Zero Dark Thirty

It was Senior Day at the old movie theater yesterday, so I plunked down a few bucks and ambled on in to see a pleasant film. OMG!
by Charlie Leck

I saw Zero Dark Thirty yesterday. It was a remarkable film. It certainly provided a fascinating story line and plenty of tension. It also raised plenty of questions for discussion: (torture, for one, because there were plenty of scenes of it in the film, and also the clear strategy to just kill Osama bin Laden and not to capture him alive).

I’d say I was mostly captivated by the role played by women in the CIA’s tracking down of bin Laden. I am told the film is very accurate, so I am amazed at how long it was before we struck the compound in which he lived after we had become quite certain the terrorist was there.

All around me in the theatre yesterday afternoon were other folks of my own age – seniors, taking in an afternoon flick. More than half of them were women. Now, this is not only a very violent film, but it is also a very realistic one in terms of dialogue. There were a lot of f-bombs as we call them around here. I’m not unfamiliar with the terminology and I’m prone to use the word in various forms and contexts; however, I try my best not to use the word around women and/or kids.

When my wife asked me this morning if the flick would be too violent for her, I told her that I didn’t think so but that the potent language might be. She looked at me and tilted her head in that manner that says, “You got to be kidding?” I think I underestimate women. Er! Let’s revise that to: “I generally underestimate women!”

There were a lot of explosions in the film and an enormous amount of gun play (isn’t that an odd combination of words – gunplay?).

Throughout the film I had to keep reminding myself that bin Laden was the bad guy – that he had killed thousands of innocents in New York City in 2001. America had sworn to bring him down. We were desperate to do it. We devoted millions and millions of dollars to do it. Is that a significant enough rationalization for the use of brutal torture? That’s an immense discussion point with which the film leaves us. Would they – or could they have – captured the maniacal murderer without the weapon of torture? I, in my cozy home here in the Minnesota countryside, can philosophize all I want about the evil and unrighteousness of torture, but I am told by the film to keep remembering the September day in 2001 when the towers fell.

Here was the stunner in this film for me! It was a woman, singularly focused on bringing down Osama bin Laden, who is the central figure in the film’s story. True? Again, I’m told the film is generally accurate when it comes to the history of the hunt and the final clash. If so, she must be regarded as a national heroine and deserved great honors.

It would be an error not to see this film on a big screen and in the company of other viewers. One deserves to feel the enormity of this hunt and sense the visceral reaction of other people to the violence.

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ObamaCare

I looked at the little woman, riding in the elevator with me, and I realized she represented current America – bitter, confused and lied-to!
by Charlie Leck

It was, I hoped, my last visit to the eye specialists. My eyes were repaired. They seemed to be working as well as I had hoped. My new sets of eye-glasses were either on my head or packed in the little cases I was carrying in my hand. Because I couldn’t locate the staircase, I took the elevator down to the main floor of the building. I was glad to be leaving the joint behind me. It was fun to see bright colors and sharp edges again, but I’d had enough of the place and they had too much of my money. As I moved into the cabinet of the elevator, I was giving thanks for Medicare and our good supplemental insurance plan from Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

Four or five people accompanied me on the very quick trip down to the main floor, including a little lady of about my own age. She seemed jittery and nervous. Like many people, I thought, she didn’t like elevators. Something made her blurt out her news to the group of fellow passengers, apparently all strangers to each other.

“I had this cataract surgery early, you know,” she said to us all, as if we cared. “I didn’t really need it yet, but I wanted to get it before Obamacare goes into effect.”

No one reacted to her. I saw a couple of medical types (they were wearing those cheesy uniforms that surgeons and their assistants don at work) glance quickly at each other.

“Well,” the lady spoke up again, “they’re going to filter seniors out, you know.”

Silence. The elevator jerked to a stop and the doors slid open with that humming, sissing sound they make. We all allowed the little, angry woman to go first. She took a sharp right and headed for the exit door and the parking lot. The others dispersed into the building. I followed the lady out the doors, into the bright sunshine. I stopped at the curb behind her, this confused and bitter lady.

“What do you mean,” I asked quite loudly into the back of her head, “about Obama filtering us out?”

She turned quickly to see who her interrogator was and recognized a fellow senior.

“He’s filtering us out, you know!” She spoke as if she was concerned for me and how I was going to pay for my future health care.

“That’s not true,” I said to her, rather boldly and in a confident, matter-of-fact way.

I think she recognized me as a liberal, agitator type. I thought I saw a flash of fear in her face, sensing she was sorry she’d brought the whole thing up. She turned away and stepped down from the curb, heading for her automobile.

“I read it in several places,” she said quite loudly, putting a hard exclamation point on the sentence, as if she’d given me careful sourcing for her comments.

“But I’ve read the entire bill,” I called out to her as she grew smaller and further removed. “There’s nothing like that in the bill. Seniors will be better off than ever.”

She hadn’t heard me, of course, because she didn’t want to. She’d read something about what Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or some other crazy dickhead had said and that was enough for her. Never mind what the legislation said. You couldn’t trust that.

Seniors were going to get filtered out. There was no arguing that with her. The loud, slamming of her car door said it all to me.

“You’d better get ready to be filtered out!”