1958's chilling A Night to Remember chronicles the disaster of the Titanic better than any version before or since. Set in the reality of the icy Atlantic, it tells the story through varied and believable characters. Without remarkable music or modern special affects, A Night to Remember presents a microcosm of humanity, leaving us empathetic, entranced, and appreciative of our own warm, dry lives.
Full steam ahead, the vessel ignored the frosty threat until the unseen iceberg submerged the unsinkable behemoth. The film's end is written in history. The intimate characterizations make you hope this version ends happily. The film begins at Titanic's proud, pompous christening. It ends as hundreds die of unfettered arrogance.
Politicians, like ships in the night, need to be aware of lurking hazards before they sink and take us down with them.
As Super Tuesday rears its head, voters are choosing a side, looking for an end to seven year of pessimism and fear. We've been battered and beaten. Since his inauguration, we've watched the Bush buffoon bumble his way across America's soul. The United States is enduring idiocy, religious ideology, and a deadly greed that is threatening the environment and killing people across the globe.
Candidates preen and pose as they pour poll numbers trying to ascertain what they think we need to hear. This month it's the economy, last month it was change, and in December it was the war. (Remember the war?) Questions are typical, and the answers are predictable and safe - but "safe" is not effective. "Safe" is not bold. "Safe" is not what we need to hear. Under George Bush's idea of "safe," we duct-taped ourselves into rooms and invaded nations.
Not unlike the gay marriage red-state panic of 2004, 2008 is full of icebergs that can drown the most unsinkable candidate. The questions that haven't been asked produce the most stress for White House hopefuls.
As record-setting deficits and despair are laid at the feet of hard-working Americans, long-term solutions to the Bush debt are too polarizing for candidates to openly discuss. Americans need to pay more taxes to service our shameful national debt, so much of which came from Bush's Iraq fiasco.
Our infrastructure is suffering from our wasteful spending. The dollar loses value and world-relevance everyday. In the midst of the sub-prime mess, our nation's leaders and individual Americans--desperate for a piece of the American dream--had their heads buried in the sand. Let's just hope China doesn't call in their bonds.
The church's influence is an iceberg that no candidate wants to intellectualize about from the stump. Will the next president have to boldness to halt abstinence-only education? Will your candidate restore the wall of separation between church and state? Bush's faith-based initiative must be repealed. The flow of tax dollars to this tax-exempt churches must end.
Will the next leader deliver the message to the leaders of Islamic countries, that America will no longer be a nation run by evangelical fundamentalists? The next president must stop the church's war room from spinning, or the Christians will get the Armageddon they've been praying for.
Will candidates establish an "Apollo-type" energy independence project? Democratic candidates are talking about energy self-sufficiency, but none are bold enough to state deadlines and goals. This would include a mandatory order to auto manufacturers that ALL vehicles sold here within 10 years must either be hybrid, or a technology that equals their efficiency (Eco-Boost, Fuel Cell, Hydrogen, etc.)
Will candidates take an aggressive stance against diseases that might be abated by much more aggressive stem cell research? The US is still number one in world in medical technology. We must embark on curing Alzheimer's, cancer, and diseases within the reach of technology before it is too late for too many of us.
What we need is change. What we don't need are sound bites of absurdity like this jewel from the leader of the Arkansas Republican Party, Dennis Milligan:
"At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need are some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country."
The Republican Party should not fear the icebergs, but the ship that they are piloting. It's careening like crazy. The crew is spouting the American dream laced with fear and bravado threatening to blow up every other ship in the ocean. The screaming and the gunshots that you hear are just the sounds of all of us as we panic in the icy abyss of misguided, jingoistic arrogance.
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