Platoon [1986)

The crusader.

The volunteer.

Ants.

Red and black.

On yer neck.

Except they’re constant.

Can’t advance storyline.

Driving you crazy.

Mosquitos.

Under your green towel.

Would even give up breathing if it meant the flies couldn’t get in.

Snakes.

Leeches.

More snakes.

What kinda watch you wearing?

It’s your shift.

Night watch.

Don’t fall asleep.

Recruited from the world’s greatest insomniacs.

Depends on where you’re deployed.

In Vietnam I would be a workaday, crack-of-dawn man in a gray flannel suit.

Night watch.

Digital foxhole.

Faster alone.

Not a diving watch.

Smeared with mud.

Rainforest.

Grime.

Now we develop.

And change.

From green.

To cynical.

But hard as nails.

Able to take it.

Until we break.

A new war.

Now.

Blew his arms off.

Don’t take the bait.

The village starts breaking you down.

Snap.

Changes you.

Supplying those that murder your friends.

War crimes are war crimes.

But you need warriors to win.

But war crimes are still war crimes.

And we lost.

Seemingly.

Vietnam was not a war.

Vietnam was a battle.

The war is just now getting started.

USA vs. China.

No American soldier died in vain in Vietnam.

It was the right decision to fight.

But we got our butts kicked.

How did America lose?

How did it come to pass?

That we had to retreat?

Making a stand against world communism.

Was successful.

And now the main fighting will ensue.

Johnny Depp wanted to kill the President.

And he said this in Vietnamese.

Then we see Vietnamese children being raped by American soldiers.

War crimes are war crimes.

Charlie Sheen stood up against the falsehoods of 9/11.

From playing a character.

To being the real thing.

WTC7.

You believe at first.

In the war.

But as the years go by, you may lose that belief.

Especially if the war becomes unwinnable.

Moronic leaders.

Bombing their own troops.

Calling in the wrong coordinates.

Some assholes know how to fight.

And how to stay alive.

And we need them.

But they can go wrong.

We need the crusaders.

But we need to remember who the true enemy is.

Vietnam was a war of ideology.

But it must not have seemed that way in the jungles.

You cannot see the forrest.

You do not have such luxury.

To think strategically.

Don’t discount the warriors.

And don’t discount the crusaders.

Because the crusaders can fight.

And be deadly efficient.

They may have active minds.

They may see the looming loss.

But they will fight their way out of an ambush.

And they will fare well.

Due to experience.

Study Pat Tillman.

How did he die?

Why?

War is hell.

It is barbaric.

It pushes the envelope in every direction.

War should be avoided.

Unless it is absolute necessary.

Oliver Stone almost loses the reins of this thing when Willem DaFoe dies.

Which is a shame.

Because DaFoe is magnificent in this film.

And so is Charlie Sheen.

Tom Berenger gives a powerful performance.

All men are sinners.

I don’t know how to fight.

But I know how to destroy.

There are no atheists in a foxhole.

As the saying goes.

We are on the frontline.

Have we been abandoned?

Power comes in owning your name.

In owning your actions.

In owning your words.

I am not anonymous.

If you fight, it is likely the man next to you will fight as well.

And the converse also holds.

Groupthink.

Bad.

But seething masses.

Good.

When directed.

CIMIC.

We don’t know if the war is still going on.

We might get off a few more rounds.

Before we are entirely disintegrated.

We have no comms.

How much do you want to win?

How badly do you want victory?

At what point have we become digital cannon fodder?

It went so fast.

Stabbed himself in the leg.

I missed it.

Thought he was stabbing a lingering enemy.

False-flagged his way home.

Where nations choose free market democracy, the USA must support them as much as possible.

Where nations are invaded by communism, the USA must protect those who have communism forced upon them.

The war is about to start in earnest.

-PD

Невиност без заштите [1968)

[INNOCENCE UNPROTECTED (1968)]

I’m taking a wild guess here.

Because life is the greatest complexity.

Only yesterday I was tempting death.

But my name is Deathwish.

Death, for short.

A hard name to live up to.

I’m taking a guess that I have been forgotten…by most of those who meant so much to me.

Such a maudlin (Magdalen) sentiment, but fitting after such a lackluster evening.

If you have read this far, then you are likely qualified to view the ikonoclastic (!) film Innocence Unprotected.

It’s a film about a film.  Wikipedia really likes Croatian.  I suppose because of the Roman letters.

So the original film is question was ostensibly called Nevinost bez zaštite.

It was made during the war.  1941.

Under Nazi occupation (just like Les Visiteurs du soir).

But our 1968 film (the film about a film…sort of) is by my favorite Serbian director:  Душан Макавејев.  Which is to say (with pity) Dušan Makavejev.

And about that title…well, it sounds the same.  That enigma “Serbo-Croatian”…but I can only guess (“taking a wild guess here”) that it was Невиност без заштите.

It flashes before my eyes so quickly.

The H that sounds like N.

The B that sounds like V.

The upside-down N that sounds like I.

The C that sounds like S.

The b with its tail in the crosswind…blowing west to east…which, mercifully, sounds like a B (or b).

The 3 that sounds like a Z.

The Roman numeral III with a floor beneath it…like a Greek temple without a roof…sounds like “Shhh…(peaceful)”.

Those are the tough ones at issue.

Cyrillic letters.

Yes?

Now that I have bent linguistic steel like Dragoljub Aleksić, we shall move on to more pressing matters.

Bending spoons.  Like Uri Geller.

An Israeli.  You know how much I love Israelis 🙂

It is true, in a sense.

Once upon a time…that the French and the Jews were my favorite people.

Completely true.

What happened?  How did I get bent from my Henry Miller humanism?

How did I move to a Jean-Luc Godard humanism?

Shouldn’t humanism value all humans equally?

Yes.

In my wrath…in my protective love for the Palestinians I have said some very unkind things about the Israelis.  Nothing I’m sure they haven’t heard before.

I am not really at the vanguard of anti-Semitism.

But I said it to be hurtful.

Strong words.

Because I was mad.

I’m sure Norman Finkelstein is a fine person.

Anyone who would argue with Alan Dershowitz must basically be alright.

As for Dersh, any lawyer who would deign write a book called The Case for Israel (in 2003, no less…year of the Iraq invasion) must have a loose screw.

As for me, all my screws are loose.

I don’t give (nor do I receive) a fuck.  Err…

That is Innocence Unprotected…a rather Dodoist film which wonders whether the dots of my most recent ellipsis were italicized.  The dots.

It would be like writing a poem about Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” (in full-on ekphrasis mode) and calling it “Howl”.

To say there is a considerable amount of film quotation in Невиност без заштите would be an understatement.

It is truly (Poetically) a film within a film.

I dreamt.

And as I did,

I hawked plywood espadrilles

in Belgrade.

Proudly,

to fund my feature film.

Writing is an attempt to live again.

Which is to say, if I begin to live again, then

I shall have to stop writing.

Not like this.

In misery.

Like Baudelaire.

Who only ever laid a hooker.

Because Jeffrey Immelt has neither the time nor mental capacity to read Walter Benjamin.

And that’s why General Electric will fail.

Because the futures of most things are the opposites of their current states.

The future of marketing?  Anti-marketing.

Because people are tired of being tricked.

They want a refreshingly frank admission of inferiority.

And the endearment begins.

Capitalism hasn’t yet cashed in on socialism.

Because to do so would mean its death.

Both.

Trump and Sanders frozen for all time.

Which would mean the humorous death of politics.

And MegYn Kelly would pull her hair out as she stumbled down the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

A lifetime wasted.

But not over yet.

There’s still night school.

She could learn a useful trade.

Now that journalism is dead.

But maybe in some Ethiopian rainforest the last shrub of curiosity/courage/integrity sits waiting for some Amazon former Fox News reporter to scale its unwieldy 39 feet…to take a clipping from the top.

Journalisa arabica.

Caught in the middle like 5 Broken Cameras.

Nothing could curse a presidential candidate more now than positive coverage by Fox News.

Fox News:  a more toxic endorsement than David Duke.

So now they change their tune.

Which begs the question:  does that mean you think that Republicans were rational (God forbid) to oppose Trump so long?

Or was it merely their house organ which disapproved of the ginger waker?

“Wake up kids!  I didn’t go to the University of Pennsylvania for nothing!!”

I would…as a paean to Mr. Georgia Guidestones himself, like to “expand upon” Gone With the Wind.  You know…add some rap music to certain scenes, show Clark Gable brushing his teeth, and such.  And then call it (wait for it…):  Gone With the Wind.

Yes?

Because that last period is almost certainly italicized.

It was not good enough to be amateur.

But Makavejev fixed that.

 

-PD