Month: June 2024

I Envy the Brits

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Nigel Farage is about to gut the Tories.  His Reform UK party is currently stealing away so many votes from the Conservative Party that with just a little luck he may finish it off as the opposition to the Labor Party in Parliament.

And this is huge.  That would be as if Donald Trump started his own party; the Big Beautiful Trump Party, and it reduced the Republicans to less than half of the seats they currently hold in the House and Senate.  It would be explosive.  It would throw Washington into a panic.  Business as usual would cease to exist.  All those Republican power brokers would in one stroke become powerless.  Of course the Democrats would run roughshod over everything.  The country would overnight become like a continent sized version of California.  Fossil fuels would be banned and the only religion would be some kind of LGBTQ cult.  It would become a hell on Earth but we’d never have to hear Mitch McConnell lie to us about why he allowed some Democrat initiative to pass in the Senate.  And we’d never have to listen to what a noble democracy Ukraine is.  And within four years the Republicans would be extinct.  Now wouldn’t that be splendiferous?

So, yeah, I’m envious of the Brits.  The Tories screwed the pooch so hard that no one on the Right will believe them ever again and that provided the opportunity to replace them.

I know, I know.  Allowing the Left a supermajority in the government is suicide.  They’ll do things so horrible that life as we know it will cease to exist.  But that’s already happening.  All that differs is they currently do it one drop at a time instead of just pouring out the whole bucket at once.  As far as I’m concerned, the accelerationist strategy is the way to go.  Let them do their worst and then let the country react to that.  Sure, they’ll approve slavery reparations, aircraft carriers with 6,000 mile extension cords, transgender surgeries in the womb and any number of other horrible policies.  But at least we’ll kill the Uniparty.  That game will end once and for all.  And then we can finally have representatives that actually want to represent us.

Bottom line is I’m ready for the next step.  And that is what the Brits seem to be doing.  In the words of Winston Churchill, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

I’m thoroughly sick of the make believe government that the Republicans represent.  With respect to being betrayed it’s never if but always when.  And that when will always be when they could do the most good or the most harm.  So hail to you Nigel Farage.  Perform the end of the beginning and lay the Tories in their well-deserved grave.  And may we follow your example and do the same to the Stupid Party.  They wildly deserve it and it will warm my soul to see them out on their butts.

Laugh, Clown, Laugh

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Dyspepsia doesn’t strike me as a particularly attractive flavor for a pundit to emit.  I mean listening to someone like me carp about all the things that are going wrong or will go wrong sounds like the height of boredom.    But it’s also kind of the world we live in.  I guess that marinating that flavor in humor might make it more palatable for the audience.  And I do try to add gallows humor and mockery of all the truly awful villains we face whenever I can.  But sometimes it’s almost impossible to paint a smile, even a wry smile, onto my face, when considering the catastrophically damaging events that seem to happen more and more frequently every day.

But we must laugh.  Despite the fact that it is very likely that Joseph Biden will be re-elected president of the United States, or maybe because it is so likely, we must laugh at Joe Biden.  All of the gaffes, the incoherent mumbling, the lies about everything from COVID to cannibals eating his uncle, to his creepy personal interactions with everyone from small children to the Pope.  All of this needs to be mocked and laughed at.

Because we need catharsis.  In ancient Athens, comedians like Aristophanes would rail against the politicians and accuse them of all manner of dishonest and even scurrilous behavior.  And the politicians had to take it with no recourse to the law courts.  Because the Athenians believed in the almost sacred right of the people to mock their elites.  And they were right.  There has to be a place where the high and mighty get taken down a peg.  It’s necessary, it’s healthy.  If that doesn’t exist you end up with Soviet Russia where the legitimacy of the state is slowly lost to cynicism and eventually when the social capital reaches zero everyone just ignores the leaders and wander away to become bandits.

Now maybe that is our fate.  With Donald Trump being stripped of his money and his freedom by kangaroo courts it won’t take long before even comedians will be hauled off to the gulag for mocking Joe.  I fully expect in the next Biden administration laws against disinformation will probably begin to mushroom around the country.  Maybe we’ll all have to refer to Biden as “the dear leader” instead of Dementia Joe.

But in the meantime, I intend to continue mocking these turkeys whenever they do something especially absurd.  And that’s bound to be any minute.  Why just today I read that during the White House briefing Haitian Shirley Temple claimed that videos of Joe Biden staring in the wrong direction from the parachutist that landed practically at his feet at the G7 conference was a “deep fake.”  We watch as the Italian Prime Minister takes him by the arm and turns him around to see what everyone of normal intelligence has already seen.  Karine Jean-Pierre is sort of like the voice of the Wizard of Oz bellowing, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

And who knows?  There’s always the slimmest of chances that something goes wrong and Trump gets elected.  And that would be the funniest joke of all.  Can you imagine if Trump actually did drain the swamp?  Hilarious.

Troy (2004) – A Movie Review

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As a former student of classical languages and literature I suppose I should be categorically opposed to this movie.  But to be honest I probably enjoyed around three quarters of it.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Now full disclosure, the movie Troy resembles Homer’s Iliad about as closely as my grandson’s middle school band’s rendition of the Blue Danube Waltz resembles that performed by the Berlin Philharmonic.  In other words, not a lot.

But that really isn’t important.  The question is whether it succeeds on its own terms.  What we’re presented with is an adventure film masquerading as a literary epic.  We have the story of Orlando Bloom as Paris absconding with Menelaus’ wife Helen from Sparta and taking her to Troy where her new father-in-law Peter O’Toole as Priam decides that they’ll defy Agamemnon and try to keep Helen even if Brad Pitt as Achilles is preparing to run amok on the windy plains of Troy.

In order to turn an epic poem into a two-hour movie some compromise had to be taken with the plot.  Instead of a ten-year war we have a ten-day war.  And some folks had to be sacrificed.  For instance, both Menelaus and Ajax are axed in the second day of battle.  Now that is surprising since in the Hellenic version Menelaus is one of the few heroes to reach a ripe old age after the war.  And equally surprising, not only does Paris survive but he ends up keeping Helen.  Shocker!

So, you might ask what does survive the translation from page to screen?  Well, I’d say Agamemnon, Odysseus, Achilles, Priam and Hector are recognizably themselves.  Agamemnon is an arrogant fool.  Odysseus is the wily survivor and Achilles is the aristocratic demi-god following his doom.  Priam is the honorable king who must see his country and family laid waste.  But the most sympathetic character is of course Hector.  Here is the good man, prince, husband, son, brother and father trying to save his country from a creature that no man can defeat.  It is his fate to kill the cousin of the monster and now have to face him in single combat.  And he will die and his body will be lashed to the back of Achilles chariot and dragged around the plains of Troy in ignominy.  And this gives his father the chance to beg Achilles mercy to allow for decent burial.

So quite a bit of the story survives.  We even get the Trojan horse scene, which truth be told isn’t part of the Iliad.  It’s more of an aside in a story in the Odyssey.

As you can imagine, the whole thing is sort of a hot mess.  To his credit I think Brad Pitt acquits himself quite skillfully in his characterization of Achilles.  His relation to the primary and secondary characters is consistent and generally very entertaining.  Unfortunately, all of this relatively positive film making falls apart in the last scene.  The sack of Troy is highly unsatisfactory.  The death of Achilles seems to fall flat and lacks emotional interest.

So, who, if anyone, can I recommend this movie to?  Well, to start with Brad Pitt fans might want to give it a watch.  I’d say fans of sword and sandals epics might like it.  Strict devotees of Homer will be affronted and may throw things at the screen.  My opinion is that it is relatively entertaining with some weak scenes and an unsatisfying ending.  Of course, your milage may vary.