CORRUPTION IS WHY WE WIN

Let me say first that I follow politics, news and economics the way people in this country follow NASCAR. I have mental baseball cards for all the players. I know the stats, dynasties and the history before history. Let me also say that I am an alien in this country, a legal resident for over 15 years, so I have not grown up with the biases that y’all were raised on. What I am offering is just an objective opinion.

I recently watched Syriana for the second time. I was excited to see it the first time, and though there was a lot of information coming in a hurry, this is my Days of Thunder meets The Longest Yard or maybe North Dallas Forty. What I got was more like Apocalypse Now in that it was a Film whose vision was not being held back by the lowest common market denominator. I also knew a few of the folks involved; producers Georgia Kakandes and Steven Soderberg and actors George Clooney, Chris Cooper and Matt Damon to drop a few names. All of them are people of the finest quality and possessed of keen intelligence and artist’s conscience. I came away from the first viewing actually moved that these people had obviously tried their best to tell a deeper truth of a story that is driving this country to the edge of Rule of Law, and hit a home run.

My girlfriend had rented it when I visited but when I arrived she was watching some God awful light romantic comedy where 2 homely girls impersonate drag queens in dinner theatre to escape a Russian drug gang that somehow wants to kill them. When we sat down the next night for something with a soupcon plus gravitas, I had every expectation of an enjoyable experience. Heather couldn’t connect the early vignettes and was clearly frustrated after fifteen minutes. She left the room after Damon’s boy is electrocuted in the Emir’s pool. I tried narrating some of the plot turns to her but she would not return. I sat back and concentrated on soaking up a lot of details about the American side of the story that I had missed the first time.

The second viewing is more wistful for me as familiar lines resonate and new details illuminate. During the hunting scenes at the 777 Ranch in Hondo, Texas I was recalling my own visits to the infamous game ranch, a month of shooting scenes for Ace Ventura Two. The 777 is one of these exclusive menu-ordered custom carnage farms, where you chose the beasts you wish to kill from a list and you write a suitable check. At an appointed time and place the (insert- dikdik, polar bear, brace of pheasants, Nubian lion, all of the above) is presented and the client duly opens fire. This is just the kind of place where Dick Cheney and Antonin Scalia go to party, as reported in the Daily Show.

The 777 Ranch is real and Syriana is a work of fiction. Global Oil Politics is a reality, and yet with all the various reasons trotted out by the Decider and his Prince of Darkness for our adventure in Iraq, the oil has never been mentioned.

I was enthralled by the lawyers and sank into a trance while they spun their deals and reaped their rewards. I was repulsed and fascinated by the Dalton character, who must ultimately take a fall and he had so many great lines. You see him on the kitchen TV during a tense scene between the black lawyer Bennet and his alcoholic father, testifying with that special drawl of arrogance to some committee. “Why is it some dirty little secret that it’s in America’s national interest to do business overseas?” It gets even better when the implacable and low key Bennet confronts him with the news that he will be indicted on corruption charges. Dalton loses control and shouts an incredulous justification of corruption itself, “Corruption, is why we win!” is his punch line. I grew increasingly morose as Bennet dutifully manufactures the “appearance of due diligence” that lubricates the wheels of commerce in this film and this country. Again, Christopher Plummer is an actor. Scooter Libby is really taking the fall for an actual political hatchet job.

When they put up the equals sign from between Clooney’s Bobby situation being cleaned up by a predator drone and the half bright Pakistanis riding Bobby’s missile Slim Pickens into the tanker full of LNG, I had my face in my hands, swamped with despair. This is the 800-pound secret that no one can talk about in the actual U.S. policy room.

These intelligent and talented people had shown immense guts in shedding light into some dark corners of American policy. This is as close to the truth as you and I will ever know, thanks to the National Security State. The National Security State is a fact and not just Warren Beatty’s paranoia. Some things are true, even if George W Bush says them. Did I mention that I once shook his hand?

As I mentioned previously, I am an alien and thus recently had some previously inalienable rights removed. As a Canadian we were taught about some quaint artifice of appeasement, a 1215 agreement known as the Magna Carta. The Monarch, under God, accepted the rights of the populace to Habeas Corpus. 800 years later, because of our fear we must be ever more terrible than our enemies.

The protracted efforts of these talented folks in the lingua franca of our middle brow intelligentsia were not going to change the way business is usual. Because it is only a movie, they succeeded in convincing me of this fact to the extent that I felt like getting up and driving the wrong way home on the Thruway from Depew to exit 28 at Fonda.

The System is working.