If war movies generally dwell on the physical manifestations of war, understandable given its nature, there is a subset of the genre that deal with the POW experience away from the battlefield — THE GREAT ESCAPE begins in a prisoner-of-war camp but belongs more in the prison-break genre. Because we are shown enemies co-existing in... Read More

Nationalism is the best defense against imperialism. Nationalism means a people minding their own business. It means having national sovereignty and respecting the sovereignties of other nations. Imperialism, in contrast, means trampling on the rights and independence of other nations. If National Socialism had remained in nationalist mode, it wouldn't have disrupted the world order.... Read More

What is meant by ‘story’ and ‘state’ in the context of what follows? ‘Story’ means the history of a nation or people, both actual(often inconvenient) and official(aka the dominant narrative). ‘State’ here means the natural state of things regardless of the story of events. Suppose a skyscraper was built. The ‘story’ would be the telling... Read More

Do cockfighters care about the cocks? No, they only care about the game, the betting and winning. They don’t care about dead cocks because that’s what cockfighting is about, training male chickens to fight to kill or die. If your cock dies, you don’t grieve and think it’s the end of the world. It’s a... Read More