My Response to the Virginian Conservative

The Virginian Conservative posted a review of Avatar...

http://virginiaconservative.wordpress.com/2009/12/25/avatar-a-political-review/#comment-616

Here's my response


Hello Virginian Conservative:

Thank you for the well written review of Avatar, the movie. It's good that you explain what the original definition of an Avatar is as - like the Rainbow mentioned in the replies - words change along with the culture. How many magazines and corporations have been named Avatar and when someone mentioned the word prior to this film my first thought was that they were referencing the old magazine from the 1960s or some corporation.

Your review was somewhat fair until you veered off into the new Conservatism at the end ..."hugging trees, dancing in the woods..." and then the slap at the general population that a movie might change minds. My perception is that people are flocking to the film because they agree with having some kind of harmony with nature. I'm in agreement with most of what Em says but the most telling reply is from "David" - let the Japanese Whaling fleet decimate the oceans when the rest of the world realizes the wisdom in being "conservative" with our natural neighbors...the whales...did they ram the ships protecting the whales or was it an "accident"...

What logic says to me is that if you take a word like "conservative" and make it the opposite, it really isn't conservative. Progressives are proud of being the dictionary definition of progressive while many (not all) Conservatives today seem to be trying to pass them selves off as "independents" - shying away from the Republican party because the Republican party has been less "conservative" and more like ...well...the aggressors in the film Avatar.

Chalk one up for the progressives here.

My second point is that with so much energy available on this planet, from solar to wind, what is wrong with not dumping toxins into the atmosphere we breathe and the water that we drink? You don't have to hug trees, but if you want to chop down the trees in the Amazon that help purify the toxins that "conservatives" want to put into the atmosphere, what will you do when cause and effect creates some Frankenstein we're not even prepared for...that won't have a happy ending like some extreme Roland Emmerich flick.

David Zucker's An American Carol flopped because it didn't resonate with the general public, despite the "conservative" radio hosts in America giving the director so much airtime. Box Office Mojo said American Carol cost 20 million to make and generated 7 million,. People paid big money to go to Fahrenheit 911 which cost 6 million and made almost 223 million - before the cable broadcasts and DVD sales. During the screening one could hear the applause in the next theater when the film ended. When the film ended in the theater I was in applause again erupted. These aren't people listening to Rush Limbaugh for free, these are people shelling out ten bucks each to hear a point of view that wasn't the current definition of the word "conservative".

The conservative movement doesn't want to conserve resources. It is an oxymoron. The progressives, on the other hand, are into conserving things of value. I'm not suggesting dancing with trees in the moonlight...but to live and let live isn't a bad idea on a planet where fellow humans attack others for wanting to preserve the air, the water, the very things essential to life. Pandora is not a planet, as you stated in your review, it is a moon circling a planet with a language and a culture so exotic and beautiful that "humans" in harmony with it can enjoy it for close to 3 hours. Though not a perfect film it is pretty sly of Cameron that putting on the 3D glasses our eyes slip into an "avatar" to get the translation of the film...not meaning that we need to stay in the film as Sam Worthington's character must because his human body/vehicle isn't working anymore - but that we can visit this exotic world and enjoy it without Rush Limbaugh's military coming in to wreck the joint.

True conservatism is conservation and until people realize we are all living in this same room called Planet Earth and have to find some harmony with each other how the heck can we be in harmony with the water we drink and the air that we breathe? You don't have to believe in Al Gore's presentations to understand that poisoning the water and the atmosphere will have multiple other bad effects whether or not it causes "Global Warming". Avatar doesn't even lay it between the lines, Cameron is very upfront about "Unobtanium" (Wikipedia has a very interesting definition of that) and the symbolic tree/twin towers falling in the forest.

I liked your review...but how many "conservatives" are going to allow me to state my logical position without going on the attack? And that is the problem that Avatar addresses, doesn't it?

Joe Viglione 9:40 AM January 6, 2010