Global
Oppression has many layers and one of the most significant and difficult to overcome is internalized oppression. This conditioning, operating on conscious and subconscious levels, leads us to choose what hurts us because we’ve been taught to believe that we have no other options.
For those of us conditioned as passive enablers of white supremacy, we don’t tend to enter the fight in earnest until we feel we have skin in the game. It wasn’t until Mike Brown’s killer Darren Wilson didn’t even get indicted by the grand jury that I realized I was also a piece and the entire game was rigged. The realization left me so disturbed that I physically felt compelled to action. It wasn’t until much later that I understood that my inability to see the humanity in my own people from the point of a life being taken, rather than the point of an institution “failing,” was contributing to the problem of action without movement.
President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw from Syria has been greeted, predictably, with an avalanche of condemnation culminating in last Thursday’s resignation by Defense Secretary James Mattis. The Mattis resignation letter focused on the betrayal of allies, though it was inevitably light on details, suggesting that the Marine Corps General was having some difficulty in discerning that American interests might be somewhat different than those of feckless and faux allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia that are adept at manipulating the levers of power in Washington and in the media. Mattis clearly appreciates that having allies is a force multiplier in wartime but fails to understand that it is a liability otherwise as the allies create an obligation to go to war on their behalf rather than in response to any actual national interest.
"There's millions of commies in the freedom fight
"Yelling for Lenin and civil rights
"How do I know? I read it in the *Daily News*"
—Tom Paxton
Writer/director Adam McKay’s Vice, an all-star biographical movie about Dick Cheney is among Hollywood’s top 2018 political pictures. It’s utterly uncanny how Christian Bale completely disappears into his role as the former vice president, just as John C. Reilly does as Oliver Hardy in another biopic being released in America during the holiday season, Stan & Ollie. With his bravura performance Bale has Cheney’s look, mannerisms and sound down to perfection and at times, when Bale is onscreen one feels as if he/she is almost watching a documentary or the TV news and not an actor in a feature. How Bale transmogrified himself from playing Batman to fat man Cheney is truly a feat of astounding acting for the ages, reminiscent of Robert De Niro’s star turn in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 Raging Bull.
A grim “Red Line” has been crossed. But not the one Donald wants.
He’s unexpectedly talking about troop withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, offering a welcome glimmer for peace.
But he’s also taken a Great Leap into the TrumpExit abyss.
Donald meant his “Red Line” to warn Robert Mueller away from his decades of bankruptcy, theft, and ruble-laundering.
All that’s crumbling. Mueller’s “report” so far has been a devastating onslaught of indictments and convictions.
If the new Democratic House majority pursues Trump’s tax returns and laundered mob money, calls for impeachment will become a deafening roar.
But there’s much more. Trump’s insane decision to shut the government has shaken even many Republicans. That hate-crazed banshees like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter could scream down the White House is a reality too terrifying even for many at Fox “News.” Visuals of young innocents being tortured and murdered have moved the madness even deeper.
The markets have reacted. Trump now hates his recent appointee to the Federal Reserve. He even distrusts his own son-in-law, a kindred grifter if there ever was one.
Shot in glorious black and white, Cold War’s helmer Pawel Pawlikowski’s won the 2018 Cannes Film Festival’s Best Director award and the film was nominated for Cannes’ prestigious Palme d’Or. Cold War won six European Film Awards and as of this writing has won a total of 20 prizes and been nominated for another 32. In 2015 Pawlikowski’s Ida was nommed for a cinematography Oscar and earned the Best Foreign Language Academy Award (Ida was Golden Globe-nominated in the same category). Cold War is currently Poland’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar (although it was completely overlooked by the Golden Globes).
“They must kill and continue to kill, strange as it may seem, in order not to know that they are killing.” — Rene Girard, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World
Socially sanctioned killing is called war. The word “war” may be the most powerful word in human history, because it creates a mask of respectability for — that is, it conceals — the dehumanization and mass slaughter of a designated enemy, along with limitless environmental contamination. When we’re “waging war,” we have given ourselves permission not to know what we are doing, even if what we’re doing is putting life on Planet Earth in danger of extinction.
Say hello to Yemen, the possible future of all of us!
If two hours and 23 minutes of nearly nonstop noisy action, violence, CGI and other eye-popping special effects in a superhero movie is your thing, then you will love the mind-boggling Aquaman. It’s put-your-brain-into-neutral for some mindless entertainment mostly beneath the waves at the Lost Continent of Atlantis, DC Comics and Warner Bros. style.
On the other hand, if you prefer character studies, well-written dialogue, originality and good stories, go see another film, such as If Beale Street Could Talk or Vice. At least seven screenwriters share credits (or the blame) for this overblown oceanic epic that is extremely derivative - and not only of a superhero franchise dating back to Aquaman’s 1941 debut during the Golden Age of comics. Indeed, the screen scribbling kleptomaniacs seem to have plagiarized Greek and Roman mythology as far back as Homer’s The Odyssey, as well as Plato, who wrote about Atlantis in Socratic dialogues.