Month: March 2026

Third World State

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Life is a remarkable experience.  We interact with our “fellow humans” in a myriad of different relationships.  And society tries to regulate the expectations we have for these interactions.  For instance, if we go to a fast-food restaurant and ask for a hamburger we’re expected to react to problems within a prescribed range of actions.  So, if the order taker tells you that they are only serving breakfast at the moment and not burgers, you are supposed to smile and shrug your shoulders or shake your head and walk out the door or even complain bitterly and ask for the “manager.”  What you’re discouraged from doing is pulling out an Uzi and spraying the building with 9mm bullets.  That was the reaction of Michael Douglas’s character in “Falling Down.”  Now, he didn’t actually shoot anyone but he was definitely behaving outside of that range of behavioral expectations.  And similarly, we have societal expectations for most reasonably common scenarios that play out in the big world we live in.  “Falling Down” was a fable to show us how the world can get out of hand.  The protagonist was a law-abiding “good guy” who saw dysfunction all around him and allowed it to infect his mind.

But of late there has been a breakdown in the mechanisms that are supposed to regulate these interactions.  In the “old days” (let’s define that as before Barack Obama became president) people who stepped over the lines into criminal behavior were handled by the police and they were allowed to use lethal force in the case where someone was committing violent crime.  But then we got the federal government stepping in and accusing local law enforcement of racially motivated murder when they dealt with violent sociopaths like Michael Brown.  And this only accelerated after the George Floyd riots in 2020.  And now we’ve reached the point where certain areas of the country no longer have effective policing to deter violent crime on their streets.  Examples would be areas of Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City where prosecutors and judges typically release repeat violent offenders immediately back onto the street after booking them for their crimes.  The people who live in these areas are constantly in fear for their lives in their own neighborthoods.

Alternatively, there are areas of the country where law enforcement is now reversing this trend and bringing order to the streets again.  Florida and Texas are highlighting their efforts to make their streets safe again.  In support of this effort, they are cooperating with ICE agents who are removing illegal aliens from their jurisdictions.  And this is having a very noticeable effect in reducing the kinds of crime associated with gang activity and drug trafficking.  After all many of these illegals are cartel members from Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

And it is encouraging to hear about locales that are pushing back against chaos.  But the fact that crime-ridden cities are exposing American citizens to third world criminality is not something that should be tolerated.  Donald Trump has tried to use ICE to infiltrate and clean up sanctuary cities.  But it’s woefully insufficient for the problems being addressed.

We’ve reached a point in our history where we have to admit that we cannot assure the safety of law-abiding citizens.  That makes us a third world state.

A Firefly Animated Series

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The sci-fi television series “Firefly” and its subsequent big screen continuation “Serenity” came out in 2002 and 2005 respectively.  That’s a very long time ago.  So, for that whole 20 plus years there have been rumors that circulated on-line that a sequel tv show or a movie would be greenlit.  And the fanbase of Firefly has been dying for such a sequel all these years.

And now their dreams are coming true.  Well, almost.  There won’t be a live-action tv show or movie.  There will be an animated movie with the original cast providing the voices of their characters.  And other than Ron Glass (who died a number of years ago) the whole cast is coming back.  But will it be any good?

Firefly and Serenity were the creation of Joss Whedon.  He invented them and breathed life into them.  Joss Whedon will not be writing or producing or directing this new movie.  He has been canceled in Hollywood for bad behavior.  Apparently, he hurt the feelings of some actresses before or during the #metoo witch hunts and has been consigned to a lower level of hell where powerful Hollywood men are sent to burn forever.  And without Whedon what are the chances that a new Firefly would be anything like the original?

Well, we’re about to find out.  That’s a slight exaggeration.  It’ll probably take a year or longer to produce this movie.  And whether it’s a tv miniseries or a motion picture you probably have to add a few months to fit it into the schedules for these kinds of things.  So, let’s say eighteen months.

Several years ago, I came to the conclusion that the best thing that could have happened to Firefly was exactly what did happen.  It only lasted a part of a season on tv and then had a motion picture to provide a satisfying climax to the characters and the story.  And the reason I felt that way was because Firefly appealed to me exactly because it went against the kind of female-centric left-leaning stuff that Joss Whedon typically produces.  Things like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” and “Dollhouse” are what he makes.  And those shows are garbage from my perspective.  Firefly was from the opposite perspective.  It was the battle between the oligarchic Alliance which is a stand-in for today’s globalists and the Independents who are the freedom-loving commoners much like today’s Right.  But the danger as I see it is that eventually Whedon would have tweaked the characters and stories until they became “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

And I still think that.  The two showrunners they’ve put in charge of this animated series are as thoroughly left-leaning and devoted to woke culture as anyone else around.  If anything, they’re worse than Whedon because at least he was talented.  They’re not.  So, I fully expect this new show will be pretty awful.

That being said I will watch it when it comes out.  Firefly was enormously entertaining while it lasted.  And it will be nostalgic to see the animated characters and hear the voices of the old crew.  But I would be shocked if it turned out to be good.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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This is a time loop movie.  It’s Groundhog Day crossed with Starship Troopers.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Tom Cruise is Major William Cage.  He’s the US Army’s public relations man during a war against aliens called the mimics who have conquered mainland Europe and are about to be counter-attacked by humanity’s attempt at D-Day from a London staging area.  But instead of staying behind in an office to edit commercials his superiors have loaned him out to the Brits as a warrior.  He tries to desert but is handcuffed and handed over to Master Sargeant Farell (played by Bill Paxton) and put into powered body armor and dropped into battle in France.  And of course, since he’s not a real soldier, he’s killed in the first few minutes of the horrific battle.  But right before he dies, he manages to kill a special mimic called an “alpha.”  And because some of the alpha’s blood gets on him, he ends up in a time loop that always brings him back to the same day of the battle.  And as long as he’s always killed he’ll come back again.

And from starting out as a hopelessly incompetent soldier, by virtue of getting to endlessly re-live and re-die on that day, he becomes adept at fighting mimics.  During one of these replays, he meets Sergeant Rita Vrataski (played by Emily Blunt) and just before she dies, she tells him to find her the next time he wakes up.  In other words, she has had the same time loop ability.  Through endless additional replays, Cage and Vrataski figure out that the mimics are aware of all the humans’ plans and fighting them is futile.  But if Cage is exposed to a device that was made to read the mind of alphas he will discover where the head mimic (the omega) is hiding.  But in the effort Cage loses his ability to reset time and come back to life.

And so, there is a kamikaze mission with Cage, Vrataski and some comrades to storm the Louvre where the monster hides.  As it works out everyone but Cage is killed and he is mortally wounded just as he blows up the omega.  But somehow killing the omega (I think) resets his looping ability and he wakes up with all of them alive but the omega destroyed and the mimics basically defeated.

Alright, so what about all this.  This is a pretty good sci-fi war movie.  The special effects are good.  The acting is good and the plot is pretty well worked out.  And even Emily Blunt’s Rita Vrataski character isn’t a complete girl-boss super hero.  She is annoying from time to time but not hopelessly.  Cruise carries the movie with a decent amount of character acting from his “comrades” and with even a little humor thrown in to lighten the mood.  The endless live/die repetition is handled very well for most of the movie with only a couple of spots where they seemed to over do it.  I will say that in the final assault the image on the screen is sort of too dark and hard to really understand.  It’s at night in an underground vault and under water so maybe that’s realistic but it feels confusing and unhelpful to the viewer.  All in all, I recommend this movie to fans of sci-fi action movies.  It’s pretty good.

Refocusing Science Fiction – Part 2

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What if you wanted to write a science fiction story about genetic engineering?  Now a good example of that is Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park.”  Here we have geneticists mining dinosaur DNA from mosquitos trapped in amber from the Cretaceous period.  And presto-change-o we’ve got tyrannosaurs and ceratopsians running around after Jeff Goldblum while he’s running around after Laura Dern.  Isn’t that marvelous.  And sure, it is if you’re selling books or movie tickets.  But there are a few hitches.

As far as I know there has never been any DNA that has lasted tens of millions of years.  Ever.  So, no Jurassic Park.  But suppose you wanted to write a story about genetic engineering.  And suppose you wanted to write it about genetic manipulation of humans.  Now you’re talking about science that’s completely possible.

With the advent of techniques like CRISPR (acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) it has become relatively easy to delete and replace DNA sequences in living cells including germ cells (sperm or egg cells or in the zygote following fertilization).  This is reality not science fiction.  But what could happen if this technology became widely used is still science fiction, so far.  A Chinese scientist named He Jiankui in November 2018 announced that he had created the first human germline genetically edited babies.  I think he was sent to prison for the act.

But the point is this is not Jurassic Park.  This is technology that exists.  And therefore, science fiction can be written about the kinds of worlds that would result if we used this technology.  It could be utopian or dystopian or it could be very complicated and involve people’s lives being changed in ways that are neither of the extremes.  What if these edited babies live much longer than normal humans?  That would create certain problems.  Or what if they’re all super geniuses and can’t relate to normal people and their normal hopes and dreams?  Either of these scenarios can have consequences that would make interesting stories.  Because fundamentally, the interesting thing about science fiction stories isn’t the science but rather its effect on human beings.  If scientists bring back dinosaurs but they don’t run amok trying to eat Jeff Goldblum (which really would be fun to watch) no one would care.  If the sun explodes but humanity has been extinct for a billion years then no one reading the story would care.  The stories are about us and that’s the thing that the writer has to make you understand.

So, I’d really like to read some stories about things that could really happen and maybe even will happen.  Maybe a good story would be about someone trying to figure out how to use artificial intelligence to eliminate violent crime or find a way to make democracy work to most people’s satisfaction.  There are an endless supply of technological problems and scenarios that already are possible and just need someone to expend a little brain power to make entertaining.  And I’m guessing in the not-too-distant future a writer with a bit of skill and a little imagination will write at least one good one.