Azarkon

Promote a political agenda? No. Angling for political reaction? Yes. Big difference. Both the release time of 300 and the additions to it by Snyder encourage political interpretations. One might even argue that Miller was angling for political reaction in his original writing, though obviously not of the same kind since he was writing in the 1990's. No one's accusing Miller of writing propaganda, or Snyder of changing Miller's work so as to create propaganda. Those are your strawmans and remain so, I'm afraid. Come on, Gromnir, your reading skills can't be that bad. I didn't say that 300 didn't have an anti-establishment message. I said that message is relevant to our argument only insofar as you can argue that 300 being anti-establishment negates its ability to be read as pro-bush (hence, you gotta cast bush as The Man and not as the vigilante). Here, you keep flaunting the fact that it's a vigilante freedom fighter going after a tyrant (must be pro-liberty and therefore anti-bush, right?), without realizing that 1) vigilantism has never been considered liberal - indeed, it's most often associated with conservatism and 2) there's something very different between a work like 300 and a work like Sin City, even if the basic message Miller's trying to get across (it's freedom-loving heroes fighting against the Man, man!) is the same. Take Sin City, which is pure anti-establishment. The work depicts a corrupt future, American decadence, oppression from the government and people in high places. It's all internalized within a single culture - there is no "Other" to speak of, only the corruption so deeply ingrained in society that man's gotta become criminal to uproot. Now take 300. The basic message (free men vs. tyrant) appears to be the same, until you realize that it's got a basic national and cultural divide. This isn't just about some vigilante Spartan trying to kill the tyrant at home anymore. This is about some Spartan king, who, though he is part of the establishment, is not corrupt but is instead a symbol of freedom and reason who'd take his fight to the enemy and in so doing inspire his nation to follow. Immediately the message changes, even if Miller didn't intend it to. 300, like it or not, is an epic - it's the birth of Western civilization and reason and its struggle against those who would destroy it. You can't get away from this message in 300. Course, it's pretty dense to argue that Miller was trying to be racist or ethnocentric about peoples 2000 years ago, but its theme of Us vs. Them is precisely what makes 300 different from Sin City in its power to inspire political parallels. You take the basic anti-establishment message, mix in some nationalistic comparisons between Sparta and America, cast Bush as the symbol of freedom and reason, and suddenly its interpretation is pro-bush. Obviously this isn't what Miller intended, but my point is that you don't have to go at it very hard to make the connection because the basic story *is* an epic about a civilization's identity. You can't tell me that 300 would be the same story if Leonidas were Persian and he were fighting against Xerxes all the same. This has got nothing to do with your "oh chrissakes one o' your points is the enemy has brown-skin" schtick. Reverse the situation (Xerxes is leading 300 against Leonidas), and you'd have the same epic except relevant to opposite cultures. The key is that Xerxes and Leonidas aren't the *same* culture, nation, or civilization. That's also the divisive point between 300 and Sin City. So yea, 300 has an anti-establishment message, but that anti-establishment message is also a message about national survival and identity. Strip Xerxes of his position as god-king of the Persian Empire, garb him in Spartan, and you have a totally different story. It's not the same as Sin City, TDKR, Give Me Liberty, or any of Miller's other works about the corruption within. In 300, Miller creates a nation built upon freedom and reason, makes its king a hero, and has him fight all the barbaric, freedom-hating, mysticism-loving hordes of Asia. That sure sounds like the same anti-establishment message as a criminal going up against a politician, yeah. You're not making a very effective argument if your point is that 300 is the same anti-establishment story Miller's been writing since he started. It's not - the reaction, in terms of political interpretations, to 300 and to Sin City is most definitely not the same.

Eh, there's no end to this argument, because you're not even following logic now (not to mention completely misrepresenting my points - "for chrissakes, brown-skinned enemies were one o' your so-called points" - WHERE?) You're just denying everything I say by suggesting that the only, even mildly credible political angle (which you don't even believe in, since you think there is no political angle) is that of Leonidas/Terrorist vs. Bush/Xerxes - despite the fact that so many people interpreted it otherwise. Not to mention, your insistence on arguing about Miller and the original 300 comic book makes no sense, given that my argument all long have been with the movie. I guess it just proves your point that two people could look at the same thing and each see something completely different - and yet, I should add, each believes in his own version of the truth so strongly that he can only see the dissenter as a nutjob. I'll address one thing, though: 300 having a political angle is a commentary on the film. Miller following Bush in his political perspective on Iraq is a commentary on his person. Nowhere did I suggest a logical connection between the two (in fact, I said that one did not explain the other). Heck, I even pointed out the absurdity of involving Miller in the discussion because like it or not, 300 is not a completely faithful adaptation of the book. The lines that stood out the most as political angling were the lines that were added by Snyder. My only argument, with respect to the book, was that it being adapted in the current political context might very well have been a ploy designed to sell more tickets, which would then call for Snyder to add more political angling (and he did.) Furthermore, 300 being anti-establishment is only relevant insofar as Bush can be symbolically cast as The Man. Is Bush the Man? Not if he's Leonidas. Kings and presidents are not automatically representations of The Man, especially when they violate international law to attack a foreign country and are politically isolated at home. Yes, Miller did get flak in the past (due to 300, even) for being pro-terrorism, so it might seem ironic that his work's adaptation is being criticized for the opposite, now. But that, as I said, is only because a work can stand for different things to different people at different times - this is perfectly valid and unproblematic in the interpretation of art. It does not mean the interpreter is nuts, because it's got nothing to do with the work's INTENTION, and everything to do with its SIGNIFICANCE. In no way can Miller be blamed for propaganda (and you're nuts for thinking that I ever claimed this) because that is an accusation of intention and since 300 was written in 1998 he could never have had that intention. Snyder, now, CAN be blamed for propaganda in his adaptation - even so, that's not what I'm doing. I'm saying that Snyder introduced blatant political angles and dialogue in order to make the film more relevant to the contemporary context, and that these added content makes Leonidas more similar to Bush. If that's where we agree to disagree, I'm satisfied. But don't act like I'm a nutjob because of your strawmans and misrepresentations. Let's view the chronology to make sure we're on the same page: * In the beginning, ~300 Spartans + many more Greeks die at the Battle of Thermopylae * More than two thousand years later, Frank Miller the comic book artist is inspired by the event and creates 300, combining the story with his own anti-establishment, pro-liberty themes * Almost a decade later, Snyder adapts Miller's work and adds his own filler content ontop of what Miller wrote * Critics see it; many criticize it for having a pro-bush stance, some think that it's a propaganda piece designed to justify Bush's stance towards Iran * Audiences see it; some decide that it's pro-Bush, some pro-terrorist, and many nothing at all * Gromnir sees it, and thinks that the first two groups are stupid, but especially the first group, since they don't know Frank Miller is anti-establishment * Azarkon sees it, and thinks that Snyder's additions make the film more political and more pro-Bush than it would otherwise be, and sympathize with the critics who read it as such, though he doesn't recognize it as propaganda * Gromnir and Azarkon have a long, heated, and ultimately futile discussion over who's right * (Present Time)

So a large % of critics and fans misjudged Miller before. Boo hoo. I'm not judging Miller. I'm restating what he himself stated in an interview. It seems awfully futile to defend a man from his own words. What's 180 about it? My first post in this thread was to the effect that Miller seemed pro-Bush in his political statements and I've never wavered since. Sure, Miller's pro-liberty, vigilante, versus The Man in his works, but he's also deadset on Bush's ideological line in his interview with the NPR. In fact, he was the only person on the show who demonstrated full support for the Iraqi War. Since Bush has basically made his administration a platform for the Iraqi War ("you're either with us or against us"), that gave me the impression that Miller supports Bush. Now, I can see how you could argue that what Miller is actually saying is that he supports Bush's policies in Iraq but that's it - in everything else he's anti-Bush. Sure. But we got no evidence for that. For Miller to do a 180 after 9/11 (he was living quite close to the place where it happened, as I recall) is not unthinkable, Gromnir, though I didn't even argue that. I argued that Miller's thoughts on foreign policy mirrored that of Bush's official line. He's obviously not looking for gray areas when he calls for the American people to fight for their existence against an enemy that would bomb us back to the 6th century (his words, not mine). Or maybe Hollywood decided 300 would make more money because it's politically relevant? It's not a conspiracy theory to push out a film of public interest in order to make more doe. See Munich, Kingdom Under Heaven, etc.. Point made, and stop arguing strawmans. Hollywood's not patriotic - when did I say it is? Hollywood's out to make money via satisfying the public interest - and what is the public most interested in right now? The War on Terror, of course. So they release a bunch of movies about the West, the Middle-East, and the West vs. the Middle-East, make them politically relevant by inserting a few allusions/key phrases, and voila - mission complete. It's no recent ploy, Gromnir - rewind your VCR and you'll find dozens and dozens of old war/action films made in the same vein as 300. Get off it. I've been entertaining this straw man since the beginning of your retort and it's not getting any better, so let's settle it straight out: I never said 300 was a pro-bush propaganda movie. I said: "People complain that critics read too much into the movie, but after seeing it myself, I can't say I disagree with them. When the director/screenwriter uses lines like "freedom is not free" (in what is probably the weakest link in the movie - the domestic scenes that were added in as filler), you know he's intentionally angling for modern politics." -and- "But Miller being a bit right-wing in his present political perspective on Iraq (and he seems to be, see this article: http://raggedthots.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20300) does not explain why Snyder, who claimed that he did not set out to analogize either side, added so much support for the Leonidas-as-Bush idea." Both of which I stand by. The most I could see myself adding ontop of what I already said, in the interest of clarification, is to change the first quote to: ""People complain that critics read too much into the movie, but after seeing it myself, I can't say I disagree with them, though I don't agree with the accusation that the film is supposed to be a government-sponsored propaganda piece, either...." The film is not propaganda. There is no coterie of faceless, cigar-smoking neocons sitting besides Miller and Snyder as they discuss how to win the American public. Miller is not a right-wing nut. There, I said it - the answers to all your strawmans. Discussion over?

Oh and just a note - you cannot see this movie and not realize its political context. Everything about its release time reeks of capitalizing on the conflict in the Middle-East. Of course, this has little to do with the story of 300 itself - and I've said as much (but you seem to like ignoring what I said), but you simply cannot ignore the reason the film was made and released at this juncture in time. Any director - Snyder or otherwise - should know what he's getting into, and I'd be surprised if they didn't adjust the film accordingly. Heck, Snyder took the liberty of adding feminism into a story that demanded none. A line or two of dialogue reminding us of 300's relationship to our own contemporary politics is almost a given.

Off the top of my head: * Leonidas wrestling with a boy and patting him when we first meet him, not in the comic * Leonidas having romantic sex with his wife, not in the comic * Leonidas being troubled about what he must do and being encouraged by his wife, not in the comic * Leonidas having a son, not in the comic * Pendant between him and his lover, not in the comic * That whole scene with the burning village and the dying child, not in the comic * That whole captain and his son thing, not in the comic * Leonidas comforting the captain before the last battle, not in the comic * Leonidas telling the cripple that he could still aid in a Spartan victory, not in the comic * Leonidas justifying his actions against the messengers, not in the comic * The speech at home glorifying him, not in the comic * The *removal* of the scene in the beginning of the comic where Leonidas enforces discipline among his soldiers Please. Feel free to call them weak if you want, but you're not convincing anyone that they don't exist. So in your mind terrorists = Iraqi freedom fighters? Bleh. We've had this discussion before. Wait, what? If I argued that Miller was pro-terrorism you'd understand? Have you not kept up with Miller in recent times? This is the guy who said that we're in an existential war against an enemy analogical to Nazi Germany. He's labeled as pro-terrorist? WTF? Maybe back when he published Sin City and Give Me Liberty. But that was a long time ago. And I don't understand why you being sympathetic to Miller means that you have to deny any political motivation in his work. Miller's current political stance is so subtle that he's gone off and written a Batman vs. Al Qaeda comic, for god sakes. I'm simply observing his political viewpoint from his OWN STATEMENTS, and talking about the film's conspicuous political angle (which doesn't even involve him directly, last I checked). That you feel this is out of line reveals alot, because nowhere did I apply any judgment to Miller or Snyder based on their political stances, nor did I say they were involved in any propaganda vehicles. I simply said, and I stand by it, that Miller himself seems to have become pro-Bush after 9/11 based on his support of Bush's foreign policy (since that's essentially the summation of Bush's political platform) in the interview they conducted with him, and I'm hardly the only one who thought he sounded like a rightist there: http://hangrightpolitics.com/2007/01/26/fr...-of-our-nation/ . Course, I also said later that it maybe that partisan politics is insufficient to characterize Miller's political stance, which seems to be pro-Iraqi War abroad and anti-Bush at home, but you apparently missed that one, too. You're looking at the wrong sandwich, I'm afraid.

So would the current US administration be deemed inappropriate or not? (I don't think good governments are necessarily self-evident. A government may seem good to some, but not to others. At any case, wrestling power from bad governments is easy if everyone had faith in the system's objectivity, presuming that we begin the process with a democracy and not a dictatorship.) One might argue that most "massively disruptive" events in history were precipitated by "elbow grease" changes in society, that the greatest leaps were made slowly and steadily. Still, when things come to a head, the final break must still be there - and the end result could still be quite messy ("an end to slavery? Not in my life time!") I'm not saying that we should go out there and change the world tomorrow, but every seed of change has the potential to be seditious. In other words, it's fine to say that progress towards a better society will likely be slow, but you still have to set goals and benchmarks. Depending on education to enlighten the world is great - but only if people are actually learning the right things.

I concede the point. There is always some subjectivity when it comes to humans. What that doesn't mean, though, is that we should be content with maintaining the same degree of subjectivity. One might argue that what differentiates man today from man of the past is his adoption of a rational, objective approach to matters relating to the physical world. It would seem logical, then, that man's next step should be to adopt a rational, objective approach to the social and political world, as well. Hence comes the idea that cultural development has not caught up with scientific progress - which consequently begs the question as to what an objective, rational socio-political system might look like. I thought that the corporate model of training and evaluating executive management was a valid model for what political leadership could look like in the next few centuries, especially as corporations and governments become closer (in what seems to be an inevitability). But maybe I'm wrong. Still, current political systems are in dire need of *some* restructuring - I don't think it'd be wise to be complacent with what we have simply because "democracy is better than the alternative." What alternative?

That's not what I said. Some interpretations are naturally more logical and apt than others. If you didn't believe this you wouldn't be arguing. I'd also caution against equating 300 to a sandwich, unless it's a very special sandwich, like the last sandwich Leonidas ever ate, in which case if I put up an image of the sandwich, some would believe that the sandwich is just a sandwich, and others will believe that it's actually a tribute to Leonidas. ... Come off it. Critics sometimes read too much into films and come up with absurd interpretations that defy common logic, but here we have a film where even the average netizen is seeing parallels. Maybe the director (as I said, this has nothing to do with Miller unless he screenwrote the fillers) didn't intend it, but he sure as hell should've expected it. As with Kingdom of Heaven, the film was okay'd and made the way it was likely for the *sake* of tapping into the current political climate - so that people would feel a greater sense of personal connection with it. None of this necessitates a political motivation behind the film. You're acting like I'm blaming the director for being a Bush propaganda machine, when in actuality what I'm saying is that it's hard to escape the accusation that he made the film intentionally political. Now, did he intend it to have a pro-Bush outlook? Maybe - I certainly think there's evidence for it. But he could've just as well done as follows: Screenwriter: So then we have the queen say, "I learned that one man must sacrifice himself so that others may live." Director: Good, good. But I think it'd be better if she said "I learned that freedom is not free." Ya know? That way people would think the film is politically relevant and we'd get alot of press about its political message Screenwriter: But- Director: It's settled, then! We'll also rip off every romance epic in the book by including a shared pendant between Leonidas and his wife. You know, for that feminine touch. Is that so hard to believe? Only one? I could name about a dozen of them, starting with the entire addition of the domsetic scene. Every addition to the film makes Leonidas more sympathetic. Heck, they even justified the pit scene by adding Leonidas's little spiel about how the messenger was responsible for everything he said, and subsequently naming each one of his offenses to the king (and adding one to the queen, no less). What do you expect? It's Hollywood. I still don't see how you can even begin to argue that Leonidas was a terrorist without resorting to pin finding. How is a king and three hundred of his best trained soldiers standing against an enemy army in any way comparable to terrorism? Freedom fighters, sure, but there isn't a shred of evidence that Leonidas or his buddies did anything that might be comparable to attacking innocent civilians in their home country. Which, consequently, defeats the whole idea that you could see anything in a grilled cheese sandwich.

The difference between your interpretation and that of the people you deride is that your scenario *is* made up of minutiae, whereas the East vs. West, freedom vs. oppression, etc. motifs are about as subtle as the council scene in Star Wars, Episode III. There the jab at modern politics was intentional. Now, just because the allusion is no longer so one-dimensional, it's suddenly reading too much into the story? That half the people at aicn and imdb reach the opposite conclusion is not proof that the film is absent of present day allusions, but that it's capable of multiple representations. I could make a film where for one and a half hours you saw an American flag being burnt, again and again, in slow motion - and be completely ambiguous about whether my message was "America is evil and should be destroyed" or "look, Americans, the Muslims are burning our flag - aren't you outraged?" Hell, I could be satirizing the whole idea of political symbolism - maybe my "message" is just a non-descript piece of cloth being burnt. But does any of these intentions, on my part, mean that my film is apolitical and that you should *only* view it as a non-descript piece of cloth being burnt? Hardly. All films are inevitably seen through the lens of contemporary history, but you didn't see many critics whining about former blockbusters like Titanic. LOTR got a couple jabs, yes, but nowhere nearly as bad as 300. The reason 300 is seen as it is is because it set itself up for such interpretations through its obvious allusions to modern politics, just as Kingdom of Heaven did. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that it has a consistent political message - but it does mean that critics are not "nuts" to interpret it through those lens. To you, maybe the film *is* just 300 buff dudes beating up on less buff dudes interweaved with nipple shots and cliche lines about freedom. But there's a huge, Atlanic Ocean-wide difference between people interpreting the same piece of work differently, and people reading too much into said work. I don't think it's a logical stretch to say that Xerxes and Leonidas can, variably, both represent Bush. People will find their own meanings to what they see - especially when they're asked to do it, as 300 most definitely does. Ironically, these days it's neither the people who claim that the film is pro-Bush propaganda nor anti-Bush critique that are most adamant in their claims. Rather, it's the people who argue, with all the snobbery and elitism of academic critics, that the film can only be about exactly what it's about. The anti-expressionist backlash from too much bull****ing in literature class, is my guess.

Ah yes, partisan politics. The inevitable descent into factions. Thanks for pointing that out, and I agree with you, to a degree, though I'd point out that even small democracies such as the one I noted in Taiwan tend to become unworkable and corrupt over time. However, I don't agree with you on the idea that all systems suffer, inevitably, as the population grows larger. Or at least, that all systems suffer to the same degree. No doubt bureaucratic matters become more difficult with more people - inevitably - but national leadership and vision should, I think, be possible even with a large population. The problems that you mentioned are apparent only in systems where candidates have to "sell themselves," so to speak, to the larger public. But perhaps that's the problem - and a meritocracy seems the obvious solution. When you're measured objectively, rather than subjectively, your personal image does not matter as much. As in the employment world, it's the results that really count. Imagine a presidency that isn't measured by its mere charisma or ability to stir up popular sentiment, but rather by how effectively it creates jobs, ensures national security, and puts forth a vision for the future. That, alone, would be a significant first step. Now imagine a presidency that isn't mired in partisan politics nor ran by entrenched political elites. I think we've still got a long way to go before we can say that we have the "best" form of government achievable by man.

not just the US that suffers from this. the US probably gets the most press on it, however, since we have had so many recent "battlefield" elections lately. taks Absolutely. The US actually has a rather healthy democracy when compared to, say, modern day Taiwan. But that's precisely evidence for why it's the government system, and not the country, that might be at fault. I don't know. Slow, elbow gease approaches have the problem of being so smooth that people barely notice them. If your goal is to restore people's faith in the system, a mass movement (even if it results in an actual compromise) would be much more effective. This is particularly true in the US, where mass movements have a history of shaking things up.

That's the issue, isn't it? Why make the queen a symbol of freedom (and *American* freedom, at that, based on her choice dialogue) in the first place? The female lead needed something to do, sure, but the whole unpatriotic senate/patriotic queen cliche just came off as corny. It's like Thora Birch's role in that Dungeons and Dragons movie - pointlessly anachronistic and, thus, hollow. Like I said - it's not that critics are reading too much into it, but that it's too obvious not to read anything into... Unless we assume that the director/screenwriter is so incompetent as to be unconscious of what he's inserting. I don't know how you came to associate pro-Bush with pro-establishment, but that's not what I mean by it. Your basic point is correct. Miller is, as you say, most concerned with personal freedom. But see, you don't have to be a neocon to be pro-Bush or pro-Iraqi War. Many people who support Bush and the Iraqi War would never support the neocon agenda, and that in some sense attests to the futility of a partisan view of politics. Miller is a supporter of personal freedom, but he's also an idealist. The neocons use the superhero motif to justify American dominance; Miller believes in it. To him, and he's stated this in no uncertain terms, this is an existential war for American civilization that we're in. This is a war for freedom, and Iraq attacked us first. He's casting this whole issue in the mold of a Manichean conflict - he made an analogy in the link I provided between Iraq and Nazi Germany, saying that 9/11 was basically the Pearl Harbor of our age. Read it yourself. Miller is no neocon, and he's definitely the very opposite of a fascist. But, like many Americans who support the war, he's a believer of their ideological line - the idea that we're in the midst of an existential conflict between Western liberalism and Islamofascism. Unsurprisingly, Miller is exactly like the superhero vigilantes of which he writes. Guess what, so is Bush (or at least, the image that the Bush administration is trying to cast itself as). I concede, though, that this does not necessarily make Miller a supporter of Bush. He's more of a supporter of what Bush supposedly supports. And who wouldn't be, if Bush's professedly simplified view of the conflict was all there was to it? I guess what I'm saying is: I don't know Miller as well as you, but from what I've read of his political opinions, he seems to think in comic book terms.

Of course - democracy only works if the people are willing. But people don't use the system because they lack faith in it. How do you put faith back into the system without giving it a new face lift, at least?

All very good points, and I like the comparison to classical Chinese political theory (although the dynastic system was never constitutional and certainly didn't offer any way of selecting good leaders besides hereditary descent). I'd like to comment on the limited term concept - there's no reason why the government should not be evaluated on an annual or bi-annual basis. Indeed, I think it'd be necessary for a healthy administration, and to root out corruption. You might argue, then, that a separation of power is also necessary, so that the executive government is not used to evaluate itself - in this, it's not too different from the current American system (which, in my mind, is very well designed but for a few critical flaws). I'd like to emphasize, though, that the key difference between a constitutional meritocracy and a constitutional republic is the existence of an objective criteria for government performance. Lacking such a criteria, the best I can see is a hybrid system in which people *voted* on the criteria for performance, instead of candidates, and then the government is evaluated and replaced as necessary based on those measurements. The problem with this, as Walsh pointed out, is that people's ideas of what the government should do change with the national mood, and yet you do not want to have a re-vote each time something new happens (ie 9/11). As such, for a constitutional meritocracy to work, there must be enough political, economic, and social theory to support the development of an all-encompassing, and objectively defined (as possible), national criteria. Such a criteria would include how to measure a government's performance on issues such as national security, domestic employment, and the like in a social scientific manner. It would still be amenable to a changing society, but presumably the process of amendment would be subject to close scrutiny under social scientific reasoning, rather than be simply a product of national mood. Ultimately, the incentive behind my post is to pinpoint some key flaws in the modern elective system and to offer solutions. The most obvious flaw in American politics that I've seen is the focus on a candidate's personal image, charisma, and (many times) the depth of his wallet as opposed to his actual ability to lead and govern. This has led to campaign tactics such as political mud-slinging and demagoguery, neither of which is conducive to selecting an effective leader. Meanwhile, the failure to produce good candidates on the part of major parties would not be nearly as much of an issue if there was actually a way of formally evaluating their failures and then producing new leaders that would not make the same mistakes. Instead, each party is simply concerned with how to caputre the largest demographic with its range of "controversial" issues and the personal background of its political candidate. In a time when what we really need are visionary leaders who can offer humanity hope and optimism towards a brighter future, we are mired in political deadlock between weak candidates and short-sighted solutions to present problems. If one, in such a situation, is not to blame the government system under which we operate, then the best we can say is that this is all just a string of unfortunate incidents and that there's nothing we can really do about it except hope that the problem will solve itself by virtue of new, better candidates. If so, are we really so different from the peasant farmers who hoped that the tyrant's son would be less oppressive? If outright tyranny was cured, in the West, by the adoption of constitutional law, then doesn't it stand to reason that political short-sightedness and demagoguery can also be cured by similar objective guarantees of government performance? I don't know - but it seems a good start.

300 came out in 1998 so it's difficult to argue that it's a pro-Bush propaganda piece. But... I've read the original comics and they're not nearly as steeped in modern political rhetoric as the film. This whole deal with the senate not being patriotic enough to support their king, freedom is not free, etc. was all tacked on. Kinda hard not to see to the political connection, even if you didn't go into the theatre expecting it. Though, as far as Miller's personal political beliefs go, I do think that he's gone over to the pro-Bush side since 9/11. In the interview I linked to earlier he claimed that Iraq declared war on us first (by proxy of Al Qaeda, I presume), that we were in the midst of an existential war against the Middle-East, said that Bush didn't mobilize the American people to war enough, and was in the process of doing some Batman vs. Al Qaeda comic.

He did? Because I left the movie with a group of people who entered into just such a discussion and came away virtually split. I thought no meaningful connections could be draw, at least, none that were intentional. Maybe because I have read 300 well before the movie, so when I saw a scene I thought of the comic rather than modern day comparisons. I thought the modern day inspired dialogue gave it away. "Freedom is not free." "We bring a new world where freedom will triumph over tyranny and mysticism." Etc. Not that Miller wasn't of the same mind. Rather that the added dialogue was especially analogical to current politics.

It's my personal view that if an objective method existed of differentiating good leadership from bad leadership (in terms of results), the optimal form of government is a constitutional meritocracy, by which I mean an essentially authoritarian government that is selected and replaced by virtue of its performance, but which can never go beyond certain constitutional barriers in terms of what it can do. By analogy, think of corporate management, where popularity among the employees alone won't get you the job, nor allow you to keep it. The obvious problem is coming up with an objective criteria for leadership. If corporate leadership is measured by profitability, what is national leadership measured by? It seems to me that the answer to this question is not, shall we say, intractable. In other words, there can be a definitive answer, and as our answers improve, so will the value of adopting a constitutional meritocracy. Thoughts?

It's much closer to being a mythopoeic movie (similar to, say, LOTR) than pure fantasy. The key points have already been noted - some of the dialogue seems taken almost straight out of Bush's political speeches, particularly the ones that were added ontop of what was there in the comics. People complain that critics read too much into the movie, but after seeing it myself, I can't say I disagree with them. When the director/screenwriter uses lines like "freedom is not free" (in what is probably the weakest link in the movie - the domestic scenes that were added in as filler), you know he's intentionally angling for modern politics. Of course, that's not to say Miller didn't intend 300 to be a mythopoeic work, in the first place. He certainly didn't make an effort to make it historically accurate or morally complicated. But Miller being a bit right-wing in his present political perspective on Iraq (and he seems to be, see this article: http://raggedthots.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20300) does not explain why Snyder, who claimed that he did not set out to analogize either side, added so much support for the Leonidas-as-Bush idea.

And one wonders why the American comic industry is going down the drain, to be replaced by Japanese manga... At least they're consistent, being single author and all.

Earth shall be united the moment we colonize Mars.

I'm sure some neocons would like a return to the time, before the world wars, when the populations of the world were desperate, backwards, and idealistic enough to consider brutality a legitimate option with which to treat the conquered... But I just don't see the US government getting away with disposing the vanquished as they pleased and still being able to wage this war. For better or for worse (for better, I think), the face of modern warfare has changed from one purely about strength, to one partly about morality.

I dunno. It sure happened back in the 50's when Communism was all the rush. Course Mao and Stalin eventually stuck their noses at each other and the alliance collapsed, but that's the way alliances are when established for the sake of countering foreign superpowers (ie the US). Actually, if you take a look at recent news the two countries are getting back together again - at least on the surface. No doubt the Russians secretly fear the Chinese because they're a declining people (numerically) holding a heck of alot of Lebensraum that the Chinese would love to immigrate into, but for the sake of appearing strong against the US's incursions into their former satellite states, a few joint military exercises certainly doesn't hurt. So yeah, a permanent alliance between the two countries isn't likely as it's not to their mutual geopoligical interests. However, in response to a pan-American bloc threatening to dominate the world, I'd be surprised if the Russians and the Chinese didn't run into each other's arms.

Yea Japan is so awesome its PM tries to cover up past atrocities by pretending they never happened: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...1595375,00.html Sound like someone we in the US have dealt with? *ahem* Ahmadinejad *ahem* *shakes head and wonders when people will stop associating the geek culture in Japan with the nation in general* Anyways, besides the obvious problem with this topic (if people could be united simply by a few individuals willing it national borders would've long ceased to exist by now), one issue you have with uniting any number of countries into a greater entity for the sake of becoming more powerful is the not-so-ironic fact that the bigger you become the weaker each constituent actually is. If the US were to unite with Mexico, we'd have to give at least 1/3rd of the votes TO Mexico. The same is probably true for Canada. That means the average American politician, citizien, decision-maker, et. all becomes less influential as he has to deal with the desires of Mexicans and Canadians in addition to his own. The loss of such decision-making power means that all that extra clout you gain by virtue of being bigger is in turn lost by vice of internal divisions. It'd work temporarily in response to a great threat, but over time all empires - especially the big ones - disintegrate simply because people fail to see why they should listen to each other. And of course, the geopolitical solution to a united NA, on the part of our rival nations, is a united Asia, a new Soviet Union, a enlarged EU, a coalition of Muslim countries, and what-have-you. No one wants to return to a world divided between mega-powers where the sovereign rights of smaller states are automatically compromised vis-a-vis their size, yet that's exactly what will happen if people feel threatened by the rise of a new pan-American bloc. You band together, others band together to counter you. You think Russia and China are polite to each other now, watch how close they become if a pan-American bloc emerges to challenge their mastery of Asia (as for your beloved Japan, I fear it shall become only a satellite state of the pan-Asian empire it once dreamed of leading).

Japanese RPGs sell just fine.

If you could control your own squad instead of just your own character in the W40k MMO, I'm in.