The subtext to the subtext of The Purge is more disturbing than the text or the subtext

The Purge franchise takes place in a not-too-distant future where once a year, all crime is legal. It began as a low-budget home invasion concept. And inspired three sequels and a TV series that are equal parts Walking Dead-style gore and 24-style ticking clocks.

The government's rationale for the Purge is that twelve hours of anarchy allows America to release all its angry impulses. But over the course of the films, the real motive becomes clearer and clearer until, by the fourth installment, the text disappears and is replaced entirely by the subtext: the Purge exists to eliminate those that weigh the economy down - the poor, the suicidal, the addicts, the criminals, the crazy.

For this reason, the franchise has been hailed as a bit of left-leaning social satire. The New Founding Fathers of America are an extreme vision of where MAGA logic could lead. But there's one thing this line of thought seems to overlook.

In the series, the Purge works. Unemployment and crime have both dropped below 1%. And that, to me, is the most disturbing idea of all.

The idea we'd all act out our violent impulses if we could? That's scary.

The idea we could be used as weapons against each other? That's even worse.

But the idea America'd be better off if we killed the poor? That's just terrifying.

Flannery O'Connor only wrote one story and it could have been written yesterday

This year I read, and in some cases re-read, the complete works of Flannery O'Connor. Like a lot of artists, she only had one theme, which she hammered compulsively, tweaking it and refining it and rewriting it over the course of two novels and 31 short stories.

She had three characters. A bad guy, often a con artist and sometimes batshit crazy. An aging Southerner, settled into a strict, frequently racist code that provides a roadmap for all his or her actions. And a high-minded urban atheist, who believes the first character pitiable and the second deplorable. At the end, all three are offered a symbol of grace, reminding them they're all sinners who need God.

And I thought, "Things just don't change much."

Americans want bigger government, just not this one

Today's USA TODAY has one of those sweeping studies that attempts to segment Americans based on their feelings about government. Some of the verbatims are so interesting. This one really nailed the zeitgeist for me:

Most Americans endorse government activism on a range of issues — not only national defense but also the environment, civil rights and consumer protection — but doubt the competence of government to deliver results effectively and efficiently.

There is no such thing as an independent voter

Would everyone who considers themselves an independent please go take a look at their voter registration card? In the state of Colorado, there is no such thing as a registered independent. You can either affiliate with a party and help choose the candidates. Or you can register as "unaffiliated," which means you are happy enough with the candidates the parties offer to abstain from voting until the general election.

The media, which is driven by voting patterns, not registration data, is accidentally perpetuating the myth of the independent voter. For instance, The New York Times wrote that "Democrats, Republicans and independents each account for about one-third of registered voters in Colorado." Wrong. One third of Colorado voters have opted out of the primary process, but that doesn't make them independent. In fact, it doesn't even make them nonpartisan.

Ten seconds of Googling will tell you I'm a Democrat. But I'll take a Republican, an ACP member, a Green party voter, or practically anyone over those who abdicate their responsibility and then try to pass it off as a sign of independence.

Is business a good background for a public servant?

See if this sounds familiar. "We need to elect businessmen to congress because they're tough and efficient and know how to get things done on time and under budget."

It seems like every election cycle, some Ross Perot-wannabe brings up some variation of this argument. But while some businesspeople make great public servants, it is wrong to assume that a business background automatically qualifies a person for elected office.

Private businesses do not make money by producing goods and services on time and under budget. That's an ivory-tower view of business that's popular among right-wing intellectuals, but has no basis in reality.

The job of a businessman is to maximize profit. Period. And profit is the difference in total revenue and total cost. Businessmen become successful by convincing people to pay more for a good or service than it costs to produce. Efficiency and customer service are certainly tools in the businessman's toolbox, but they aren't the only ones. Businesses can use advertising to raise perceived value, they can choose to focus on under-served markets, they can trademark innovations to prevent competition, they can cut costs by laying off staff and making salaried employees work long hours, and the list sort of goes on like that for a long, long time.

On the other hand, the job of a public servant is to maximize value. They strive to ensure the greatest number of taxpayers receive the greatest amount of service for the lowest possible cost. Cutting necessary but unprofitable services, refusing to serve difficult markets, raising perceived value with branding - none of these are options for those who spend their life maximizing the value of taxpayer dollars.

There's nothing wrong with business. It's essential to the American way of life. And many businessmen, like John Hickenlooper, do become good public servants. But it's wrong to assume that people who can maximize profit are inherently suited to maximize value.

You get the heroes you deserve

When I was a boy, James Bond was a blank slate on which I could project my heroic dreams. If I wanted to imagine battling sinister baddies in foreign lands, Bond showed me how. If I wanted tips on ordering drinks, playing cards, driving cars or bedding glamorous women, Bond had my back. He could ski, rock climb, parachute, and kill with bullets or charm. He didn't have any super powers or any special strengths. He was just awesome. At everything.

For Bond, the means weren't justified by the ends. The means were the ends. The cars and the guns and the subterfuge seemed to be the point. And the conclusion of each movie never did much more than leave me hungry for the next one.

In the post-9/11 world, there's suddenly a surplus of super agents on film with the initials J.B. Just two months after Al-Qaeda's attacks on our homeland, 24 debuted on Fox. The show's hero is Jack Bauer, whose experience in the army, LAPD SWAT and the CIA prepared him to defeat all sorts of awfulness on perilously short timelines. June 14, 2002 saw the premiere of the first Jason Bourne movie, The Bourne Identity. Where Bauer has a gift for solving problems in a day, it took the amnesiac Bourne three movies to figure out his own name. Along the way he discovered he was the world's deadliest man, a government-trained black ops machine.

(I'm far from the first blogger to notice this coincidence. Most only discuss which J.B. would win a fight. A very few go further, such as Considering Bond, Bourne & Bauer.)

Bond stayed clear of any deep thoughts about, well, anything. But Bauer and Bourne are both consumed by questions about the violent tactics they employ and their relationship to the outcomes desired by shadowy bureaucrats and mysterious handlers. For Bauer the choice is clear. If the goal is the advancement or safety of the American people, any course of action is justified. In fact, the US military reportedly had to ask Fox to "tone down the torture scenes because of the impact they are having both on troops in the field and America's reputation abroad." Meanwhile, Bourne's entire fictional raison d'etre is to question the psychological toll that black ops take on the men who must carry them out. His most obvious enemies are specific actors in the American government itself, who brainwashed him at his own behest and turned him loose on a scary world.

In the words of A Few Good Men's Col. Jessup, "we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns." We know this. And we also know that beyond those walls, a different sort of men must be sent to do difficult and sometimes unimaginably painful jobs. Because these jobs are done in secret, we rarely get a clear portrait of those who do them. But they are probably nothing like James Bond, Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne, Bryan Mills, John Rambo, Ethan Hunt, Casey Ryback, Dutch Schaefer, Xander Cage and so on.

The way in which we imagine our heroes says a lot about our culture. It makes sense that after 9/11, we were no longer content to imagine them blithely racing Aston-Martins and sleeping with Pussy Galore. (Yes, that was her name.) But what does it say about us that we replaced James Bond with two super agents with similar resumes and initials but directly opposing psyches? Bauer is a man of action, morally questionable, and perfectly at home on the Fox network. He seems explicitly designed to appeal to flag-waving Republicans who believe that torture is not torture if it's conducted by an American. On the other hand, Bourne's very existence confirms liberal fears of daddy-state power brokers and military-industrial complexes. He is efficient, deadly, hampered by doubt and filled with self-loathing. He seems like he sprang directly from the paranoid imagination of an East Coast Democrat. In fact, Bourne Identity director Doug Liman and screenwriter Tony Gilroy are both Manhattan natives and, according to Huffington Post's Fundrace 2008, Barack Obama donors.

The success of the Bourne movies forced a reinvention of the Bond franchise. The 2006 prequel Casino Royale re-imagined my boyhood hero as an emotionally scarred orphan whose steely charm was a defense mechanism against the death and destruction he both prevented and caused.

It's as if on 9/11 our country began a search for meaning that almost immediately left us deeply polarized. We could no longer tolerate a blank slate upon which to project fantasies of control and cool. And so we are left with a soulless spy, a brutal warrior and an angst-ridden assassin. I guess you get the heroes you deserve.

[Ed. - For what it is worth, I am currently reading Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq, a book that offers a realistic portrait of the Special Forces troops that patrol the outer reaches of American interests.]