bleeding heart

Everyone would immediately recognize this if the allegations were other than attacks against allied personnel. Which means the moral compass is set firmly on the doctrinal necessities of "worthy" vs. "unworthy" victims, combatants, and chess pieces generally.

No wonder. It's an extremist opinion, implying the discredited "commie" themes, which are belied by the NDP's broad and broadening public support. I can't see it, either.

Less-than-perfect title aside, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a gruelling, pain-soaked movie about mother and son, exploring the Nature vs. Nurture debate (but coming down more or less on the former). Eva, played amazingly by Tilda Swinton, wants to be a loving mother, but her son's cruelty and strangeness simply won't let her. She is not a very good mother, but the flaw could well be a reaction, rather than her true self. If anything, the broken and episodic nature of the movie aligns with Eva's shattered psychology. The narrative is non-linear and fractured, continually cutting back and forth between Eva and Kevin (chillingly portrayed by three actors, as toddler, child, and especially as teenager, almost a Swinton lookalike). Their relationship is distant and ugly, but also profound. Eva hates him, but loves him too, and tries forever to bridge the gap while becoming terrified of her son's behaviour...until the end, a paroxysm of bloodshed that is more emotionally-wrecking than explicit. The movie is really about Swinton's Eva, a woman who spends fifteen years trying to cope with an impossible life: her awful son, and her loving but clueless husband, played unusually straight by the usually quirky John C. Reilly, who is naive about his son't nature and unwilling to even consider the possibility that his wife's feelings are legitimate. Because the narrative is non-linear, we also see (are subjected to) the community's hatred of Eva, as her son's murderous school attack make her a pariah; she avoids victims' mothers in grocery stores, is slapped on the street, has her house and car splashed with red paint: one component of the overwhelming blood imagery that soaks this movie in grief and estrangement. A great movie: it's not a didactic, movie-of-the-week look at a teenaged killer; it doesn't go to pains to explain his behaviour. (He has considered the matter himself, but says he can't really figure it out.) The movie is about a woman whose son turns out to be a mass murderer, and so it "teaches" us nothing except about her grief and pain.

Really? So a person of means, who writes about the excellence of, say, free market ideology, should not be taken seriously, either? What are the financial credentials one needs to write about political economy and economic theory and philosophy? Am I mistaken in remembering your defense of the ideas of Ayn Rand? She was famously misanthropic, and proudly elitist.

The dodge is your own...repeatedly, here and elsewhere. I think you're miffed, but I think it's misplaced: you think you've been exposed as a defensive partisan...when you scream it in your own moniker! I did little more than agree with your self-assessment. Or is that something only black people and women would say?

Well, that's exactly right, a point often missed in the union debates. Labour-costs wise, we cannot compete with several other countries. Period. It's impossible. Heck, the wages paid in many of these countries is wildly insufficient for them, even though their money goes a lot further on living expenses. Here? Forget it. Such wages are literally unliveable ones.

No...let's stick to the formulation as it exists, rather than your backpedaled one which conveniently revises your theme: If you called all black men idiots, yes, I would think you were doing that because they're black. Who wouldn't?

Well, sure, the art world is a vastly varied place, and all sorts of crazy things are going to occur. If we expand "art" to the world of film, for example--as we must--a lot of people enjoy the Transformers franchise, buy the tickets, maybe even the DVD with the "director's cut" (a sham, crude marketing idea in and of itself, incidentally, and meaningless) even though the Transformers is a crappy chunk of garbage, a terrible series of films. Same principle, at bottom. Or they like the Twilight books, for...some reason, never properly articulated.

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So you don't think we should be involved in some overblown (in fact, fallacious) "War on Terror"? Good man.

No, because your statement about the narcissism, the desensitization, and the moral relativism of society is based on the notion that at one time, things were not this way. Further, you said that "relativism" is messing up "our kids." But if we had always been narcissistic and relativistic (which we have been), then we would all have been messed up, always. Which, for all I know, is indeed the case...but it's not something new, thanks to liberals, or secularists, or feminists, or unwed teens, or whatever other monstrous evil you're worried about. Your whole argument is about how our current state of affairs is a bad mistake--thanks to "relativism" and so on--which plainly implies that we need to go back to when we weren't like this. Maybe, as Kimmy says, back to the days when ancient laws dictated all sorts of brutal behaviours; or maybe back to the halcyon days of the 1950s, which somehow has assumed an ehthereal, magical quality, when Dad worked, Mom baked cookies, kids played stickball with a sense of fair play.... You know, the "good society" that is a product of sheer fantasy. Not at all. But your argument here, and elsewhere, is always predicated on the idea that secularism, feminism, liberalism, and Planned Parenthood are what has damaged us; which means that things were better before these sinister forces came about. So I'm asking you: prove it. That's not an unreasonable request.

Yet somehow, the ignorant among us don't live in terror of being nuked by the servants of Allah. Even Glenn Beck hasn't yet convinced us, and he's on th' T.V.!

The real problem with Ccanadian society is the Somalis.

No question.

Perhaps the primary matter that you've missed is the irony of a poster called "CPCFTW" mocking the very notion that he might be a wee bit partisan. The defensiveness goes without saying. At any rate, the trajectory of this discussion will doubtless shortly head in the same direction you elsewhere like to take them: eventually, you will agree with me....but say that it doesn't matter, because "blacks and women" are priveleged over white males in the left imagination, or whatever other point you'ver plagiarized from this or that reactionary. Or perhaps you'll be inventive enough to ultimately answer with some other non sequiter, which isn't necessarily a terrific improvement. We'll see what happens, I guess.

Yes, it was a very serious question. In my opinion, society has always been "narcissistic, desensitized, uncaring, and relativist"....plainly you disagree, so I'd be interested in hearing when such qualities were not omnipresent.

That's because you're trying to follow the "argument" as posted. Understandable.

Well you see, you may have forgotten, but a couple of posts ago you did agree with me. So the point is pretty moot, isn't it?

Just so. Govern yourself accordingly. Then explain to me Harper's poor little abused arguments, and explain how I have mischaracterized them. You'll have to include his actual words in your argument, else someone might think your analysis a little...defensively partisan. Tilter is indulging in a pretence that my words don't mean what they plainly do. That's by definition a dishonest method of discussion. And since you have been following this discussion, you are fully aware of this. So why your pretence, CPCFTW?

So you agree with me, that the two of you were inventing phantom opponents, and then mocking your own inventions. I'm glad you see it my way.

If you prefer masturbation to honest debate, there are other websites more suited to your needs.

It's an empty platitude, which at bottom wishes to portray Western behaviour on the internaitonal stage as benign and humane. It's preposterous.

Great points, Wyly. What big protest movement do we look back upon, cringe, and say, "Wow, that was a stupid idea!"

When, exactly was our society not "narcissistic, desensitized, uncaring, and relativist"? It's an honest question.

Not a single poster has even vaguely suggested that this man shouldn't be imprisoned. You two are literally arguing with phantoms of your own invention.