Au Revoir Lesbian Space Witches of Color

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Over the last decade or so it has become obvious that Hollywood and specifically, Disney is more interested in producing content that adheres to a social justice message than they care about making money.  Examples of this are plentiful.  Every recent installment of the Star Wars movies and their spin-off television series has suffered heavily from this policy.  And recently the fans have reacted to this decision by abandoning the franchise.  And to a greater or lesser degree similar results have been seen in the other Disney entertainment franchises; Indiana Jones, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and even things like the Toy Story movies.  It’s gotten so bad that Disney has been forced to fire directors, cancel series and scale back earnings estimates.  Which is something no CEO wants to do.

I have heard that Hollywood is claiming that they’ve heard the message and they will rededicate themselves to producing entertainment that is actually entertaining to regular people.  Now if that happened, I would be ecstatic.  Seeing Hollywood learn its lesson and focus its significant talents into putting out original and entertaining movies would be phenomenal.

But it won’t happen.

The people who run Hollywood are social justice extremists from the soles of their feet up to their eyebrows.  They would rather see their companies go broke than give up their message.  They will keep pumping out Star Wars movies that feature lesbian space witches of color as the main characters until Disney has to shut down the studio.  The idea that the ticket buying public wanted to see Luke Skywalker rescue Princess Leia with the assistance of Han Solo and that all three were white, sexually normal characters is completely unacceptable to them.  They have the same message as the Harris campaign, “We won’t go back.”

So that means the future of entertainment won’t be Hollywood.  And we’re already seeing the alternatives.  I’ve been informed by one of my grandsons that movies are being made based on the fiction produced by YouTube influencers who write stories based on video games.  So, a space video game has an audience of tens of millions of boys and young men.  And one guy writes a narrative story as an adventure in that game and millions of these gamers read the story and because of this immense popularity a movie studio (Amazon or Netflix) produces a movie from this story.

Well, there’s nothing wrong with that.  Eventually that will replace Hollywood nicely.  Someone said to me that this won’t avoid the social justice activists because all the studios are the same.  But there are indications that isn’t true.  A couple of years ago Netflix produced Dave Chappelle’s comedy series that was pretty strongly critical of the transgender agenda.  When Netflix employees protested the series, they were told overtly by Netflix that if their consciences wouldn’t allow them to work for a company that produced the Chappelle series, they should work somewhere else.  And that put an end to the protests.  I suspect that a home will be found for content that has an enormous built-in audience even if there is an extreme shortage of lesbian space witches of color in the script.  Maybe it’ll be Netflix that steps in or maybe it’ll be a new company that an entrepreneur like Musk founds.  But at this point it’ll happen because people are still people and they want to be amused and message fiction isn’t entertaining.  It’s boring so something will have to give way. Au revoir lesbian space witches of color.

02SEP2024 – Quote of the Day

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I will admit that an artist may be great and limited; by one word he may light up an abyss of soul; but there must be this one magical and unique word. Shakespeare gives us the word, Balzac, sometimes, after pages of vain striving, gives us the word, Tourgueneff gives it with miraculous certainty; but Henry James, no; a hundred times he flutters about it; his whole book is one long flutter near to the one magical and unique word, but the word is not spoken; and for want of the word his characters are never resolved out of the haze of nebulae. You are on a bowing acquaintance with them; they pass you in the street, they stop and speak to you, you know how they are dressed, you watch the colour of their eyes.

George Moore

Devolution

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The world I live in has been changing at a rapid rate for the last four years.  The COVID and George Floyd strategies combined with the Biden administration’s green revolution, Ukraine war, the opening of the border to all illegal aliens and finally the intelligence agencies use of extreme surveillance and control over the social media platforms have truly changed the way of life in the United States in a fundamental way.  I guess this is what Barack Obama meant when he talked about fundamental change.  He meant destroying the middle class and eliminating law and order.

But we’re still here.  Where could we go?  Europe has been similarly wrecked.  There is no other place.

So, I often wonder how life will adapt under these new conditions.  What was the saying back when everyone thought overpopulation would be our downfall?  “We’ll all be a little hungrier by and by.”  Well, that sounds likely.  Both here and in Europe the powers that be are eliminating farmland, making farming more expensive and making things like fuel and fertilizer much more expensive.  So, let’s assume the hungrier idea is likely.  Of course, many would note that currently obesity is running rampant so how could we be going hungry?  On the contrary, obesity and malnutrition can certainly coexist.  Junk food can be pretty cheap.  But it means shorter life and ill health.  So healthy food will be scarce, unless you count crickets.

We already know that energy in all its uses will be very expensive.  This means homes will be less comfortable, travel will be less frequent, work will be closer to home and all goods that have to be shipped will be more expensive.

Jobs will be harder to find and professional work will be scarce.  Learning trades will once again be a very important avenue for employment.  Colleges will fail on a grand scale.

And the existence of law and order will be on a case-by-case basis depending on who is in power in the local area.

Put all those things together and what kind of a place will we be living in.  First off, I don’t it will be one place.  We’re already seeing different areas of the country diverging from each other.  California and other areas that encourage the importation of large numbers of illegal aliens are already becoming very third world with large homeless encampments, very high crime, high taxes and businesses fleeing to safer areas.  Whereas places like Florida that discourage crime, illegal aliens and high taxes are booming and attracting new businesses.

What this means is that there will continue to be a polarization between the red and blue states and this will cause issues where the blue states will use their control of the federal government to try to outlaw the red state practices that give them advantages over their blue “neighbors.”  How this resolves itself over time is an open question.  If the red states successfully defend their sane policies eventually the blue states will become moribund and they will even lose their control of the Congress and White House due to population loss.

But if the federal government uses force to compel the red states to comply with the blue state practices, then we will be headed for the Brazilification of the United States.  And at that point it truly will not matter where you live.  At that point.  We might as well be in Mexico City, Entebbe or Soweto.  Our lives will be nasty, brutish and short.  And probably better so.

Well, a lot is riding on this upcoming election.  Here we go again.

31AUG2024 – And Then, Quite Suddenly, Summer Was Over

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Bradbury understood summer to a boy.

 

“And then, quite suddenly, summer was over.
He knew it first when walking downtown. Tom grabbed his arm and pointed gasping, at the dimestore window. They stood there unable to move because of the things from another world displayed so neatly, so innocently, so frighteningly, there.
“Pencils, Doug, ten thousand pencils!”
“Oh, my gosh!”
“Nickel tablets, dime tablets, notebooks, erasers, water colors, rulers, compasses, a hundred thousand of them!”
“Don’t look. Maybe it’s just a mirage.”
“No,” moaned Tom in despair. “School. School straight on ahead! Why, why do dime stores show things like that in windows before summer’s even over! Ruin half the vacation!”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

 

“June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past. And if he should forget, the dandelion wine stood in the cellar, numbered huge for each and every day. He would go there often, stare straight into the sun until he could stare no more, then close his eyes and consider the burned spots, the fleeting scars left dancing on his warm eyelids; arranging, rearranging each fire and reflection until the pattern was clear…
So thinking, he slept.
And, sleeping, put an end to Summer, 1928.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

 

The yearly ritual continues.

 

This is a Free Country You Know!

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I was looking for something to watch on tv tonight and I noticed that I had recorded “A Man for All Seasons” recently.  But when I started it, I saw that I had missed the beginning and it started in the middle of Henry VIII’s visit to Thomas’s home.  I was disappointed but then realized that even watching part of this movie was more enticing than watching any one of a hundred movies that I had ready in their entirety.  Now why I haven’t already added this movie to my collection is a mystery for which I should be rebuked.  It is indeed an inspirational film.

But what struck me while I was watching it was a line that two of the characters used in the story.  At two separate points someone says, “This isn’t Spain you know, it’s England!”  And this is meant to mean that England is a free country and not full of religious zealots that would burn you at the stake for superstitious nonsense.  But of course, one of them is Cromwell who arranges perjury to have Thomas More beheaded for refusing to sign an oath confirming Henry’s legitimacy as head of the Church in England.  Even more amusing, the Cardinal who assisted Cromwell in this witch hunt was literally burned at the stake a few years later.

And now the reason I’m writing this essay.  That little phrase that the characters recited reminded me of what we used to repeat, “It’s a free country, I can say what I please.”  It was a trite saying.  But it was true.  You could say or believe whatever you wanted to.

But is that still a true statement?  No, it is not.  There are many things you may not say.  The COVID episode proved that.  The government proved that.  They ordered the social media platforms to censor anything they didn’t like about COVID.  And they did it.  And they hid the fact that they did it.  So, most people never knew there were other sides to the story.  They did it so successfully that most people still don’t know just how many lies the government told about COVID.  And they did the same sort of thing about Hunter’s Laptop and a host of other stories that were embarrassing to the Biden administration.

And it’s gone well beyond political issues.  They censor stories about pediatric transgender drug therapies and surgeries, illegal immigration criminality, price increases on food and housing, unemployment figures; basically, anything that makes the Biden administration look bad.  And of course, the biggest coverup was the fact that Joe Biden was suffering from dementia.

So, is this really still a free country?  I would have to say that since the “Patriot Act” was signed into law we have ceased to be free.  The government knows everything we say and the government now censures anything we say that they don’t like.

Well, that’s where we are.  It’s a discouraging thought.  But watching More’s story helped.  Here was a man surrounded by jackals and yet he lived his life in service to the good.  He exemplified intelligence, honesty and humanity.  His enemies ultimately destroyed him and yet history has recognized his excellence while branding his persecutors as pernicious, dishonest and cowardly.

I hardly see myself as martyr material.  I enjoy annoying Camera Girl too much to want to end up on the chopping block either figuratively or literally.  But I do think we should all be willing to pay some price to oppose the forces that have gained a stranglehold on America.  We’re all guilty of laziness in some sense or other and it behooves us to step up and try to make a difference in our families and local communities.  This isn’t Spain you know!