This Isn’t Nam, There Are Rules

Summary: One of the most famous scenes in the movie The Big Lebowski is when Walter accuses Smokey of having his toe over the line when he rolled. Walter’s adamant that the frame be marked with a zero. Smokey, not surprisingly, disagrees. “Bullshit, Walter!” is his exact response. Then, Walter says one of the most quotable lines in cinema history. “This is not Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.” The Dude tries to find a compromise. ‘... it's Smokey. So his toe slipped over a little, it's just a game.” Walter’s not having it, though, because he lives by a code that requires everything to be fair, even to the point that he lets his ex-wife use him as a free dog sitter because, in Walter’s mind, that’s fair. He says, “This is a league game. This determines who enters the next round robin, am I wrong?” Walter is so committed to this sense of justice and fairness that when Smokey continues to insist that he wasn’t over the line, Walter pulls a pistol out of his bowling bag and says, “Smokey my friend, you're entering a world of pain.” Smokey turns to The Dude to reign in his bowling partner but Walter doesn’t give The Dude a chance to respond. Instead, he primes the gun, points it at Smokey’s head, and screams, “HAS THE WHOLE WORLD GONE CRAZY? AM I THE ONLY ONE HERE WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THE RULES? MARK IT ZERO!” The thing is as ridiculous as Walter’s actions seem, and no sane person would condone his brandishing a gun for something as inconsequential as a foot foul, there are a lot of people who share the same level of anger over injustices they perceive to have been committed against them. Some of those perceptions are grossly false and the anger being displayed is ridiculous to the point of being disturbing. Others, though, are very real and in some cases, deadly. The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55902070">people of Myanmar </a>saw their democratically-elected government overthrown by their military. As they’ve protested this past week, people have died. Ethiopia has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56263704">kidnapped and subsequently released reporters </a>who told of possible genocide in Tigray. And in Nigeria, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56212645">kidnappers who target students</a> at boarding schools are being rewarded with cash and cars when they give the students back. All over the world, we can find injustice of the most extreme variety, but a lot of things that are not fair, are not right, are actually legal and the people being cheated often feel they have little recourse in solving the problem. We’re not going to be able to address all the injustice in the world in one day, but let’s take a few minutes to shine a light on some of those legal-but-exploitive actions that target the most vulnerable people among us: the poor. This Isn’t A New Problem One of the stories carried in all four of the Xian gospels is that of Jesus angrily, and to some degree violently chasing the money changers out of the temple. The story is unique for many reasons, one of the big ones being that this is one of the few times where Jesus lets loose with his anger and takes an action that appears anti-social. There is some disagreement as to whether this happened once or twice, based on different terms used in the gospels, but those ancient charges seem based more on a misunderstanding of that society and the language around it. One thing for certain is that there were severe consequences for Jesus’ actions. Within a week of this event, he was dead.

This Isn’t Nam, There Are Rules

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