Posts
Marlon Brando died July 2, 2004. Not long afterward, this letter to the editor by me appeared in a local newspaper, the Marquette, Michigan, Mining Journal. The letter uses a recap of the movie Burn starring Brando to imply that the US ruling class has ulterior motives for wanting to bring their style of democracy to Iraq.
The great American actor Marlon Brando died recently. I have been a Brando fan since I was a teenager in the 1950s. Over the decades I have enjoyed such movies as VIVA ZAPATA, MISSOURI BREAKS, DON JUAN DE MARCOS, and many others. Of all Brando films, my favorite was released in 1969 with the title QUEIMADA, except titled in Canada THE MERCENARY and titled BURN in the US, where it was released in 1970. It was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, the Italian movie maker who also directed THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, about the guerrilla movement in Algiers in the 1950s against the French occupation.
The story in BURN takes place on a fictional Caribbean island back in the days when Portugal controlled it and had brought slaves from Africa to work the sugar cane plantations. Brando plays William Walker, a British agent pretending to be a tradesman. Walker chooses a young man among the slaves who is a natural, charismatic leader and around him organizes a band of revolutionaries that starts, and eventually wins, an insurrection that frees the island from the Portuguese.
Then the film shows that Walker is a reactionary who cares not about freedom and democracy for the island's liberated, ex-slave plantation workers but rather about power and profit for the British empire. Backed by the empire's economic power, he cuts a deal with local Creole businessmen that they will govern the country and manage the plantations for British owners, while the African-Caribbean ex-slaves will still be poor and powerless plantation workers -- except now without even the job security of life-long slavery. His job done, Walker goes on to other assignments, other islands.
A few years later the comprador island government is so corrupt that the plantation workers revolt. Walker is sent back to the island to advise the government on anti-guerrilla strategy. With such brutal methods as burning whole villages and forests, the government crushes the rebellion.
But the resistance lives on. At the end Walker is shot dead on a city street by a young black man, one of a new generation of freedom fighters.
Meanwhile the USA is bringing democracy to Iraq.
Brian Leekley
Marquette, Michigan
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Uniting Americans in Democratic Process
This Letter To The Editor appeared on or about Christmas Day 2004 in the Marquette, Michigan, Mining Journal.
I agree with your editorial of Thursday, 11-4-2004. You said that the country should unite after the divisive Bush versus Kerry campaign and that President Bush, who got a bare majority of votes, should have the humility and good sense to "govern from the center."
In a democracy, unity does not mean agreeing 100% with every act and word of the President or of anyone else. I think rather it means finding broad areas of agreement, then debating the details of each goal and path, to achieve, if not ideal decisions and giant leaps forward, at least workable compromises. The nature of a democratic republic is that one's opponent on one issue in the morning may be one's ally on another issue in the afternoon, with all united in the democratic process.
I have adamantly opposed the Bush administration on numerous grounds, but I do agree with Bush that democracies in the countries of the Near and Middle East would be better than dictatorships or theocracies. If I agree with Bush about anything, it is likely that many others across the political spectrum agree with him on that point, too.
The details are debatable. Is invading and occupying another country, self-servingly manipulating its economy, dominating its process of regime change, and building numerous military bases there an effective way to help that country progress from dictatorship to democracy? Or counterproductive, creating an insurgents versus foreign invaders and quislings war? And what about the contradiction between those who seek real, unfettered democracy and those, like President Bush and his ilk, who want to impose a strings-attached democracy in Iraq, skewed for the profitable advantage of American corporations and financiers?
Two neighbors might disagree on whether the American occupation is the solution or the problem in Iraq but might agree, for example, about the need for affordable baseline health insurance for all Americans. My hopeful daydream is that Americans coast to coast will gather together regularly in small groups at the neighborhood level, to exchange views about a variety of issues and to look for common ground, or middle ground, or better understanding of differences. Such Freirean small groups would be a leavening bottom-up influence on politicians and public institutions, leading to new constellations of political alliances and, hopefully, improved and more democratic government.
Brian Leekley
Marquette, Michigan
I agree with your editorial of Thursday, 11-4-2004. You said that the country should unite after the divisive Bush versus Kerry campaign and that President Bush, who got a bare majority of votes, should have the humility and good sense to "govern from the center."
In a democracy, unity does not mean agreeing 100% with every act and word of the President or of anyone else. I think rather it means finding broad areas of agreement, then debating the details of each goal and path, to achieve, if not ideal decisions and giant leaps forward, at least workable compromises. The nature of a democratic republic is that one's opponent on one issue in the morning may be one's ally on another issue in the afternoon, with all united in the democratic process.
I have adamantly opposed the Bush administration on numerous grounds, but I do agree with Bush that democracies in the countries of the Near and Middle East would be better than dictatorships or theocracies. If I agree with Bush about anything, it is likely that many others across the political spectrum agree with him on that point, too.
The details are debatable. Is invading and occupying another country, self-servingly manipulating its economy, dominating its process of regime change, and building numerous military bases there an effective way to help that country progress from dictatorship to democracy? Or counterproductive, creating an insurgents versus foreign invaders and quislings war? And what about the contradiction between those who seek real, unfettered democracy and those, like President Bush and his ilk, who want to impose a strings-attached democracy in Iraq, skewed for the profitable advantage of American corporations and financiers?
Two neighbors might disagree on whether the American occupation is the solution or the problem in Iraq but might agree, for example, about the need for affordable baseline health insurance for all Americans. My hopeful daydream is that Americans coast to coast will gather together regularly in small groups at the neighborhood level, to exchange views about a variety of issues and to look for common ground, or middle ground, or better understanding of differences. Such Freirean small groups would be a leavening bottom-up influence on politicians and public institutions, leading to new constellations of political alliances and, hopefully, improved and more democratic government.
Brian Leekley
Marquette, Michigan
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
