1988 Becomes 2023

I saw part of a PBS special on Olympia Dukakis, and I tuned in just as she was winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 1987 film “Moonstruck.” The Oscars were in April, 1988, and as she graciously and excitedly accepted her award, she said something like, “Let’s Go, Michael!”

She was exhorting her cousin, Michael Dukakis, who was on his way to winning the Democratic nomination for President. He called her after the show, and he was so proud of her. What a golden moment, when it looked like a bright, capable, and very honorable man might be elected President, and end the “Greed is good” ’80’s, and perhaps bring back liberalism to where it had not been for many years.

Michael Dukakis was a true liberal, who described himself as “a card-carrying member of the ACLU.” He said that he was against the death penalty. How quaint that seems, where a candidate was expected to express his position on the death penalty. No one is asked that now, most likely because the Republican Party has not been demanding that the media grill the Democratic nominee about his or her position on that.

But they grilled Dukakis, didn’t they? In fact, the Republicans were determined to make the 1988 campaign about it, and crime-related issues. Can anyone forget the one Presidential debate in 1988? (George H.W. Bush would only agree to one). Maybe ninety minutes to decide the fate of the country; and moderator Bernard Shaw, his facial expression gleaming with his pride at the question, asked ” If your wife Kitty were raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty for the murderer?”

What an absolutely appalling question. A classless attempt to put Dukakis in a “double bind.” If he says, “no,” he is an emasculated unfeeling liberal wimp who will not even want to try to avenge the rape and murder of his wife, If he says, “yes,” he is a hypocrite, demanding rules which he would not follow. This is the question that Shaw wanted to make the first of the debate, and set the tone, which it did.

And Dukakis did not handle the question well, as no one would, though he later said that he should have, they had prepared for it. But try to take two minutes to explain that you do not believe in the death penalty, banned throughout most of Europe,; and that the emotional reaction to a personal situation should not be allowed to subsume the principle. It is very difficult, particularly when you know that Republicans, and newspeople like Shaw and Ted Koppel (“You just don’t get it, do you, Governor?” he said to him when he showed up for a 90-minute interview which Bush would not appear for) would hammer away at him no matter what he said.

So that was the campaign where the death penalty (left to each state to decide its laws on) somehow became the major issue in a presidential race. Because the Republicans wanted it to be, and because the media always takes its cue from them. And it was even worse than that. The Republican campaign people, led by Lee Atwater, and then some operatives who now show up on MSNBC to lament how far to the Right that the Republican Party has gone, one of them writing a book, “It Was All A Lie,” thought that their best chance to beat Dukakis, was to paint him as a pointy-headed liberal who was soft on crime.

The death penalty issue was an offshoot of the “Willie Horton issue,” which was actually about the fact that the Massachusetts Parole Board (which was independent of Governor Dukakis), had paroled Horton, who then later attacked a couple in their home. The lesson the Republicans wanted to squeeze out of that, was that Dukakis was “soft on crime,” whatever that means, and that if he became President, Black people like Horton would be allowed to rampage into homes, to rape, kill, and threaten.

It was meekly pointed out by Democrats that the parole board which oversees federal prisoners, had also paroled some prisoners during the Reagan Administration, who committed violent crimes after being released. Reagan and VP Bush, like Governor Dukakis, had no power over the decisions made by the parole boards. But that was ignored, because the Republicans almost always call the tune; and they had a narrative that Dukakis was soft on crime, soft on Black criminals, whereas GHW Bush was a real man, taller, more athletic, and living at least part of the time in Texas, not Massachusetts, home of liberals.

So that became the 1988 campaign. All about crime, the death penalty, flag burning. Republicans once again arrogated to themselves the mantle of “the party of law and order.” What Republicans have ever done to lessen crime is obscure, but they love to talk tough. And just as with the other absurd portrait which cast Republicans as fighting for liberty, while Democrats were appeasers and pacifists, the general populace went along with the narrative which has been used by Republicans and their media for most of the last hundred years.

It is 35 years since that ignominious disgrace of a presidential campaign. And here are the Republicans, again intending to make “soft on crime,” and “law and order” the primary focus in the upcoming campaign. It is so easy for them to do. They just charge any Democratic President, or Democratic nominee who was governor, with allowing crime and criminals to run rampant. They then contend that they, the Republicans,, will crack down on crime. Of course the statistics never bear that out, but it doesn’t matter at all to them, and the media is willing to let them pick the issues in every campaign.

So they’ve got it all teed up. Their issues are going to be…law and order! Black mayors and “woke” people are allowing waves of crime. Weak federal polices allow bad hombres to cross the border to commit crimes and dispense fentanyl. Liberals want to take your guns away, so that you can’t use them to…um, stop criminals. We need tough law enforcement people to stand up, “back the blue.” We need to stop law enforcement, FBI, DOJ, from, um..fighting crime. We attacked the police on January 6, because they were against us We don’t discuss mass shootings with assault weapons, because we worship guns, because they keep us free from…the police

It’s easy to mock or eviscerate their arguments, but they are emotional, not logical. Put in blunt terms, they are saying, as they have always said, “We are White people who are under attack from various outsiders. Blacks, Hispanics, Jewish people, Antifas, Wokes, people who would subject us to a liberal agenda full of sexual weirdness, groomers, people who tell us what we can’t read, when it is we who should be telling people what they can’t read. We are in danger of losing our rightful power, and we will do everything necessary, including shooting people, elected officials, unless we get our way. So you had damn well better let us get our way.”

Then they sit back and wait for every crime report, and blame it on the Democrats. In a similar manner to how they blamed every price rise on Biden and his party, and then when prices went down, they ignored it, or said, “So what, they are still higher than they were.” And so is employment, job growth, and wages, but they ignore that, and the media goes with their framing. Just like they wanted to scare everybody with the migrant caravans ready to cross the border and commit depredations.

So the point is, that no matter how factually wrong or logically absurd their positions are, they go right ahead. And every time President Biden sticks his head outside, they are there to scream questions at him. I don’t know if they will agree to any presidential debates next year, but if they do, you can count on most of the questions being about crime and law and order. It’s as if Republicans always win the toss, and get to choose whether they want to kick off or receive.

Democrats really need to be prepared for this. Why don’t we start out accusing them? Saying over and over again that the massive rise in homicides is due to Republicans’ failure to vote for legislation banning or at least limiting assault weapons. Show videos every day of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, and the attacks on police officers. Talk about the efforts to assassinate Democratic officials.

There are other issues, of course. Abortion and birth control rights! Climate! Totalitarians, people who want to force critics to register and be monitored. Support of democracies vs. support of dictatorships. The key is to attack now, not wait until the Republicans set the agenda, and then have to try to defend or deflect. And if people respond to slogans or catchwords, then come up with a few, but make sure they are effective.

The 1988 election campaign was the second-worst I have ever seen, behind 2016. And the one thing that Republicans can do well, is to create some kind of narrative where it all fits in for the average voter. Democrats need to actually use the “crime issue” against the Republicans. It’s not easy to do, but it is important not to let the Republicans choose the battle terrain and the weapons, and to automatically get to wear the uniforms with the “law and order” emblems on them.

Movies Past and Present

The Oscars telecast will be next Sunday. Not that I watch most of it, but it is fun to see who wins, and who might hit one of the people on stage. Of course, there are so many movie and television awards shows, that it seems almost anticlimactic, we know who and what are likely to win. Still, it is a spectacle, and I enjoy seeing clips on TCM and other stations, of Oscars shows from decades ago, even if the style and jokes and most importantly, the quality of the movies, was better then. Yes, I know, ‘get off my lawn,” but it’s true, they were!

I will indulge myself a bit, by telling you my favorite movies. I am not any kind of movie expert; I could scarcely tell a long shot from a tracking shot. But just like anyone, I have my favorite movies, and then those I think are very overrated. At this point, I don’t see many movies in the theatres. That is partly due to trying to be safe, and also because there are few current movies that I want to see, which is a shame.

This year, I have seen a few, the ones I wanted to see. So I may have missed something great, though I doubt it. “Everything Everywhere All At Once” I will never see, I am not even curious enough to give it a try. I absolutely do not like the current movies which always seem to win now, which are described as “mind-bending,” “weird and wild,” ”hilarious yet moving,” etc. I saw “Parasite,” and that was enough of that. Someone whose opinion I greatly respect, saw “Everything,” and thought it was not good at all; and that, plus my initial sense of what it is, was enough for me. But it will win.

As I mentioned when it came out, I think that “The Fabelmans” is a very good movie. Honest and humorous and touching, and still very entertaining. Yet it probably will win nothing, which is not only wrong, but a little unsettling; Is the “New Academy” disinclined to give major awards to “Jewish-themed movies?” Or is it just that the voters keep wanting to reward strange movies with foreign directors, finding the old-fashioned type of story boring?

Put it this way: “The Fabelmans” was a much more enjoyable picture than “Ordinary People,” also about a family, which won “Best Picture.” One of the awards shows this year nominated its actors and director: Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Judd Hirsch, Stephen Spielberg, and the movie, for top awards; and it won none of them, including “Best Ensemble Performance.” Rather amazing, in a negative way.

Well, I think it is a very fine, old-fashioned type of movie with modern touches. I am not saying that it will be considered a classic, but it is the kind of movie where you leave the theatre with a smile, as they used to say.

Other than that, I would hope that Justin Hurwitz wins for his brilliant score for “Babylon.” I will root for Austin Butler in “Elvis.” I would like to see Spielberg win, but he likely will not.

Leaving the present, I will list some of my favorite movies and actors and such; not that everyone does not have their own opinions on these things, but it is fun to do..

Favorite Movie of All Time; “Out of the Past.” Others high up there: “Vertigo,” “Kiss Me Deadly,” “Random Harvest,” “Casablanca,” “The Graduate,” and I’m sure there are others I am not thinking of right now.

Best Movie Musical: “The Music Man.”

Best Mystery Movie; “The Last of Sheila.”

Best Adaptation of a Shakespeare Play: This is very difficult, but I’ll pick “Julius Caesar,” from 1953.

Best Western: For an elegaic Western, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” For a straight story, “Warlock,” and “The Garden of Evil.” Also, I had thought that “High Noon” might have been overrated, but I saw it again a few weeks ago, and it deserves its accolades. Gary Cooper is superb, and the tension is present throughout. And the partial allegory of the McCarthy hearings; do you stand up, or hide away, is still so meaningful.

Best Musical Score: Two very different movies; “Somewhere in Time,” John Barry; and “Vertigo,” Bernard Herrmann.

Best Comedy:”Monty Python’s Life of Brian.’

Best Movie in the so-called “Horror” genre; “The Innocents,” adapted from “The Turn of the Screw,” by Henry James. I will mention that I taped a movie I had never seen, “Scream of Fear,” with an excellent cast, and I have only watched some of it so far, and it looks very atmospheric and unsettling.

Best Adaptation of a non-Shakespeare play: “The Barretts of Wimpole Street.” “The Petrified Forest.”

Best Dance Scene in movie: Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly in “Brigadoon,” the song “The Heather on the Hill.”

Best Adventure Movie: “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”

Favorite Female Actor: Jean Simmons, Bette Davis, Eleanor Parker, Norma Shearer.

Favorite Male Actor: Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Leslie Howatd.

I’m sure I will think of more categories and choices, but I’ll list these for now. Just think, how many movie have been made; how many stars; how many visual and aural memories? I would like a return to movies with compelling narratives, and intelligent dialogue; they exist, but seem to be less each year. And of course the pandemic has really hurt the ability to make Independent films which can at least break even. Otherwise, we’ll be limited to Marvel films, and arty ones which make little coherent sense. And of course Tom Cruise, whose “Top Gun Maverick” film may have saved the movie business, they say. I think that literate screenplays, with dialogue you remember, are what are most missing from movies today. But there are still a few good ones each year.

Liars

We have read and heard all about George Santos, the new Congressman from New York, who has lied about virtually everything, or maybe absolutely everything, in his claimed background. Yet despite about 80% of his constituents polled as wanting him to resign, he goes nowhere; and Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans will do absolutely nothing, other than taking him off some committees and putting him on others. They want his vote, and more than that, they are virtually all just fine with lying, if it gets them where they want to be.

Now we learn about another new Republican Congressman, Andrew (Andy) Ogles, from Tennessee. who brazenly lied about all sorts of aspects of his college record, and his career background. Ogles has called himself an economist, but his transcript shows that he took one economics course in his life, at a community college, and got a “C” in it. He apparently failed (maybe he didn’t show up to them, because it is very hard to get an “F” at any college) the nine political science courses he took.

He had claimed to have majored in International Relations (my mother legitimately majored in that, with a minor in Languages), but his transcript showed that he graduated with a major in “Liberal Studies,” which Middle Tennessee State University allows for someone who never picked a major. Actually, it appears that Ogles left the school, then got a degree ten years or so later, through a “Distance Learning” program

Ogles lied about his background, saying that he was an expert in sex trafficking cases, and various other things which were not true. In fact, there appears to be almost nothing which he did not invent or wildly embellish in his background and history.

This of course will not get him removed from the House, either. When first confronted with his lies, Ogles actually blamed liberals for making a big deal out of a little mistake. But then when all the lies were revealed, he has stopped saying that, for now.

We could go through all of his fabrications, which Ogles first tried to pass off as bad memory, but it’s not worth it. Nothing is going to happen to him that would benefit the country; and even if it somehow did, they would put another one in there. Ogles is described as “Far Right.” Of course, and undoubtedly with all the sanctimonious speeches about virtue and honesty and trust and all the things that the Far Right trumpets as proof of their patriotism.

Politicians have an ignoble history of lying, though not all. And obviously, some lies are more trivial than others. Ogles, like Santos first tried to do, has said that he did it for the sake of brevity, or that he just made an error. Santos said that everyone inflates their resume, which is not true; and Santos just invented his, he might as well have said that he was heroic at the battle of San Juan Hill, or with Lord Nelson at Trafalgar.

It does seem rather clear that Republicans have unmoored themselves from any sense of responsibility for telling the truth about anything. We’re hearing about (as if we did not already know) how Fox “News” lies all the time, it is built into their model. We would say that Donald Trump was the biggest fabricator, pathological liar, of all time, but he didn’t start this. At this point, the only possible motivation for a Republican political figure not to lie, is if he or she didn’t think it would get them anything.

Why do people lie? In general, outside of the absolutely psychologically warped ones, it is because they think it will get them something, or save them from something they don’t want. We can discuss the nature of lying; and I read at least one book on it, which meant well, but did not answer much. The book, and I forget the author, tried to make a case for the value of telling the truth. And one can certainly do that, but it is an abstract argument, if it comes from some version of a cost-benefit analysis. I think she emphasized that if you lie, you are showing that you do not respect or value the other person, and thus the relationship is perhaps ineradicably damaged.

The most time-honored arguments for telling the truth are either religious, or secular moral, or the concept that if you lie, then you are countenancing people lying to you, wherein all trust and reliability breaks down. But for the habitual liar, there is always the idea of what he can immediately gain from the lie; and also, that his sense of self-worth, his whole self-identity, is at risk if he doesn’t try to protect it by lying about what he is, or what he has or hasn’t done. They don’t usually realize it, of course, it is on an unconscious level.

How could one try to exhort someone to always tell the truth about significant things? Someone could talk about Hell, and try to scare them into it. One might read from some of the parables or childhood stories, which emphasize that if you lie, soon no one will believe anything you say. One could quote particularly good poetic verses. But there is something that goes on in the minds of these Far Right people, who make a career out of lecturing people about morality, and the terrible wages of sin, where their own lies are not only acceptable, but to them, necessary. Of course, they usually don’t call them lies, but let any liberal misstate anything, and they are calling for impeachment, hanging, the stocks and the whipping posts.

Apart from the mild humor in hearing about Ogles, there is a sense of futility, where we see people utterly making up resumes, backgrounds; claiming they didn’t say something, until it is shown on tape. I heard someone the other day say that the people who watch Fox have come to reject any story or fact they don’t like, by simply saying, “Fake News.” That becomes a self-constructed impenetrable shield which blocks out anything they don’t want to hear, or even consider. That would be analogous to absolute fundamentalist religion, or a cult.

The frustration comes not just from seeing these people get away with it, but in knowing that for most of us, we have tried to be honest about our educational or career achievements, and what we tell other people about ourselves. And we rely on others to be as honest, that would seem to be a legitimate human goal. But we as a species are falling far short of that, and there is nothing, outside of possibly religion, that can change that, and it certainly has not. And often, it is those who want to tell everyone how religious they are, who lie with not an ounce of guilt about it.

So is morality a lost cause? “Might makes Right”? Or “God is on the side of the one who has the most guns”? Is getting what you want, the answer to any moral dilemma? For Santos and Ogles it is, that is obvious. And there are many more of them. What did Al Franken write about lies and the lying liars who tell them? That seemed like a rather dramatic description, at the time, but it now seems that Franken was being nothing but completely honest about what they are.

“The Both-Sides Game”

Let me introduce you to the “Both Sides” game

You may already know it, but I’ll tell you all the same

You see it on TV and the printed page

It’s always so useful, it’s become all the rage

You use it to prove that your side’s never wrong

It’s just another viewpoint, different words for a song

If you want to sell papers, or get them to stay tuned,

You can’t upset either side, or else you’ll be ruined

So whatever the issue, whatever the claim,

You’ll just “both-sides” it, so they both are to blame.

You don’t value logic, you don’t look for truth

You let them decide that in the voting booth

There’s nothing that’s wrong, there’s nothing that’s right

It’s all just perspective, what’s day and what’s night

One side says this, another says that,

And you give them equal merit, like slips in a hat

Now, I’ll give you an example, just so you can see,

That no one “both-sides” better, than the famed NYT.

(Jonathan Weissman, writing in the New York Times: “Democrats see East Palestine as action and consequences: rail regulations were gutted, blame assigned. Republicans see a more operatic narrative, a forgotten town in a flyover state struggling against an uncaring mega-corporation and an unseeing government.”).

So you take a tragic story, and go past the narrative,

To get to your usual theme of both-sides comparative.

You say that Democrats want to focus on the sequence,

While Republicans see operatic themes, which gives them depth and credence.

You say that Democrats are stuck on the train off the tracks,

While Republicans have an aesthetic sense, which their rival lacks

What you always want to do when you play a “both sides” part,

Is to concentrate just on style, like reviewing a piece of art

Thus, what actually has happened, is less important to know

Than the fact that in your words, they each see a different tableau

To the Democrats, it’s the faulty train, and the governor’s toxic burn,

While Republicans want to give it a more elegaic turn

The effect of this, of course, is that it’s just another contrast,

No one’s right, and no one’s wrong; the train recedes into the past.

So you can “both-sides” anything, by taking out the gist,

And inserting in your story, your own psychological twist

Both sides are flawed, you say, they can only see a part

Of this complex reality that’s at this story’s heart

So Democrats can’t escape the blame, in some cosmological sense,

And Republicans have an equal chance to win their audience.

You can do this endlessly, with every theme or story,

Ultimately you frame it all as just another quest for glory

And no matter what’s at stake, or what anyone might say,

Your goal is to cancel it all out, so as to write another day

You know the Right will hate you if you ever give them blame,

And you want your job, and you want your perqs, and you want your front-page name

So you wait for the newest piece of news, and you know just what to do,

You’ll immediately write the both-sides piece that your bosses want from you

But one day you’ll find that “both-sides” means only the powerful will win,

And then there’s only one side, and they won’t let you in.

But for now, it’s a comfortable living, where you try not to tell dark from light,

And you’ll never admit that it’s not just a game, and that usually only one side is right.

At the end, when you count up your money, or think of your status or fame

You’ll realize that you lost us the country, by playing the “Both-Sides Game.”

The Biden Presidency after Two Years

Joe Biden has been President for just over two years. During his rather amazingly fruitful tenure, we have seen the economy get much stronger than it was when he took office. The unemployment number is currently the lowest in history, though it may go up just slightly in the upcoming report. Job growth has been remarkable. Consumer spending is strong.

We haven’t really seen the effect of the bill which will pour billions into infrastructure projects. The only negative economic number is inflation, and that is declining. And that has been a worldwide problem, due primarily to the pandemic. Virtually any unbiased economist will say that.

And yet such is the relentless Republican noise machine, and such is the mostly reflexively echoing media, that Biden’s “Favorable” numbers are always below 50%. Republicans started attacking him from his first day in office, and that will only increase as the next election comes nearer. If there were a children’s story about some boy or girl who would always complain about everything, and always disagree with whatever someone else said, that would pretty much be what Republicans are like. They have no substantial things to complain about, and certainly no coherent ideas or plans; they just start complaining, equivalent to hoping that the parents (the voters, in this analogy) will get so tired of the complaining, that they will punish the target of it.

It is an embarrassment to any concept of a functioning republic. It is beyond-childish yelling and screaming and threatening. MTG and others call for secession. One could only hope. They wave their guns in the air. Every single thing that the Republican-controlled House (thank massive gerrymandering for that) does, is only for show, what the media likes to call “performative.” There is not one bit of policy or position behind it, just noise.

Not only has the economy substantially improved, by any halfway reasonable measuring stick, Biden has also stood up, as best he can, on important matters such as abortion rights, arresting climate change, limiting assault weapons, civil rights. Apparently these do not count for the people who keep rating Biden unfavorably.

We have witnessed many presidential regimes. Opinions can differ, but I would say that the only presidents whom I would rate more highly from what I experienced, are Clinton, and then Johnson, who tarnished so much of his great domestic legacy by escalating the Vietnam war. Kennedy was learning about the unreliability of the military officials, and might well have pulled us out of Vietnam, and become a great president, but he was tragically assassinated. The other presidents ranged from passable, to very bad, to would-be dictators. And yet here is Biden, and every week the media must tell us how low his Favorable numbers are.

I feel like I am watching some kind of surrealistic movie, where things are not meant to make sense; these are the kind which now invariably win Best Picture Oscars. I have no illusion that Biden is always right, or that there are not things I wish he would articulate better. But I like his foreign policy team; I very much appreciated his former Chief of Staff and Communications Director, and their loss will be felt. I think that he has mostly appointed very good people to Cabinet positions; the unfortunate exception might be his Attorney General, who unquestionably is a very decent and honorable man, but who seems so concerned about appearing partisan, that he does not do nearly enough to counter the most dangerous internal force in American history.

Biden has done a very commendable job with regard to Ukraine, the polar opposite of what his predecessor did. He has helped to re-establish alliances among democratic countries; and it is clear that the worldwide battle is between democracy and totalitarianism, with the Republican Party in America essentially being on the side of the totalitarians. In that sense, Biden is fighting two wars.

There are so many people shown on TV or in the polling, who appear to have this idea that Biden is a terrible president. This is so far from the truth as to be only attributable to a combination of ignorance, stupidity, and brainwashing by the nonstop Right-Wing attack apparatus. And we know that it will only get worse. Whatever Biden does or says is immediately criticized and mocked. I would ignore it, except that it has consequences.

The very grimly amusing thing is that under any Republican president, the various daily problems are mostly ignored, by them, and by the media. Did we get daily worry about the stock market, or any economic numbers, or crimes, under Republicans? Did any terrible event like the train derailment and aftermath in Ohio, get blamed on the President?

Again, this is like some eight-year-old kid trying to blame everything at school on his enemy. We laugh at that, but this continues each day. “Republicans charge that Biden caused this or that.” He didn’t shoot down the spy balloon fast enough. (If he had it shot down sooner, and the debris hit people or buildings, he caused all of that). He shouldn’t have shot down the other balloons. He hasn’t fixed immigration. (nobody, no president from either party has fixed it, but that is not the point for them).

Their big issues going into the next election, appear to be immigration, crime, and something they call “wokeness.” Crime is somehow blamed on Biden, or on Black mayors. That is where the wokeness thing comes in; it is an attempt to get White people to consider the Democratic Party to be full of Communists (they still use that term, even though they have no idea what it means in this era), Black lawbreakers and militants, Jewish people who only care about money, angry women. Essentially, they have been doing this since at least the 1920’s, and it is pathetic that this is all they have; but then again, it is what fascists usually have used as their betes noires, as they seek to install the totalitarian state which is their ultimate goal.

Biden is thus just the newest target, there will always be another, unless and until the totalitarians take over, or are greatly marginalized. Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom–we know what the Far Right which owns the Republican Party would say about them if they ran for president. Biden had to be the target, because he is the Democrat who is President.

I remember Trump making a speech to his supporters after the 2016 election, saying something like, “Now that we have won, you’re going to be less angry, right, you’re going to be happy?” As if he knew that he had unleashed something very dangerous, and then thought that he could control it. I do think that part of what Republicans do, is to yell and threaten so much, that maybe people will just give in and let them win, so they don’t have to endure all the imprecations and gun-waving and insurrections. Probably someone like Bannon has written an article about that tactic. “Drive them crazy, make every minute of their day full of anxiety, fear, and anger, and eventually they’ll let us win.”

But we can’t let them win. President Biden is certainly not perfect, but given the current political and media atmosphere, he is a model of decency, determination, and bravery, much like the people of the country he is trying to save from being taken over by brutal totalitarians. Both countries, actually. Ukraine and the United States of America.

A Few Things Going On in Our Country

I had written earlier about the immensely important race for the open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The top-two primary took place on Tuesday, and the two highest vote-getters were reasonable judicial moderate-to-liberal Janett Protasiewicz, and MAGA John Kelly. Kelly is supported by every anti-abortion group, and the Far Right powerful Uhlein family, which pours dark money into Wisconsin politics.

Protasiewicz actually received more votes than the two far Right candidates combined. However, Ben Wikler, the great strategist and organizer for Democrats in Wisconsin, points out that in the last major race for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, the liberal candidate led by nine points in internal polls of both candidates, but that a flood of dark money came in, and the conservative won by over 5,000 votes. That is the insidious power of dark money, running ads lying about the other candidate, and pouring them onto the airwaves, with no one able to know who funded them, or to even accuse them of lying.

We all know that the Citizens United case was one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in history, and may well have caused most of the bad things that we see in our country, if one follows the cause-and-effect skein. It is absolutely essential that Protasiewicz, win, or abortion will be virtually illegal in Wisconsin, based on an 1849 law. Wisconsin is just about the most gerrymandered state in the country, and that will continue. And it is not inconceivable that the Far Right Wisconsin state legislature will find ways to keep a Democratic victory in Wisconsin’s vote for President to not be certified,. All this is really at stake, so we must do what we can to help this from not happening. The election is on April 4. American democracy is literally on the ballot.

Did you all see Emily Kohrs on television? She was the foreperson of the grand jury that was called to investigate the allegations that former president Trump tried to interfere with the election in 2020, by demanding that the secretary of state of Georgia invent 12,000 or so ballots for him that did not exist.

Ms. Kohrs essentially had appointed herself as foreperson of the grand jury, because she was the only one who wanted the position. She admits that she did not vote in the elections of 2016 and 2020, but now said, in the long interview which she gave on TV, that she thought it was important to be the foreperson, and now to tell everyone her thoughts on the hearings. And she did, in a very weird interview, where she laughed, made strange faces, and acted as if she should never have been anywhere near this matter, much less the only person who has talked about the actual hearings.

She said that she loved Lindsey Graham, she thought that Rudy Giuliani was great, and Pat Cippoloni was wonderful. She said that there would be about a dozen indictments, some of famous people, some of not-so-famous. No one can absolutely decipher her actual intentions here. but there seem to be only two possibilities. She either is a fool, or she is trying to discredit the grand jury, and thus make it easy for the cases filed to be thrown out. Republicans are already on that path. Kohrs looks so much like another right-wing set-up, that it is hard to think that she is just weird. Things like this keep happening every time there is a hearing about a Supreme Court nominee, or an effort to sentence a Trump ally.

If one wanted to spend fifteen minutes being depressed, one could try to decide who would be a more awful and dangerous president, Trump or DeSantis. We’ve seen Trump; and a second term, where he would not have to worry about being re-elected, would be worse. DeSantis seems to me like the absolute model of an American fascist, yelling about “woke mobs,” and “woke agenda” which is somehow causing violence, which is going to be his major issue, the classic fascist attempt to gain power. I certainly cannot root for either of them to win the nomination, with the logic that the other would be even worse. Cyanide and strychnine. Good political ad, there!

As to President Biden, I think he will run, but the media is having fun with “what if he doesn’t run?”? scenarios. I would be quite upset to see him not run, because I don’t see a Democratic candidate who would get as many votes. Republicans’ best “skill” is derogating and smearing any new Democratic candidate. And they’ve got the trillions of dollars to do it.

Kevin McCarthy giving Tucker Carlson 41,000 hours of Capitol insurrection film, is almost incomprehensible, except that nothing is for Republicans. The Speaker of the House, which is a position supposed to represent the country, not a political cult, just gave those films only to a Far Right person on a Far Right station which now has essentially admitted that it makes up facts, and lies, to do with them what he wanted. I won’t bother to suggest what he will do with the films, except to try to doctor them, reframe them, try to create a narrative which has nothing to do with the reality of what happened on January 6, 2021.

The forces which exist, are far more than a battle between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. It is democracy vs. totalitarianism. Truth against lies. Reality vs. constructed illusion. Good vs. evil. Light vs. dark. Could it be viewed in any other way?

Denialism: Power, Profit, and Psychosis

You probably have heard about the election denier who was chosen by Michigan’s Republican Party to be the head of that party in the state. Her name is Kristina Karamo.

Ms. Karamo said in 2020 that she witnessed fraud when she was a poll challenger during the Presidential election. She said that Trump won the state of Michigan. Then she ran for Secretary of State for Michigan, and lost to incumbent Jocelyn Benson by fourteen points. She refused to concede that she lost. Following that, the Michigan Republican Party chose her as leader of the state party. Trump called her “a fearless election denier.”

Karamo had previously called herself an “anti-vaxxer,” on her personal websire. She has called abortion “child sacrifice.” Very unfortunately, she does not even stand out in her opinions or agenda, in this Republican Party. Or maybe she has the positions so that she has a chance to rise in the frightening cult that the Republican Party is.

Kari Lake of Arizona rose to prominence as host on right-wing media. She then ran for governor. She was a vocal election denier regarding the presidential election. Trump supported her in the governor’s race, which she was widely expected to win. When asked whether, if she lost, she would concede the race, she would always scornfully reply that she would win. She lost. As the early results came in, and she was slightly behind, she accused election officials of “slow rolling the count,” i.e., they knew she would win, but were counting votes for Democrat Katie Hobbs first, to make her look bad, or not let her claim her victory right away.

When the final count was finished, showing that she had been defeated, the first thing she did is to say on social media, “Arizonans know b.s. when they see it.” Of course she did not concede, and never has. She filed a variety of lawsuits which have gotten nowhere. Now she is preparing to run for the Senate seat in Arizona next year.

There will only be two results in the world of Kari Lake, if she runs. She will either win, or she will have been cheated. She can never lose. Just like Trump. This is the world that they, and increasingly others, have projected into existence, in this country which calls itself a democracy. You win, you always win. If the count says that you lost, you demand recounts, over and over. I think that in Arizona, they had four recounts of the presidential election, with the Ninja election deniers. And if somehow you are not able to get the results overturned, or have a revote, you send your armed supporters out to storm the Capitol, and install you through violent means.

That is not an overstatement, that is where the Republican Party is now. Karamo and Lake are just two of the many Republicans who still claim that Trump won. And of course that means that they won, too. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Republicans who are planning to run for office, as true believers in the infallibility and undefeatability of Trump, and with the certainty that either they will be elected, or will be cheated out of their victory by corrupt election officials.

Do you remember the so-called “Brooks Brothers riot” of 2000? Those were Republicans who feared, or likely knew, that Al Gore had won Florida over George W. Bush, and that the only way to avoid it, was to shut down the recount by any means. And it worked. And the Supreme Court finally shut it down by writing a decision which had no logic other than that they had the power to make Bush President, and they were going to do it. Then they finished by saying that anything they wrote in their opinion had no legal or precedential import whatsoever, it was limited to this one case. “We win, you lose, we call the game over right now.”

In retrospect, Gore and the Democrats should never have accepted that. Not just because it was terribly wrong to have the Florida Secretary of State stall and delay the legal recount, until the Supreme Court could step in and say that it was too late to finish the recount, so Bush wins. But because it was another step in the “might makes right” progression of the Republican Party toward an end-game of absolute totalitarianism. Does a dictator ever lose an election? Never. That is what they are shooting for here. Trump and his followers’ refusal to not only accept, but even perceive, a result where they don’t win, is near to their final goal.

One can speculate about and try to analyze why they are that way. Different reasons, if it matters. For many, it is the ultimate in megalomania; they are invincible, they never lose. They may have been brought up that way by psychotic parents, and then become psychotic themselves. Or they are just utterly amoral sociopaths, who cannot even conceive of any result but the one where they win. Those people have some dim sense that they lose from time to time, but simply believe that they can manipulate or force others to submit to them, so that they have “won” again.

I suppose that there is a more pedestrian but just as scary third type: those who know that they are lying; that they lost, but they don’t want to admit it because it would cost them money or fame or influence or power. “Fox News” top brass are showing clearly, in the evidence put forth by Dominion, that they deliberately withhold information and news, and lie about what they know are facts. The lies are put forth to their credulous viewers, who then turn them into their votes and violence.

Can you imagine endlessly lying, when you know that others will believe you, and be like automatons that you are controlling, even to the extent of seeking to kidnap and kill officials whom you tell them, or strongly suggest, heh, heh, are evil, and should be destroyed? They do it every day, like certain kids or adolescents might do. Lessons about being decent, being empathic; the Golden Rule, are never learned, or contemptuously rejected. And as we all know, most of them love to preach and declaim about how spiritual they are, how they can quote Biblical verses to fit any need.

I remember encountering a few boys on the playground or even playing board games, who simply refused to ever concede a defeat. Endless calls for do-overs; balls claimed to be foul or out of bounds; they weren’t ready, they called timeout; you didn’t play fair. I wondered even back then how they became that way. Did some of them grow out of it, or were they the Nixons and Alitos and Trumps and Lakes of tomorrow?

This is such a small thing, but I remember a summer where I helped around the Recreation Center in the neighborhood where we lived; and one of the best parts was playing a lot of ping-pong with the Recreation Director. We were very even in ability, and had great games; and we always yelled out, “good shot,” when the other person made one. We wanted to win, but we never argued about a call, in or out. If we won, it was because we earned it.

I realize that it is far easier to admit that you lost a ping-pong match, than that you lost an election, or that the real news story was unfavorable to your side, so you refuse to tell it. But I think that we all have known people, children or adults, who could not even accept the loss in the game.

The recourse that you have is not to play with the other person any more. In a sphere of life where you can’t escape so easily, you are forced to keep interacting with the other person or people, how do you manage to contend with those who not only are determined never to lose to you, but will simply deny any part of reality that will show them losing? And when the people who decide who won and lost are not just the people who played, but a large group of observers whom the other person and his supporters relentlessly try to convince not to believe anything they see or hear, but to just believe him, or her, and inevitably them, what must you do to surmount that?

At the very least, I would hope that Democrats constantly call out directly as liars, those many Republicans who are, without trying to dilute it. Everything is not debatable, or shades of gray. Blatant lies are blatant lies, no matter if the people who tell them are after money, or power, or are mentally and morally twisted. Doesn’t it really ultimately come down to variations of the same thing?

Biden in Warsaw

He’s about to give his speech, carefully timed to follow Putin’s whine fest. In retaliation to the US support of Ukraine, Putin is defiantly pulling out of the New START nuclear deterrent treaty – in 2026. Pathetic.

The square in Warsaw is full. I’ve read that people started gathering hours ago.

Let’s listen in. Leave your comments 👇

It’s a sunny Presidents Day in Kyiv

Oh yeah, Biden went there. Literally.

That’s an air raid siren in the background about halfway through that clip while cameras are clicking. They just continue to stroll through Kyiv. Amazing.

Russia is calling it a “demonstrative humiliation”. Well, of course it is. We aren’t seeing pictures of Putin walking the streets of Donetsk. He might be taken out by one of his own mobiks. That would be humiliating for so many reasons.

I was watching the latest interview drop from Frontline’s Putin and the Presidents series. I’d been looking forward to the Timothy Snyder interview almost as much as Julia Ioffe’s. Each interview gives a unique perspective on the war in Ukraine based on the interviewee’s subject matter expertise. Snyder’s is the motherlode. He’s studied Ukraine extensively. He knows more about Ukraine than some Ukrainians. It might be from studying that history that Snyder has also gotten into the heads of tyrants and how they operate.

This is the interview that every American should see. There are a few people I’d like to strap into a chair and hold their eyelids open ala Clockwork Orange to get what Snyder is saying past the thought stopping filters. That probably goes against everything Snyder believes but the frustration with some of our Republican fans is prompting day dreams of mandatory deprogramming.

In Snyder’s interview, we get a better understanding of how Russian leadership thinks. It’s deeply cynical and paranoid. All dictators fall, Snyder says. They live in fear of falling because they understand how to come to power by undemocratic means. And Putin and the Russian elite don’t understand Americans.

Snyder says that by using KGB tactics and psychological warfare, Putin was able to get into to minds of many Americans on Facebook and Fox News. We always knew that but Snyder breaks it down for us. It’s fascinating and frightening because each one of us has a lever and Russian propagandists know how to manipulate it. In Ukraine’s case, be very suspicious of anyone talking about Ukrainian corruption or nuclear war or Hunter Biden. Snyder says Ukrainian journalists know that the Hunter Biden laptop story is less than nothing.

But Snyder also says that Russia doesn’t get America’s fundamental decency. Yes, we have issues. Still, a slight majority really are freedom loving, sincere, decent people who saw that Russia crossed a red line in invading Ukraine. We aren’t kidding about helping Ukraine. We didn’t push Ukraine into anything. We’re not puppet masters. We’re supportive friends. We’re the kid on the playground who keeps the bully from picking on younger kids. That’s the role that we have taken on. We’re very lucky, we children of the kindly west, fortuitously situated between two oceans with friendly neighbors on both sides. We are unsullied by the kind of trauma that Ukraine has suffered through for many centuries. That means we have a greater reserve of optimism and resilience that we can lend to others in a crisis- if we recognize that crisis and have the collective will to act.

But what about Ukraine? Where did it find these qualities? It must have been there. The Maidan revolution shows that primarily young people decided to choose a pro-EU path back in 2014. Where did that sentiment come from? The source is probably dissected in detail there in one of Snyder’s lectures.

Leadership counts too. I sometimes catch myself marveling at how extraordinarily lucky the world is at this moment that so many good people were in the right places when the latest set of crises erupted. I seriously underestimated Joe Biden, who doesn’t second guess himself. There’s a core there. Pelosi masterfully got the band back together after the insurrection and displayed calm and steeliness throughout. Our NATO Allie’s and EU partners stepped up. And Zelenskyy is the Churchill of our times.

Zelenskyy was a comedian before he was president and had no expectations of rising to this occasion. His Servant of the People sitcom might have been more influential than we know. Zelenskyy plays a earnest high school history teacher whose rant about corruption in his country that was recorded without his knowledge goes viral and gets him elected president. If you haven’t seen it, check it out on Netflix. Zelenskyy displays his fundamental decency. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that his humble history teacher had something to do with Ukraine’s resilience today.

So, now we have two presidents meeting on Presidents Day in Kyiv. I couldn’t imagine such a scene four years ago. Look at how much has happened since 2019. It took a slim majority of us to tap into that fundamental decency to push off the toxic miasma of the Trump years. Slowly, slowly, we are fighting back against ubiquitous propaganda undermining that fundamental decency and pushing back the forces of illiberal democracy and election denialism. It’s two steps forward, one step back. If more people understood how they have been deceived by the KGB tactics that American right politicians and media sources have embraced been using on them to grab power and corrupt the country, then this meeting in Kyiv would be recognized as the historic moment that it is. We are allies with Ukraine and it helps us as much as we help it.

The older, wiser president, walking the dangerous streets for the younger scrappier one is a image of perseverance, self-determination, freedom, optimism and decency that Americans cut their teeth on.

Washington and Lincoln would be proud.

Is There Still a Future for the World of Film Noir?

I went to see the movie “Marlowe” on Thursday. I must support noir movies! There are so very few of them, and it is my favorite film genre.

There have been several movies which feature Raymond Chandler’s private eye Philip Marlowe. “The Big Sleep” is the one most cited, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Bogart is always superb, but I do not love this movie, the plot is very hard to follow; even when one has read the book!, and William Faulkner, who at least co-wrote the screenplay, famously admitted that he couldn’t follow it himself. But the film had style, and some memorable dialogue.

I like “Murder My Sweet,” which is actually Chandler’s novel “Farewell My Lovely.” Dick Powell transitioned from a light musical star to a protagonist in film noirs; and while I did not initially like him as Marlowe in this movie, on additional viewings, I appreciated him more. It is perhaps Chandler’s best novel, and the semi-romance between him and Anne Riordan (Ann Grayle in the movie, played by Anne Shirley), adds a nice charm to it. And who can forget Mike Mazurki as Moose Malloy? My father told me about that role before I had ever seen the movie. That movie was made in the same year as “The Big Sleep,” 1946.

There was “The Lady in the Lake,” also based on one of Chandler’s best novels. This movie was criticized, mostly for actor and first-time director Robert Montgomery’s use of a “subjective camera” device, where the viewer sees things through his eyes. It is somewhat unsettling, but I’ve seen the movie a few times, and I rather like it overall. Notable is Audrey Totter, whom I believe was a superb actress, and who appeared in several noirs.

See her in this brittle yet soft role, and as a sympathetic hospital psychiatrist in “The High Wall,” and then as a truly amoral and yet always watchable woman in “Tension,” and one has to be amazed at how good an actress she was. She was a guest invitee at a noir film showing, and I regret not seeing her, just to applaud or tell her how great she was.

There is a movie channel which shows all film noirs on Thursdays, and I admit that I have watched some of these movies several times. “Tension” is really a great noir movie. It was excellently directed by John Berry, whose career was essentially ruined by being blacklisted. So many times I will watch a movie, usually a noir, on TCM, and the host will tell us that the director or screenwriter was blacklisted. There was one so-so noir film, “Wash the Blood Off My Hands,” with Burt Lancaster and Joan Fontaine, which had three screenwriters, and they were all blacklisted, though two of them, including Walter Bernstein, who wrote the movie “The Front,” about the blacklist, used a front to get their work put on screen. So much great talent and so many decent people were destroyed during this infamous period.

Back to Philip Marlowe, “The Little Sister,” another Raymond Chandler novel, was made into a movie called “Marlowe,” starring James Garner. It is interesting to see how the different star actors play Marlowe. Garner did it with his characteristic somewhat light demeanor. It is a pretty good movie, notable for the appearance of Rita Moreno, Bruce Lee, and then Gayle Hunnicutt, who started as a glamorous young American actress, then went to England, and almost revamped her career, as she was given several very prestigious roles in historical or classic dramas.

“Farewell My Lovely” was remade, with the original title, starring Robert Mitchum. I admire him so much for his brilliant lead role in “Out of the Past,” and he would have seemed to have been an ideal Marlowe, but he was older then, and the movie is not quite as good as I would have thought, though not bad, few noirs ever are bad. Then the one which I have started to watch a couple of times, but turned off, because it is just wrong, unless somehow it got much better going along.

That is “The Long Goodbye,” directed by Robert Altman, starring Elliott Gould. He starts off waking up, looking sleepy or hungover, shambling into the kitchen to grab a box of dry cereal and a carton of milk, and pouring it into a bowl. He also has several cats. This is an “interpretation” of Marlowe that I do not favor, and Altman is not the director whom I want to see doing a noir film (though he did a great job on the gambling movie “California Split”), so I gave up on it.

There were a couple of other Philip Marlowe movies. Robert MItchum starred in another version of “The Big Sleep.” There was a “Marlowe” series starring Powers Boothe. Marlowe was played on the radio in a long-running series starring Gerald Mohr, who was superb, and won awards for it. BBC did the Marlowe novels in an entire series of radio dramatizations, starring Toby Stephens, who is excellent, along with a cast of British actors doing decent American accents.

So that brings us to this new and original movie, “Marlowe,” starring Liam Neeson, who is 70, which means that his Marlowe is somewhat different, though recognizable. The movie has good pedigree, with Neil Jordan directing, the screenplay written by William Monahan, who wrote the screenplay for the very good “The Departed,” and it was based on a novel by the very highly regarded Irish writer John Banville.

Well, I will leave it to you to see, if you want to, so I won’t say much more, except that I thought that it wasn’t bad, it was done with a serious regard for the Chandler and Marlowe canons. But it wasn’t great, either. And I am trying to think whether it was because of choices made by the filmmakers, or whether, as some critics were quick to say (though some did like it), it shows that the character of Marlowe, or the classic noir themes and images, have become worn out.

I give the filmmakers credit for trying to do an actual noir, setting it in 1939 Los Angeles, though it was mostly filmed in Ireland and Spain. It is not a “New Age noir” trying to make it more hip or familiar for a younger audience. It is an actual attempt to make a classic noir movie. But it was somewhat slow and at times uninvolving, though the “reveal,” what was really at stake, was well done, and gave the movie more resonance.

I do worry that this might be the last time that a “prestige film” is made like a classic noir. It may well be that an audience which has an inexhaustible appetite for “superhero movies,” or whatever one terms the seemingly thousands of films turned out by Marvel; or which wants politically themed movies about various kinds of biases, does not want to see anything about 1930’s or 1940’s Los Angeles. I will admit that at times “Marlowe” seemed to be trying to recreate the atmosphere of “Chinatown,” which was a better film. But I think we can use all the noirs we can get.

Why do I like film noir so much? I have written an essay or two about it here on the blog. I will just say that it offers escape; not the fantasy world of the Marvels, but an escape into an earlier time, which in some ways, as in “Chinatown,” is a kind of backstory to how we got to where we are now, not just historically or politically, but perhaps in terms of morality, who wins and who loses. Philip Marlowe, described as a “knight-errant” by Raymond Chandler, does not see himself that way; but in a world of deceit and corruption, and seduction of various sorts, he almost always does the moral thing, tries to help or save the decent characters.

Actually, the best noir, books or films, in my view, feature the detective as a good guy or woman, who is almost in some sense trying to save the world in microcosm, the “things fall apart/the centre does not hold” frightening evocation of the poet Yeats. Of course he is only working on one small corner of things, though sometimes, as in the best neo-noirs, it is more than that. In either case, the reader feels better to think that there are one or two people out there who can tell good from evil; who do not take the bribes, or lose their moral sense to the femme fatale or the power broker.

I think that we need this kind of champion, even if fictional, as much now as we did in those earlier eras. Not someone who is larger than life, that would not be satisfying. Someone who may have his flaws, but knows himself, as the words written on the temple of the Oracle at Delphi enjoined. A person who takes the wrong direction sometimes, but finds it again, and is willing to risk everything to put things right, at least as far as he can in the story he is in.

And I love stories set in that era; and of course Los Angeles, where I live, is where many noirs are set, for some obvious reasons. What a thrill it is to see movies from that time show streets and locales which I know, some recreated, some still there, Sometimes if feels as if I can open the door, and I will be on those streets, as they existed; go into the diners, visit the racetracks and the poker games; talk and dance and listen to the music in the famous clubs. It is a world of danger, but also of possibility, if you can somehow find your way through the maze.

I don’t know if the film noir ethos can be preserved in new films. “Marlowe” tried, but I don’t think succeeded as well as it wanted to. Maybe no one can, though I am excited about Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which I have deliberately tried to avoid learning anything about, maybe it is not a noir at all, but the title sounds like it is.

I know that the “Noirfest” every year in Los Angeles, showing twenty or so films in ten days, was very popular; but because of COVID, it was canceled, then currently moved to another city. Film noir still has an audience, its themes still have resonance. We can only hope that we are not overwhelmed by a surplus of fantasy films and comedies, which there is certainly room for, but not as a steady diet of non-nourishing junk food. I hope that there will still be a few other people who will try to evoke the world of film noir in their movies, with all the drama and character and moral choices that made the best films of that genre so involving, and in many cases unforgettable.