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Home  News News Conan The Inconsistent
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Written by bigpig
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Friday, 03 October 2003 |
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Page 1 of 2 FMeekins sent us this: "Though it might not be obvious upon first glance, both politics and cinema are actually different sides of the same coin. Both of these forms of performance employ an engaging narrative structure for the purpose of conveying how those crafting these dramas see ultimate truths manifesting themselves in the lives of individuals." ... read the rest by clicking below.
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FMeekins sent us this:
Though it might not be obvious upon first glance, both politics and cinema are actually different sides of the same coin. Both of these forms of performance employ an engaging narrative structure for the purpose of conveying how those crafting these dramas see ultimate truths manifesting themselves in the lives of individuals.
In The Terminator, as a cyborg sent back in time, Arnold Schwarzenegger walks into a gun shop and orders up a litany of firearms. The highlight of the scene occurs when he requests a plasma rifle with a 40-watt range, a weapon that has not yet been invented.
Though running as a Republican in the California gubernatorial recall, Schwarzenegger endorses a number of policies traditionally popular among more liberal constituencies, gun control being a primary example. So should Schwarzenegger’s character ever want to acquire such a weapon legally, Governor Schwarzenegger would probably want to prohibit him from doing so.
One might overlook Schwarzenegger’s actions in the first Terminator film since he played the antagonist and thus allowed greater dramatic leeway as a thespian since the villain by definition operates as an antithesis to the film’s moral vision. However, in the second and third installments of the series, Arnold portrays a cyborg sent back in time to protect the life of John Conor who is one day destined to lead the human resistance against a tyrannical artificial intelligence and its murderous robotic minions.
As the hero, one would assume Schwarzenegger upholds the ethical milieu established in the film since that is the duty of the so-called “good guy”. In order to protect the life of his young charge, Arnold must confront various robo-assassins bent on erasing Mr. Conor from the timeline all together.
However, Arnold’s character does not accomplish his objective through spineless appeals to the good will and higher nature of his fellow cyborgs or by “leaving things to the authorities” (a sure recipe for disaster if there ever was one in a moment of crisis). Instead he is compelled to respond in the only manner criminal scumbags understand ---- be they the advanced computerized variety of the future, the diaper-headed Middle Eastern kind, or just your typical home-invading street trash --- that of course being superior firepower. Yet if the real Arnold had his way, John Conor would be unable to defend himself, thereby dooming the future of mankind.
There is more at stake here than a dimwitted actor cast in a role as a character with whom he has profound disagreements. By enunciating such a anti-Second Amendment position, Mr. Schwarzenegger reveals he is either a stooge of or knowingly in league with those desiring to wipe out most of humanity from the face of the earth and to enslave those unlucky enough to remain alive.
Even though most statists don’t like to admit it, the primary purpose of the Second Amendment is to provide citizens of goodwill a mechanism of legal recourse whereby they posses judicial grounds to protect themselves against the rapacious banditry of both those who perpetrate their misdeeds against liberty and justice from behind an illusion of authority bestowed by government as well as the more obvious thugs prowling the streets. The first thing any aspiring tyrant does is to disarm the populace, thereby making them less prone to resist and more malleable to whatever radical social manipulation those holding power have in mind.
The skeptical might laugh about viewing a sci-fi action/adventure as a philosophical cinematic manifesto. Yet the world portrayed in The Terminator films is closer to becoming a reality than most realize thanks in large part to those like Schwarzenegger in both parties seeking to undermine fundamental rights in order to remake the world in their own image, often employing revolutions in technology to oppress mankind instead of utilizing scientific advances to maximize freedom for all individuals.
In fact, a dictatorship combining the worst elements of both man and machine is not beyond possibility. Of the False Prophet, Revelation 13:15 says, “And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed (KJV).”
Prophecy scholars have speculated for decades what exactly this passage is foretelling. The Brothers Lalonde have hypothesized an advanced virtual reality simulation or interactive hologram. It could just as well be some kind of sophisticated android.
Exodus 20:4-5 commands, “You shall not make for yourself an idol...You shall not bow down to worship them. (NIV)” History and Archeology note these objects often came in the form of attractive statuary representing the respective deities of pagan cultures around the world.
By engineering an audioanimatronaton so technologically sophisticated as to mimic life, those seeking to exercise global domination could easily win the hearts and minds of a post-Christian population no longer embracing Biblical conceptions of what exactly constitutes life and how it comes about in the first place. After all, who among us would not be more amazed by the Abe Lincoln in Disney’s Hall of Presidents than an otherwise unanimated counterpart in a run-of-the-mill wax museum?
Such speculations are not the irrational fantasies of a half-mad fanatic. Adrian Berry --- a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Geographical Society, and the British Interplanetary Society (organizations not exactly known as bastions of creation science or eschatological exaggeration) writes in The Next 500 Years: Life In The Coming Millennium, “It will not be difficult, in the future, for malicious people to build killer robots like that in the film The Terminator.” There’s no guarantee such artificial beings are going to abide by Asimov’s famed, but hopelessly naive, Laws Of Robotics.
Such threats do not confine themselves to the nebulous, undefinable future of sci-fi writers and comic book artists that always seems to be just beyond reach protected by the impenetrable veil of tomorrow. Misguided souls are busy preparing such nightmares as we speak.
Through assorted drugs and nanotechnologies, Pentagon wonks plan to bioengineer a soldier requiring less sleep and possessing enhanced abilities, no doubt ending his days in helllish misery in some forsaken Veterans’ hospital when such experiments don’t end up as eggheads intended. Elsewhere, scientists have implanted neuro-transceivers in the brains of rats allowing for control of the rodent’s movements from outside its nervous system.
One can just imagine internationalist planners salivating like Pavlov’s dogs over implications of such devices. Do the words, “You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile” sound familiar?
At present, it’s easy to dismiss the threat to liberty posed by hypocritical elites wielding power who would deny the American people the same prerogatives enjoyed and abused by the overclass coupled with advances in technology unbridled by the ethical guidance once provided by a Judeo-Christian culture. Yet who until recently could have imagined an election with porn stars, has-been child actors, a Zsa Zsa Gabor impersonator, and an Aztec supremacist legitimately campaigning for public office?
Copyright 2003 by
Frederick B. Meekins
American WorldView Dispatch
http://americanworldview.tripod.com
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