Wingnut Memento
by Tom Sullivan
"What does a Memento remake look like in 2015?" asks The Verge. You remember Memento, Christopher Nolan's 2000 neo-noir film about Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) who is hunting down his wife's killer? Shelby lost his ability to form new, short-term memories in the same attack and so hangs onto "clues" by tattooing them on his body and scrawling notes on Polaroid photographs. Shelby's condition makes him easy prey for people who would manipulate him to their own ends. Shelby winds up killing the wrong man. He had already killed his wife's killer. Then he immediately forgot.
It's a shame, isn't it, that tattoos aren't more popular with Republican politicians? They are still struggling with the blowback from when after September 11 they killed the wrong country and created Daesh in the process. It took Barack Obama to get Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden played the war hawks like a fiddle. Now it's Daesh's turn. They know just which buttons to push, too, and they pushed them last weekend in Paris. Republicans responded as predictably as Pavlov's dog.
Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to shut down mosques.
Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz (whose father was a Cuban refugee) wants to stop resettlement of Syrian refugees.
Republican Presidential candidate Jeb Bush thinks we should let in only proven Christians.
Republican Presidential candidate John Kasich wants to fund a new, government agency to promote Judeo-Christian values around the world. (There might be a slight upholding-the-constitution problem with that, but these are stone killers we're talking about, right?)
House Republicans want to bar women and children fleeing death at the hands of Daesh from entering the United States.
Here's a memento that won't help them remember how well things worked out last time:
Maybe a mug with “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” on it?