Category Archives: Culture

Another Cliffhanger

I despise cliffhangers. Books that leave you in a lurch for 20 years, television programs that think it’s cool to have massive dramatic shifts at the close of a season, and nail-biting presidential elections, all are terribly frustrating.

As I write this the states called for Biden total to 253 electoral college votes with Trump’s total coming up to 214. Biden needs just 17 more to win the election, Pennsylvania does it, as do any two of the other five so the odds favor Biden but until the votes are tabulated we will not know.

What is clear is that the massive crushing destruction of Trumpism has not occurred. Even if Trump is defeated, which seems likely, the electoral attraction of Trumpism will remain a potent force in Republican politics. His blatant racism, sexism, and cruelty will be a weapon available for politician with an equal lack of moral but with great talent and intelligence to wield against ‘the others.’

White, male, grievance politics are not equivalent to conservatism, but they have displaced conservatism as the motivating force in GOP ideology. There are valid issues and questions that can be approached from a conservative perspective, what is the proper role of government in the economy? where does the line lie between an individual’s rights and the collective good? These questions have nothing to do with wanting to ‘own the libs’ or inflecting suffering solely for the point of suffering. There is nothing conservative is disregarding the painful death of nearly a quarter of a million Americans because it is disruptive to your election or ignoring the rule of law because adhering to it brings a painful price.

America’s future is very much in doubt.

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The Central Dilemma of Economics

The central dilemma of economics is often presented as ‘people have infinite wants in a world of finite resources,’ and I would say that it is generally true, but it misses one vital aspect. That while there are in fact finite resources individuals are in general incapable of perceiving the limitations and emotionally react as though resources were in fact infinite.

Electricity is a limited resource, generated from limited resources and distributed by limited system but an individual’s relationship to electricity, at least in rich nations, is that it is always there in limitless amounts. Food, material good, are all produced in quantities so vast that it becomes nothing more than an abstraction in same way that a single death is a tragedy and 200,000 thousand a statistic.

However, when the resource limitations are stark and undeniable, survival and disaster situations, people do not act like engines of infinite wants. Contrary to most disaster and post-collapse stories people in general do not become self-centered engines of destruction and exclusion but often become more generous and supportive to others, including strangers.

On any scale beyond a few thousand people and with resources that feel infinite economics central dilemma applied in full force, but what happens if very tightly contained and constrained environments that last indefinitely?

That is one of the central questions in what is likely to be my next novel. It should be fun to explore.

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The Exorcist is a Very 70s Novel

I just finished re-reading William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist. The story by now is familiar to nearly everyone interested in horror fiction. Young Regan McNeil is possessed by the spirit of demon and her fiercely atheist mother Chris McNeil after exhausting everything the worlds of science and medicine have to offer calls upon a Jesuit priest suffering a crisis of faith Father Karras and an aged but experienced exorcist Father Merrin to save her daughter.

Published in 1971 The Exorcist displays some interesting hallmarks of that period in its construction. Now, I am not referring to disco music or leisure suits but rather the way extra-sensory perceptions and abilities had been absorbed into the public consciousness.

What started in science-fiction print media and had grown throughout the 50s and 60s, telepathy, prescience, and telekinesis became accepted wisdom, along with pyramid power and ancient astronauts.

What does this have to do with a novel about the demon Pazuzu possessing the body of 12-year old Regan McNeil?

Before Karras can appeal to his Bishop for permission to perform the ritual of exorcism he must first eliminate the possibility that the phenomena associated with Regan are natural and explainable by the science at the time. This includes the shaking of her bed, objects flying about her room, and Regan possessing knowledge of events and languages unknown to her.

As Karras grapples with the enormity of the possibility of an actual possession his faith, already shaken, is undermined by the explanation that all the strange events may be caused by telepathy and telekinesis. This is not a by-product of Karras being a person who is weak in his scientific knowledge or understanding, he is a trained and respected psychiatrist. The novel, though published in the early 70s, is so infused with the popular wisdom at the time, that this priest of science considers telekinesis are rational and scientific justification for observed events.

I was a teenager in the late 70s and re-reading the novel for the first time in many decades it is a strange deja vu sensation to be brought back to that unique period in American Culture.

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My 9-11 Memories

While 2020 seems an endless treadmill of terror the 19 years between today and 2001 seem like a flash that passed with the swiftness of a hummingbird’s dive.

September 2001, I worked the overnight  as a specimen processor at Quest Diagnostics. I ran a machine that took very little active thought and throughout the night usually listened to a ‘boom box’ tuned to a local radio station. One the morning of September 11th, as often happened, the radio’s reception turned spotty and the station alternated between clear signal and migraine inducing static. Just before reception failed entirely, I heard a breaking news report that an aircraft had apparently collided into the World Trade Center.

My first thoughts were that some light general aviation aircraft had lost its way and slammed into the building much like in 1949 when a B-25 Mitchell had struck the Empire State Building. Tragic, people had died, but not a monumental news story.

Unable to get any further news I completed my shift and left for home. At the bus stop, in those years I was bound by mass transit, a young man listening to a handheld transistor radio with a single earpiece pushed into his ear said that one of the towers had fallen.

I did not believe him but kept quiet. So often in the immediate moments after something breaks on national news there are rumors and exaggerations and still with no knowledge of what exactly had happened, I was disinclined to believe the most sensationalist version of events.

Disembarking from my bus I stopped off at a 7-11 on the way back to my apartment and on the televisions playing in the store saw the horrible truth. In that moment it changed from being a ‘news story’ to history we were living through. I called friends and woke them up and as the day passed dread for our future grew.

Since that day, September 11th, 2001, we have been in constant war. Thousands lost their lives and it’s difficult to assess that we have made any meaningful progress since then. The culprits directly responsible have mostly been dealt with but the underlying conditions have scarcely changed and the toll it has taken on our national character, it opened the door for American to be known as a nation that tortures prisoners, it incalculable.

It is no test to be moral when times are good the test is when anger burns the blood, when vengeance enflames the mind, that is when the test truly comes and people discover who you really are.

It is up to us to change the tense of that verb, from who we are to who we were.

 

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Is the Mafia a Militia?

A common action among firearm rights supporters is to organize into independent militias invoking the phrasing of the second amendment as a support for their actions. This is often combined with a fairly strict anti-government mentality and a stated readiness to combat the government should it overreach. This bravado has been on display this year with displays pf tyrannical government overreach such as public health measures combating a lethal global pandemic.

The Mafia and organized crime in general whether it be Russian international criminals laundering millions of dollars through real estate or Baltimore youths dealing in street drugs are all armed and anti-government are they too also militias?

The question is ludicrous of course they are not but what divides the ‘militia’ from the ‘gang?’

It is important to remember that when the second amendment refers to a ‘well regulated militia,’ it is speaking of a common and well understand definition. The militia was an irregular force that could be called up and activated at the state’s requirement. The need for individuals to have a right to bear arms was essential as the militias were not funded and supplied by the several or individual states. Each man brought his arms and the commander of the local militia, and these were men of wealth and property, financed the heavier arms such as cannons. It is clear from history and intent that the second amendment is an individual right that supports the militia’s existence.

But any group of people with arms are not a militia.

When a group of people self-organize to enforce the law as they see it, pass judgement on guilt, and met of punishment, they are not a jury they are a mob and are not conducting a trail but a lynching.

As with a jury a militia is an arm of the state. A citizen can arm themselves to prepared to fulfill their duty to the state as a member of the militia but the activation and deployment of the militia is a state matter not one of personal preference or self-aggrandizement.

If you organize, cross state lines, and commit likely crimes you are not a ‘militia’ you are a gang.

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Was The Cold War Just Over Tax Rates?

From the post-World War II period through to 1991 the United States of American and its allies engaged in a deadly game of brinksmanship utilizing nuclear bombers, middles, and artillery, with the Soviet Union and its allies for the fate of the world. We were assured that this was a war that pitted democracy, with the First World, the USA and its allies, against the tyranny Second World, the USSR and its allies with humanity’s future balanced on the knife’s edge. The USSR’s collapse ended the conflict and revealed a corrupt, monstrous system if lies, propaganda, and murder.

And the American Republican Party can’t let the war go.

In any two-party system each of the two major parties are a coalition of interests ideally with a few unifying themes or goals and for the second half of the 20th century what unified the GOP was a dedicated stance against the USSR and communism. Bereft of that binding force the GOP floundered for compelling arguments for its election and finally settled on culture war issues that satisfied its religious wing, energized it racist elements, and the business elements provided the control rods required to keep the entire pile from going super-critical and melting down. Beginning in 1994 more and more of those control rods were removed until 2016 provided the final crisis, sent the entire stack critical, and released the rampaging nuclear monstrosity that is Donald J. Trump.

And now we have reached a point where a majority of the GOP finds more than 170,000 pandemic deaths ‘acceptable,’ and in order to retain their minoritarian grip on power our votes are being undermined, the Post Office is sabotaged, and very concept of democracy is under assault. So, what was that Cold War victory for? Was it just to preserve low taxes for the wealthy? Was the entire conflict about biblical literalism?  It must have been because it seems the only charge the GOP knows to deploy is to point at their opponents and with mouths agape like the 70s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, scream ‘Communist!’ And like that movie it is an idea out of time and out of place with the moment.

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Work in Process Nation

It’s a fuzzy line between patriotism and Jingoism but I think that divide lies along the capacity to admit error. A patriot can recognize that their beloved nation is in error, demand that the nation be better, and work to make it better, while the jingoist can only proclaim their nation is best and reject the recognition of any flaw. You might think of a jingoist as a narcissist whose narcissism is projected onto their country and not themselves.

While you are writing a book it is called a work in progress and it continue to be one until the final edits have been approved and the text goes to production. In a way the United States of America is a work in progress that never is submitted for publication and one where the revised text remains in the copy all the way through.

Our text started with some very good ideals that were executed terribly. It’s hard to be for freedom and equality when some are enslaved, some are disenfranchised, and some are nothing more than an occasional count. But with fits and starts and not a few bad chapters we’ve improved the work, gotten closer to the ideal and further from that terrible first drafting. There is more equality but not enough. There is more liberty but not enough. There is more justice, but not enough. The work continues and we are its authors.

Anyone who has been reading this blog knows that I am not shy about sharing my political views. it goes contrary to advise I have received that as an author trying to move product, convince more people to buy my books, I should avoid politics because I may offend some and lose those sales.

That’s true. It may cost me sales.

But I have a duty to ideals I believe hold to be true and to be derelict in that duty for mere money is something I simply can’t do. I have not always met my duty, my responsibilities, we all sometimes fall short but we have an obligation to try and my voice, however soft it might be, must still be raised for what I think is right and I must take my part in crafting this national work in progress.

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A Grab Bag of Items

The Haunted Palace

This is a Roger Corman movie that supposedly is part of his Poe cycle of the adaptation but in reality it is a film version of The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward. A single line from a poem by Poe is used to justify the pretense adaptation but as a Lovecraft film it actually works pretty well. It’s always nice to see Vincent Price in one of these moody atmospheric films. I’m glad I sent away for the Blu-ray from the U.K.

The NRA

Last week the Attorneys General for the State of New York and the District of Columbia files suits to dissolve the National Rifle Association. The NRA operates as a non-profit organization dedicated education and training of the general public on matters related to firearm use and ownership with a supposedly side interest in lobbying and political work. The suits however are not related to lobbying and political activism but rather focus on corruption and the senior leadership using the non-profit as their own personal profit centers and in that respect the suits are not dissimilar to the ones used to dissolve the Trump Foundation that had also engaged in serious financial corruption.

There are those who advance the idea that this is an election year political ploy by the various Attorneys General to harm the GOP in the upcoming election but I have serious doubts about that hypothesis. This action is likely to energize the GOP base and provoke them to turn out in greater numbers and with less than 90 days until the election it is highly doubtful that these suits can sideline the NRA before the voting. Legal gears do not turn that quickly. I think it is clear that the New York AG was hostile to the NRA but it is also clear that the NRA suffered from deep systemic corruption.

Horrible Imaginings Film Festival

Next month is the 11th annual Horrible Imaginings Film Festival and the first year that the festival will be entirely virtual. The pandemic has been terrible with the economic damage and the loss of life that is nowhere near ending and in these dark fearful times it is good to find what little joy and light there is and one of those things is the festival dedicated to horror films short and long from around the world. I have taken days off around that weekend and while I will desperately miss the in-person event at the Freda Cinema I will thoroughly enjoy the films.

 

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Cinematic Social Commentary: Robocop vs They Live

 

In the essay I will not be taking a position on the merits of either films observations. I trust my readers are more than competent to make their own value judgements and evaluations politically but rather I am looking at how the films made their comments and which films, in my opinion, succeeded more adeptly at its intentions.

In 1987, the penultimate year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop was released to theaters, the story Alex Murphy, husband, father, cop, who is murdered and then scientifically resurrected as Robocop makes important comments on the nature of humanity and identity but its sharpest social observations are on conservatism and Reaganism.

The next year John Carpenter’s They Live debuted and under the guise of an alien invasion movie spoke to the same social commentary about its views on conservatives and the effects of the Reagan presidency.

They Live posits aliens living amongst us that are subtly controlling and directly all facets of human life and social development. The title refers to the ‘waking sleep,’ created by a signal broadcasted by aliens, that keeps people from seeing the aliens around them and the subliminal messaging used to control the population. Global pollution is not a side effect of unregulated industrialization but rather a deliberate project of ‘terraforming’ the Earth to alien standards. Capitalism is an alien system imposed upon humanity for the purpose of extracting the planet’s wealth to the aliens and corrupting select human into acting as quislings for the invaders. Aliens live amongst us at every level of society but most importantly solely occupy the commanding heights of our cultural and political institutions.

The commentary here is not subtle. The direct one to one mapping of capitalist, the wealthy, and the powerful as a parasitic and controlling force with the alien invaders is a clear analog to class-based observations of our real-world economies, However, the worldbuilding is sloppy and not thought out in any logical manner. How the aliens extract wealth is hand waved away. The illogic of aliens travelling hundreds if not thousands of lightyears at great expense of energy to live as beat cops and bank tellers is ludicrous mudding Carpenter’s social commentary allowing neo-Nazis to reinterpret the text in an anti-Semitic screed. The fact that extremists on the right can see the commentary as supporting their racists position rather than attacking the economic system  they favor speaks volumes to the film’s failure to build any coherent statement.

Robocop is set in an undefined near future where crime is rampant and social services are nearly non-existent. The city of Detroit is crumbling under the lack of resources as the tax base evaporates and crime runs uncontrolled in the streets. Changes in the tax codes have benefited corporations concentrating wealth and privatization has turned social services such as prisons, hospitals, and schools over to corporate control and as the film open the fiction OCP corporation takes over management of Detroit’s police force. While corporate control of social services is presented in a plain and unflattering light the factions within OCP, standing in for all of corporate America, are given a richer and more nuanced portrayal. Dick Jones, a senior vice-president who is in bed with the city’s criminal boss, is a greedy immoral man only interested in the wealth and power he can extract from his positions. Bob Morton is a corporate climber and ambitious young man but seems to believe that the corporation can be a force for good and actually wants to deliver beneficial services. The ‘Old Man’ heading OCP is more of an enigma, it is unclear if he is even aware of the corruption within the company or if his ‘it’s time to give back’ speech is heartful or merely for appearances.

What is clear is that the film’s stand that corporate government is an ill is quite clear. Despite the story being about social disintegration and collapse there is no representation of actual government. Aside from a brief use as hostages, and there’s powerful symbolism in that, there is no mayor or civic leader presented in the film. The people and their representatives are whole absent a comment on their invisibility to corporate views.

As social commentary Robocop succeeds for better than They Live

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Corona vs Chernobyl

For some strange and unknowable reason here in the depth of a global pandemic I have started re-watching HBOs Chernobyl mini-series. Brainchild of show runner and writer Craig Mazin the five-episode series follows the historical disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant following the explosion that ruptured the core and endangered million with its radioactive contamination. The series has won a number of awards around the globe and garnered praise for its acting, direction, and writing.

Mazin centers the themes of truth and lies at the heart of his scripts for Chernobyl opening the series with the question, ‘What is the cost of lies?’Given the lengthy time for writing, pre-production, and production Mazin’s work was not a direct comment on the Trump presidency but the applicability of those themes and questions are unavoidable.

The Chernobyl nuclear reactor number 4 exploded because of lies and because of the reliance of the system upon not only lies but that the lies of the authorities were never to be questioned. Lies hampered the recognition of the disaster and hampered attempts to mitigate its lethal consequences.

And yet dozens of scientists and engineers and bureaucrats managed to evade the lies and with the dangerous work of hundreds of thousands more and the sacrifice of millions more confront and contain the contamination. The Soviet system when confronted with the awful truth of the explosion and what it imperiled spent vast amounts of treasure and resources doing what was required. Mikhail Gorbachev the final General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has expressed the belief that the economic cost of the Chernobyl disaster was a critical factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Which brings me to the global COVID-19 Pandemic.

The government of the United States, the world’s wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation/state, under the presidency of Donald Trump, aided and abetted by support from his governing party the Republicans, has lacked the courage shown by the brutal communist government of the former USSR.

The Administration has failed to spend the treasure necessary, has failed to muster the resources required, has left its citizenry to face the crisis alone and instead has continually counseled with lies resulting in a count of 150,000 thousand dead, a count that continue to rise.

Trump and his GOP enablers have plugged their ears, squeezed their eyes shut and like children pretended that the mess simply doesn’t exist.

This is not to praise the Soviet System. It was a brutal, monstrous, and evil empire responsible for the murder of millions. It subjugated and enslaved its own citizenry and that of its neighbors the world is better off with its collapse.

It is shocking however that a system so utterly reliant upon lies and the denial of truth rose to a crisis while a party that prides itself on virtual signaling its patriotism leaves its country to burn.

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