What can a Vermonter possibly do, when confronted with the AIG bonus scandal, global economic meltdown, and the uniquely dirty pleasure that is mud season?
Escape to the movies, of course.
And, in the “art mirrors life” department, there is no finer new movie than director Tony Gilroy’s “Duplicity.” This fun if flawed film marks a revival of the old “couples caper” genre (think Hepburn and Grant) and features two of Hollywood’s most bankable stars – Julia Roberts and Clive Owen – surrounded by a scene-stealing supporting cast.
In a nutshell – Ray Koval (Owen) and Claire Stenwick (Roberts) are two retired intelligence agents who’ve transferred their skills to the world of corporate espionage. The game – competing (or are they cooperating?) to steal secret data for a new and stunningly profitable product (a substance that cures male pattern baldness – no joke) while playing off two rival corporations against one another. Veteran actors Paul Giamatti (of “John Adams” fame) and Tom Wilkinson (“Michael Collins”) fill out the film as the antagonistic CEOs of the two rival corporations, and the movie’s opening, featuring a “slow mo” airport tarmac scene in which the two execs try to beat the snot out of each other – is (almost) worth the price of admission.
Back to the game. The film is told in a series of flashbacks shot in exotic locations – Dubai, London, Rome, New York, and, um, Cleveland – moments in which corporate spies Ray and Claire rendezvous for logistical strategizing and sexual refueling. The fun comes when we quickly learn that neither one of them entirely trusts the other to hold to their agreed-upon evolving plan. Each rendezvous scene is a variation on the same theme, in which the two characters repeat lines of similar banter, verbally joust with one another, and then hop in the sack…or don’t. Are they working together? Will one double-cross the other? How will the story end?
There are two problems with the film, one small, the other not so much. The first comes in the film’s climax – after close to two hours of “cat and mouse” fun, the script throws the audience a giant curve ball – which sucks the wind out of the story faster than you can say “AIG bailout scam.” I won’t ruin it for you here, other than to say, in art as well as life, one corporation emerges as the ultimate victor uber alles.
The second and much bigger problem is the almost complete lack of frisson between Roberts and Owen, odd for such two physically attractive and gifted actors. Roberts, who looks a bit tired on camera, goes through the motions of playing the part of the sexy double agent, but never really lights up the screen, even when engaged in amorous acts with Mr. Owen. There is a moment at film’s midpoint when, in one very brief scene, she slips into “Mystic Pizza/Pretty Woman” mode – bright eyed, with her dazzling smile, and I was reminded of just how winsome a character she can play. And anyone who has seen “Erin Brokovich” knows how good a dramatic actress she can be. The problem here seems to be direction – she never really “inhabits” her character, and fifteen minutes into the film, I gave up on her.
Owen, meanwhile, looks good in a suit and designer sunglasses, but delivers most of his lines with the assuredness of someone who has just walked onto the set from a somewhat frustrating chess match not sure if he won or not. Maybe this is the point in a caper film, but the results, when combined with Ms. Roberts’ lack of engagement, are, well, disengaging.
As a story that illuminates the high-stakes cutthroat world of corporate espionage, “Duplicity” has tremendous potential, and there are moments of celluloid magic, scenes involving supporting actors Giamatti and Wilkinson. But as a “couples caper” film, it feels flat.
Maybe, in part, this is because in art, as well in real life, duplicitous corporations are having their way with us at the moment, and it doesn’t feel all that good.
“Trainspotting” director Danny Boyle’s new film, “Slumdog Millionaire,” just won the 2008 Oscar for best picture, and with good reason. Set in the slums of modern India, “Slumdog Millionaire” is a frenetic tour de force –rhythmic, fast-paced, visually arresting, and ultimately hopeful. “I knew the answers,” says the film’s protagonist, Indian Muslim Jamal Malik, whom we see being tortured in the film’s opening moments. Turns out, he’s just won a big pile of rupees on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.” one of India’s hottest TV game shows. All good, right?
Nope. Those in authority (including the game show host) think he cheated his way to the answers, and punish him to determine how he knows what he knows.
In the film, Jamal’s life story is told in a series of flashbacks touching on seminal moments from his impoverished life in the Indian slums. We see a young Jamal plunge himself into a pile of outhouse waste, watch as his mother is killed in the Hindu-on-Muslim violence of a local riot, view the forced maiming and blinding of young poor Indian kids to attract much-needed rupees by opportunistic adults, and witness human conflagration and abject poverty of the most gut-wrenching sort. We also see a chance encounter between Jamal and a young girl, Lakita, blossom into a friendship, and then romance – in true Hollywood/ Bollywood fashion.
How “Slumdog” plays out is worth the watching, and I won’t give anything away here. As a director, Boyle’s genius is not to preach, but rather to rub together the most disturbing dialectical sets of images (rich versus poor, Western versus Indian, Hindu versus Muslim, kid versus adult) with the most uplifting glimpses of what could be, given a bit of chance, no small measure of luck, and the star-crossed circumstances of fate. In doing so, Boyle personalizes one individual’s chance “rags to raja” story, mixes it with a whole heap of wrinkles, twists and turns thrown in for good measure, and paints a captivating and visually arresting film.
And there are a deeper cross-cultural fissures here, too, captured in the fierce and ongoing global online debates about the movie and its significance. When “Slumdog Millionaire” won the Oscar last month for Best Picture, “residents of Mumbai’s slums celebrated,” explains one online pundit. “In contrast, Indian activists and intellectuals who have decried the movie for its portrayal of poverty and violence and its alleged exploitation of child actors and slum dwellers lamented the victory, claiming that the movie is a flawed Western interpretation of Mumbai.” “This claim, however,” the writer concludes, “overlooks both the film’s basic faithfulness to the novel by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup on which it is based, and Bollywood’s own tradition of uplifting stories.”
Fair enough. And for American audiences, the film is sure to continue the debate about the roots and nature of global poverty and the excesses of this thing called “globalization” in its current incarnation. Ultimately, “Slumdog Millionaire” is a story that strikes multiple chords with American audiences at a time of economic meltdown and tremendous uncertainty about our future.
Nothing Hardly Ever Happens In Colbyville, Vermont
Essays by Peter Miller
Most Vermonters who know of Colbyville-based Peter Miller and his work recognize him as the photographer who has captured black and white slices of a vanishing cross-section of our Green Mountain communities. His visually arresting photos, including a famous one of Fred Tuttle holding a photo of his father (and so on), have been captured in a number of books: Vermont People, Vermont Farm Women, and most recently, Vermont Gathering Places. Miller’s iconic photography has so worked its way into Vermont’s collective imagination that he was named Vermonter of the Year in 2006 by the Vermont State Legislature.
What many may not know about Peter Miller, however, is that the fellow is a fine writer, first honing his craft with LIFE magazine during the 1950s and 1960s, and then combining wordsmithing and shutterbugging ever since. And one couldn’t do better for an introduction to Miller’s writing than his new collection of essays entitled Nothing Hardly Ever Happens In Colbyville, Vermont.
First things first. Where is Colbyville?
Stand in the south corner of Waterbury Center’s Ben and Jerry’s parking lot, and toss a stone down the hill.
Bingo. You’ve struck the place, and perhaps, Miller’s house, in the process. Who new? Isn’t that Waterbury?
And this is a big theme in Miller’s writing – the ways in which “traditional” Vermont (poor, homespun, rural, hardscrabble – call it what you will) has been upstaged and gentrified by the imposition of “newer” Vermont, and the creative tensions that have resulted from this process. Consider Chunky Monkey. Ben and Jerry’s ice cream put Vermont on the map globally as an ice cream destination, made Messrs. B and J a mint, and forever cemented the Holstein in the popular public imagination as Vermont’s bovine of choice, particularly for milking, thanks to artist Woody Jackson’s iconic (I can’t get enough of that word) artistry on the side of ever one of those little pints. But Ben and Jerry’s arrival, of course, forever changed the destiny of little Colbyville, and, Miller subtly suggests, this story is perhaps a smaller metaphor for a much larger Vermont experience these past five decades or so, as tiny, rural, backwoods Green Mountain communities, comprised of hunters, fishers, trappers, farmers, loggers, and the like – has moved (or been dragged) into the modern (and post-modern age).
“Colbyville exists for two reasons,” writes Miller. “Its is beside the only road that heads north to Stowe, and there were two falls on Thatcher Brook, which is across the road from my house.” In Miller’s geographic musings, he underscores how quickly Vermont, in the latter half of the twentieth century, has moved from rural subsistence to global retail (at least, in some pockets of the state), as the tourism, skiing, recreational and related industries brought visitors, money and new businesses into play.
And yes, Miller is not entirely happy about all of this – and his photographs and essays reflect an almost-elegiac and sometimes very humorous “take” on this state of affairs. In one essay, he writes about discovering a suicide site while woodcock hunting. In another, he muses about the passing of Fred Tuttle, the famous “Man With A Plan” Vermonter’s funeral becoming a lens through which Miller considers the unique regionalism of Vermont’s rural heritage. In one of his best essays, one rejected by Vermont Life (too provocative, no doubt), entitled “I Poach: Confessions of a Duck Hunting Addict Gone Astray,” Miller writes of illegally hunting on a neighbor’s land with a friend, and their attempts to elude a gamekeeper, and I felt for several pages like I was Danny, the “champion of the world,” out with my father furtively tracking elusive wild game. My favorite essay, “Dear Folks At Orvis Repair,” recounts how Miller broke his fishing rod in an encounter with a…well, you gotta read the essay to find out what happens.
And that’s a big part of the fun in reading Miller – his essays are full of colorful characters, dry wit, and some not-so-subtle digs at what Vermont has become, even as he celebrates the Vermont that once was, still is, and will no doubt be again.
“Billions of dollars are made in shredding the Constitution.
Not a single penny is made in restoring the Constitution.”
Naomi Wolf – January 17, 2009
Big Picture Theater – Mad River Valley, Vermont
Author, feminist and social critic Naomi Wolf has written one of the most important books of our time. Short, accessible, and deeply disturbing, The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot (Chelsea Green, 2007) lays out the ten steps required for an open society (read: a democracy) to move towards a closed society (read: a dictatorship).
I remember reading the book when it first hit the streets – and upon a recent reread in the wake of Mr. Obama’s election, I still find The End of America a seminal work in shaping my own thinking about the constitutionality of and need for nonviolent secession, with the once and future republic of Vermont leading the way.
Wolf’s conclusion? In comparing the coming of closed societies in other countries, notably Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Nazi Germany, and Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, Wolf concludes that all ten steps already have been taken here in the 21st century United States.
It might be worth reading that last sentence again. Let it settle a bit.
Don’t like to read?
Well, fortunately, a new film version of her End Of America book brings her written arguments to life with visual evidence that supports the book’s conclusions: news snippets, interview clips, and on-the-ground footage, edited together with Wolf’s warm, witty, wise and charismatic stage presence – all of which strengthen her written case quite dramatically.
How do democracies get shut down, transformed into dictatorships?
Let Wolf’s analysis of this step-by-step process be submitted to a candid world
Step #1: Invoke an External and External Threat
What does the USA PATRIOT Act stand for? ((It is an acronym, oh yes – the film does a funny Penn and Teller bit with this.) To wit: “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” Passed in the immediate wake of 9/11 with nary a peep from Congress (who actually wrote the several hundred page document, and why it was ready for passage so quickly in mid-September 2001 is a matter of no small interest, one ignored by the film), the USA PATRIOT Act, Wolf concludes, essentially guts much of the Bill of Rights (you know, that little add-on to the U.S. Constitution that “guarantees” citizens the rights to press, speech, assembly, gun-carrying, trial by jury – little stuff like that), as well as eroding critical pieces of the Constitution (I won’t bore you with the details.)
Step #2: Create Secret Prisons Where Torture Takes Place
For years, Wolf observes, the U.S. government has denied that it tortures individuals. Not true. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and “extraordinary rendition,” the process by which the U.S. government captures and transports “detainees” (known in the new legalese as “enemy combatants”, a term that the president can now apply to anyone at will) to other countries where the U.S. Constitution has no jurisdiction, solely for the purpose of torturing them, offer undeniable proof. The U.S. government doesn’t call it “torture, though. Nope. “Enhanced interrogation techniques” is the phrase de jour, and, by the way, the Geneva Convention and other international systems for protecting citizens simply don’t apply. And the Military Commissions Act (October 2006) strips detainees of the right to even see the evidence against them.
Step #3: Develop a Paramilitary Force
I’ve got one word for you. Blackwater. Wolf explains that this private for-profit corporate mercenary organization, operated by Eric Prinz and engaged in hiring professional soldiers from around the world, operates at the behest of the U.S. government in global “hot spots,” including Iraq, and, as it turns out, New Orleans and other places around the United States. U.S. law has shielded Blackwater “employees” from government investigation – the State Department has been less than forthcoming in giving Congress any specific information about the cozy relationship between Blackwater and the executive branch. (As an aside, journalist Jeremy Scahill’s recent book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army is a must-read for anyone interested in what’s going on in this arena.)
Step #4: Surveil Ordinary Citizens
You can’t close an open society, Wolf observes, unless you are able to “listen in” on the private conversations of ordinary citizens and intimidate, even silence, those who are most vocal in their criticism of the government. Naomi Wolf speaks to her own personal experience as an air traveler with a quadruple X designation, indicating that she is “on the watch list.” A well-meaning young airport guard clued her in after several successive flights in which she was singled out and detained for extra questioning. Might want to check your ticket next time you fly. Bottom left.
Step #5: Infiltrate Citizen Groups
Anyone who understands the history of COINTELPRO in the United States, Wolf explains, understands how this works. The FBI sends agents to infiltrate, spy on, and harass citizen groups. Congress passed laws against this sort of behavior after the Vietnam War – those laws have since been undone.
Step #6: Detain and Release Ordinary Citizens
Another intimidation tactic, Wolf notes – designed to strike fear into the general population. ‘Nuf said.
Step #7: Target Key Individuals
Wolf notes that Hitler’s propaganda minister Josef Goebbels proved particularly adept at this, according to Wolf. She points to the repercussions that followed Dan Rather and the Dixie Chicks’ criticism of the Bush administration (See the documentary “Shut Up And Sing”) as two high-profile examples, but there are many others.
Step #8: Restrict the Press
On the surface, an obvious tactic. One of Wolf’s weaknesses, however, is that she assumes the U.S. corporate press (yes, I am including the New York Times) is interested in providing a multi-sided picture of any story. With 90% of our media content ultimately owned by one of 6 multinational corporations, vital information rarely gets through the gatekeepers. If you don’t believe me, answer this simple question: How many Iraqis have been killed (estimated) since the 2003 U.S. Iraq invasion? This seems a number that should be on the tip of everyone’s brain. And yet, most Americans haven’t a clue, not because they are stupid, but because the U.S. media simply censors this sort of tough but necessary information. As a citizen of the most powerful Empire in the world, I think it is safe to say that we are generally clueless about what our own government is up to. “Disinformation” is the order of the day, if you read, watch or listen to mainstream news sources.
Step #9: Recast Criticism as Espionage and Dissent as Treason
In a closing society, Wolf suggests, you see more attempts to restrict free speech. U.S. history is full of examples, beginning with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 (see John Adams). In our current era, the “T” word becomes more universally applied to any citizen who criticizes the U.S. government. (That’s “terrorist.”)
Step #10: Subvert the Rule of Law
More and more, Wolf suggests, the Executive branch (the President) simply ignores the Legislative branch (U.S. Congress) on those few occasions when Congress actually gets up the gumption to ask some tough questions or hold some public hearings. Have you heard about “signing statements?” Mr. Bush used them more than any other single executive in U.S. history, and they allow the president to simply reinterpret or ignore whatever Congressional laws he deems wrong-headed. Huh.
And Wolf ends the film by suggesting that a coup d’etat has occurred in October 2008, when the president deployed U.S. troops returning from Iraq to patrol U.S. soil, in direct violation of the posse comitatus act of the 1870s, designed to prohibit the president from ever using U.S. troops against U.S. citizens.
Only “the psychology of liberty” can save us, Wolf concludes, with the film suggesting we “write letters, blog, be vocal, and generally embrace a more critical form of patriotism.”
As hope for our constitutional future, this tastes like awfully thin gruel.
Maybe President Obama might save us.
But in the Q and A after the film, Wolf argued that “no American president is powerful enough to restore our Constitutional system by himself. Until every one of the laws is rescinded,” she concludes, “Our work is not done.” America’s “reverence for the law” is what is most admired globally, Wolf observed, and “the law is so fragile – it is a consensus, and if people say ‘fuck the law,’ it is difficult to restore it.”
Check out her new book Give Me Liberty for a blueprint for grassroots change.
Time will tell if Wolf’s optimistic vision of “a people’s army” rising up to reclaim our federal government and the “rule of law” comes to be reinstated.
The End of America? An Interview with Film Producer Avram Ludwig
Rob’s Quick Note: In his thought-provoking new movie, based on citizen activist Naomi Wolf’s book The End Of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot (Chelsea Green, 2007) Ludwig suggests that the U.S. Constitution, and indeed democracy itself, is under siege here in the United States. His film “The End of America” will be featured at the Big Picture Café and Theater’s 2009 Mountain Top Human Rights Festival (running from Wednesday, Wednesday January 14 – Sunday, January 18) on Saturday, January 17 at 7:00 p.m., and again on Sunday, January 18 at 5:00 p.m.
Join Avram and best-selling author Naomi Wolf on Saturday night, January 17 at the Big Picture for a public dialogue (as well as good food, drink and conviviality).
Here, I interview Avram Ludwig about his film “The End of America.” While I take issue with his suggestion that the Barack Obama administration will actually be able to undo much of the legacies of the Bush/Cheny regime (an unpopular view in Vermont at the moment, I know), he has helped make one of the more important political documentaries of our time – and we are excited to host him in Waitsfield this coming week-end.
The End of America – INTERVIEW
Q. How did you come to make “End of America”?
A. I met Naomi at a Halloween Party, she was dressed as a sexy feminist and I knew if I wanted to get a date, I had to come up with a good pick up line. “Let’s make a movie out of your book.” But seriously, I’d been living the past eight years with this mounting sense of fury at my own powerlessness at my government’s almost daily shredding of the Constitution. I had been reading about the torture, the denial of habeas corpus, the copying of everyone’s email since 2005 by the NSA, Blackwater on the rampage in Iraq and New Orleans then pouring money into the coffers of the RNC, and the horrible strategic mistake of the war. All these things made me so angry, but when I read Naomi’s book, I could see a systematic effort of political intimidation of the press and the Democrats, and I knew I had to make the movie.
Q. In what ways, exactly, does your film suggest that “America” is “ending”?
A. George Washington and his comrades gave us a great gift when they set up the system of checks and balances and the protection of individual rights. Free speech, freedom to demonstrate, due process, protection from search without a warrant, separation of the military and police. Washington was offered more and more power throughout his career and instead of trying to keep it, he kept giving back when he was done with it. This is the essence of American Democracy, and it takes self-discipline and self-restraint to practice Democracy. Everyone has to abide by an objective set of rules. When politics is practiced as if it’s war, winning is everything. Democracy can’t survive that.
Q. Why select Naomi Wolf as your “red thread” here – what qualities does she bring to the movie?
A. Naomi was able to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, how the government was making a systematic effort to undermine democracy. She’s also a fantastic communicator, a great rabble rouser and someone that people instinctively trust. Unlike a politician, she has nothing to gain from all this, and she always writes the story of her emotional connection to an issue, so you can read her social theory and social criticism and be incredibly moved.
Q. The book “End of America” is a critique of the eight years of the Bush/Cheney administration. With the election of Democrat Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency, doesn’t that weaken the film’s argument?
A. I think we dodged a bullet, without the economic meltdown, I think we would have had a very scary and much closer election. A lot vote stealing and vote suppression both illegal and legal was in place for implementation in the last election and was essentially called off. A closer election could have been stolen, but Obama was clever and had a lawyer in every polling place in the country. Also, PBS teamed up with YouTube to ask people to film and post anyone being denied the right to vote. Rove saw the writing on the wall and made statements the week before the election that if Obama didn’t win, there would be riots, and he was right. On October 1st, Bush moved a brigade specializing in crowd control back from Iraq to the US in violation of Posse Commitatus, the American legal tradition to strictly separate the Army from policing except in the event of insurrection. The day after the election, Bush brought two more brigades and now the plan is to bring 20,000 troops for use in the US by 2011. This is the greatest hallmark of a police state, and the most dangerous one. When the leader can start using the military at will, the constitutional checks and balances are meaningless.
Q. Will Obama really offer an alternative to the Bush/Cheney regime?
After he got elected, Obama went on 60 Minutes and reaffirmed his promise to close Guantanamo and stop torture – two major concerns in End of America – and he’s made nominations for the Presidential lawyers and Solicitor General and CIA Director that would make you think that the Bill of Rights will be respected.
The major question: is will Obama press to undo all the legislative damage done to the Constitution in the post 9/11 legislation? We have to think of the damage as a trap that has been set.
Writer’s note: Grace Potter grew up in the Mad River Valley.
First, the bad news.
I missed the New Year’s Eve Higher Ground show, in which the Nocturnals vamped as the Royal Tenenbaums.
See photo.
The good news?
I caught Grace Potter and the Nocturnals’ (GPN) December 29 Higher Ground show, two days before, and what a show it was.
The popular Burlington venue was packed to capacity by the time the band took the stage at 10:15 p.m. With a quick welcome for the crowd – “Are you guys ready to have a good time tonight?” – Grace Potter, resplendent in knee high boots and a black mini skirt, promptly picked up her triangle-shaped cutaway electric guitar, laid down some growling blues chords, and lit into “Watching You,” backed by smoking riffs from fabulous-fingered Scott Tournet, the solid drumming of Matthew Burr, and the low-end speed bass of Bryan Dondero.
The evening took off from there.
All of the band’s best original rockers made the cut: “Mastermind,” “Treat Me Right,” and “Joey,” as well as a new tune I didn’t recognize, something about “Apples Off My Tree.” Sign me up.
My first thought, while listening: this is a band that has clearly been honing their chops with plenty of good hard touring on the road. The extended “road trip,” of course, as any traveling musician will tell you, is not nearly as glamorous as the movies and popular imagination make it out to be, but it is vital for a band seeking to cultivate a larger audience and a tighter musical groove. The Nocturnals sounded tighter and more together than they ever have, despite a few technical difficulties at various moments during the show.
My second thought: after several years of touring, Grace Potter has established herself as a multi-talented instrumentalist and stage performer. Throughout the course of the sixteen song Higher Ground set, she moved fluidly from one instrument to another – electric guitar, the Hammond organ and keyboard, the tambourine (a much harder instrument to play than it looks) the acoustic guitar and back again, comfortably and with a playful sense of the possible. Her voice has matured, as well – she channeled the blues, funk, soul and folk traditions with equal ease, though this listener would love a few more slow ballads mixed into the set – the “jam band” thing, which the band does well, could benefit from occasional more quiet interludes, which would also offer Grace a chance to show off both her voice and her remarkable word smithing chops. (For listeners who want to keep up with GPN’s exploits, check out the web site www.thisissomewhere.com – you can hear and watch some great live stuff, and you can find acoustic live versions of some of the band’s tunes, as well.)
All in all, the show proved spectacular. By the time the Nocturnals slipped into “Ah Mary” (their set’s ninth song and Potter’s most brilliantly lyrical – a critique of U.S. Empire disguised as an “out-of-control” woman story), I was hooked. They followed this up with the wonderfully hooky tunes “Some Kind of Ride” and “Stop The Bus,” but the band’s “come to Jesus” movement – a transcendental tour-de-force – came at the show’s climax, with “Big White Gate” and the “Water” double-shot from their “Nothing But The Water” project – masterful. Throw in a really funky cover of Steve Miller’s “Big Old Jet Airliner” to round things out, and the evening proved magical.
To top it off, as we left the theater, the snow started to come down, blanketing Burlington in some much-needed white stuff for the journey back to Mad River. The warmth of the music stayed with me and my companions, though, and I thought how fortunate we are to live in a place and in a community that nurtures and supports its young people as they spread their wings, in so many different ways.
It is always appropriate, in my mind at least, to write one’s last media column of the year about the most interesting media text one has discovered over the past year.
For me, that media text would have to be Secession.
Charlotte, Vermont’s Thomas Naylor is a former international businessman, professor emeritus of Duke University (in economics), and the chair of the Second Vermont Republic, a think tank devoted to advancing the radical but very American idea that the state of Vermont should nonviolently secede from the United States and govern itself as an independent republic once again, as it did from 1777 to 1791.
He’s outlined the case for secession, Vermont-style, in a book with the same title (see above) and, to this reader, it is worth a close read.
Full disclosure.
As the editor and publisher of Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence news journal, I believe (as Naylor does) that the idea of secession merits serious exploration. And, while he and I differ in terms of our tone and tenor, style and strategy, I submit that the idea of secession is an idea whose time has come.
Before you scoff, consider a few facts, to be submitted (as Jefferson suggested) to a candid world.
Secession is as American as apple pie. The United States was born out of secession, as the thirteen English colonies left Great Britain’s imperial orbit and crafted a new republic for themselves (Vermont, of course, beat them to the punch – establishing itself as an independent republic fully seven years before the 1783 Treaty of Paris was signed, creating the new United States.) The 1776 Declaration of Independence’s central theme is, of course, secession – and the very first verb Jefferson and the first Continental Congress use is “dissolve.”
Contrary to what we learned in school, the first region of the U.S. republic to seriously consider secession was not the South (mention the word “secession” to most Americans, and, assuming they can spell the word correctly, their first impulse is to conjure images of plantations, slaves, and mint juleps). But it was 18th century New Englanders (Vermonters included, as Vermont joined the United States in 1791) who seriously considered secession on no fewer than six occasions between the 1787 signing of the U.S. Constitution and the so-called “Civil War” of 1861-1865 (really a “War to Prevent Southern Secession,” but Lincoln’s radical re-invention of the U.S. Constitution won the day, with the help of Union bayonets and the lives of hundreds of thousands).
Why is secession worth another look in this new century?
In his short and accessible book, Naylor suggests that the United States is no longer a republic but an Empire that is essentially ungovernable and unsustainable. In what he calls an “endgame for America” scenario, he sees the 1990 collapse of the Soviet Union as an omen for the United States, and points to the scourge of “bigness” as the chief problem facing Americans today – big government, big business, and big militarism – and explains that the problem with the United States is ultimately one of size and scale, beyond the range of one person, party, platform or program to fix (“hope and change” rhetoric notwithstanding.)
But the strongest part of the book, in my mind, is Naylor’s celebration of Vermont’s unique virtues as one of the tiniest and most decentralized states in the U.S. Our Vermont communities, Naylor suggests, offer an ailing United States a new way forward, a new metaphor: of small schools, small businesses, small towns, and small communities. It is this decentralized and small scale model that provides the blueprints. What if Burlington became the music capital of the northeast, with its network of concert halls, studios and recording talent? Could Vermont cheesemakers set high artisanal standards for the continent (they already do, in my book)? What of our syrup, farm and forest industries? What if, Naylor suggests, Vermont becomes the Switzerland of North America?
At a time when the United States seems to be teetering on the edge of the abyss, Vermont independence is an attractive notion. The book’s biggest weakness, however, is its refusal to specifically grapple with the kinds of economic changes that will move Vermont from here to there. 21st century Peak Oil realities, for example, demand that we in Vermont re-invent the ways we power our homes and businesses, feed our communities, and transport ourselves from place to place. Naylor shies away from confronting specific “nuts and bolts” questions like these – which is too bad, because his business and scholarly experience would no doubt prove invaluable.
But Naylor’s Secession, a celebration of Vermont’s past, present and potential vis-à-vis a crumbling United States, is the single best book-length starting place for considering a conversation about what Vermont could be in the 21st century and beyond.
An independent republic? An “Untied States?” A new metaphor for a new millennium?
If you haven’t immersed yourself in the “Madagascar” experience, you may be missing one of the most entertaining animated treats of the past decade.
And the good news here is that the new sequel is on par with the 2005 original.
Be forewarned – if you are planning to bring “the littles” to this film, know that the movie moves incredibly quickly, contains hilarious adult-aimed highbrow humor that will go over the heads of most children, and has some moments of action and violence that may be inappropriate for younger audiences. The good news – very few fart jokes or other gratuitous potty humor, and the music and dance track will get you up out of your seat. Plus, the animation is wonderful to behold on the big screen.
Like the original, “Madagascar 2” revolves around the adventures of four animal friends who grew up performing for big crowds as captives in a New York City zoo. This time, they leave their lemur-infested island home of Madagascar via airplane, and end up crashing down in – yep, you guessed it – Africa. From there, they find themselves involved in a whole crazy series of events that actually button up themselves quite neatly by the end of the movie.
Alex (affably voiced by Ben Stiller) is a lion who loves to shake his groove thing for the enjoyment of the audience. Here, he ends up being reunited with his father and mother, but must prove himself to the rest of the pride or suffer banishment.
Jada Pinkett Smith’s hilarious hippo hip-shaking hipster Gloria discovers a whole group (gaggle? flock? posse?) of African hippos, including a muscle-bound monster male named Moto Moto (voiced by Will.I.Am) who takes a liking to her. Their courtship is borderline inappropriate for the littles, who will find themselves lost in the joke, but quite comical for the older crowd.
As it turns out, Gloria’s close friend Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer as a convincing New York City neurotic) has feelings for her, and how the two of them work out this wrinkle in their relationship over the course of the film I leave for you to discover.
Chris Rock’s Marty the Zebra has the least interesting time of it, running with a herd of his own and providing occasional comic foil relief to Alex’s “roaring” dilemma.
And then, of course, there are all the wonderful supporting characters in this film. Yes, the four commando penguins are back – Kowalski, Skipper, Private and the top dog – and of course, if they are not busy hijacking jeepfuls of savannah tourists for parts to rebuild their downed aircraft, they are busy making wisecracks or sorting through the finer points of labor contracts with their simian work force.
And yes, the lemurs return, too (and they are ring tailed lemurs, not sifakas lemurs, my six-year-old neighbor Carl Kellogg, a Valley expert on this pro-simian creature, would have you know). Sacha Baron Cohen of “Borat” fame voices King Julien with his usual trans-gendered goofiness, ably supported by Maurice, his trusty sidekick (Cedric the Entertainer.)
And the surprise character? An older retired female tourist named Nana (voiced by Elisa Gabrielli), who sports a handbag, spectacles, and an aggressive attitude (she is, we learn, a Yonkers native and learned martial arts as a Brownee) to match. Apparently, she and Alex the lion have had run-ins before, but watching her beat the stuffing out of Alex in one early scene is a bit over-the-top. As she and her other Big Apple tourist neighbors “go native,” younger viewers may be a bit dismayed, though older audience members will appreciate (perhaps) the references to “Lord of the Flies” and other dystopian novels we were force-fed in junior high school.
Is Madagascar 2 fun? You bet – but you might have to do some explaining to the kids afterwards.
