osan
Member
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2009
- Messages
- 16,867
Generally speaking, I despise so-called "Hollywood". Literally speaking, 99%+++ of what they have produced is not fit for the lowest of human filth to view, much less decent folk - and yes, I am just brash enough to make the distinction between the worst and the better among us in this era of "it's all good" relativism. But there is that almost infinitesimal proportion of work the conception and execution of which has been so keenly inspired as to nearly excuse the hopeless wreckage of all its sibling productions. One of those is "The Devil's Advocate" with Al Pacino and, so surprisingly, Keanu Reeves, whose next best accomplishment in terms of film was "Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure".
The Devil's Advocate contains many small gems of sorts - many of them setups for larger coups, but all of them worthy. There are, however, the two passages delivered by Pacino's perfectly cast character that drive this film to yon dizzying stratospheric heights. Between the two, there is the exchange between Pacino and Reeves about free will, another gem.
My purpose in posting these here is that these two vignettes within a larger story so very adeptly distill the most strident of all human proclivities in such a way as to drive home with something of the most slightly understated fury why humanity is in such deep trouble, why They are winning the battle for the future of the human race, why liberty-oriented people are losing, and to be depressingly blunt why things are likely not going to work out too well for us on the whole. There is always a chance that the tiger may change its stripes, but let us not ignore the statistical reality in the process of hoping for the best.
If perchance you have never seen this film, unlike most others I can recommend this one highly. The language and some of the notions are coarse, so be warned if perchance that sort of thing offends you. I deem it all well worth cutting through to get to the good stuff, which is very good.
Anyhow, this first gem is from the scene where Reeve's character is relaying to Pacino's the message from "Eddie Barzoon" about maybe ratting the firm out to a government commission investigating them:
"You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire.
You build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor; becomes his own god.
Where can you go from there?
As we're scrambling from one deal to the next who's got his eye on the planet as the air thickens, the water sours? Even bees' honey takes on the metallic taste of radioactivity; and it just keeps coming, faster and faster. There's no chance to think, to prepare.
It's buy futures... sell futures... when there is no future.
We got a runaway train, boy. We got a billion Eddie Barzoons all jogging into the future. Every one of them is getting ready to fist-fuck God's ex-planet, lick their fingers clean as they reach out toward their pristine cybernetic keyboards to tote up their fucking billable hours.
And then it hits home. You got to pay your own way, Eddie. It's a little late in the game to buy out now. Your belly's too full, your dick is sore, your eyes are bloodshot and you're screaming for someone to help.
But guess what?
There's no one there! You're all alone, Eddie.
You're God's special little creature."
The second comes right after Reeve's character's wife commits suicide and his mother confesses to him who his father is (Pacino's character). This one is dialogue and in order to more fully understand it, you will need to watch the film:
"[Devil] You were right about one thing. I have been watching. Couldn't help myself. Watching. Waiting. Holding my breath.
But I'm no puppeteer, Kevin. I don't make things happen. Doesn't work like that.
[Lomax] What'd you do to Mary Ann?
[Devil] Free will. It's like butterfly wings. Once touched, they never get off the ground. I only set the stage. You pull your own strings.
[Lomax] What did you do to Mary Ann?
[Devil] A gun? In here?
[Lomax] Goddamn it, what did you do to my wife?
[Devil] Well... on a scale of one to ten, ten being the most depraved act of sexual theater known to man, one being your average Friday night run-through at the Lomaxes', I'd say, not to be immodest... Mary Ann and I got it on at about seven.
[Lomax] Fuck you!(starts shooting the devil multiple times)
[Devil] Got me! Got me! Yes! Step it up, Son! Come on! That's good! You got to hold on to that fury! That's the last thing to go! That's the final hiding place. It's the final fig leaf.
[Lomax] Who are you?
[Devil] Who am I? Who are you?
Never lost a case.
Why?
Why do you think?
Because you're so fucking good?
[Lomax] Yes.
[Devil] But why?
[Lomax] Because you're my father?
[Devil] I'm a little more than that, Kevin.
Awfully hot in that courtroom, wasn't it?
'What's the game plan, Kevin? It was a nice run, Kev. Had to close out some day. Nobody wins them all.'
[Lomax] What are you?
[Devil] I have so many names.
[Lomax] Satan.
[Devil] Call me Dad.
[Lomax] Mary Ann, she knew it. She knew it. She knew it, so you destroyed her.
[Devil] You're blaming me for Mary Ann? I hope you're kidding.
Mary Ann, you could have saved her anytime you liked. All she wanted was love.
Hey, you were too busy.
[Lomax] That's a lie.
[Devil] Face it, you started looking to better-deal her the minute you got here.
[Lomax] That's not true. You don't know what we had!
[Devil] Hey, I'm on your side!
[Lomax] You're a liar!
[Devil] There's nothing out there for you! Don't be such a fucking chump! Stop deluding yourself! I told you to take care of your wife!
What did I say? 'The world would understand.'
Didn't I say that?
What did you do? 'You know what scares me, John? I leave the case, she gets better and then I hate her for it.'
Remember?
[Lomax] I know what you did. You set me up!
[Devil] Who told you to pull out all the stops on Mr. Gettys? Who made that choice?
[Lomax] It's entrapment. You set me up.
[Devil] And Moyez! The direction you took! Popes, swamis, snake handlers, all feeding at the same trough. Whose ideas were those?
[Lomax] You played me!
[Devil] It was a test! Your test! And Cullen! Knowing he was guilty! Seeing those pictures! What did you do? You put that lying bitch on the stand!
[Lomax] You brought me in. You put me there! You made her lie!
[Devil] I don't do that, Kevin! That day on the subway, what did I say to you? What were my words to you?
Maybe it was your time to lose. You didn't think so.
[Lomax] Lose? I don't lose! I win! I win! I'm a lawyer! That's my job! That's what I do!
[Devil] I rest my case. Vanity... is definitely my favorite sin.
Kevin, it's so basic. Self-love. The all-natural opiate.
It's not that you didn't care for Mary Ann, Kevin... it's just that you were a little more involved with someone else. Yourself.
[Lomax] You're right. I did it all. I let her go.
[Devil] Don't be too hard on yourself, Kevin. You wanted something more. Believe me.
[Lomax] I left her behind and just kept going.
[Devil] You can't keep punishing yourself."
Snip some comparatively irrelevant dialogue and it continues:
"[Lomax] What do you want from me?
[Devil] I want you to be yourself.
You know, I'll tell you, boy... guilt... it's like a bag of fucking bricks. All you got to do is set it down.
I know what you're going through.
I've been there.
[Lomax's "sister"] Just come here. Come here. Let it go.
[Lomax] I can't do that.
[Devil] Who are you carrying all those bricks for?
God?
Is that it?
God?
I'll tell you... let me give you a little inside information about God.
God likes to watch. He's a prankster.
Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do? I swear, for his own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time.
Look, but don't touch.
Touch, but don't taste.
Taste, but don't swallow.
And while you're jumping from one foot to the next, what is He doing? He's laughing his sick, fucking ass off! He's a tightass! He's a sadist! He's an absentee landlord!
Worship that? Never!
[Lomax] 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,' is that it?
[Devil] Why not? I'm here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began!
I've nurtured every sensation man has been inspired to have! I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him!
Why? Because I never rejected him,in spite of all his imperfections! I'm a fan of man! I'm a humanist. Maybe the last humanist.
Who, in their right mind Kevin, could possibly deny the 20th century was entirely mine? All of it, Kevin! All of it. Mine. I'm peaking, Kevin. It's my time now. It's our time."
And there you have it. Humanity statistically wrapped up neatly in a concise and frighteningly precise nutshell.
The question that remains to be answered is this: are there enough good people left who are willing to do what needs doing - the ugly things; the abominal things; the monstrous things to set this world free? And if so, is the race worth freeing? What of it? What is the likely reality of a freed, technologically enabled, self-absorbed humanity? All of we who presume to hold the goal of human freedom, even if only in America, need to sit quietly and alone or perhaps with a small number of trusted and like-minded friends and family and think about this very carefully. I am not sure that the spectre is particularly appealing.
As I see it, the simple freeing of humanity would be an unmitigated disaster. Why? Because people have no experience with actual freedom but only with the pretty slavery wherein the Master's beneficent hand guides the "free man" at the boundaries of his cage so that he will not stray into grave sin, vis-a-vis the petty. This is where the Christian ethic applied to real life has failed catastrophically and monumentally. And the Godless progressives and other such vermin have no hay to make in that black sunshine because their ethics are Christian in their very fabric. Let none of those raving imbeciles fool themselves into believing otherwise. To the extent and in the manner the Christian Church has failed so spectacularly, so have the others - the anti-religious, the stooge-atheists because their standard of ethics are taken from the precise same book.
Furthermore, let us be crystal clear that the Christian ethic, per se, is not what has failed here, for that is only a conceptual body of principles and tenets by which one may choose to live. The bitch and the hitch is that the ethics in themselves mean NOTHING until they are interpreted and applied, and it is we as a race who have done so poor a job of application. The really scary part in all of this is that most of it has been done ostensibly with nothing but the best of intentions.
It was good intention that enslaved the human race in the manacles of imposed love and caring, thereby ripping from it its liberty. It was the self-absorbed church that forced itself upon the world with the sword and the book, perverting the beauty within and changing it into the evil against which the world now thinks it rails, unaware that its own book is the precise same one at heart, only using slightly different wording. It is the cowardice of men that has enslaved humanity; the steadfast and categorical refusal to accept men and the world as they more truly are. Rather, they have adopted this wildly demented masturbatory fantasy of an idealized world that can never exist because it is based upon a world populated by non-human creatures.
There are so many layers, each entangled in endless convolution with the others such that it numbs the mind of the intelligent man who endeavors to understand it. Complete, precise, and correct analysis is unlikely to be achievable. The good news, however, is that it is not necessary. To begin from a clean sheet with principles in hand is the ONLY thing that will provide the basis for our salvation and deliverance back into freedom, once again assuming that we are even worth saving.
A key here lies not in just having the intellectual chops to dope it all out, but the courage and moral and intestinal fortitude to accept the seemingly harsh realities that accompany one along the path toward the goal. Good intentions that work against the wills of people who commit no criminal acts is WRONG no matter what the perceived greater good is. You want a poster child for "crime" - well there you have it - the do-gooder forcing his unwelcome help upon his fellows. In the end, the only person the do-gooder is serving is himself because at the bottom of it all he does not give the least damn about what the targets of his beneficence want. He cares only about what HE wants - to feel better about all the things in the world that he perceives to be unjust; to feel he has righted some terrible wrong and made the world a better place by hook or by crook. This is pure egotism of the worst form, for it is unregulated, non-self-limiting, and so blindly self-serving as to be frightening to even the bravest among men.
A truly pathetic element in all of this is that the forcible do-gooder operates under the delusional presumption that he does all of this devoid of the ego of the individualist. Unlike the individualist, when faced with failure they refuse to demur and they do this because they are devoid of all humility and human decency, all ostensible good intentions notwithstanding. They are the epitome - the very definition of "evil" and "disease" because in the end, everything they do is solely for themselves and not in the least measure for those whom them purport to help. They will take any measure they feel is needed and with which they think they can get away to achieve their objectives.
Let me now be clear as to how such people are to be treated: all who attempt to use force, and here I mean that which ultimately reduces to the physical, may and perhaps ought to be killed on the spot, without hesitation or compunction, and without equivocation. I do not care if it is police, Congress, their agents, robbers, rapists, or the city dog catcher. If one is proceeding without having committed a crime, and here I mean a real crime as in mala in se, vis-a-vis phony baloney crimes mala prohibita, any force applied may be justifiably met with opposing force up to and including that which is lethal. On this I am unequivocal. There is no other way to put an end to the insanity of those who would murder us with their stated good intentions. If we are indeed free beings in our fabric, and I contend that we are, then there exists no authority above that of the individual and all who believe otherwise are deluded. If you think about it, the whole notion of "justice" bases upon the tacit assumption of entitlement, and is questionable.
Truly, we are in quite the mess.
Anyway, I have wandered a bit off my original track and for that I apologize. The notions just came to me and after all, my thoughts are all I have to offer. I have no money, no credibility, no authority. Just thoughts, such as they may be.
The Devil's Advocate contains many small gems of sorts - many of them setups for larger coups, but all of them worthy. There are, however, the two passages delivered by Pacino's perfectly cast character that drive this film to yon dizzying stratospheric heights. Between the two, there is the exchange between Pacino and Reeves about free will, another gem.
My purpose in posting these here is that these two vignettes within a larger story so very adeptly distill the most strident of all human proclivities in such a way as to drive home with something of the most slightly understated fury why humanity is in such deep trouble, why They are winning the battle for the future of the human race, why liberty-oriented people are losing, and to be depressingly blunt why things are likely not going to work out too well for us on the whole. There is always a chance that the tiger may change its stripes, but let us not ignore the statistical reality in the process of hoping for the best.
If perchance you have never seen this film, unlike most others I can recommend this one highly. The language and some of the notions are coarse, so be warned if perchance that sort of thing offends you. I deem it all well worth cutting through to get to the good stuff, which is very good.
Anyhow, this first gem is from the scene where Reeve's character is relaying to Pacino's the message from "Eddie Barzoon" about maybe ratting the firm out to a government commission investigating them:
"You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire.
You build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor; becomes his own god.
Where can you go from there?
As we're scrambling from one deal to the next who's got his eye on the planet as the air thickens, the water sours? Even bees' honey takes on the metallic taste of radioactivity; and it just keeps coming, faster and faster. There's no chance to think, to prepare.
It's buy futures... sell futures... when there is no future.
We got a runaway train, boy. We got a billion Eddie Barzoons all jogging into the future. Every one of them is getting ready to fist-fuck God's ex-planet, lick their fingers clean as they reach out toward their pristine cybernetic keyboards to tote up their fucking billable hours.
And then it hits home. You got to pay your own way, Eddie. It's a little late in the game to buy out now. Your belly's too full, your dick is sore, your eyes are bloodshot and you're screaming for someone to help.
But guess what?
There's no one there! You're all alone, Eddie.
You're God's special little creature."
The second comes right after Reeve's character's wife commits suicide and his mother confesses to him who his father is (Pacino's character). This one is dialogue and in order to more fully understand it, you will need to watch the film:
"[Devil] You were right about one thing. I have been watching. Couldn't help myself. Watching. Waiting. Holding my breath.
But I'm no puppeteer, Kevin. I don't make things happen. Doesn't work like that.
[Lomax] What'd you do to Mary Ann?
[Devil] Free will. It's like butterfly wings. Once touched, they never get off the ground. I only set the stage. You pull your own strings.
[Lomax] What did you do to Mary Ann?
[Devil] A gun? In here?
[Lomax] Goddamn it, what did you do to my wife?
[Devil] Well... on a scale of one to ten, ten being the most depraved act of sexual theater known to man, one being your average Friday night run-through at the Lomaxes', I'd say, not to be immodest... Mary Ann and I got it on at about seven.
[Lomax] Fuck you!(starts shooting the devil multiple times)
[Devil] Got me! Got me! Yes! Step it up, Son! Come on! That's good! You got to hold on to that fury! That's the last thing to go! That's the final hiding place. It's the final fig leaf.
[Lomax] Who are you?
[Devil] Who am I? Who are you?
Never lost a case.
Why?
Why do you think?
Because you're so fucking good?
[Lomax] Yes.
[Devil] But why?
[Lomax] Because you're my father?
[Devil] I'm a little more than that, Kevin.
Awfully hot in that courtroom, wasn't it?
'What's the game plan, Kevin? It was a nice run, Kev. Had to close out some day. Nobody wins them all.'
[Lomax] What are you?
[Devil] I have so many names.
[Lomax] Satan.
[Devil] Call me Dad.
[Lomax] Mary Ann, she knew it. She knew it. She knew it, so you destroyed her.
[Devil] You're blaming me for Mary Ann? I hope you're kidding.
Mary Ann, you could have saved her anytime you liked. All she wanted was love.
Hey, you were too busy.
[Lomax] That's a lie.
[Devil] Face it, you started looking to better-deal her the minute you got here.
[Lomax] That's not true. You don't know what we had!
[Devil] Hey, I'm on your side!
[Lomax] You're a liar!
[Devil] There's nothing out there for you! Don't be such a fucking chump! Stop deluding yourself! I told you to take care of your wife!
What did I say? 'The world would understand.'
Didn't I say that?
What did you do? 'You know what scares me, John? I leave the case, she gets better and then I hate her for it.'
Remember?
[Lomax] I know what you did. You set me up!
[Devil] Who told you to pull out all the stops on Mr. Gettys? Who made that choice?
[Lomax] It's entrapment. You set me up.
[Devil] And Moyez! The direction you took! Popes, swamis, snake handlers, all feeding at the same trough. Whose ideas were those?
[Lomax] You played me!
[Devil] It was a test! Your test! And Cullen! Knowing he was guilty! Seeing those pictures! What did you do? You put that lying bitch on the stand!
[Lomax] You brought me in. You put me there! You made her lie!
[Devil] I don't do that, Kevin! That day on the subway, what did I say to you? What were my words to you?
Maybe it was your time to lose. You didn't think so.
[Lomax] Lose? I don't lose! I win! I win! I'm a lawyer! That's my job! That's what I do!
[Devil] I rest my case. Vanity... is definitely my favorite sin.
Kevin, it's so basic. Self-love. The all-natural opiate.
It's not that you didn't care for Mary Ann, Kevin... it's just that you were a little more involved with someone else. Yourself.
[Lomax] You're right. I did it all. I let her go.
[Devil] Don't be too hard on yourself, Kevin. You wanted something more. Believe me.
[Lomax] I left her behind and just kept going.
[Devil] You can't keep punishing yourself."
Snip some comparatively irrelevant dialogue and it continues:
"[Lomax] What do you want from me?
[Devil] I want you to be yourself.
You know, I'll tell you, boy... guilt... it's like a bag of fucking bricks. All you got to do is set it down.
I know what you're going through.
I've been there.
[Lomax's "sister"] Just come here. Come here. Let it go.
[Lomax] I can't do that.
[Devil] Who are you carrying all those bricks for?
God?
Is that it?
God?
I'll tell you... let me give you a little inside information about God.
God likes to watch. He's a prankster.
Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do? I swear, for his own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time.
Look, but don't touch.
Touch, but don't taste.
Taste, but don't swallow.
And while you're jumping from one foot to the next, what is He doing? He's laughing his sick, fucking ass off! He's a tightass! He's a sadist! He's an absentee landlord!
Worship that? Never!
[Lomax] 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,' is that it?
[Devil] Why not? I'm here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began!
I've nurtured every sensation man has been inspired to have! I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him!
Why? Because I never rejected him,in spite of all his imperfections! I'm a fan of man! I'm a humanist. Maybe the last humanist.
Who, in their right mind Kevin, could possibly deny the 20th century was entirely mine? All of it, Kevin! All of it. Mine. I'm peaking, Kevin. It's my time now. It's our time."
And there you have it. Humanity statistically wrapped up neatly in a concise and frighteningly precise nutshell.
The question that remains to be answered is this: are there enough good people left who are willing to do what needs doing - the ugly things; the abominal things; the monstrous things to set this world free? And if so, is the race worth freeing? What of it? What is the likely reality of a freed, technologically enabled, self-absorbed humanity? All of we who presume to hold the goal of human freedom, even if only in America, need to sit quietly and alone or perhaps with a small number of trusted and like-minded friends and family and think about this very carefully. I am not sure that the spectre is particularly appealing.
As I see it, the simple freeing of humanity would be an unmitigated disaster. Why? Because people have no experience with actual freedom but only with the pretty slavery wherein the Master's beneficent hand guides the "free man" at the boundaries of his cage so that he will not stray into grave sin, vis-a-vis the petty. This is where the Christian ethic applied to real life has failed catastrophically and monumentally. And the Godless progressives and other such vermin have no hay to make in that black sunshine because their ethics are Christian in their very fabric. Let none of those raving imbeciles fool themselves into believing otherwise. To the extent and in the manner the Christian Church has failed so spectacularly, so have the others - the anti-religious, the stooge-atheists because their standard of ethics are taken from the precise same book.
Furthermore, let us be crystal clear that the Christian ethic, per se, is not what has failed here, for that is only a conceptual body of principles and tenets by which one may choose to live. The bitch and the hitch is that the ethics in themselves mean NOTHING until they are interpreted and applied, and it is we as a race who have done so poor a job of application. The really scary part in all of this is that most of it has been done ostensibly with nothing but the best of intentions.
It was good intention that enslaved the human race in the manacles of imposed love and caring, thereby ripping from it its liberty. It was the self-absorbed church that forced itself upon the world with the sword and the book, perverting the beauty within and changing it into the evil against which the world now thinks it rails, unaware that its own book is the precise same one at heart, only using slightly different wording. It is the cowardice of men that has enslaved humanity; the steadfast and categorical refusal to accept men and the world as they more truly are. Rather, they have adopted this wildly demented masturbatory fantasy of an idealized world that can never exist because it is based upon a world populated by non-human creatures.
There are so many layers, each entangled in endless convolution with the others such that it numbs the mind of the intelligent man who endeavors to understand it. Complete, precise, and correct analysis is unlikely to be achievable. The good news, however, is that it is not necessary. To begin from a clean sheet with principles in hand is the ONLY thing that will provide the basis for our salvation and deliverance back into freedom, once again assuming that we are even worth saving.
A key here lies not in just having the intellectual chops to dope it all out, but the courage and moral and intestinal fortitude to accept the seemingly harsh realities that accompany one along the path toward the goal. Good intentions that work against the wills of people who commit no criminal acts is WRONG no matter what the perceived greater good is. You want a poster child for "crime" - well there you have it - the do-gooder forcing his unwelcome help upon his fellows. In the end, the only person the do-gooder is serving is himself because at the bottom of it all he does not give the least damn about what the targets of his beneficence want. He cares only about what HE wants - to feel better about all the things in the world that he perceives to be unjust; to feel he has righted some terrible wrong and made the world a better place by hook or by crook. This is pure egotism of the worst form, for it is unregulated, non-self-limiting, and so blindly self-serving as to be frightening to even the bravest among men.
A truly pathetic element in all of this is that the forcible do-gooder operates under the delusional presumption that he does all of this devoid of the ego of the individualist. Unlike the individualist, when faced with failure they refuse to demur and they do this because they are devoid of all humility and human decency, all ostensible good intentions notwithstanding. They are the epitome - the very definition of "evil" and "disease" because in the end, everything they do is solely for themselves and not in the least measure for those whom them purport to help. They will take any measure they feel is needed and with which they think they can get away to achieve their objectives.
Let me now be clear as to how such people are to be treated: all who attempt to use force, and here I mean that which ultimately reduces to the physical, may and perhaps ought to be killed on the spot, without hesitation or compunction, and without equivocation. I do not care if it is police, Congress, their agents, robbers, rapists, or the city dog catcher. If one is proceeding without having committed a crime, and here I mean a real crime as in mala in se, vis-a-vis phony baloney crimes mala prohibita, any force applied may be justifiably met with opposing force up to and including that which is lethal. On this I am unequivocal. There is no other way to put an end to the insanity of those who would murder us with their stated good intentions. If we are indeed free beings in our fabric, and I contend that we are, then there exists no authority above that of the individual and all who believe otherwise are deluded. If you think about it, the whole notion of "justice" bases upon the tacit assumption of entitlement, and is questionable.
Truly, we are in quite the mess.
Anyway, I have wandered a bit off my original track and for that I apologize. The notions just came to me and after all, my thoughts are all I have to offer. I have no money, no credibility, no authority. Just thoughts, such as they may be.
Last edited:
