Sean Penn Speaking Out Again

tieguy

Banned
Onlly in america can we take an idiot actor and make him an expert on world afairs. Liberal democrats like Penn should be reminded of this fact first attributed to Reagan when they have the guts to think they might know something about the world that has not been over embellished on the studio stage.
 

Jones

fILE A GRIEVE!
Staff member
I figure he knows at least as much as a couple truck drivers and a manager :cool:. I suspect he's got us beat in the looks department as well, unless there's some truth to the rumours about that handsome intellectual who runs a feeder center in Maryland.....
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
I figure he knows at least as much as a couple truck drivers and a manager :cool:. I suspect he's got us beat in the looks department as well, unless there's some truth to the rumours about that handsome intellectual who runs a feeder center in Maryland.....

:lol: That was good!

The reason this subject came up other than the obvious fact that Sean made the news with it has to do partly with something from George Orwell who wrote a short piece of the subject of fascism back in 1944' that I found interesting. For example, in the piece he said:

"It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.

Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come."

George Orwell: What is Fascism?

Now he does have a point and we see it today where people in the order of discourse make accusations against others by using terms that are not so much designed to make a true and valid point but rather to impune as a means of forcing the other side to instead of making their points, they must now divert to defending against a negative that has no defense. Jones, if would be like you proclaiming in this forum that I am gay or for that matter that I'm straight but in this forum how would I prove otherwise? I can't. It's basically impossible. Orwell just may have a case that one element or trademark of an authoritarian bully or proponent of dominate authoritarianism of others is a person who would make wild accusations of such nature. It does give one a pause of thought.

In the case of Sean Penn, is it a means for sensational effect, Hollywood publicity seeking that is a known practice amongst it's practictioners or is Sean himself in reality what he proclaims others to be? I don't know but I'm gonna give him the benefit of doubt and even go so far as to agree with him and that he has valid cause for concern. I too think that America is showing strong signs of Fascist leanings and in respect to Mr. Orwell's comments maybe the right term to use is "Authoritarian Empire" but I'm gonna use Mussolini's own writtings to prove my points of why I think what I do and that why I also believe Sean does have a valid point here that is worth the time to consider and think about. I don't know this for fact but Sean and I may part company as he may see this aspect from a one sided point of view as it realtes to the American political apperatus. I happen to see it a dominate feature of the whole process and has been and growing for about the last 150 plus years.

First off, here's my source for the quotes I'll leave you with:

Mussolini - THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM

Now the quotes in bold:

1) Fascism wants man to be active and to engage in action with all his energies; it wants him to be manfully aware of the difficulties besetting him and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle in which it behooves a man to win for himself a really worthy place, first of all by fitting himself (physically, morally, intellectually) to become the implement required for winning it.

2) The Fascist conception of life is a religious one, in which man is viewed in his immanent relation to a higher law, endowed with an objective will transcending the in­dividual and raising him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. "Those who perceive nothing beyond opportunistic considerations in the religious policy of the Fascist regime fail to realize that Fascism is not only a system of government but also and above all a system of thought.

3) In the Fascist conception of history, man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which he contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation, and in function of history to which all nations bring their contribution. Hence the great value of tradition in records, in language, in customs, in the rules of social life. Outside history man is a nonentity. Fascism is therefore opposed to all individualistic abstractions based on eighteenth century materialism...

4) Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity. It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts

Just a minor point here that one should consider in the broader thought to our own world today, Classical liberalism is also the 18th century materialism he put down in the previous quote and it was this liberalism of the Enlightened era that influence the founding fathers of this Nation to give us what we have. It wasn't perfect mind you but it was what we were. Now on with the quotes.

5) The rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual. And if liberty is to he the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State.


<SPAN style="LETTER-SPACING: -0.05pt"><SPAN style="LETTER-SPACING: 0.3pt"><SPAN style="LETTER-SPACING: 0.05pt"><SPAN style="LETTER-SPACING: -0.05pt"><SPAN style="LETTER-SPACING: -0.05pt"><SPAN style="LETTER-SPACING: 0.1pt">6) <STRONG><EM>The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
Well the posting just didn't work out but hopefully you'll take the time to look over the link for yourself and consider what Mussolini wrote and then step back and look hard at the gov't that runs us today and what they are doing. I truly think Sean Penn had reasons for concern and was valid in making the coments that he did even though they are distasteful to all of us personally because as voters what does this say about us and our actions on election day?
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
I also meant to say that I plan on seeing Sean Penn's version of Willie Stark to see not only how it compares to a compelling Broderick Crawford version but to see what and how Sean does different to this character as I'm sure he will. Politics aside, he is a good actor.
 

moreluck

golden ticket member
It's been an experience to watch Sean Penn mature as an actor. I have enjoyed many of his movies.....Mystic River, Dead Man Walking, I Am Sam, The Game, Colors....etc.

No one forgets Fast Times At Ridgemont High.....in his own words, he wasn't acting much in that movie. He was a surfer and that's basically how he really talked back then.
 

tieguy

Banned
good point more. Sean should be discussed for how well he portrayed a good natured surfer then for political views that will never gather him an oscar.

Otherwise fascism is better left as the bogeyman of the 40's unless it is somehow tied to the radical islamist.
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
All The King's Men didn't fair well at Toronto Film Festival.

I enjoyed this op-ed by a confessed liberal because in the very last sentence he asked the Million Dollar question IMO.

Salt Lake Tribune - Keillor: Coffee, tea or TATP

There would have been a day when those people of whom he asked would have been in the forefront opposing many of these measures but not anymore. I heard another comedian (can't remember who) propose to have everyone armed on commercial flights. Now it was done obviously in humor but you had to admit, that would be one civil and polite flight for sure!

:laugh:

"By all means Grandma, please take the window seat but could you point that M-16 somewhere else?"
 
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