The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.
John Milton
Month: May 2024
29MAY2024 Photo of the Day
ZMan and Trump
In a particularly thoughtful article the ZMan considers the spectacle going on in a Manhattan courtroom where Donald Trump is being given the full treatment from a cartoonish New York City legal system that is astonishing in its corruptness.
I think it speaks well of ZMan that he recognizes the stark contrast between Trump and his enemies. Even while rejecting and even reviling Trump’s civic nationalism ZMan points out the stark superiority of the man versus his odious enemies.
A good read.
Must Supply Own Tall Top Hat, Riding Boots and Whip
“Conservative” is now a term of derision. People in the dissident right use it as a swear word. I guess the replacement term for the people who resist the progressives is now simply “the right.”
Well, whatever you call them and whatever they believe in, they are a mess. Organizationally, their leadership is nominally the Republican party and that’s as laughably absurd as anything imaginable. That would be like an organization of sheep electing a wolf pack as their police department.
Now, I guess you can say that Donald Trump has taken the first baby steps toward changing that situation. His candidacy has driven certain absurdly obvious RINOs out of the party. The best documented case is Liz Cheney being primaried out of her seat. But only slightly less hilarious is the ejection of Mitt Romney from his senate seat. Technically he refused to run for re-election. But despite his claim that he was afraid of assassination by rogue Bugaloo Boys the truth was that he knew he was going to be primaried out of his seat. And Trump’s presidential campaign has forced the likes of even Nikki Haley to kiss the ring in order to even remain in the party for the future.
But these truly are baby steps. What is needed is an organization that reaches from the local grassroots all the way up to state and national leaders. And it needs to be doing much more than politics. Let’s face it, politics is just influence peddling and what needs to be enacted is a way for us to band together to buy influence from the crooks we hire as the face of the party. Sure, we know they’re selling themselves to the contractors but at least let’s prevent them from being bought by the contractors who hate us. Let’s make sure that GLAAD and the other left-wing NGOs are restricted to buying influence from the Democrats.
After all, a phony like Marco Rubio can be made to act in his own best interests and mimic right-wing talking points to keep himself on the gravy train. He’s not a Liz Cheney or a Mitt Romney. He doesn’t believe in the Left’s values. In fact, he doesn’t believe in anything at all so he’s a blank slate that can be bought for the price of a pot of gold. And he’ll stay bought as long as the gold keeps coming. Mitt Romney on the other hand, belongs to the same clubs as George Bush, Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama. He’s following his social set with respect to what behaviors need to be favored and which curtailed. It’s as natural as breathing for him to hate us and force us to submit to their code of behavior.
So, what is needed is an old-fashioned political boss. Someone who doesn’t run for office but controls the politicians and makes sure they do our bidding. Maybe someone in Trump’s camp can be that boss. Maybe Junior wants that job. Maybe not. But I think we need someone to do it. The only way we make such a job attractive is by providing it with the power to get things done. And the only source of power in Washington is money. So, we’d each have to pony up cash to get a circus master that makes the carneys dance for us. And that’s definitely doable. If there are fifty million people on the right (more than that number voted for Trump) and they each donated one hundred dollars a year, that’s five billion dollars a year. You can get a lot done for five billion.
Of course, for that much money I’d expect a lot of results. At the very least I’d want the phonies from the National Review forced to act as dunk tank clowns at the CPAC closing ceremony. And I’d want the Bushes burned in effigy at the Republican National Convention. But beyond that I’d want some kind of accurate scorecard for each member of Congress and for any with a failing score I want to know the date of his upcoming primary election and who will replace him.
But seriously, what would be more important from a political boss is the backroom deals with private corporations to provide measurable progress on social issues that we favor. So, if Disney wants some tax breaks or approval of an acquisition they’ll have to quit their LGBTQ activism. And likewise, companies that take sides in the culture wars can be reined in with the correct use of a carrot or a stick. None of this is rocket science. Money talks and that’s what it would take to change the political system we live under. Hopefully there’s someone who can do the math thinking about this.
28MAY2024 Photo of the Day
28MAY2024 – Quote of the Day
Tell the innocent visitor from another world that two people were killed at Serajevo, and that the best that Europe could do about it was to kill eleven million more.
A. A. Milne
A Little Love for the Left
Something I’ve noticed lately is that the Left is feeling blue. I think they have a sense that the vast majority of people in the country have come to the realization that the Left has single-handedly ruined a whole slew of very important parts of American life. All kinds of people; poor, rich; black, white, brown; educated and uneducated; men and women. They’ve looked around and they see things like closed up stores in cities, failing school systems, homeless encampments everywhere, violence even in the rich neighborhoods and the cost of living becoming unmanageable. And they all know exactly how and who did it. The Left did it on purpose and unapologetically. And now the fingers are being pointed directly at them. And they want a hug.
I’ll read an article in the Atlantic or the New York Times and they’ll bemoan the loss of safety in the cities and they’ll wring their hands over the paradox of how making the criminal justice system easier on criminals has inexplicably made the streets mysteriously more dangerous. And they’ll finally say, “Well maybe we went too far.” And then they look for some kind of solidarity with the “good people in the middle.” They want to join hands with people who didn’t vote for Joe Biden. They’re looking for the kumbaya moment where we all share the blame for defunding the police and voting in soft on crime prosecutors and mayors. They want absolution; a do-over. Maybe they even want to leave the same bad actors in place and just let them learn from this “teachable moment.”
Of course, there are plenty of Republicans just stupid enough to rise to the bait and “reach across the aisle.” But hopefully the people themselves have become disgusted enough that we can build up a slow boil in society at large. We need enough areas to finally get wise to the futility of cooperating with the Left. States with large cities have to become sophisticated enough to make laws that can allow the state to step in when local officials create dangerous or dysfunctional conditions. They can legislate against unconstitutional gun laws, sanctuaries for illegal aliens or unhealthy treatment of children. And these states can counteract the federal laws that damage life for them. Improve the schools and eliminate propaganda from the Left, welfare reform, defunding of illegal aliens.
So, I take it as a very healthy sign that the Left is worried about the exposure they’ve received for driving the country into a ditch. And anyone who reacts to these kinds of appeals to solidarity and fellow citizenship should have his head examined and then given a good solid butt kicking for good measure.
And as far as these kinds of things happening in deep blue states like California and Oregon, I’m absolutely thrilled. I hope that nothing whatsoever is done to change the policies or alleviate the outcomes of the policies they’ve instituted. I want places like San Francisco and Portland to become just one big homeless encampment. I want every single store in places like Oakland to close up. I want the price of gasoline in Los Angeles to reach twenty dollars a gallon and brownouts to last for most of the workday. What I’d really love to see is all of Silicon Valley move to Texas and California officially go broke and go out of business. Then I’ll give them a hug.
27MAY2024 – Quote of the Day
I wrote somewhere once that the third-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking.
A. A. Milne
27MAY2024 Photo of the Day
Thoughts on Current SF&F in Cinema – Part 1
When I was much younger, I remember wondering if there would ever be a time when the state of the art in “film” would allow a decent version of the Lord of the Rings to be made. When Ralph Bakshi’s cartoon over live action was made in 1978, I was quite surprised at how good it was. And I hoped that he would continue the project to finish the complete story. But he never did. Maybe he didn’t make enough money or maybe he got bored. And so, it would be another twenty years before anyone tried again.
Peter Jackson did a remarkable job both visually and artistically of capturing Tolkien’s story. And I think he proved that we have reached a point where regardless of the unreal or fantastic nature of the story CGI can produce a convincing visual representation of that story on the screen. And that was an important moment. For a fan of science fiction and fantasy this is the promised land.
And yet, what have we got now? For every film like Dune where the story faithfully reproduces a worthwhile piece of fiction, we get ten movies like “The Marvels” or “The Last Jedi” or “Madame Web” where the visuals are successful but the story and the acting are unwatchable.
Well, that’s reality. The cultural and societal standards are pretty awful so even if some interesting topic like the Second Age of Middle Earth (Rings of Power) or Harry Seldon’s Psychohistory (Foundation) are being filmed chances are that the result will be terrible.
But the only good thing I can say is that the potential exists for a rogue force like Elon Musk to come along and fund an independent studio to produce some exciting projects. So, eventually we will get good movies. Eventually the profit motive will succeed. Who knows we may be forced to watch Chinese or Hungarian movies in subtitles but it will come. So, patience, patience.
And what might make a good project? Well, based on what we know would sell, how about space opera that is a lot more interesting than the Star Wars universe? How about a project to film the Lensman series? A few updates to the technology might be needed and the chronology might need to be tweaked but then the story would be easily turned into a series of films. It has likeable heroes, awful villains, interesting aliens and plenty of space battles. And best of all, not a girl boss in sight. Just classic square-jawed heroes saving the day and rescuing the damsel in distress. I would guess that the Lensman saga would be easily as popular as Star Wars and in fact more so.
Now another popular film idea would be the Heinlein juveniles. There are several good candidates. As a first choice I’d go with, “Have Spacesuit Will Travel.” It has all the requisite ingredients for a good young adult movie; human interest, suspense, adventure, pathos, humor and the resolution of a coming-of-age story. As a second choice I’d recommend, “The Star Beast.”
It’s an interesting thing to reflect that a really satisfactory movie version of a Heinlein book has never been done. The only one he ever had a hand in was Destination Moon. And while technically there were interesting aspects to the production as a movie it was pretty cut and dry; more of a primer on rocket flight than work of fiction. In terms of popularity, I guess Starship Troopers is the best of those produced, even though the director made it in the spirit of a mockery of the underlying philosophy of the book. A faithful portrayal of Starship Troopers would be an amazing idea for a movie.
And rounding off my picks for Heinlein would be, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.” I think this story would make an excellent film too. I’d especially enjoy seeing the rail gun attack on Earth on the big screen. And I think the friendship between Manny and the artificial intelligence Mike would work great on the screen.
I’ll have to think of some other classic sf&f books that would make good movies. If you can think of any you’d like to see made, leave them in the comments.