[lit-ideas] Mrs. Miniver
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 20:11:35 -0800
My wife occasionally gets me to watch an old movie with her, and tonight we
watched Mrs. Miniver. It was surprisingly good. Greer Garson did an
amazing job of acting and won the academy award for it. The movie took
place in the early days of World War II. It's about an English family's
efforts to rise above the hardships of war. And, as Netflix tells me, "Mrs.
Miniver stands tall, strong, proud and still filled with hope."
In one scene Mrs. Miniver finds a wounded German pilot in her yard. He
produces a Luger and insists that she feed him and give him a coat to cover
his uniform. She reproaches him for Germany's killing of women and children
and he threatens to do the same to England. At which she slaps him on the
face.
The German's fascist speech reminded me of the Islamists speeches I've read.
Islamism is after all an a fascist tyranny in its ideology. Francis
Fukuyama believes Liberal-Democracy shall defeat all competing forms of
government and society, but Fascism is alive and well in the form of
Islamism. Islamists promise to do to us what the German flyer promised to
do to Mrs. Miniver.
In a scene in a partially ruined church, the pastor notes the civilians who
have been killed and observed that this was a war of peoples, and that
therefore it wasn't surprising that little kids and old men became
casualties. That is the war the Islamists are fighting as well, targeting
civilians.
Back in World War II, Lord Haw Haw was considered a traitor for supporting
the Fascists, but the present world is more complicated. Many modern
Westerners believe the Islamists are, despite their announced goals,
harmless. They think that Islamist attacks on civilians are to be excused
because they represent post-Colonial and post-Cold-War frustration. All the
Islamists do is excused in some manner or other, and those who oppose them
are blamed in words that defy logic. Surely some might think, when the
Islamists get nuclear weapons, they should be opposed, and I see a breaking
of ranks and a leaning toward such opposition, but others have made the
final adjustment and have learned to love the bomb.
Mrs. Miniver was never conflicted. She knew that what the Fascist believed
was wrong. That movie was made in 1942, longer ago that Mike Geary is old.
The world has been deconstructed since then in the eyes of deconstructed
Liberal Democrats our Liberal Democracy has become worse than Fascist
Islamism. But thankfully these people exist only in certain small circles,
Circling into ever smaller
Circles, a whirlpool, an
Inverted water spout,
Churning its liquid fury
And clutching at the inadvertent
In a downward rush.
Beyond, a half-day
Fishing boat slowly
Passes, with fishers
Focus on the ripples
And the tugs of their
Trolled lines,
And further out a sailor
On a broad reach
Is oblivious to all but
The beauty of the wind
And the sun scintillating
From the tops of flashing
Waves, brave in exhilaration
And the sea at its most joyous,
But in a while the wind died down,
The sea begins its evening chop,
The fishers headed for home,
And the sailor tacks past the sea
Where the whirlpool had whirled
And regrets the days end.
Lawrence
Other related posts:
