Saturday, Oct. 09, 2004 - 12:45 a.m.

Alien or Predator?

Have you downloaded the Bush vs. Kerry wallpaper yet? (1280x1024, 833K). I just fixed the aspect ratio on Kerry.

I finally got around to seeing the Alien vs. Predator movie. Sadly, I thought it was the weakest film among all the Alien and Predator movies. It does pick up toward the end, but it’s too little, too late. However, I did find it to be a rich source of metaphor about the current U.S. presidential election season.

First, Bush is obviously the alien. Anyone with eyes can see that he’s got sharp metallic teeth and oozes slime. If you put your face too close to the TV when Fox News is on, the American flags will jump off the screen and onto your face. As the fear of terrorism tightens around your neck, they lay the egg of jingoism in your guts, and before you know it, a brand new crypto-fascist bursts out of your chest, ready to assault protesters and utter warnings such as “watch what you say.” Also, domestically or abroad, U.S. citizens, Iraqis, or even British or Canadian citizens, they capture many, and subject their prisoners to such unspeakable horrors that some of them beg for death.

Then there’s Kerry. At first I thought that maybe he should be an alien too, cause after all, his positions are only marginally different from Bush’s and given that they’re both Skull and Bones members, their rivalry is probably more show than real. But after seeing the movie, I think Kerry is definitely the predator.

First, predators hunt humans for sport, and that’s probably exactly what Kerry was doing in Vietnam, unless you believe that it was all the other U.S. soldiers who were killing civilians there, and Kerry politely declined to participate. In perfect Orwellian doublespeak, when they say that Kerry served honorably, that means that he followed orders to commit atrocities in a dishonorable war. In comparison, Bush didn’t kill anyone during that period of time, and I’d praise the guy for deserting if he only had the guts to admit to it.

Secondly, just like the predators, Kerry is virtually invisible. This is because so many liberals are willfully refusing to see the same things in Kerry that they vocally detest in Bush. As an example, I recently saw the bumper of a car with two stickers: one said, “WHO WOULD JESUS BOMB?” and the other said, “KERRY/EDWARDS 2004”. I would like the driver to ponder the question: “who would Kerry bomb?” For reference, make a list of who Clinton bombed.

Thirdly, the heroine of the movie starts reciting the mantra, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, similar in spirit to the “anyone but Bush” mantra. And just like the Predator, Kerry will let you join his team and help him vanquish his enemies, the Republicans, and he’ll let you use his prized weapon, the limited hang-out, the partial truth that damns Bush, but of course not enough of the truth to incriminate Kerry and the entrenched power structure as well.

Fourth, Kerry has fluorescent green blood and badass dreadlocks. Well, no, he has stupid-looking poofy hair, but he does have blue blood. As Bush’s 9th cousin once removed, that probably means he is related by blood to the Queen of England, as is Bush (this is mainstream news, not conspiracy theory), and I also heard that he’s related to other royal families of Europe, but I don’t have a source I can cite for the latter assertion.

Fifth, Bush and Kerry are combatants in a ritualized, orchestrated, rigged contest, and though enemies, they exist in a weird symbiosis. Kerry needs Bush to be as nasty as he wants to be, so that people will be more eager to lend their uncritical support to Kerry. Bush needs Kerry to stage some vicious attacks against him in order to maintain the illusion that there is some kind of democracy, the farce that there are some meaningful options to choose among.

Lastly, like the alien queen escaping, maybe the Bush Administration has gotten a bit out of control, from the perspective of the power elite. Maybe the real masters would prefer Bush be taken out and dumped down a crevasse. However, let’s be clear that if this is the case, they are merely debugging the death machine, and that if anything, Kerry is just better lubricant in the gears of the Empire.

newest archive guestbook email rings profile Diaryland