Die Hard at the White House as Obama propaganda. Okay, now you know the entire movie. Well, not really, because this movie has what Die Hard did not: An invulnerable hero, played by Channing Tatum. What made the original Die Hard so good was John McClane’s weaknesses and real injuries. In this movie, Channing plays John Cale, who seems to live unscathed through a thousand poorly aimed bullets by sharpshooting criminals, deadly falls, and even a grenade. I know, I know, even the new Die Hards have become that. But I mean not even a scratch on the guy. Makes it rather unsatisfying because you never really believe he can be caught or hurt by the bad guys so your emotional investment is lost.
John Cale is a security agent for the Speaker of the House who is trying desperately to get a job with the Secret Service because his daughter worships the President as hero, and no longer feels that way about him. He’s divorced, and he’s messed up one time too many, but he figures if he can protect the one person his daughter sees as a hero then maybe he can gain her trust back. And that is the emotional power of this story of a father and daughter in the midst of a terrorist take down of the White House. It’s actually quite touching and it’s what makes this story rise a little above its otherwise excessive action movie set pieces.
But the political and moral worldview of this movie is abysmal.
If you want to understand the moral worldview of the storytellers, look at the villain. The villain’s goals and rationale are what the storytellers believe are the dangerous beliefs in this world that must be stopped. And in this movie, the real enemies that exist in this world — the Islamic regimes and Muslim terrorists killing tens of thousands of innocents around the world, with the intent of imposing Islamic Law on everyone – THOSE villains do not really exist. The very real threat of Iran is just a figment of the vast right wing conspiracy theorizing. NO, the REAL enemy is the tired old Hollywood boogeyman, the “Military Industrial Complex” and “Right Wingers” in America who believe that Iran is a threat and must be stopped from getting nuclear weapons. I kid you not. This is the ludicrous view of the world that could only come from Hollywood.
First of all, Jamie Fox plays President Sawyer, an obvious Democrat Barack Obama President, who just like Obama, makes all kinds of references to himself in connection with Abraham Lincoln. Ironic, since Lincoln was a Republican who would condemn the Chicago mafia politics of Obama, and the slavery, KKK, and Jim Crow of the Democratic Party. But truth is often not important when people try to construct symbolism of themselves. Nevertheless, Sawyer/Obama ends up fighting the bad guys, shooting a rocket launcher and helping the hero save the White House, his daughter, America, and the World. The obvious intent here is to construct a narrative mythology that connects Obama to a superhero persona worthy of obedience and genuflection.
In the beginning of the film we see President Sawyer on TV talking about how “the source of violence is poverty,” in other words, the tired old Left Wing sloganeering that poverty causes crime. Really? So, all the tens of millions of poor people, many tens of millions more than those violent ones, who don’t engage in crime, why aren’t they violent? And since the source of so much violence in the world is actually driven by the rich, where is their poverty? This is the evil foundational belief of Marxism that reduces morality to economic terms because of its desire to control the wealth of others. With Presidents like this, who needs enemies?
In contrast with this religion of Leftism, Christianity claims that the fundamental cause of violence AND poverty is actually VALUES. It is moral values that drive human beings to do good or evil, NOT economic status. Those with good moral values do not engage in crime, even if they are poor. Those with bad moral values DO commit crimes even if they are rich. See Spot run. Duh. The real truth of the matter is, folks, that the most violence has been done upon this world through this very belief that economics causes crime (See: Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, North Korea etc etc.).
SPOILER ALERT: We soon discover that the President has a “Peace Plan” that consists of removing all American troops from the Middle East. Another absolutely immoral belief, since it would create the biggest slaughter and takeover by Islamists in the world. So when the villains first blow up the Capitol and take the White House hostage, we hear that everyone thinks they’re Arabs (Because, don’t you know, we’re all racists who have created an artificial boogeyman of Arabs as terrorists without any reason whatsoever. Just racism, yeah right.) The racist MSNBC newsman, Chris Matthews would love this movie and so do Islamists. But we ultimately learn that the bad guy is a Right Wing conspirator who tracked down a bunch of “Right wing sociopaths,” “racists,” and “White Supremecist” radicals as well as Libertarian nuts who are mad for the laws against online pirating. (One of the bad guys uses the derogatory term “Sheeple” of the hostages, which happens to be a term that right wing survivalist types use) Oh, and just to make sure, they connect the villain to religious Americans, the movie has the villain saying, “God bless us all.” I’m surprised they didn’t add a Tea Partier, a Pro-Lifer, or those “dangerous” types who don’t believe in big government.
But this all just reflects the same bigotry and Islamophilic prejudice that the current White House administration enforces when it scrubs all references to Islam, Muslim, Jihad and terrorist from its government documents and instead proclaims the real dangerous people to be pro-lifers, and “people who do not trust government.” Yeah, those are the REAL bad people we need to watch out for.
Okay, so this villain is taking over because he believes that there are no nukes in Iran, “But there will be,” so the President’s move will allow Iran to move forward. So the villain wants to rain nukes upon Iran in a Pre-emptive strike in the name of protecting the country.
So Iran will love this movie too! Because it shows what terrible victims they are of the big bullying imperialistic America, that we all know is trying to take over the world!
So, you get the analogy with the real world? Those in our real world who are warning that Iran will use nukes as Hitler would use nukes — because they are WORSE than Hitler’s Nazis — THOSE people are the dangerous ones, NOT the actual Islamo-nazis of Iran who will actually start with nuking Israel and move on from there. Those who say that sometimes we are forced by impossible options to stop a bully, or rather a serial mass murderer, by pre-emptively using force, those people are just warmongers and racists. Of course, in the real world, using nukes is the last option for such things. A pre-emptive strike does not require nukes. But this movie’s political posturing is actually an incitement of hatred (and violence?) against those who are arguing for the use of force to stop Iran from getting nukes. The filmmakers create a demonized image of their political opponents as dangerous violent crazy zealots to inspire the suppression of those views from the public debate.
Kinda like Chicago politics.
Kinda like the IRS.