Overton Window: Chapter 37-41
Aug. 29th, 2010 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyChapter 37
Back to the people actually contributing to the plot and not reacting to it. Danny is boring the shit out of Kearns, and me, with conspiracy theorizing that will obviously turn out to be accurate. Basically, there is a real terrorist plot in addition to the Fake!Kearns plot. And Elmer is Mohamed Atta, or we’re meant to think he is in order to link September 11 to the Patriot Underground.
Both the Teabaggers and Al Qaeda are into creating a backwards theocracy using violence against civilians. They both hate women, queers, socialists, atheists, and New Yorkers. There, I linked them for you. See how I didn’t need a shitty book to do it?
Anyway, so there is the iNuke fake terror plot, and then there’s another fake terror plot, and somehow one is supposed to be a distraction from the other, or something.
The problem with government conspiracies—and specifically 9/11 conspiracies—is that you have to swallow several assumptions in order for your narrative to hang together.
1. Bloomsbury couldn’t stop the last few Harry Potter novels from being leaked; you need to believe that the government could do a better job than that, with much more at stake if someone talks.
2. You need motive. The motive in this book is “power,” but the definition is fairly vague and it’s explicitly a non-ideological brand of power. You can get much more power as CEO of a big corporation these days than you can running a country (Arthur, to Beck’s credit, seems to realize this). A political party behaves very differently when its sole motivation is maintaining power—look at how the Canadian Liberal Party behaved for decades. They have no ideology whatsoever—their sole concern is getting re-elected, and until recently, they were damned good at it, too. I guess you could also seize power after a national crisis and throw your opponents into FEMA camps, but I’m pretty sure the way the Liberals did it was much more efficient and caused them fewer headaches.
3. Then you need competence. Government. Competence. Put these words together in a sentence that doesn’t include the word “lacks.” September 11 was ghastly, but it was tactically brilliant, and I just don’t think that the same government that got mired in Iraq and Afghanistan could pull off something that clever.
Chapter 39
We go back to Noah, still reading Molly’s diary of Jefferson quotes. I’ve raised the Bible study parallel before, but it’s really obvious here too.
It’s like when I was 12 and had a crush on this boy, and a Cure song came on the radio and it was EXACTLY HOW I FELT about him, like Robert Smith just knew my pain, you know?
Who am I kidding? It’s right out of Left Behind where the authors twist some fanciful Bible passage about a beast with many heads to somehow be about the UN. (Protip: Nowhere in the Bible is the UN mentioned, and nowhere in Thomas Jefferson’s writing is Noah Gardner mentioned.)
In conclusion: Government is bad. Freedom isn’t free. Molly, for some reason, doesn’t mind Noah reading her diary, because he finally gets it.
The plane finally lands and then they have to rent a car, and I am sick of these people and their travel arrangements. Why does Beck think that I want to read about travel arrangements?
Chapter 40
Danny and Kearns are on a date! And by “date,” I mean they’re in the middle of nowhere, Nevada, to meet up with Elmer and the Teabaggers. But they are touching each other quite a bit for unnecessary reasons. And, uh, playing with their guns.
Chapter 41
Oh teh noes! Elmer is still not around, the Teabaggers are acting suspicious-like, and someone is carting around something that looks a lot like a real nuke, plus a body bag. Subtlety: Not these guys’ strong point. Danny and Kearns develop an emergency psychic link where they decide to shoot their way out. I wonder if Danny will be able to use that as evidence in his trial.
Anyway, despite being outnumbered, they kill all the dudes but one, who skulks off somewhere, and take off in the truck.
Wow! Actual plot! Not a very good plot, and certainly not well-written, but stuff at least happened. That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Back to the people actually contributing to the plot and not reacting to it. Danny is boring the shit out of Kearns, and me, with conspiracy theorizing that will obviously turn out to be accurate. Basically, there is a real terrorist plot in addition to the Fake!Kearns plot. And Elmer is Mohamed Atta, or we’re meant to think he is in order to link September 11 to the Patriot Underground.
Both the Teabaggers and Al Qaeda are into creating a backwards theocracy using violence against civilians. They both hate women, queers, socialists, atheists, and New Yorkers. There, I linked them for you. See how I didn’t need a shitty book to do it?
Anyway, so there is the iNuke fake terror plot, and then there’s another fake terror plot, and somehow one is supposed to be a distraction from the other, or something.
The problem with government conspiracies—and specifically 9/11 conspiracies—is that you have to swallow several assumptions in order for your narrative to hang together.
1. Bloomsbury couldn’t stop the last few Harry Potter novels from being leaked; you need to believe that the government could do a better job than that, with much more at stake if someone talks.
2. You need motive. The motive in this book is “power,” but the definition is fairly vague and it’s explicitly a non-ideological brand of power. You can get much more power as CEO of a big corporation these days than you can running a country (Arthur, to Beck’s credit, seems to realize this). A political party behaves very differently when its sole motivation is maintaining power—look at how the Canadian Liberal Party behaved for decades. They have no ideology whatsoever—their sole concern is getting re-elected, and until recently, they were damned good at it, too. I guess you could also seize power after a national crisis and throw your opponents into FEMA camps, but I’m pretty sure the way the Liberals did it was much more efficient and caused them fewer headaches.
3. Then you need competence. Government. Competence. Put these words together in a sentence that doesn’t include the word “lacks.” September 11 was ghastly, but it was tactically brilliant, and I just don’t think that the same government that got mired in Iraq and Afghanistan could pull off something that clever.
Chapter 39
We go back to Noah, still reading Molly’s diary of Jefferson quotes. I’ve raised the Bible study parallel before, but it’s really obvious here too.
In the course of his supposedly top-shelf schooling he must have already been exposed to much of this, and if so, it shouldn’t have seemed as new to him as it did. And in a strange, unsettling way—like reading a horoscope so accurate that its author must surely have been watching you for months through the living-room window—it seemed that each of these writings was addressed to this current time, and this very place, for the sole, specific benefit of Noah Gardner.
It’s like when I was 12 and had a crush on this boy, and a Cure song came on the radio and it was EXACTLY HOW I FELT about him, like Robert Smith just knew my pain, you know?
Who am I kidding? It’s right out of Left Behind where the authors twist some fanciful Bible passage about a beast with many heads to somehow be about the UN. (Protip: Nowhere in the Bible is the UN mentioned, and nowhere in Thomas Jefferson’s writing is Noah Gardner mentioned.)
In conclusion: Government is bad. Freedom isn’t free. Molly, for some reason, doesn’t mind Noah reading her diary, because he finally gets it.
The plane finally lands and then they have to rent a car, and I am sick of these people and their travel arrangements. Why does Beck think that I want to read about travel arrangements?
Chapter 40
Danny and Kearns are on a date! And by “date,” I mean they’re in the middle of nowhere, Nevada, to meet up with Elmer and the Teabaggers. But they are touching each other quite a bit for unnecessary reasons. And, uh, playing with their guns.
Chapter 41
Oh teh noes! Elmer is still not around, the Teabaggers are acting suspicious-like, and someone is carting around something that looks a lot like a real nuke, plus a body bag. Subtlety: Not these guys’ strong point. Danny and Kearns develop an emergency psychic link where they decide to shoot their way out. I wonder if Danny will be able to use that as evidence in his trial.
Anyway, despite being outnumbered, they kill all the dudes but one, who skulks off somewhere, and take off in the truck.
Wow! Actual plot! Not a very good plot, and certainly not well-written, but stuff at least happened. That wasn’t so hard, was it?
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 11:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 04:11 am (UTC)Here's what I wrote:
no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 11:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 01:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 06:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 11:59 am (UTC)I think the funniest is that teabaggers covet political power, and so they need to go to places like New York and DC, and they are terrified. Just look at those directions posted for the DC rally! They go to a primarily black city and try to avoid meeting a black person. I think they're largely too timid to be taken seriously, though I think a handful might be confident enough to pull off some terrorist plots.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 07:54 pm (UTC)Moon Landing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw); Princess Diana (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoZ71sj3Kn0); Aliens (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyInKT95eG0).
SFW if your work doesn't mind bitter snorfling.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-03 03:34 am (UTC)