Editorial Director’s Note:

“The History of Western Politics in 18 Horrific Minutes.” That’s how Jim Amrhein sums up one of the most memorable (and controversial) movie sequences of all time.

When Jimbo sent me this groundbreaking piece of “cinematic criticism and political discourse” (his words), my one-word reaction was “Whoa.” It really made me think... which was exactly his intention.

And, of course, we truly want to know what YOU think – which is why we’re not afraid to take the occasional risk with pieces like this one. Share your gut reactions and carefully considered replies here, and all will be passed along to Jim: justice@taipandaily.com

The Ned Beatty Prophecies (Part One)

By Jim Amrhein, Contributing Editor, Taipan Daily

“The History of Western Politics in 18 Horrific Minutes” is how Jim Amrhein sums up one of the most memorable (and controversial) movie sequences of all time.

Lewis: “Machines are gonna fail. And the system’s gonna fail. And then…”

Ed: “And then what?”

Lewis: “Then survival – who has the ability to survive. That’s the game.”

– Exchange between Lewis (Burt Reynolds)
and Ed (Jon Voight) in 1972’s Deliverance

There’s a stream near my home that trickles perpetually cool water. It’s discharged from beneath a dam that holds back one of Baltimore’s three main reservoirs. On even the hottest of days, this cold water creates refreshing mists that rise above the creek...

That’s why I paddle my 15-foot canoe down this river several times a summer. Usually, I’m with a friend or a date. The trip has just enough whitewater to be fun – but not so much as to be overwhelming for an inexperienced boat-mate.

However, sometimes I’ll make this run alone. I find it very therapeutic; a day for just me, when I don’t have to make conversation or accommodations for anyone else. I can paddle when I want or lie back on the gunwales and soak in the sun when I want. I can stop on shore and cast out a big pool for some hard-won trout. I can stretch my legs with a creek-side hike – or dunk myself in the cool, gin-clear water…

It was on one of those reflective, lazy fish-and-paddle solo excursions that the seed of this article series planted itself in my mind. It happened as I was silently rounding a shady bend in one of the more remote sections of the upper end of this stream. The banks in this section are steep – as close to a river gorge as you’ll find in central Maryland.

In this gorge, there were no creek-side picnickers. No foursomes of teenagers awkwardly making out on towels. There weren’t even any of the fly-fisherman that relentlessly ply every pool within a mile of any bridge over this creek. I couldn’t even hear any distant cars or trucks…

The only sounds were the gentle rush of the riffles and the rhythmic lapping of the water against my canoe’s hull. As I cruised though the bend, an enormous blue heron lofted with massive, powerful wing-beats from the shadows at the shoreline. I paused, watching in awe as it effortlessly winged downriver and around the next curve, a half-mile away.

It looked prehistoric, like a pterodactyl. I wondered how many millions of years ago some doomed dinosaur made the final step in its eons-long evolution into something very similar to that majestic bird. And in that moment of serenity, when nothing betrayed the modern age to my ear or eye, it occurred to me that what I was sitting in wasn’t just a canoe – but a time machine of sorts. A floating teleportation device straight back into any century I could care to name…

And the way we’re headed right now, I could name a few other centuries I’d rather be in.

But most of all, that soundless bend and primitive bird made me think of another scenario in which canoes turned into time machines – and took four modern suburbanites back to a place before politics. A place in which “the system” couldn’t help them. A place in which they had to live or die by brute force and the strength of their will and wits...

(Trail) Blazing Paddles

To anyone who has seen the movie Deliverance, it’s almost impossible to go canoeing in the eastern U.S. without hearing distant echoes of dueling banjos or imagining menacing hillbillies in the shadows at river’s edge. That film did for canoe trips what Jaws did for trips to the beach...

And like Spielberg’s shark flick, the sheer this-could-happen horror of John Boorman’s masterful adaptation of James Dickey’s trail-blazing novel and script leaves a permanent boot-print on the pit of one’s stomach. However, this visceral horror overshadows the deeply political nature of the story – one that’s eerily prophetic on multiple levels, and that carries with it numerous disturbing parallels for the America we find ourselves in today.

For those who have not seen the film, here are the high spots:

Four Atlanta-area men decide to take a two-night canoeing trip down a remote river that’s being slowly flooded by an immense hydro-electric dam. All goes relatively smoothly until midway through the second day, when two members of the party – ad agency art director Ed and insurance salesman Bobby – pull ashore to stretch their legs and await their lagging partners, soda-salesman Drew and entrepreneur/survivalist Lewis...

While ashore, Bobby and Ed are accosted by a pair of armed mountain men. The two “city boys” are forced up into the woods, where Bobby (Ned Beatty in his unforgettable screen debut) is sodomized by one of the hillbillies. His counterpart is about to administer a similar treatment to Ed when champion archer Lewis arrives on the scene with his bow, and drills the sodomizer (the inimitable Bill McKinney in the greatest cinematic death of all time) through the chest with a razor-tipped hunting arrow.

The remaining assailant flees, leaving the four to decide what to do with the dead hillbilly. After some heated discussion and an impromptu vote on the matter, the men decide not to carry the body downriver to the authorities – but instead to bury it, gambling that the rising waters of the soon-to-be mammoth lake will cover all evidence of the incident. They execute this plan, then embark downriver with great haste.

But things quickly turn desperate for the foursome. The mountain man who fled has taken up a position on a high bluff above the river, and shoots Drew – who topples from the canoe. To make matters worse, the rapids of this gorge prove too much for the men and boats to handle. They go head-over-heels into the water, where Lewis breaks his femur and one of their canoes is reduced to splinters.

Trapped in a pool below the bluff, unable to continue downriver without being picked off by the revenge-bent hillbilly, mild-mannered Ed takes up his bow and makes a grueling nighttime climb up the face of the bluff, where he manages to ambush and kill the sniper at dawn of the next morning. They then face the daunting task of hiding yet another body and getting the wounded Lewis safely downstream in the remaining, battered canoe. Along the way, they find and submerge Drew’s body to prevent discovery of his gunshot wound, and concoct a plan to convince the authorities that he was lost miles downstream from the gorge.

Sound like a straight-up summertime adventure thriller, with some heavy-handed 1970s culture-conflict and “costs of progress” symbolism thrown in? Well, that’s how it plays to the average viewer – and incredibly well, at that. If you take nothing else from this essay series except a renewed interest in this cinema classic, your time in reading will have been well spent.

However, underneath Deliverance’s popcorn exterior lies what I believe is one of the most profoundly metaphoric – and prophetic – political movies ever made. And as I’ll explain, this story’s political undertones reveal principles that are vitally important to the survival of the American republic right now...

The History of Western Politics in 18 Horrific Minutes

Many have written essays about Deliverance for its clash-of-cultures and cost-of-progress themes and for its literary symbolism. But to the best of my knowledge, nothing has ever been published about this story’s incredible political subtexts...

That seems odd to me, since the film is like a crash course in the evolution of the practical dynamics of most Western systems of governance. One need only watch Deliverance with a sharp eye to discern shades of Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others who helped forge the American system. For instance:

• Once deep in the Appalachian wilderness, the foursome find themselves in an environment that’s far removed from the rule of law and social contract (see Locke, Rousseau) that forms the foundation of most Western political thought. As such, it’s very near to Hobbes’ “state of nature” – a primitive place where life is brutal, and in which one only has the right to that which he can personally seize and defend. I see this as representative of what I’d call the “first stage” of human political interaction, a very nearly pre-political state in which force reposes solely with the individual, what Hobbes calls the “war of all against all.” The only alliances are those of mutual interest, forged at a moment’s notice. We see this fact starkly illustrated when the grizzled, armed hillbillies conspire with a glance to sodomize and dominate at will the softer, more genteel suburbanites without regard to the laws of man, but in perfect accord with the immutable law of nature: Might makes right.
• Forced to fend for themselves without the rule of law to protect them, the strongest among the four (Lewis, an archetypal alpha male) seizes command of the group. Recognizing that the situation he warned Ed about earlier in the film – that moment when the system fails – is upon them, he acts forcefully and unilaterally based on the dictates of natural law. However, instead of acting solely in his own interests (i.e., forcing Drew to paddle right past Bobby and Ed’s predicament), he risks much to wield deadly force on behalf of his friends. To me, this represents a shift toward what I call the “second stage” of human politics, something more akin to a tribal dynamic than a purely self-interested one. Under this system, alphas have not only the right to a greater share of force by virtue of their strength – but the responsibility to benevolently wield that force in the best interests of their tribe. These are the beginnings of a State, in my opinion.
• Once Bobby’s buggerer is skewered and the other hillbilly is driven off, the hapless four are forced to reckon with the aftermath of Lewis’ homicidal action. Though grateful, they are predictably divided about how to handle the killing. Idealistic Drew argues for taking the body downstream to the police, claiming that their situation is a “matter of the law” and is beyond debate. On the other hand, Lewis argues for burying the body as he rails, “What law? Where’s the law, Drew?” What’s interesting here is that Lewis – who’s clearly capable of bullying the others to his position (or killing those who dissent from it) – relinquishes his power as the head-of-tribe and himself suggests a vote on the matter. I see this as a “third stage” of political evolution, the final step toward a classic Democratic system in which those of disparate power to wield force under natural law are nevertheless granted an equal say in deciding how force is wielded.

So there it is: The metaphorical evolution of most forms of Western politics. A journey from a natural state of total, savage liberty to one of civilized democracy in which, through a “social contract,” the strong cede to the will of the collective their natural right to force in exchange for the protection of a system in which all are equal, and that wields force on behalf of the collective good...

All in a tense-as-a-snare-drum 18 minutes of one of America’s greatest screen thrillers.

However, this brief lesson in political history isn’t the end of Deliverance’s timeless significance – but only the beginning. There’s one more under-the-radar principle evident in the film that takes its linear progression of political evolution from merely “Western” in scope to distinctly American...

It’s the most important of all American political tenets, one that it’s entirely fitting that I should be writing to you about on Independence Day weekend.

It’s a largely overlooked key component of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution – yet nevertheless, it’s the main thread of our national fabric itself.

It’s a step beyond democracy, without which we wouldn’t exist, or we wouldn’t be us.

And though all but forgotten, it’s a principle that can protect us from getting the full “Ned Beatty treatment” during the present reign of America’s new Marxist regime...

That is, if We the People still have the sharpness of mind to recognize it as our right, and the iron in our stomachs to exercise it.

Find out (or be reminded) what this greatest of Deliverance’s political lessons is – and why you need to know about it now more than ever – in part two of this series. Stay tuned...

Always delivering reason,

Jim Amrhein
Contributing Editor, Taipan Daily

Other Related Topics: Democracy , Jim Amrhein

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