Comments on: Connecting the dots

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 17:12:06 +0000

Greg: What I’ve done is take an earlier speech by the same character in GWH (here and substituted a few references. The point is that actually at this point in the film, the Matt Damon character isn’t necessarily speaking sincerely; he’s just decided that he doesn’t want to work for the NSA, and he’s reeling off a patter-speech from the books he’s memorised, just as he did in the bar earlier.

By: Greg Hunter

Greg Hunter — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 12:50:23 +0000

D – It’s all been done – BNL. Maybe it is not obvious to you, but people can come to the same conclusions about the world with out reading the books on that subject. The books become the voice that they did not articulate, but were drawn to by life experience. Please try to view the world from someone else’s perspective.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 07:07:57 +0000

I think a decent case can be made that the Damon character is speaking ironically at this point, by the way …. certainly, this speech invites the rejoinder: “Of course that’s your contention. You’re a first year grad student. You just got finished readin’ some pop antiglobalisation book—Michael Moore probably probably. You’re gonna be convinced of that ‘til next month when you get to Noam Chomsky, and then you’re gonna be talkin’ about how the real issue is global hegemony and media domination. That’s gonna last until next year—you’re gonna be in here regurgitating Amartya Sen and talking about the necessary preconditions of development in viable political institutions.” “So Asians ‘will work for fifteen cents a day with no bathroom breaks’? You got that from Pat Buchanan ‘The Death of the West’ page 98, right? Yeah, I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or do you…is that your thing? You come into a bar. You read some obscure passage and then pretend…you pawn it off as your own idea just to impress some girls and embarrass my friend? See the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you’re gonna start doin’ some thinkin’ on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One: don’t do that. And two: You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a f——n’ education you coulda’ got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library. ”

By: Robert Schwartz

Robert Schwartz — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 00:55:00 +0000

Ophelia nailed it.

By: Antoni Jaume

Antoni Jaume — Thu, 25 Sep 2003 23:07:03 +0000

I must be falling asleep, but isn’t the point that if the boy does the work a the NSA , then the bad things happen? DSW

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Thu, 25 Sep 2003 17:55:59 +0000

Is Thomas Friedman ever anything but glib and flip?

By: JRoth

JRoth — Thu, 25 Sep 2003 17:48:28 +0000

d-squared forgive me for defending (or explicating) Good Will Hunting, but the key point isn’t to be anti-free trade; it’s to be anti-the bastards who set things up to benefit themselves, and don’t give a shit about anyone else. I think Friedman’s point is related in part because he suggests that the collapse in Cancun indicates that “the bastards…” don’t care about free trade, nor about Will’s buddy from Southie, nor his buddy’s enemy in wherever. I might add that this is, fundamentally, the position of nearly all those who are lumped together as “anti-free trade.” The free trade that dan and Brad D and others all extoll is a potentially excellent thing. Not unlike peace, love, and understanding. The trouble is that the institutions that are in place to promote/enforce “free trade” are run by “the bastards…”, and therefore are much more likely to result in Will’s scenario of a poor, wounded vet than in, say, Brad’s fantasy of a single mother with ample disposable income and a pen-pal correspondence with the upwardly-mobile Guandong sweatshopper who makes her clothes.

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Thu, 25 Sep 2003 16:04:35 +0000

Friedman is saying that free trade is a good thing, indeed vital because without it people in the underdeveloped world will get poorer and angrier. Matt Damon is saying free trade is a bad thing, because the honest working stiff in the US will get ripped off, and the working stiff in the third world won’t be any better off, or will be better off because he won’t play fair (>he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks< ). Not the same thing at all. Is this just a cunning ploy to get us sympathising with Friedman?

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Thu, 25 Sep 2003 15:51:43 +0000

>It’ll be some guy from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ‘cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks.< Brief, and entirely accurate, summary: Free trade is an elite plot to destroy the jobs of the patriotic working class and deliver those jobs to foreigners living in hostile countries in Africa. Not a terribly admirable judgement, and not one with an awful lot of supporting data. Matt Damon says it, and so does Pat Buchanan, and so do all the worst EU politicians, and so did Bush when he imposed steel tariffs. That said, it is always enjoyable to ask right-wing warmongers why they haven’t spent any time in the military- see Mark Steyn’s current mailbox, for example.

By: Maria

Maria — Thu, 25 Sep 2003 10:36:51 +0000

Boo hiss! I bet, with my massive knowledge of movie star trivia, that I can make a Matt Damon connection in practically everything I write… Sigh, he’s just dreamy.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 25 Sep 2003 09:48:42 +0000

I am not at all sure that this liking of Matt Damon is official editorial policy.