The Thomas Chronicles

Thus saith the augers at the Oracle of Brussels— or else.

“EU climate policy is gearing up to confront the US. Imports from countries that refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol could be subject to punitive tariff duties — a new measure intended to pressure the Bush Administration. A climate tax on flights may also be introduced.”

This is the basic message of environmentalists the world over. In addition to their attempts to make you wet your pants with fear at your impending doom from flooding, a sun scorched earth, and enormous wild Herculean hurricanes, our friendly environmentalists/pacifists have resorted to a more direct route of persuasion: coercion.

Or to be more succinct, save the earth or be punished.

This has been the tenor of our rabid environmentalists for some time. They tend to hold Mankind in the highest contempt as a Gaia polluting miscreant, while simultaneously they wish to be Mankind’s quasi-saviors. It’s a contradiction they don’t bother to resolve.

We can’t leave the house or turn on the news without being assaulted by the notion of just how terrible we Americans are by our oil consumption, our level of production, our antiquated belief in Christ. Etc, etc, etc. You’ve heard it all before.

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It is an incredible gorgeous SoCal day. The air has a pinch of cold in it, enough to spring you into a brisk walk and the skies, well, they’re blue and open and filled with the glory of God. Outside my window I can see clear all the way to Malibu and watch it jut out into the Pacific like a happy hippo bathing in the river.

The ocean surf is high and full of foam, the American flag snaps to attention with the passing wind, and merry holiday shoppers roam about the street in light winter jackets and scarves— a common sight in most of the country but not in Southern California.

Days like these I wish I had a camera with me. All the troubles of the world can wait still digitized on the internet rather than conducting backstrokes in my brain. That can wait.

How many days of your life can you recall the light Heaven lifting you in a wave of inexpressible beauty?

I think I’ll have lunch outside today…

… oh, by the way, lest I forget.

I’m almost finished with my next post. It’s fairly long, so I’ll chop it up into a couple of parts, which will be published throughout the week.

I have a confession to make. I love Stephen King’s writing.

I think he’s one of the most gifted writers of his generation, the Baby Boomers. The fact that he chose to direct his efforts to write predominately horror is incidental. His real gift and the reason why he’s become a household name is his knack of peering into the souls of men and relaying what he saw with sympathy.

His characters are all too human; their defects, their virtues, the little petty evils they do when they think others aren’t looking. They are like us, and he shows us just how capable we are of the most heinous acts. In his most recent movie adaptation of his novella, The Mist, he made this commentary of us via the characters:

Amanda Dunfrey: You don’t have much faith in humanity, do you?

Dan Miller: None, whatsoever.

Amanda Dunfrey: I can’t accept that. People are basically good; decent. My god, David, we’re a civilized society.

David Drayton: Sure, as long as the machines are working and you can dial 911. But you take those things away, you throw people in the dark, you scare the shit out of them - no more rules.

He turns his spotlight on mankind and finds us wanting. We, as another one of characters opined, are essentially a mad race. This is Stephen King’s novels all over. He takes the most malevolent person we think possible and reminds us that he’s still human— like us. His novels don’t shirk from the inevitability of such evil, that they make a desolation of their lives and the lives around them, but they are still nevertheless very human (minus the overt supernatural elements, of course).

This is why I find the statements of his most recent interview with Time Magazine puzzling to say the least.

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This video was posted by commenter, Ymarsakar, at his blog a while back. I thought it would be useful to re-post this in light of the strange behaviors we see around us. This is not meant to be a comprehensive explanation. Just another piece of the puzzle.

Much ado has been made of Hollywood’s anti-American, anti-Christian slant. Volumes have been erected on store shelves to dissect and explain their apparent loathing of everything American. But the reason is very simple: It’s plain old greed. You know, just another one of those boring deadly sins.

IMDB.com posted the following in June 2001:

The importance of the international exhibition market to filmmakers will continually rise over the next decade with gross revenue reaching $24 billion by 2010, a 36-percent advance over this year’s expected take of $18 billion, according to a survey released Tuesday. As reported by Screen Daily, the online edition of the U.K.’s Screen International trade magazine, the Informa Group survey, “Global Film: Exhibition & Distribution,” also concluded that the U.S. share of the global box office is likely to drop from 45 percent to 41 percent by 2010.

Roughly two-thirds of the revenues made by Hollywood are not made in the United States. It’s made out there in the foreign markets where the anti-American vitriol is spoon feed, nurtured, and taken in as easily as morning breakfast and tea. In foreign markets is where Hollywood’s bread gets buttered. That’s how directors, actors and studio executives get their fifteen to thirty odd million clams per movie.

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