Fanatics at Home and Abroad

Symbiosis, I think it’s called. The recent cartoon controversy was yet another reminder that we stand between two forms of insanity: a global Islamic jihad versus an Anglo-American crusade for democracy, neither of which would be very compelling without the provocations ceaselessly offered by the other. Behold Bush and Blair, two righteous fools, that together with Osama bin Laden form a kind of triumvirate of fanaticism and ineptitude, that is likely to lead to a third Middle Eastern War (with Syria or Iran), more Islamic-inspired terrorism, a progressive diminishment of our freedoms, and a growing bill, culminating in national bankruptcy. As William Pfaff observed in his recent column in the International Herald Tribune (February 10): "The radical threat to the United States is at home."

A Book and a Film

Have you read Carl Schmitt’s Concept of the Political (1932), which identifies the friend/enemy distinction as the essence of politics? You should. But before that why not watch a neglected cinematic masterpiece, an HBO production actually, from the era before Oklahoma City and the Twin Towers when it was still possible to suggest that perhaps the real enemy, or at least the most dangerous one, spoke English, was born in the States, and worked for the Government. Flashpoint (1984) tells the story of two Border Patrol agents, whose discovery of buried treasure attracts the attention of some rather nefarious fellows, whose job it is to keep certain things, and especially certain kinds of knowledge, safely buried and forgotten.

Inspired Screen Writing

In the key scene, Agent Logan (played by Kris Kristofferson) is being berated, so to speak, by Inspector Carson (played by Kurtwood Smith). Logan was once a promising young man (war hero, Rhodes Scholar type) who could have advanced high in the national security bureaucracy, or gone into politics to play the fool, but instead dropped out, and is now happily working for the Border Patrol in southwestern Texas. Carson ridicules his choice, accusing him of being unable to handle the pressure of politics, and says that he is wasting his time patrolling the border. The government doesn’t care how many "wetbacks" cross the order, he cracks; "hell, Nixon even had one working for him at San Clemente."

Carson: "You think you’ve beaten the system because you’re hiding out at the bottom of it."

Logan: "I don’t work for the system, I work for the law."

Carson: "The law (he says derisively). You work for the same law that pays all our salaries:

Logan: "Who are you?"

Carson: "I’m a fixer Logan, I fix things."

Logan: "Yeh? What kind of things?"

Carson: "Whatever needs fixin."

Classic …

Two More Recommendations

While you’re looking for Flashpoint, check out these other anti-state classics, both from that decade of freedom, the 70s: The Parallax View (1974), starring Warren Beatty; and Three Days of the Condor (1975), starring Robert Redford and Max Von Sydow.