Will's Good Idea for the Week of 4/17/22

Happy Easter to all our Christian readers. 

Sixty dollars (American) for a kosher brisket. Thanks, Joe. 

Twenty years ago this Passover, 'Palestinian' terrorists murdered 30 Israelis and wounded Dozens more in the Passover Massacre. At our Seder the night after the massacre we read, as we always read, the following from the Haggadah, 'Pour out your fury on the nations that do not know you, upon the kingdoms that do not invoke your name, for they have devoured Jacob and desolated his home. Pour out your wrath on them; may your blazing anger overtake them. Pursue them in wrath and destroy them from under the heavens.' Drive them into the sea. I don't give a crap. 

Yesterday a fan and Confederate holdout noted that Patton was one of the greatest war movies ever and too others were Full Metal Jacket and Kelly's Heros. Ahhh...the latter two are interesting choices. Reader(s) should write their favorite Kelly's Heroes quotes below. I'll start, 'I've been thinking positive thoughts about that bridge all morning...'

We hate Patton. We say that as someone who played Captain Brackett in the Hendrick Hudson Drama Club's production of South Pacific and modeled his speech after Geroge C. Scott's opener. 'Up until now, our side has been having the hell kicked out of it in two hemispheres...'* Patton does little to help us understand the real Patton. Not once did the script delve into the man's family, his mystical connection to his Confederate ancestors, his time commanding the tank corps in WWI, and his deep loyalty to Pershing. That movie sucks.

Our favorite war movies are about men, and war and human nature. To that end, here's our list.

Bridge on the River Kwai. Three different views of war. Saito and Nickolson are both stubborn, pigheaded, and nuts. Only Shears makes any sense. Nicholson figures it out in the end, 'My god what have I done,' while the nominally sane Shears is screaming, 'Kill him!' All while the train grows closer and closer. 

The Longest Day. Many of the English parts are silly and the film feels more like 1962 than 1944. But TLD captures the greatness and grandeur of D-Day while telling the tale of confused and disoriented men controlled by events. Best scene? A tie between the Pegasus Bridge assault and the French Commandos, no?

Platoon. Has stood the test of time, hasn't it? A character study in a story about coming of age in war.

The Caine Mutiny. No surprise to longtime readers of this blog. This film is about war, men, duty and loyalty.

Twelve O'clock High. See above. Also, leadership and the price of command. Also the redemption of Col. Gately, who started out a goat but ended up taking command at the end. 'No...tell Gately to take it.'

Apocalypse Now. Well duh. War is grand, banal, horrifying.

Anyway...our Confederate holdout also suggested that we show people discussing the points in the president's inauguration address after the fact. We had toyed with something like this, people huddled around the radio listening, like they did with FDR's fireside chats, but this post-address idea works a lot better. 

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 4/17/22. Pakistan spends The New American Order harassing and pressuring India. Their ISI destabilizes Bangladesh, sponsors terrorist attacks in India and attacks Indian assets abroad, all in the hopes of forcing Delhi into some kind of deal on Kashmir. This leads to war. With no super powers to restrain them this could be the big one with the Indians deciding, aww hell with it. Let's take Islamabad. The Indo-Pak war could be its own novel in this universe. We'll see, we'll see if The Great Salvation of 1976 and The New American Order do as well as The Great Nuclear War of 1975.

*Thirty years ago this April, and I still remember it.