying that yes indeed there was a significant change in the u.s. govt's attitude towards military spending and global military action during the cold war and yes indeed we all grew up in the country that change made, and that's why the 90s seem like peacetime to us.
― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 21:21 (eleven years ago) link
It's so large a percentage of the budget in the nineteenth century because the federal government had literally no other responsibilities except making war.
― the ones that I'm near most: fellow outcasts and ilxors (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 21:24 (eleven years ago) link
which is why heritage has chosen to graph it as they have, and then filenamed it myth-of-isolationism.jpg
― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 21:30 (eleven years ago) link
okay much lolz at filename
― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 9 October 2012 21:57 (eleven years ago) link
and yeah I didn't really care about the 19th century half of the graph, but it was attached to the 20th century half
Good job:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INW6i6K1NmQ
All I've read by Vidal was his memoir, so I came to this only knowing him through his public persona. His blanket sourness about politics (I think someone in-house once internalized his every pronouncement) was persuasive, both softened and mitigated by things I don't especially feel like getting into. That aside, it's another good documentary about getting old.
― clemenza, Friday, 6 December 2013 03:02 (ten years ago) link
sound mix in trailer is a wreck; doesn't bode well
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, 6 December 2013 03:08 (ten years ago) link
I don't have the greatest hearing in the world, and there wasn't a word in the entire film I couldn't make out. Honestly, not a problem at all.
― clemenza, Friday, 6 December 2013 03:14 (ten years ago) link
Meant to say that one of the funniest things in the film is Vidal's skill as an impressionist. He does JFK, Tennessee Williams, and W. He's like two notches below a good SNL impression.
― clemenza, Friday, 6 December 2013 14:45 (ten years ago) link
Loved Best of Enemies, about the Vidal-Buckley convention spots (“debates”) in ‘68. For most of it, exactly what I wanted: all the segments in their entirety (the 10th is excerpted for an epilogue, but I think most everything from the other nine is included), with all the necessary context (effectively provided piecemeal and a little scrambled--e.g., you get a Ben-Hur clip well into the film, connected to Vidal’s thoughts on the war and American empire). Great line from Frank Rich that I think I knew but had forgotten: “The joke was that if you really wanted to end the Vietnam War, put it on ABC and in 13 weeks it would be cancelled.” Towards the end, I found it genuinely sad: how this one skirmish stayed with both men for the rest of their lives (Buckley seemed especially haunted by it). The epilogue makes the obvious but necessary point, and not sentimentally: it locates Vidal and Buckley not as one last great shining moment, but in fact--in the words of Vidal himself--as the beginning of the circus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSH20evwVIc
― clemenza, Monday, 27 April 2015 04:08 (nine years ago) link
Howard K. Smith's equanimity in the face of these two guys got huge laughs more than once.
― clemenza, Monday, 27 April 2015 04:15 (nine years ago) link
― clemenza, Friday, December 6, 2013 9:45 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Finally watched this last night, and YES! He does a good Reagan as well, but his best Reagan zinger remains this one (included in the film):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iuNpn17pfM
― The New Gay Sadness (cryptosicko), Monday, 3 August 2015 14:27 (eight years ago) link
I'll be seeing this twice this week with different friends--I've been proselytizing.
― clemenza, Monday, 3 August 2015 14:57 (eight years ago) link
You meant the Vidal documentary--I meant Best of Enemies.
― clemenza, Monday, 3 August 2015 14:59 (eight years ago) link