Basterd! That's right with an E!

I guess my random thoughts aren't all that frequent. Trust me, I'm trying, but apparently my brain is a rocky place where interesting thoughts can find no purchase. Anyway, I recently watched a few of the best picture candidates from last year and came out with the distinct thought that Inglorious Basterds was the best of the bunch. The Hurt Locker didn't strike me as anything particularly new or original and Avatar was "Dances with Smurfs". Up in the Air was quite entertaining, but didn't really have the weight of something that I would consider as best picture material. Tarantino has always been the most original of directors working in the big budget world of Hollywood. His movies are always the sum total of his ideas. If he wants to make a kung fu movie with an homage to every bad 70's Shaw brothers movie, then that's what he does. If he wants to make a movie based on all the bad action drive in movies that he saw growing up, then that's what he does. He has been more successful in converting those ideas to the screen in some of his movies as opposed to others, but he always hits the target that he's aiming at. Inglorious Basterds gives us an alternative view of WWII and while you'll be reminded of movies like "The Dirty Dozen", the actual execution of the movie is something entirely different. I won't give away any plot points, but it was surprising on many levels. It was also fun. And Hollywood definitely needs a little bit more of that.

Why We Fight

We fight because "...in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope". We fight because senior citizens should have not have to chose between food and medicine. We fight because American Individualism is not an open invitation to social Darwinism. We fight because Gay and Lesbian are not dirty words. We fight because we believe that all men are created equal. We fight because we believe that people should be judged by the content of their character. We fight because having tens of thousands of people die each year because of a lack of affordable health care is morally unacceptable. We fight because having thousands of children go hungry in the richest nation on the planet is morally reprehensible. We fight because every child deserves access to an education that will prepare them to compete in the global economy. We fight because torture committed in our name is still torture. We fight because everyone should have the right to marry who they chose. We fight because we only have one planet. We fight because the status quo is unacceptable. We fight because a lie repeated often enough must not be permitted to become the truth. We fight because women deserve to paid the same as men. We fight because our veterans deserve to be treated with respect they have earned. We fight because the expenditure for the Iraq war could have paid for health care for every man, woman and child in the country who cannot afford it. We fight because the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We fight because the forces massed against us never take a day off. We fight because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. We fight because as FDR put it, at the height of the Depression,

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of the those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little".

That is why we fight. We fight because we must.