Posted on 08/20/2006 1:19:02 PM PDT by Lorianne
Deadwood is one of my favorite programs. Set in a South Dakota gold mining camp in the 1870s, it grittily explores the way human beings organize themselves when consigned to a lawless territory that attracts miscreants, varmints and vultures.
A recent episode had an especially insightful moment when all the leaders of the camp were called to an important meeting without an invitation proffered to the female owner of the camp's only bank. Alma Garret could have all the money in the world, but because she has two X chromosomes (a distinction more graphically described in the show), she wasn't about to have a voice in camp affairs.
The writers were right. Testosterone-laden Deadwood is not a welcome place for women. When the law is determined by the number of gunslingers on your side, women don't flourish. But neither do men, certainly not men of learning or ability. Which is why Deadwood, as its name suggests, is doomed.
I mention this because I've been feeling lately that the world has suddenly gone all male - Deadwood-male to be exact. And this is not a good sign for civilization.
Although I consider myself a feminist, I'm not the man-hating kind. Men have clearly been at the forefront of nearly all the great advances in science, medicine and humanist thought.
We understand the physical forces of the world thanks to Isaac Newton and the natural ones thanks to Charles Darwin. There wouldn't have been an Enlightenment without John Locke or Voltaire. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela remind us that compassion and a taste for social justice are found in both sexes.
I also believe that men and women are more similar than they are different.
Still, those who would glorify violence and the law of the streets are thought of as masculine for a reason. Dirty Harry never said, Let's talk about it.
Fighting terrorism has steeped us in a social psychology that is palpably different from our 50-year battle with the Soviet bear. There is something more aggressively mano a mano about fighting Islamic extremists. And that difference has been exploited by our leaders to justify knocking down the rules of civilization, such as the Geneva Conventions, as being too effete. The claim is we must respond to the terrorists' lack of humanity by throwing out our own standards. The result is a vicious cycle of ever-deepening depravity (Let's talk secret CIA prisons).
Yet this dirty, street-fighting paradigm has fit perfectly with George Bush's swaggering cowboy approach to geopolitics. Bush likes his enemies in black hats and hiding in the brush. For Bush, justice gets meted out when the good guys take matters into their own hands and don't wait for lawyers with fancy words like "due process."
But what you never see is that when the hero rides into the sunset, the real work of rebuilding a society is left behind.
The Deadwood hero leaves bodies in the thoroughfare, while the reality hero tries to prevent the bloodshed in the first place. The Deadwood hero is a vigilante, while the reality hero understands the inherent value of a society dictated by the rule of law. The Deadwood hero is impulsive, aggressive and macho, while the reality hero is a rational consensus-builder with an intelligent plan of action.
Under a curtain of fear from terrorism, we have been manipulated into thinking that our national security depends on casting our lot with a Deadwood hero, when in fact it lies with the other.
International affairs professor Gary Bertsch at the University of Georgia - he is also director of the Center for International Trade and Security - puts it forthrightly: "The Bush administration has relied on hard power (militarism) rather than diplomacy (soft power) and it has been very costly. It is reshaping the view that the rest of the world has of the United States as a responsible power."
Bertsch says it is in our national interest to put much more emphasis on dialogue, give and take and negotiation over military dominance. Otherwise, he warns, our allies will soon no longer regard the United States as a model to follow.
Deadwood societies are anti-intellectual havens of selfishness and triumphalism, where warfare and violence are extolled and the feminine ethos of cooperation, understanding and forbearance are disparaged as weak. There is little doubt that many Muslim subgroups fit this mold. Their men would rather shoot guns at ancient enemies than build a modern society. But it is also true that our nation has adopted more of this aspect under Bush than we would like to admit.
Almost nothing could be more damaging to our future prosperity or security. A Deadwood society will never foster positive social change or human advancement. Its focus on force will evoke more violence. Its contempt for intellectuals will silence reason. And if we continue to inch down this road, our fate will be just as bleak as that of the residents of that muddy street in that grimy town in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Translation of article "Clearly the fault of that swaggaring Bush."
Tagline says it all.
Deadwood is one of the best shows on TV, The dialogue is great, unfortunately people today don't waste time speaking so colorfully. As for the St Pete times, it's a mullet wrapper.
Amen.
Diplomacy only works when backed up by military power. It does no good to offer the bad guys something, if they can just take it without having to negotiate with you over it
My experience with "consensus" is that the danger is that it will turn into a dictatorship of the most obstinate (which is why so many obstinate people like requiring consensus and hate "unilateral decision making")
Diplomacy also works if backed up by economic might...
Oh I don't. Caught it once or twice while staying in hotels with limited cable.
In his essay on Rudyard Kipling (1942), Orwell wrote: "[Kipling] sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilised, are there to guard and feed them."
In theory Orwell also said "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf", but the quote, although famous, doesn't seem to have an attribution
I never got into '24' when it started but I caught part of one recently. Jack Bauer tells his crying daughter to shoot this guy in the chest, then when she does, says something like, "Good girl. Now I want you to shoot him again."
I almost fell over laughing, that was so classic!
How can you not like a show where every character speaks as if they're placing an order at a drive thru window?
"I've often wondered if people on the western frontier really talked like the Deadwood characters. "
There's an interview with the creator (or director or something) on one of the DVDs, and he talks about that. I didn't really buy his argument, but your mileage may differ.
I continue to be amazed that people actually buy this line of thought. Usefull idiots would be the understatement of the year.
hese are the Words of Robert E. Howard the creator of Conan..."Barbarism is the natural state of man ...civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. The civilizing process has within itself the seeds of it's own destruction."
Here we see those seeds.
Oh to anyone who didn't understand that I am saying we need more men of action (Barbarians) and fewer men of the limp wrist.
Dirty Harry didn't deal with people who wanted to "talk."
I knew this was retarded when I saw the title. Why did I even click on the link? :p
Michael C. Hall (David from Six Feet Under) is getting his own series.
Robert E. Howard lived with his mother until her death, and rarely, if ever, dated, much less married.
"A Deadwood society will never foster positive social change or human advancement. Its focus on force will evoke more violence. Its contempt for intellectuals will silence reason."
Commie, metrosexual, wimp!
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