Month: February 2026

Donnie Darko (2001) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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Continuing my review of a list of “best Science fiction movies” from YouTube, the next installment is a movie from 2001 that I have heard spoken of as a “forgotten gem;” Donnie Darko.  I will attempt to disavow my audience of that idea.

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

I would compare this movie to some mash-up of “The Breakfast Club” with a cheapo time travel/horror movie.  The movie is stewed in teenage angst in an upscale California town where Donnie Darko (played by a young Jake Gyllenhaal) is undergoing psychotherapy to find out why he is hallucinating about a man in a dog mask who seems to be telling him to do dangerous and harmful things like smashing a water main to flood out his high school and burn down the house of a motivational speaker who is appearing at the school’s Health classes.

While staying out all night at the urging of Frank (the dog guy) Donnie escapes death when an airliner engine falls out of the sky and destroys his bedroom.  It turns out that the FAA can’t locate a plane that lost an engine that day.  Meanwhile his science teacher answers questions about time travel by using Stephen Hawking’s theories about wormholes to justify Donnie’s belief that his psychosis is really messages being sent to him from time travelers.  And when he finds out that an old woman who lives up in the hills was a teacher at his school who wrote a book about time-travel he becomes convinced that he will be involved in a time travel event.

It all comes to a head around Halloween so the fact that some of the kids in the movie are wearing masks becomes less inexplicable but no less annoying.  By the end of the movie several people have been killed violently which appears to include his mother and younger sister who are aboard a jet airliner that coincidently has lost an engine over his town before landing.

At that point, Donnie goes up to the mountains to await the time-traveling storm that’s about to strike.  The end of the movie returns back a month before all the trouble started and this time Donnie is in the room when the engine strikes.  So apparently, he’s sacrificed himself to prevent the deaths of his mother and sister and his girlfriend and the guy who ran her over and was then shot to death by Donnie.  The end.

I hated this movie so much I can’t state it enough.  I despised everyone in it.  That includes Donnie, his English teacher (played by Drew Barrymore), his mother (played by the actress who was the president’s wife in Independence Day), the motivational speaker who turned out to be a kiddie porn purveyor (played by Patrick Swayze), and basically everyone else in the movie.  Everything about this movie was annoying or depressing.  And calling it science fiction is absurd.  There’s absolutely no justification given for any of the events or hallucinations that Donnie experienced.  But honestly, he was such an unlikeable character that all I felt at the end of the movie was annoyance that I had sat through this ridiculous movie.  I don’t recommend this movie to any fans of science fiction.

Cultural Pep Talk

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So, what’s the deal?  Are we reaching the end of the American Century and should we abandon all hope, we who enter?  Or is there any other way to approach the situation we are in?  Well, I would be accused of being a hopeless optimist if I didn’t admit that western civilization has fallen off a cliff at this point.  Looking around and seeing what passes for leadership and competency it’s impossible not to see a step change down from what existed a generation before.  Even the crooks are a couple of standard deviations below the level that used to operate in the last century.  Everything is diminished.  It’s undeniable.

Where do we go from here?

A few years ago, I read a book by a culture critic named Rod Dreher called “The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation.”  Now Dreher is a man of the right but he has had lots of fights with many other folks on his “side of the aisle.”  If I remember correctly, he’s not very fond of Donald Trump.  Oh, well.  But there was much in his book that I found interesting and helpful.  He talked about how our era had commonalities with 5th century A.D. Europe during the fall of the Roman Empire.  The Benedict in the title refers to Saint Benedict who at that time founded the Benedictine monastic order that began the slow painful process of restoring civilization to the human wreckage that existed after civil authority broke down after the barbarian hordes knocked over the Roman government.  Dreher’s point was that we no longer live in a society united under a common culture or religion.  But that doesn’t prevent us from forming our own communities to preserve the things we value and pass them on to our descendants.

And he’s absolutely correct.  Now admittedly, the left is doing everything it can to infect all areas of civil life with their Anti-American, Anti-European, Anti-Christian, Anti-western-civilization, anti-white propaganda and agenda.  But giving up because it’s difficult is the very definition of weakness.  If the things we want to see endure are worth saving then they are certainly worth fighting for.

So, I see this as the alternative to despair.  Look at the current state of affairs as a test of fitness for people and ideas.  If you’re not willing to fight for the things you value then maybe you don’t actually value them that much at all.  It certainly is a shame that the elites in this country valued the monetary advantages they could gain from globalism over the patriotic loyalty they owed to their fellow citizens and drowned our culture in third world “diversity.”  But just giving up is weak and defeatist and now that the globalists have been exposed it’s incumbent on us to support all individuals and organizations that work toward preserving the best parts of our traditional culture and do everything we can to reconstitute that culture and allow it to flourish again in this country.  Start rebuilding.

Who Will Inherit the Earth?

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Jesus told us that the meek shall inherit the Earth.  But he didn’t say when.  Maybe the meek have to wait until God disenfranchises the current owners when the Trump of Doom sounds.  But what we know for certain is that progressives mean to disinherit the Americans that were Americans before the great replacement was begun.  The globalists have decided to get rid of us.  Or more exactly, they want to get rid of our children and grandchildren.  And their plan is to drown them out with immigrants.  Bring in people who will work for less of everything; less money and less rights.  You can see the cultural trappings of it in every commercial and every social message.  Immigrants are the real Americans and they will replace these evil white people and they’ll do it right now.

But will it work?

Well, it’s a fair question.  Trump is providing a mechanism for slowing down and even reversing the flood of aliens.  And he’s challenging all of the DEI justification for the plan.  He’s declaring DEI anti-white discrimination and that is a very compelling argument and even the supreme Court has backed him on several points of his programs.  So, there is a counterweight to the Left’s push and plan.

But is it already too late?

Some people say that there are already too many aliens born her to undo the replacement.  Well, I’m not a purist on who is an American.  If I were to restrict the definition of American to even full European ancestry, I’d be leaving a whole lot of Texans out who are pretty sure they’re Americans.  And I’d agree with them.  My definition of American is a little looser.  If you came here legally, speak English, respect the people who were here before you, know who George Washington was, prefer football to soccer, believe in the Bill of Rights and hate Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton then you might convince me you’re an American even if you just got your citizen papers and were born outside the country.

My people only came here about a hundred and fifty years ago.  We were the wretched refuse at that time and I’m sure most Americans thought we should be sent packing.  But my family has always been highly patriotic and loved this country as the greatest country that has ever existed on this planet.  And when I meet legal immigrants who love this country and never show any disrespect for those who were here before them, I accept them as equals; as Americans.

And it is my belief that once the borders are secured and the great bulk of the invaders are deported we will be able to Americanize the children of immigrants that remain.  In our history immigrants wanted to assimilate.  The Left has declared that a dirty word.  But it’s exactly what needs to be done by all of these new people.  We need to make a point of requiring assimilation.  And the first order of business is eliminating the accommodation of other languages than English.  English needs to be made the official language of this country and all government business must be transacted in it.  That includes voting and all other government programs.

Well, anyway.  As far as who will inherit the Earth (or at least America), the jury is still out.  But I wouldn’t assume we’re doomed.  Far from it.