Ahhh, vacation. More Americans should enjoy them.
Finally got around to watching the extended version of Coppola's "Apocalypse Now". The result is a mixed bag -- the added layers of symbolism are welcome (e.g. Lance's increasing use of face-paint, corresponding to the dehumanization of the crew), but the larger canvas also highlights the flaws in the original. The film can't grasp gender, and the Vietnamese remain inscrutable Others.
What Coppola does get right, though, is the delusionary madness of Empire, how its utopia of endless malls turned into napalm and mass murder. Yesterday's heli-war is today's drone bombardment, but the result is the same: slaughter, mayhem, and utter futility. In my most nightmarish dreams, never did I imagine that the US would be insane enough to commit suicide the same way the USSR did, bankrupting itself on military-industrial folly and foreign debt, and going so far as to recycle the same Central Asian burial ground.
Meanwhile, a fresh crop of Colonel Kurtzes is showing up in Central Asia. The greatest irony of all is that America's creditors are beyond caring. If the Americans want to bleed themselves further, that's America's problem, not theirs. The BRICs have time and T-bills on their side.
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