Respecting the rights of others

To live amongst other people and maintain order there generally needs to be some limits on personal liberty. I think that most of us would agree with the notion that everyone cannot do absolutely anything they please at any moment. One famous limit on speech is the oft-quoted concept that "you cannot yell 'fire' in a crowded theater."

I was in a fairly crowded theater yesterday to see a movie. I walked in a few minutes before the film started and, with the center rows pretty full, I took the first seat on a middle row in a side section. As the previews were running, three young guys -- frat-boy types -- squeezed by me to take the open seats to my left. They munched loudly on popcorn at the start of the movie, but they weren't intentionally trying to create noise and they do have a right to eat popcorn -- whether the theater is crowded or not.

What they did do that was infuriating was fiddle with their cell phones throughout the entire film. Texting, checking for messages, checking the time and, at one point, the guy next to me took a phone call during the film. The same guy dropped his phone toward the end of the movie and fished around on the floor for five minutes. These were guys in their 20s acting like teenage girls.

Even without the movement and talking, the blue light of cell phones is pretty damn annoying in a theater. It is distracting to the eye. I turned to give a dirty look every time I saw the glow, but in the darkness of a cinema I doubt the trio noticed. Even if they did, however, is it likely that they cared? The signs in the lobby of the Somerville Theater clearly specify that cell phone use -- even just texting -- is grounds for ejection, but no one was walking around checking, and I wouldn't expect them to be. If I went out to inform the staff, they would have probably come in to warn the guys, but then I'd have to sit somewhere else because they'd be angry. If I said something to them they would have scoffed at me.

I've had a similar experience here on Bennington Street. A number of times this summer, at various hours of the night, a vehicle will pull up to a house almost directly across from mine and the driver will beep the horn. This has happened as late as 3 a.m., and I've noticed it a half-dozen or so times. (It may have happened many times before, say, 10 p.m., but I wouldn't have taken much notice because I am not some cranky person who wants to stifle the lives of others. I have only taken notice when the incident occurs at an unreasonable time.)

The horn blasts aren't even tepid toots. There's usually more than one long blast. It is unfathomable that this individual thinks that he or she has the right to disturb, even wake up, the roughly 200 or 300 people that are within earshot because whoever is supposed to be picked up not outside or because the driver is too lazy to get out of the vehicle and ring the doorbell. I've been close to going out there a couple times, but I'm not looking for a late-night confrontation with a stranger. (It is always the same house. I have the address, and I am taking note of who comes out and of the vehicles.)

What's the problem here? Why don't the theater guys or the drivers have some respect for the people around them? There is a temptation when things like this happen to believe that our society, or civilization in general, is going downhill -- the "hell in a handbasket" argument. I am leery of jumping on that as a first option (though in the end in may be true). A thousand years ago the Vikings (and other marauding invaders) weren't very civil; less than 200 years ago one race was still enslaving another in a "free" society; 60 years ago most Americans agreed with interning the Japanese in wartime; in places all over the world ethnic and religious differences lead to horrific bloodletting -- today as in every previous society.

These are big, violent examples, I know, but maybe in general things aren't getting worse, but in the overall scheme of the modern Western world, things are actually getting better -- which makes even small transgressions appear more noticeable. Maybe that's it. I'm not sure. All I can do is try my best to be as civil to those around me as possible and hope that everyone else thinks in the same terms.

A dark cloud

We are a few days away from the 64th anniversary of events that are among the most consequential in world history. It was early in August of 1945 that the United States, attempting to bring to an end to the Pacific campaign of World War II without an invasion of Japan's home islands, unleashed new and catastrophic weaponry, dropping atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Some 240,000 people were killed directly, while many thousands more were made ill, dying later. The Empire of Japan surrendered unconditionally on Aug.15 because of the bombings and because the Soviet Union backed out of their treaty with Japan and was ready to invade from the north while the US prepared to do so from the south.

A recent poll by Quinnipiac University found that 61% of Americans believe that using the atomic bombs was the right thing to do, while 22% disagreed and 16% were undecided. It's no surprise that women, Democrats and young people were less likely to approve of the bombings than men, Republicans and older folks.

As an unabashed liberal, my first inclination is to believe that using such destructive weapons on civilian-filled cities is immoral. There is, however, a great deal to consider on this topic, and I don't disparage anyone who comes to a conclusion based on an examination of the evidence and reasoned thought -- whatever that conclusion may be. (Wikipedia has an entry on the issue that does a decent job briefly laying out the arguments on both sides.)

By the summer of 1945 it was clear that Japan could not win the war, yet Emperor Hirohito and his military commanders refused to surrender. The fighting in the Pacific went from island to island, with American forces closing in on the home islands and the Japanese employing desperate tactics, such as kamikaze pilots. After the US victory at Okinawa, plans were coming together for an invasion of Japan that was scheduled to begin on Nov. 1, 1945. Estimates were that the invasion, Operation Downfall, would bring unprecedented casualties on all sides -- possibly a million American soldiers, several million Japanese soldiers and millions more Japanese civilians.

In the end, President Truman decided that the US needed to drop the recently developed atomic bombs to hasten the end of hostilities and to save American lives, and today most in the US still see this as the right course of action. It seems, however, that some of the country's top military leaders -- General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Douglas MacArthur, Admiral Chester Nimitz and others -- believed that the war had essentially already been won and that using the bombs was unnecessary. After meeting with Truman, Eisenhower later wrote:

During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.

I'm not saying it was an easy decision then or that it's an easy judgment today. I'm just saying that when top military people -- including a five-star general and future president -- clearly had misgivings about such drastic actions, those of us who don't agree that it was right and necessary aren't necessarily foolish or unserious or revisionists or lily-livered. Any way you slice it, the Japanese government and military of the period engaged in many abhorrent actions, and the steps taken to finally end the war were sorrowful days for all of humankind.

Dark days and knights

Batman has come a long way since I used to watch reruns after school of the campy, short-lived 1960s TV series and even farther from its creation as a comics series in 1939. I saw the most recent incarnation this week, Christopher Nolan's film The Dark Knight, on an IMAX screen in Reading, and the movie is breaking box office records.

While there were a number of things I liked in the film, there were also some drawbacks to it. I recently read an entry in the Globe's MovieNation blog in which critic Ty Burr tells of being at a family event and having a number of teens and twentysomethings come up to him and ask if The Dark Knight is the best film ever. It seems the more cleverly violent and destructive a movie is, the more young people like it, but -- call me "a bleeding-heart liberal wuss" (and some have) -- that doesn't motivate or excite me as a moviegoer. I can appreciate special effects, stunts and celluloid trickery to just a small degree, but then it quickly turns me off.

I like stories about people and their struggles with life, their ethical dilemmas, their subtle epiphanies. I like long shots, few cuts and wide landscapes. I like witty dialogue, intelligent characters and smart plots. For me, The Dark Knight was a spectacle, and a cool one, but it's not likely to be the best film I've seen this year. In fact, it's already not.

There were, in the somewhat convoluted and hard-to-follow plot, a number of ethical questions addressed by the movie, and most of them relate to the path America has taken in this post 9/11 world: Does an increase in resources and tactics applied to an enemy increase the atmosphere of disorder? Is it acceptable to spy on everyone to keep tabs on the bad guys? Should torture be used to elicit information? Is it necessary and acceptable to violate one's moral code in order to subdue an enemy who seems not to possess such a code of their own?

The Dark Knight cannot really be discussed without mentioning Heath Ledger's role as the Joker. It is one of the most captivating cinematic performances I've ever seen, but some of that is certainly due to our knowledge of his death not long after filming was completed. Still, he is very good and worthy of an Oscar nomination. Whether he wins or not, however, should be based on the strength of his performance as compared to the other nominees (if you agree that such awards have any sensical rubric) and not out of pity because he is gone.

The movie is good -- dark in tone and filled with non-stop action. It is also physically dark, and -- as a review in The New Yorker pointed out -- after Christian Bale, who plays Batman, trained for months in martial arts, it's impossible to follow what he is doing in any of the fight scenes because they are so fast, close and dark. The same effect happens in other scenes and plot elements, causing some confusion as to what is going on.

What is really unfortunate is that Hollywood has wasted and will continue to waste untold millions on movies with violence and explosions that take on none of the ethical quandaries that The Dark Knight does, and our young people -- who have had their ability to appreciate art that has depth and meaning destroyed by our watered down, mass market culture -- will continue to give the studios a reason to do so by accepting all the artless crap they are sold every day.

To err

In the wake of the self-destruction of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, The New York Times web site has a piece today that wonders aloud why politicians at all levels "engage in clandestine sexual entanglements...[and] all too often, their stealthy frolics then poison their political careers." The writer implies that those with political power entrap themselves in these ethical snares more than the rest of us.

However, I think the article misses the point. People of all incomes and religions, of all occupations and political persuasions, and of both genders, make terrible decisions all the time, and pretty frequently those miscues come back to bite them in the ass. We're human, and we're flawed. That's not to excuse away Spitzer's transgressions or those of anyone else; yet, he is no different than the rest of us. The misunderstanding is thinking that he, or anyone else, is above such things. Anyone familiar with human history for the past few years or the past few millennia knows that no one is.

What are we doing?

Is there anybody, besides George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who still believes that invading Iraq was a good idea?

Recently a former top general was publicly critical of America's strategy in Iraq, while a Globe columnist writes about the moral deficiencies of this nation's current position in the world.

Retired Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, the former US commander in Iraq, said that the Bush Administration's war plan was "catastrophically flawed" and "unrealistically optimistic" and added that the so-called surge is a "desperate" move.

Writer James Carroll detailed how America has frequently risen up to face the moral challenges at hand, but that today "we are paralyzed by a war that no one wants."

Meanwhile, in a recent issue of The New Yorker, famed investigative journalist Seymour Hersch consults his deep sources in the military and intelligence communities to uncover the latest plans that Bush and Cheney have instructed their underlings to assemble: bombing raids on Iran.

Will we continue to allow these colossally arrogant and stupendously foolish people to commit American blood and treasure to their outrageous schemes?