The Daily Grand and Sundry

I love historical dramas, I love costume dramas, I love dramas about British history, I love Robin Hood, I love Russell Crowe, and I love GLADIATOR.

So imagine my joyful anticipation as I set out, in the rain, to view the new Russell Crowe film, ROBIN HOOD. After seeing it, and paying SEVEN dollars for my medium sized popcorn, I still love Russell Crowe, just a lot less.

I admire Ridley Scott, I mean I was one of the three people who saw KINGDOM OF HEAVEN in a movie house.

Mr. Scott directed this version of ROBIN HOOD and KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, in both I found something lacking.

My enjoyment of ROBIN HOOD was reduced by playing catch the borrowed scene; I saw scenes borrowed from BRAVEHEART, BECKET,THE LAST SAMURAI, CONAN THE BARBARIAN,THE PATRIOT, GENGHIS KHAN, EL CID, HENRY V (Branagh’s  version), HENRY V(Olivier’s version)  and GLADIATOR. Even scenes from Uwe Boll’s triumphantly horrible  adaption of a video game, IN THE NAME OF THE KING, DUNGEON SIEGE was thrown in. In fact I counted three times that the  famous scene from GLADIATOR, in which Russell Crowe, while on his white horse  is thrown a weapon, was replicated.

Even the white horse from GLADIATOR was replicated.

Two talents I admire do a film about a topic I am entranced by, and it is lacking. Why?

All you movie buffs out there, please do me a favor, go rent the DVD of the 1939 version of ROBIN HOOD starring Errol Flynn, Claude Rains and Olivia de Havilland. Put it on your DVD player, and then walk into the next room.

Don’t watch the film(even though it is visually stunning),listen to it.

The voices from those actors are enthralling; they are melodies from a symphony or a concerto, the bold, defiantly fresh voice of Errol Flynn, the sweet soothing voice of Olivia de Havilland and the slithering evil voice of Claude Rains, playing PRINCE JOHN.

Listen to Claude Rains play the evil PRINCE JOHN, with the tones of a snake come alive and you know the problem with both KINGDOM OF HEAVEN and ROBIN  HOOD. The villains stunk.

In GLADIATOR, Russell Crowe had a great villain, Joaquin Phoenix, who only wanted two things in his life, slaughter and incest.

ROBIN HOOD had the most nondescript villains ever; I assume they figured that the audience would know the bad guy was evil because his head was shaved( like the bad guy in THE MUMMY). But film is not wrestling.

Film is a higher form of art; the villain does not have to be the strongest guy on the screen, or the best fighter. The best villains are never brutes but sophisticates. The best villains are not the ones who will ravish and rape our daughters; the best villains are those that, if you leave them in the room with your daughter, or wife, or mother will seduce and corrupt them.

In KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, Jeremy Irons,with his voice, would have been a perfect villain rather than a throw away second lead. If you were going to borrow anything from that Uwe Boll film, steal Matt Lillard. He played a wonderful villain in it, and would have made a weaselly Prince John. 

What the old film makers knew then, and what  we don’t practice now, is that evil is cool,seductive, fun….evil is the slick who runs the brute.

As I sat there watchng all those nondescript villains in this version of ROBIN HOOD, I hungered for James Mason, George Sanders, Robert Douglas, Henry Daniell, Zachary Scott and Anthony Hopkins from THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, actors with voices which could corrupt a convent.Evil is not in the look, or even the attitude,that is video game stuff; evil is in the voice, the mandate of film. Which is why George Lucas used the voice of James Earl Jones to punctuate the great evil of DARTH VADER( hey, I mean how evil would DARTH VADER have been with Woody Allen’s voice?).

I have three other quibbles with the film,  since I am a quibbler.

Catholic bashing, I firmly believe I can Catholic bash with the best of the British atheist class, but I will  not rewrite history to do it.  Medieval Catholics did not  cremate people; they buried people. Vikings cremated people. Hindus cremated people, pagan Romans cremated pecople. But Medieval Catholics, in the most Catholic time in world history, did not cremate people. Anyone interested enough to drag their asses to see a historical drama about medieval England, on a rainy day, knows that.

To see the medieval Catholic Sir Walter cremated in this film is a joke; it would be like showing a Medieval Muslim Salifist eating pork. The  audience cannot be held in contempt.

The female actor who played ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE…Good luck lady…if you are going to follow Katherine Hepburn in one of the great roles ever for women, playing one of the great women of all time, get some verve in your performance. I mean Eleanor of Aquitaine is one of THE Women in history, a combination of Helen of Troy, MEDEA and LADY MacBETH.

Eleanor as a character and historical figure is wonderful, every actress who protrays her, should ENJOY that experience and let the audience share that enjoyment, just look how much fun, FUN Katherine Hepburn had playing Eleanor in THE LION IN WINTER.  Just because you are in an historical drama does not mean you cannot have any fun.

Finally, Cate Blanchett. This is a great actor, I have been totally devoted to her since she had to fight off Dame Judy Dench’s attempts to rape the hell out of her  in that sensationally great film NOTES ON A SCANDAL; which forgive me, I found to be one of the great comedies of all time.

This is the worst performance I have ever seen Ms. Blanchett give; though I tried to enjoy  her playing  peasant, and milking every cow in England.

Russell Crowe is a great actor.

Ridley Scott is a great Director.

Cate Blanchett is a great actress.

Go rent NOTES ON A SCANDAL. 

SIDEBAR

“For much of history the Catholic Church banned cremation as a choice for dead Catholics, but in 1963 the Vatican lifted the ban. Cremation is now an acceptable practice for Catholics, but only if done for the right reasons.”

SIDEBAR II

ELEANOR of AQUITAINE

 Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the most powerful and fascinating personalities of feudal Europe. At age 15 she married Louis VII, King of France, bringing into the union her vast possessions from the River Loire to the Pyrenees.  Eleanor, attended by 300 of her ladies, went on a Crusade with her husband King Louis,  to help “tend the wounded.”

The presence of Eleanor, her ladies and wagons of female servants, was criticized by commentators throughout her adventure. Dressed in armor and carrying lances, she went Crusading.

The expedition did fail, and a defeated Eleanor and Louis returned to France in separate ships.

… In 1152 the marriage was annulled and her vast estates reverted to Eleanor’s control. 

Eleanor became engaged to the eleven years younger Henry II, Duke of the Normans. On 18 May 1152, eight weeks after the annulment of her first marriage, Eleanor married the Duke of the Normans. On 25 October 1154 her husband ascended the throne of the Kingdom of England, making Eleanor Queen of the English. Over the next thirteen years, she bore Henry eight children: five sons, two of whom would become king, and three daughters. However, Henry and Eleanor eventually became estranged. She was imprisoned between 1173 and 1189 for supporting her son Henry’s revolt against her husband, King Henry II.

Eleanor was widowed on 6 July 1189. Her husband was succeeded by their son, Richard the Lionheart, who immediately moved to release his mother. Now queen mother, Eleanor acted as a regent for her son while he went off on the Third Crusade. Eleanor survived her son Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King John. By the time of her death she had outlived all of her children except for King John and Eleanor, Queen of Castile.”

 Claude Rains as PRINCE JOHN

 The evil George Sanders making a radiant Elizabeth Taylor an offer she dare not refuse.

Dame Judi Dench showing her platonic love for Cate Blanchett in one of the best comedies ever, NOTES ON A SCANDAL.

Robert Douglas

Henry Daniell

 The evil James Mason

“SON OF THE MORNING STAR” is a great book, a study of George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn by a tremendous writer, Evan Connell, who wrote the great American novels MR. BRIDGE and MRS. BRIDGE.

Born in Kansas City, Connell now lives in New Mexico; I am hoping he visits the set when we film our John Ford Western, LOS PISTOLEROS there.

I am an avid fan of the book SON OF THE MORNING STAR, for I thought, think and will think that it is the definitive study of General Custer. I am not a big fan of General Custer, as a  person nor as a  tactician. 

I admire many things about SON OF THE MORNING STAR, its writing, its fairness to Custer and its depiction of the battle of the Little Big Horn. The depiction is brutal, one of the fascinating tidbits presented to the reader is this, many of the men of the 7th, Custer’s Regiment, surrounded by legions of Sioux and Cheyenne dog soldiers, KILLED THEMSELVES.

When the relief column finally came up to the Rosebud and upon the battle field; they found many of the men of the 7th had saved the last bullet for themselves and rather than be taken alive had placed their guns in their mouths and pulled the triggers.

Such was frontier warfare.

Custer had as much self confidence as Julius Caesar, and like Caesar thought the people he was fighting barbarians. However, Custer under estimated the Lakota and the Cheyenne; Caesar never  under estimated his barbarians, the Gauls.

Caesar won; Custer did not win, big time.

There have been a ton of filmic interpretations of Custer, from Custer as a hero in THEY DIED WTH THEIR BOOTS ON, to Custer as a maniac in LITTLE BIG MAN. The best filmic interpretation of Custer, in my opinion, was Robert Shaw(JAWS) in CUSTER OF THE WEST. Shaw nailed him.

Custer only had one tactic the charge…elan, elan, elan. He never cared about how many men he lost, as long as he could elan the battle.

For what it is worth, his brothers, and his wife adored him (even though there were, well known in his time, rumors that Custer had fathered an illegitimate half Cheyenne child while stationed on the Washita). He and his wife never had children.

Now that you know where this blog stands on Custer; I get an email from a buddy of mine who is in the Army….”gerry, did you see what they said about Custer in the new book about Custer, THE LAST STAND….they are bringing back the heroic Custer. M”

This is what they said: ”(Custer). In reality he was a fine soldier, “one of the best cavalry officers, if not the best, in the Union Army” in the American civil war”

THE BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG HORN( CUSTER’S LAST STAND), THE END OF THE SON OF THE MORNING STAR

THE HEROIC CUSTER AS PLAYED BY ERROL FLYNN from THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGohzYn_Tj8

Good movie making, but a bad influence on the capacity of the American soldier to win.

SIDEBAR

CUSTER’S FATE

Custer died with two brothers,a  nephew, and a brother in law, all killed,  at the LITTLE BIG HORN. Custer’s body was stripped (as were all the bodies,) but it was not mutilated, the others were(maybe because he fathered that child on the Washita).

His brother  “Thomas Ward Custer, the only two time Medal of Honor winner up to that time, lived and died, literally, in the shadow of his older brother. In contrast to the General, Tom Custer’s body was castrated, brained, scalped several times. His heart had been cut out. Some say it had been eaten by one of the Indian warriors. His face had been so badly mutilated that the only way his body was identified was by the tattoo “T.C.” on his arm. ”

“ The scalp of Custer’s  18 year old nephew, Harry Armstrong Reed,  resides in a museum in Wichita, Kansas. He was killed along with his uncle at the battle of Little Big Horn. Harry’s job was to hold the 7th Calvary flagpole, which he reportedly did until the end. His scalp was found six weeks later, attached to a pole, in the camp of Chief Crazy Horse, and then, through a series of private collectors, eventually ended up in Kansas.”

Custer’s brother in law,  JAMES CALHOUN  was Custer’s adjuntant. He wrote a published book, “WITH CUSTER IN ‘74″  He “ wrote of the Indians in letters to family as “heathens” and foresaw a day when white civilization would wipe them out.” Lt. Calhoun died at the Little Big Horn trying to wipe out the Native Americans.

Custer’s brother BOSTON CUSTER had been unable to officially join the Army due to poor health, but he tagged along with the 7th Cavalry on the baggage train. When his  brother, George, asked for more ammunition, Boston Custer carried it to him,to die with him on LAST STAND HILL.

http://gerrymaxeyworkshop.com/blogging/?p=794

One of the great unrequited love affairs of the 20th Century was between the demure Olivia DeHavilland and the rakish Errol Flynn. 

Flynn was one of the best looking men who ever lived, and women just served themselves up to him;  men admired Flynn, for his grace and authenticity.

He played swashbucklers in THE SEA HAWK, CAPTAIN BLOOD, THE ADVENTURES  OF ROBIN HOOD. But he had more adventures in real life than he ever acted  on  screen,

Here is a tidbit from his adventure in Papua New Guinea,when he was a teenager.:

 ”"The Sepik is a monster waterway 600 miles long;”"No white man has been up the river more than 200 or 300 miles and the nature of the river or the land beyond that was practically unknown and remains little known to this very day.”

“The waterway was heavily populated with mosquitoes, kanakas, and pukpuks (crocodiles).

“As we traveled the garamuts, tomtoms made of crocodile skins, kept up a steady communication: ‘Outsiders, big magic on the water, beware’.

“When we came in close to shore and tried to get film of the natives, we got arrows instead, real ones, and poisoned.I had to shoot a native”

Errol Flynn

So here the young men are sitting in the dark theaters watching an action hero, who not only could act but had gone up a river where no white man had ever gone before.

Errol Flynn was authentic.

So we have the killer/adventurer Errol Flynn and the demure, lady like Olivia De Havilland locked in an unrequited love affair, sort of a real life TWILIGHT SERIES vampire story, with world class interesting people. While making the film, GENTLEMAN JIM, Errol Flynn has a heart attack, a severe one. He was 32.

Rushing to his side, Olivia DeHavilland feeds him chicken soup. She knows he is a womanizer, a drunkard, a brawler. She also knows the world will be a lesser place without him. She  informs him that he should change his life, eat right, stop drinking, maybe cut back on the women?

His reply is one of the most haunting of the ages; he tells this woman who not only loves him, but adores him, that he is “not interested in the second half of life, all I am interested in is the first half of life.”

Flynn died of a heart attack at 50, in the company of his lover, a young girl he had seduced when she was 15.

Both of Flynn’s parents survived him.

Olivia De Havilland is still alive; she is 93.

He was a cad, a rake and a rogue and he has been replaced by cads, rakes and rogues with less charm, and certainly less courage; so in the end, the world was made less by his leaving.

 Errol Flynn as CAPTAIN BLOOD

First of all, let me state, I have been to Richmond, California.  When I was dating coeds from Mills College, I was a member of the Richmond Rod and Gun Club.

It is a hard scrabble town; I assume it was prosperous in the 1940s and 1950s; there were refineries then, shipbuilding, ports like nearby Port Chicago, even a steel plant nearby. Yes readers, they once made steel in California.

All gone; we are globalized now. The people left behind are multiracial and poor.

The victim was a high school girl, 15 years old. The sociological explanation for the rape from the San Frncisco Chronicle has already begun,

“The 15-year-old victim was a vulnerable girl who attended church and wanted to be a police scout, but also worried counselors by trying too hard to please the school’s bad boys.”

That observation is wrong; being vulnerable is not a prerequisite for being a rape victim.  Being seen as prey is.

On the night of the attack, the victim left the homecoming dance at about 9:30 p.m., before it ended, and walked to the back of campus to call her father to pick her up, detectives say.

That’s when someone invited her into the notorious courtyard.

The group of about a dozen boys and young men was already well into 2 gallons of vodka. After they liquored up the girl with brandy, they proposed sex, according to several accounts by friends of those who were there but asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

The girl said no. Some of the men placed her on one of the two red cement benches set alongside the main brick building of the school and said they were going to have sex anyway, according to the accounts.

“They had her down on the bench and the bitch tried to kick ‘Tweak’ (one of the men) in the nuts,” said one young man, who said he had a first-hand account of the attack from Smith but was afraid of being named. “He went off on her, started hitting her, and then it was on. They pulled a train (a gang initiation-style rape, one after the other) on her.”

What ensued was 2 1/2 hours of beatings and raping, at times with a foreign object. The scene attracted onlookers, some calling others over by cell phone, and eventually there were as many as 10 men or boys sexually assaulting the girl while another 20 looked on, laughing and snapping pictures. Teachers and students were searching last week for at least one video that many said was filmed of the attack.

The rape finally stopped, around midnight, after students at a house down the block heard of what was going on and called police. The girl was found, semiconscious, beneath a picnic table.”

Where the rape occured.

At the same time tis rape was happening. Maria Shriver had a convention in Long Beach, the WOMAN’S CONFERENCE, in which Maria Shriver proclaimed the Shriver Report. Its findings, supported by a Washington think tank, declared the United States, “a woman’s nation.”

“The theme of the conference was :We want to change the world. We just want to do it on our terms.”…(Los Angeles Times).

As the upper class women,supported bya think tank,  were declaring America, “a woman’s nation”, the 15 year old in Richmond was being raped en masse.

“Richmond, California (CNN) — Investigators say as many as 20 people were involved in or stood and watched the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl outside a California high school homecoming dance Saturday night.”

TWENTY PEOPLE STOOD AROUND AND WATCHED A GIRL GET BRUTALIZED IN ‘A WOMAN’S NATION”

Twenty men, some of them her classmates, stood around and either raped her or laughed at the rape, or took cell phone pictures. How can this behavior be altered in this woman’s nation?

Before I suggest how to alter this behavior, let me state I know very little about the new generation of men created by absentee fathers, working mothers, strangers in day care, hip hop music, Reality Tv,LIFETIME and  watching Oprah.

However, up to 1997, I worked a lot with soldiers and ex soldiers. Working with them, ordinary men from ordinary families, perhaps gives me an insight into male behavior that the female inhabitants of the “woman’s nation” don’t have.

Men are natural born killers, and many are natural  born rapists. Before the rise of the woman’s nation, society knew that. Knowing that, society made every effort to do some things, such as enforce codes of conduct, enforce good manners, enforce religious concepts like being a good Samaritan, enforce civility to woman, enforce chivalry.

These enforcements confined Men and their brutal natures. Both boys and men should always have codes to restrain them.

Men were indoctrinated by society, the media and entertainment, churches, schools to have a standard with women as mother, wife,lover,sister,daughter. The best example of this EVER, is the film, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES;every teenage boy should be forced to see it.That scene in which the woman tells the armless sailor she still loves him, will touch the souls of gangbangers more than any woman conference. I have seen it in practice.

Even the Mafia never violated women of their enemies, let alone a kid from the neighborhood.

But women, in their drive to make this a woman’s nation, have torn down the very codes that were set up to protect them.

If you peruse FACEBOOK, you become shocked at how many women called themselves or other women, bitches and whores. If women cannot respect themselves in a social environment, how in the hell should they expect that behavior from natural born killers?

“I’m Britney bitch”; Britney has armed guards; Maria Shriver has armed guards, Rose O’Donnell has armed guards. There is only one thing which protects poor women, the image that men have of women.

If women have succeeded in destroying that image, that leaves poor women the most vulnerable, for they must attend public schools, ride public transportation, walk the streets at night.

Entertainment has encouraged a backlash against women. I saw the film HITCH in a crappy prolo  theater in Oxnard, California. There is a scene, where, without provocation, the Eva Mendez character kicks a male in the groin.

A guy yelled at the screen, “Try that on me bitch”; and the audience applauded.

And then another guy yelled out, “Now do you see why I bitch slap my girl.”

I went to see some fine young actors in a showcase in Santa Monica; nine scenes were about straight relationships. One scene was about a gay relationship. Only the gay scene was Romantic; the scenes about modern male and female relationships were brutal beyond belief.

Toxic, shrewish women, emasculated or arrogant males.

The scenes were either  misogynist, or anti male; it broke my heart to think that young women must endure a lifetime without a lick of romance with a capital R.

So, how to change the toxic environment in the gender wars caused by the establishment of the “woman’s nation”?

High school students need an antidote from this toxic gender environment;

A General Assembly should be called and the kids should be shown

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES.

Now for you Romantics who need a quick fix; this link is to the famous farewell scenefrom THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON, with Errol Flynn playing General George Armstrong Custer and Olivia D Haviland portraying his wife. 

“ Autie and Libbie - the farewell. From “They Died With Their Boots On”. It portrays George Armstrong Custer (Autie) bidding farewell to his wife Elizabeth (Libbie) Bacon-Custer before he rides off to his certain death at the LITTLE BIG HORN.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3yCRln6lUg…    

SIDEBAR

 If the reader wants a more in depth examination of the war against women, and women’s role in this changing world may I suggest my blogs

http://gerrymaxeyworkshop.com/blogging/?p=1377

http://gerrymaxeyworkshop.com/blogging/?p=1949

http://gerrymaxeyworkshop.com/blogging/?p=553

http://gerrymaxeyworkshop.com/blogging/?p=1120 

;

April 22 is not only EARTH DAY but was Lenin’s Birthday;

Earth Day Is Lenin’s Birthday

Coincidence or Communism?

The problem with that theory is that VIadimir  was not a naturalist.

Lenin’s Tomb itself, sits in Red Square, in front of the Kremlin and across from St. Basil’s Cathedral.  It is the most MONTY PYTHON Place in the whole wide world. God, it took every fiber of my self discipline not to burst out laughing when I entered it. The embalmed, dead leader of an atheist political movement has his body treated, after death, like the Shroud of Turin. What came to my mind as I saw the body was the story about Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. Supposedly when Edison was dying, Henry Ford took a bottle and put it to Edison’s lips capturing Edison’s last breathe, preserving Edison’s last breathe of genius for posterity.

We really have no need for Monty Python, not with Ford, Edison and the Communists around.

What is the point of being in an atheist movement if you have to line up in the bitter cold of Moscow(tourists get to go to the head of the line immediately) and worship the rank body of a slight, bald guy who reminds you a lot of Bob Newhart? We could have Lenin’s tomb in Hollywood if we embalmed Bob Newhart after he died;no self respecting Communist could tell the difference.

 It makes one shudder to think if Hitler had won the war, what shrine the  Nazis would have built for his dead body, that assumes Hitler planned on dying if he had won.

That ludicrous embalmed body got me to thinking about the kind of dictatorships we have and will face.

THREE KINDS OF DICTATORSHIPS

a-The Military Dictatorship

b-The Thug Dictatorship

c-The Dictatorship of the Intellectuals.

The military dictatorships usually come about because of a coup or a Civil War, examples are Franco in Spain, Pinochet in Chile,  the Greek Military junta, the Brazilian, Argentine,Peruvian,Uruguayan,Guatalaman juntas. They have two common features, they do a lot of unpleasant things, like disappear people, drop living people from planes into the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans, kill mothers and farm out their children to childless officers. They are usually led by the Upper Classes of the Military; they are the easiest dictatorship  to bring down.

It is easy to bring down a military dictatorship, you wait. They do fall. They go. I have South American friends who abhore General Pinochet because of his coup, and the murder of President Allende, but Pinochet left. He lost the vote, and left….he clung to some power, but he did not fight a Civil War in the sewers like Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. When he lost the vote, he stood down from the presidency.

Military dictatorships go, they don’t last more than thirty years. the longest being Franco in Spain. Even Franco did something very interesting, when he decided that he was mortal, he did not keep the military dictatorship going, he restored the monarchy.  Then he did something even more interesting, he gave the restored throne not to Don Juan, the Count of Barcelona,  The True Pretender, but to his son, Juan Carlos, the current King. Some of my Spanish friends tell me that Franco passed over Don Juan because he was too liberal and that he(Franco) thought that Juan Carlos was more conservative.

I don’t believe that, Franco was a short, ugly toad of a man, who had outsmarted the Communists, the republicans, the Anarchists, charismatic fellow Military officers, Hitler,Stalin, and the United States. A man who could outsmart Hitler, could see into the soul of the callow boy,Juan Carlos. Franco knew what he was doing. All military dictatorships die a generational death.

2- Dictatorships by Thugs.

These are dictatorships usually imposed on their countries by NCOs( the Sergeants in the Army), men like idi Amin in Uganda, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, Batista in Cuba,  Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African Empire, Mobutu in Zaire, Assad in Syria, Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Even though Chavez was a Colonel, in reality he is a thug. A dictatorship by thugs is basically institutionalized mafioso. They run the countries as fiefdoms, for their pleasure. They don’t have natural shelf lives like the Military dictatorships; they like to hang on til death, and then give it to their sons.

Thug Dictatorships can and should be bought down economically, by  either funding an indigenous rebellion against the thug, as we should have done in Iraq, or assassination, as we did with Trujillo and should have done with Chavez when we had him under our allies control,for 48 hours in 2002.

Thugs never go on their own volition; they NEVER resign. They can be bought down by a cheap invasion of surrogates, (Idi Amin) or rebellion(Batista) or assassination(Trujillo).

Now, I know it is against stated public policy to assassinate the heads of foreign nations, but we are a diminished state. We are Byzantium, living off of past glories of supreme power. To survive diminished, we have to use Byzantine methods.   

We have spent a trillion dollars on our Iraqi misadventure, insanity. For a time, we had under our control, Saddam Hussein’s two sons in laws, surely they would have given us enough information ( for less than a TRILLION DOLLARS)  to expedite his and his sons’ assassinations.

We are broke, and yet we can last another thousand years, like Byzntium if we get smart, and deal with the thugs of the world as Byzantium would have.

3- Dictatorships of Intellectuals

The dictatorship of the Intellectual is the worst kind of dictatorship; it  is dictatorships led by former ANNAKIN SKYWALKERS who have morphed into DARTH VADERS.

The roll call of those Dictatorships is as follows;

SOVIET UNION the Communists led by Lenin(a lawyer), Stalin(a great poet who studied to be a priest),Trotsky,(Journalist)

NAZI GERMANY- Hitler( who wanted to be a painter of fine art)

FASCIST ITALY- Mussolini( a Socialist  newspaperman)

COMMUNIST CUBA-Castro(a lawyer)

COMMUNIST CHINA-Mao(a poet)

FASCIST PORTUGAL-Salazar(a would be priest,lawyer,finally a teacher of economics)

A dictatorship  of intellectuals can not be dislodged by popular uprising. The intellectual is too clever and ruthless for a popular uprising to work. Only guns, or the threat of guns(Reagan) over an extended period of time can bring down a dictatorship of the intellectual.

There is nothing as cruel, nor as vicious as a dictatorship of the intellectual; it is one of those tapeworms with hooks that latch on to the intestines. It will never go away of its own accord. It is a costly, long process to defeat a dictatorship of intellectuals; it takes years of containment.

The Putin Regime is a regime of thugs; if it lasts beyond Putin’s generation, their own people will bring it down.

But the Communist Chinese are a living dictatorship of the intellectuals, and in the end our only hope to defeat them is that they lose the their inevitable war against the future anti Chinese alliance of India, Vietnam, Taiwan and Japan.

Stalin was a big fan of American films, I often thought as he watched Ronald Reagan play second fiddle to Errol Flynn. did he ever suspect that this actor would bring down his dictatorship?

  A view of Lenin’s tomb and Kremlin wall at night

“

Lenin looking frisky.