14 November 2011

Why The Occupy Wall Street Kids are Better Than Spartans

This is a link post, but to a very good article that does three things extremely well.

One, it has a lot of good historical information about why the Spartans, far from being the shining crusaders of 300 were kind of giant douchebags, and the role of the rest of the Greek states in the battle of Thermopylae. Also a lot of good stuff about Greek culture in general which, even though my Menos project is on the backburner, is a pretty interesting read on its own.

Two, it talks about how Frank Miller is, apparently, a raging douchebag of his own who thinks that people who are dissatisfied with the economic imbalances in society are whiny kids, rapists, and thieves with no real grudge and that apparently they should be concerned with some shadowy "enemy" that hasn't made a move against us since, well, 9-11. Although I'm not sure that "Islamicism" is behind the attacks as much as some fairly vindictive terriorist groups are.

Three, he mentions that maybe the OWS guys should "join the military." This is near and dear to my heart for obvious reasons, not the least of which is the fact that this illustrator makes somewhere in the realm of "fucking way more" than even an officer, who themselves make two to three times as much as the enlisted guys that are actually doing the hard work. I'm pretty sure most of the people in the military (myself included) have a soft spot for the OWS guys, since we're the kind of guys who look at the military's core values (brotherhood, fairness, personal responsibility) and wonder why the rest of the world doesn't seem to get it.

But enough of my babbling, here's the link. Go read it, it's fantastic.

2 comments:

  1. Nice article. I didn't like the graphic novel 300, couldn't finish it because of the historical inaccuracies, and didn't see the movie. I wrote a brief blog post about the Spartans about a year ago. They had great propaganda.
    http://dynastyzero.blogspot.com/2010/11/700-thespians.html

    Despite Miller's attitudes I still love The Dark Knight Returns.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good god, that's a great comic, or whatever they call it. "Graphic novel," I suppose.

    300 was a good enough movie, if you realized that it was hopelessly exaggerated and took it on the level of the Odyssey, where you realize that behind all the posing and machismo that a real story of some seriously brave dudes were there.

    ReplyDelete

Looking Back

They say that if you don't look back at who who were from a year ago and cringe that you haven't grown enough. What if I look back f...