KultureDrome

The Culture Wars

Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters vehemently defended Pentagon story plants in Iraqi newspapers. Peters argued that we were fighting “postmodern warfare,” his term. In “postmodern warfare,” Peters righteously explained, as if it was his own invention (and maybe it is), “to win the media is to win the war!” On Fox News Bill O'Reilly is self-destructing. It is a terrible sight to behold. To put a seasonal spin on it, we are, according to the banner-waving right-winger, engaged in a "cultural war" on the home front to save Christmas! Liberals, according to the latest ever more feeble list of conservative talking points, do not celebrate Christmas. As spinning-head-screaming-throats go, O'Reilly is among the most self-hating of the breed, a homegrown version of the suicide bomber, he will seemingly do anything no matter what to try and save the party line, even sacrifice himself publicly on the altar of a bright lit soundstage. Only the Busheviks have exhausted so much rhetoric there is little left for O'Reilly than to argue that Christmas is a patriotic landmark and those who don't celebrate it are traitors to the Union. Never mind that among the myriad Constitutional ideals O'Reilly and his ilk have to sabotage in order to get at that point is religious freedom. Do the ends always justify the means? These folks are so outright wrong-headed, it is hardly worth arguing with the maniacs and they know it. It has been their strategy all along to trash anything and everything that comes between them and their selfish goals, the more absurd their position the better for them. Woe to anyone who argues. It’s like talking to lunatics. They are so wrong on every different level its impossible to know where to even begin making headway to try and make sense of it all. It is like the scene in The Brotherhood of Satan (1971) in the sheriff’s office when the characters try and figure out what the hell is going on. By no means is it anywhere near the best part of the movie. Basically the story is about a father, his daughter, and his girlfriend who seemingly unwittingly enter into a small desert town terrorized by dark forces. Children are mysteriously vanishing. Among the highlights are the abduction sequences. In each case the parents of the child are brutally murdered by one of the child’s toys turned deadly weapon: a toy tank crushes a boy’s family in their car to open the movie, later on a doll turns cutthroat, literally, a mounted knight figurine beheads a father, etc. After which the children purposefully march off to the Satanic coven to eat red cake with black frosting before the hovering black hooded priests take them away. What follows is a Devilish orgiastic frenzy you really have to see for yourself. The ending is left wonderfully open ended by director Bernard McEveety, who was also involved in the cult favorite A Boy and His Dog (1975), staring a very young Don Johnson. Back in the sheriff’s office, however, the true face of evil is yet to be revealed and the characters, including the sheriff, his deputy, the preacher and small town doctor are all desperate to stop the carnage before it is too late. At that point it is all guesswork. The sheriff is, of course, a realist. The preacher counters with the possibility that the only explanation might be metaphysical. While the deputy, who has throughout the movie been avidly reading sensational tabloids has his own ideas about what is behind all the mayhem: “Little green men”. What can they do? In the end the doctor, hidden agenda aside, suggests they are too tired to figure anything out and they turn in for the night. When answers are illusive, after all, anything is possible. Who’s to say one way or another what is the truth. All ideas, no matter how preposterous, are of equal value. The scene makes one realize: no wonder things are the way they are! How can folks agree on anything when some blame god, and others are sure it’s the nefarious handy-work of space aliens. Politics is no doubt the art of disagreement. In the era of the postmodern cultural wars, however, it has become little more than the science of distilling everything down to the most primary "wedge" issue – divide and conquer. But Christmas, Bill O'Reilly, really? The Christo-fascists are going down in flames. Christmas is the least of their worries.