Apocalypto Now and Then

I saw Apocalypto this weekend, on the heels of Children of Men. These are movies that will show you two different views of dying civilizations. Both are profound, both are disturbing, and both offer a tiny ray of hope at the end.

Apocalypto Review

Children of Men review

Two cinematic views of empires in decline: one in the future, one in the past...

And from the front line of our present empire burning:

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we are training and arming the people who are killing each other and us on Tuesdays, Thursdays, weekends and evenings.

Dear Democrats; Bush has walled up our soldiers in the Valley of Death and will fucking well keep them there until we’re all broke and they’re all dead or damaged for life. They need to be rescue from Bush’s Iraqi Fiasco as surely as New Orleans residents needed to be rescued from Bush’s Katrina Catastrophe.

On this point the landslides of 2006 made the will of the American people unambiguously clearly.

Your most vital civic duty is to save our military from their involuntary participation in an Iraq Civil War that is killing them for no damned good reason, and from the cowardly Republican sociopaths here at home that are holding them hostage to George Bush's ego.

(from Driftglass )

Unless, of course, you're a fan of the destruction of the American empire...