Fannish Five; Politics and cognitive dissonance

Taken from a lot of people, this week's fannish five:

The five favourite relationships in my fandoms

Only five? Yikes. That demands some ruthless cutting and slashing. (No, that that way.) (Well, except for... you'll see.)

1) Buffy and Dawn in BTVS. I have a thing for sibling relationships, and having been an older sister, there was such a lot that I recognised here. The ups, the downs. Of all of Buffy's relationships, this is probably my favourite. More on Buffy and Dawn when I finally get around to writing that essay.

2) Londo and G'Kar in Babylon 5. Yes, you're all so surprised. And here's where I regret the limit of five, because I love the friendship between Londo and Vir almost as much, but the Londo/G'Kar (interpret that any way you want) arc is the core of the show, and the best thing JMS ever wrote. It actually pulls off the mortal enemies turning into friends/companions/whatever you want to call them by time season 5 ends thing which many fandoms are so fond of in fanfic, without ever trivalizing the massive issues on the way. On the contrary, JMS makes it harder by actually showing us Londo's fall first, in all ugly details, instead of presenting it as backstory (backstory being something fans are much more easily inclined to forgive).

3) Amanda and Duncan in Highlander. Because it's pretty unique. Amanda and Duncan never were presented as Destined Lovers (tm). Duncan's Star-Crossed Love (tm) was Tessa. They had a lot of sex over the centuries, sure, but above all they were and remained friends. He forgave her her occasional double-crosses. She could pull him out of his brooding and make him laugh when life was pretty horrible. And when it really counted, they were there for each other.

4) Angel and Connor on AtS, only barely etching out Angel and Darla. After spending a season and a half without caring about Angel the character (from Epiphany onward, I think, till A New World), this father-son tragedy made me empathize with him again, completely. They were such a messed-up, intense pair, he and Connor, and Connor himself competes with his mother (and Buffy) for being my favourite overall Jossverse character.

5) John Crichton and Scorpius in Farscape. Yes, there are a lot of interesting and likable relationships on Farscape but this dark one intrigues me more than any other. Blue-eyed obsessive 1, meet blue-eyed obsessive 2, via torture, mind games, alliance of necessity and several other bizarre courtship rituals.

***
I've been biting my tongue about politics in recent weeks, since there was more than enough strong feeling on lj already. (And outside of lj. I've been having conversations with my father which basically circle around an "I won't visit Bush Land in the next four years and neither should you"/ "Let's keep a little perspective, shall we?" exchange.) yuki_onna wittily related the extreme polarization to the recent film version of Lord of the Rings, saying that most lj'ers cast Bush & Co. as Sauron and wonder why the 50-something % who voted for him didn't see it that way. Which reminds me, Time Magazine in 2002 actually in its review of The Two Towers cast Saruman as Osama Bin Laden and the Americans as the beleagured humans and hobbits, which horrified one of the film's stars, Viggo Mortensen, so much that he wrote a letter in protest and appeared on a lot of talk shows wearing "No Blood For Oil" t-shirts.

Now personally, I find both extremes annoying. The Americans-as-Hobbits line by Time writer Richard Corliss evoked a disbelieving "How self deluded can you get?" from me at the time, but conversely, I don't see Bush & Co. qualifying for the Prince-of-Darkness label just yet. But I think what this points towards is more than a bi-partisan longing for a world in which villains are clearly seen as such and get their proper defeat, it's that we really don't see the same things anymore, if we ever did. "If you could see what I've seen with your eyes..." says Roy Batty, the rebel android, in Blade Runner. He means something else, but that is the problem. I look at Bush and don't see a prince of darkness, but I do see a dangerously deluded man of limited intelligence and abilities, without any kind of intellectual or emotional curiosity about what is outside his immediate circle, who has caused much havoc in the world already and will continue to do more. That he's (probably) a good husband and father is as irrelevant in this context as George III. civic virtues were.

Meanwhile, I do have friends of different political persuasions, both in RL and in the lj world (hobsonphile and shezan, for example), who look at Bush and see someone completely different. They see a competent leader of moral integrity etc. And I don't think either of us has had access to facts and reports the other hasn't read/seen/heard. We look at the same material, but we don't see the same thing, and that seems to be a universal experience these days.

Errol Morris, whose documentary about Robert McNamara, The Fogs of War, won respect from both sides of the political spectrum, wrote a great analysis of this cognitive dissonance apropos the recent pictures from Fallujah. Since not everyone is registered with the NY Times, I'll give you some crucial quotes:

( What are we looking at? )

Of course, such philosophical deliberations are easier when you're thousands of miles away, when you're neither the marine or the prisoner, neither the British woman who worked for years to help others and now has been murdered, nor the mother who lost children in the most recent bombings. If you're actually living there, your point of view sounds more likely like this.

I'd call it fascinating, except that I fear this increasing gulf of perception will only grow and ultimately contribute to more death.