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May 27, 2005
The United States - Land of the Revolution
by Andrew A. Anissi
Last year, a Japanese girl got very annoyed at me for criticizing Peter Jackson's movie, The Return of the King. Not that I thought it was a bad movie, I actually enjoyed it very much. My criticism was merely that it should not have been nominated for Best Picture because it lacked an original screenplay (the producers cheated by using a story that already had great market success). But I was quite surprised when the Japanese girl (who was actually my girlfriend at the time) asked, "Who are you to criticize?"
My first thought was that I was a member of the audience who paid to see the movie and was thus entitled to an opinion. But, reflecting on the incident, it occurs to me that the issue of my right to criticize Hollywood's most popular filmmakers resulted from a cultural divide. This person grew up in a country with a national culture based on total loyalty to the Emperor (and ultimately loyalty to all authority). The United States, on the other hand, has a national culture of dissent. Modern Japan began not after World War II, but in the late 19th century when the Japanese decided that competing daimyo in a feudal shogunate system no longer made sense, and the nation was united by allegiance and loyalty to the Emperor, who represented all of Jopan. To betray the Emperor was to betray their own Japanese heritage.
The United States, on the other hand, began when Americans decided that loyalty to a British monarch made no sense, and chose instead a culture of self determination. This was manifested through a democratic form of government, a capitalist economy, and the many freedoms that the Supreme Court has very slowly recognized over the past couple of centuries. The United States is not the land of loyalty, it is the land of the Revolution, and we American value our rights to think for ourselves and to decide for ourselves, in a land where, ideally, opportunity is great, and we can have the potential to recognize our dreams and then to fulfill them.
I have the right to criticize a The Lord of the Rings movie because I'm an American, and it's my cultural duty to have my own opinion and make my own choices.
What occurs to me, based on this reflection on American culture, is that the current regime is actually Counter-Revolutionary. Every time authorities attempt to silence people who oppose the President, to label as "anti-american" people who criticize the foreign policy, and especially when authorities attempt to punish Senators who vote in their best judgment, those authorities are opposing the very basis of the American Revolution. The current regime's demands for total obedience and for enforcing the will of the Protestant Church are anti-american, COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY demands. We the American people owe no allegiance to the Crown of England or to anything it symbolizes. We are free to have our own opinions, to dissent, to choose, and to live our lives according to our individual wills. I'm not even sure it's the Bush who is the counter-revolutionary, but, more specifically, the counter-revolutionaries are the Bush-ites: those to whom the mere voicing of disagreement with the regime is immoral.
Failing to think for oneself and living for total loyalty to the regime is the path of a Benedict Arnold, and those who do so should be deported to Canada with all the other royalist toadies.
Posted by andrewanissi at May 27, 2005 12:07 PM