Full Metal Jacket | The Magpie Gazette

Talking a Good Game

January 23, 2018 Vita Historia

Players at a game of Catan during the April 2016 Wikimedia Hackathon in Jerusalem, Israel. Photo by Ariel Elinson.

The German board game Settlers of Catan, now known simply as Catan, first published by Klaus Teuber in 1995, changed ideas around the world about what board games could be and led the renaissance in the form that has seen huge growth over the last 20 years, primarily among young adults. Catan is competitive, just like many board games of the past like Monopoly and Risk, but unlike those games it does not eliminate some players before the game is over, and therefore everyone who starts the game holds on to a chance at winning until the end. It is competitive, but not reductive.

That game dynamic, which has come to define most of the board games coming from Europe, and particularly Germany, in the last 20 years has become known by the shorthand Eurogames. The games are overall competitive in nature while incorporating elements of cooperation and degrees of engagement with, or isolation from, one player to the other players as suits an individual’s personality or strategy. The character of the games can be seen as socialist rather than capitalist, as in Monopoly. Warring and confrontation are similarly sidelined in favor of building or collecting. A player still strives to outdo the others, though not entirely at their expense. The games are not zero sum games, where one player ends up with everything and the others are left in ruins.

A balloon of the Monopoly mascot, Mr. Monopoly, also known as Rich Uncle Pennybags, at a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in the early 2000s. Photo by Fluffybuns.

The genius of these games coming out of Europe is how they tap into the better parts of our nature without resorting to banality, which of course would ensure they got played exactly once before finding a place on a closet shelf, there to be ignored ever after. The game designers understand the duality of human nature, and they give play to both sides, and in the best games, such as Catan, they appear to have achieved a balance, a yin and yang duality, if you like.

A scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 film Full Metal Jacket, with Matthew Modine as Pvt. J.T. “Joker” Davis being upbraided for not going along with the program. Warning: foul language.
Many of the older games, like Monopoly, much loved as they were, gave vent primarily to the aggressive, greedy side of our nature, and people mistakenly thought that was who we were, and all we were. Pillaging and destruction of competitors may be all fun and games for a certain limited part of our psyches, and honesty demands we acknowledge that is part of who we are. But it is only a part, and the rest of our spirit seems to demand we fulfill our need to build and create, urged on still by that core desire to do it as well as we possibly can, and if that results in greater and grander returns than everyone else can achieve, then so much the better. All in good fun, of course.
― Vita

Entertainment Catan, Eurogames, Europe, Europeans, Full Metal Jacket, Germans, Germany, Israel, Jerusalem, Klaus Teuber, Macy's, Matthew Modine, Monopoly (game), Mr. Monopoly, Rich Uncle Pennybags, Risk, Settlers of Catan, Stanley Kubrick, Thanksgiving Day, Wikimedia Hackathon

All We Got Are Thoughts and Prayers

October 3, 2017 Vita Historia

Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers, all we got are thoughts and prayers. After the latest mass killing in America, add “warmest condolences” from Supreme Leader, friend of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and hinter at how Gun Nuts could hide behind the Second Amendment to the Constitution in order to take out his political rival in the 2016 presidential election. Nothing will be done to stop the killing. This is who we are, what we have become, a sick society.

A scene from director Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 film Full Metal Jacket with a cool, aloof discussion of two of America’s many killers, at least until the end, when one of the recruits appears to be personally affected.

Gun company stocks are up again in the last two days, after slumping since Big Cheeto took office in January. Obama was great for gun sales, because his presence in the Oval Office fed the paranoia of the Gun Nuts, despite the real power to control their activities with gun control legislation residing with Congress, which has been bought many times over by NRA lobbying. The crazy black man is coming for our guns! But of course they would use a much less genteel appellation.

Two Julia butterflies, Dryas iulia, drinking the tears of turtles, Podocne mis expansa,in Ecuador. Turtles bask on a log as the butterflies sip from their eyes. This “tear-feeding” is a phenomenon known as lachryphagy. Photo by amalavida.tv.

Big Cheeto was bad for business because the Gun Nuts believed he wasn’t about to come for their guns, but now with the latest mass killing there’s still the libruls and their Democratic allies in Congress to worry about. Better stock up! What Would John Wayne Do (WWJWD)? You better believe it. Shoot first, ask questions later, especially when confronted by one of them people, the kind who don’t stand up for the National Anthem. Amurica, love it or leave it, Commie. How did we come this far, only to fall back into the past? We never did advance as far as we supposed, only some of us did, and the rest, now with the backing of Orange Julius, are reacting against those advances – a word with a view they do not share – with massive retaliation. Making America Great Again, with warmest condolences.
― Vita

Guns America, Barack Obama, Big Cheeto, Charles Whitman, Communists, Congress, Constitution, Democrats, Ecuador, Full Metal Jacket, Gun Nuts, John Wayne, Julia Butterflies, Lachryphagy, Lee Harvey Oswald, Liberals, National Anthem, National Rifle Association (NRA), Orange Julius, Oval Office, Second Amendment, Stanley Kubrick, Supreme Leader, Turtles

Walk the Walk

February 12, 2017 Editor

In Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 movie Full Metal Jacket, two marines engage in an ironic “John Wayne” face-off. Wayne’s chickenhawkish stances were well-known and widely held in contempt by combat veterans from World War II to Vietnam. Warning: foul language.

America’s wars continue with no end in sight, from one presidential administration to the next. One proposal to curtail the corporate oligarchy’s military adventurism is to bring back the military draft or to institute Universal National Service, the idea being that if a greater percentage of the population has a personal stake in foreign policy then they will be more likely to make their preferences known to their leaders, and people with a personal stake are less likely to want more war. The oligarchy knows this, too, as it’s a lesson they learned from an aroused public during the Vietnam War and are unlikely to want repeated if the public reawakens.

Since the draft ended in 1973, the per capita percentage of the population serving in the military has steadily declined, while the number of American military interventions overseas has drastically increased. Linking the two trends could be coincidental, but it’s worth considering that in the 40 years from 1933 to 1973, in most of which there was a draft, the US sent the military abroad on 27 occasions, and in the 40 years from 1974 to 2014 the US sent the military on 175 different foreign interventions. Has the world really become 6.5 times more dangerous since 1973? Or is it that the US has taken on in earnest the burden and profits of empire and the role of world policeman, putting out small fires everywhere, many times at the behest of corporate interests?

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

― Marine Major General (Retired) Smedley Butler, writing in the
Socialist newspaper Common Sense in 1935.

The 1994 Robert Zemeckis movie Forrest Gump is an excellent portrayal of the diversity of experience awaiting Vietnam era draftees, though of course most of them did not want to be there. Warning: foul language.

The majority of Americans catch the news about these numerous foreign conflicts as they go about their daily business, and because they don’t know anyone in the military and didn’t serve themselves, the news pretty much goes in one ear and out the other. Who can get agitated or even interested about what’s happening in Kosovo or Libya or Yemen or the Horn of Africa, wherever that is? Afghanistan and Iraq, oh yeah, are those still dragging on? Are we going into Syria now, too? And so these busy Americans go on with their lives, paying their taxes and going shopping, surprised to learn that when the US deploys Predator drones to these foreign hot spots, the controllers of the deadly drones sit in air-conditioned trailers halfway around the world in Nevada or Germany. It’s the New Age, alright, a deadly video game.

Or so we might choose to believe. As technocratic and bloodless as the military brass and the politicians may try to make modern war seem in order to make it more palatable for the general public, it will always nevertheless be a nasty mess both physically and morally. They don’t want to show that part, though; they learned that lesson from Vietnam as well. Rah-rah Hollywood movies are not the answer to getting Americans to come to terms with their current situation in world politics. Far from it. There are far too many chickenhawks making movies in Hollywood and making policy in Washington to serve anything but the basest emotions of too many Americans, the “summer soldiers and sunshine patriots” among them, who are stirred to cheer movies glorifying war and the macho posturing of Supreme Leader. As long as they reflexively say “Thank you for your service” to a service member or veteran when they encounter one, they’re covered. Aren’t they?
― Ed.

An early scene in Full Metal Jacket depicts Marine boot camp in a less lighthearted vein than the boot camp of Forrest Gump. Some of that can be attributed to the differences between the Marines and the Army, and some to the aims of the two films. Nonetheless, some of the drill sergeant’s insults will ring bells in the dark sense of humor shared by many veterans, an emotion Kubrick effectively turns inside out at the end of the scene. Warning: foul language, of course.

Military Adam Baldwin, Afghanistan, Al Capone, Americans, Army, Big Business, Central America, Chickenhawks, China, Common Sense Newspaper, Corporations, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Draft, Drones, Empire, Foreign Policy, Forrest Gump, Full Metal Jacket, Germany, Haiti, Hollywood, Honduras, Horn of Africa, International Banking House of Brown Brothers, Iraq, John Wayne, Kosovo, Libya, Marines, Matthew Modine, Mexico, Military, Mykelti Williamson, National City Bank, Nevada, New Age, Nicaragua, Oligarchy, Politicians, R. Lee Ermey, Robert Zemeckis, Smedley Butler, Socialists, Standard Oil, Stanley Kubrick, Supreme Leader, Syria, Tampico, Technocracy, Tom Hanks, United States, Universal National Service, Vietnam War, Vincent D'Onofrio, Wall Street, Washington D.C., World War II, Yemen