Lab Rats

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Yesterday I was skimming through an interview with Mitt Romney about his decision to retire from the Senate.  Naturally it was thoroughly self-serving and delusionary about almost everything he mentions; his motives, the actions of the other politicians in both parties and about the needs of the country.

But one line seemed true, “What he seemed to know for sure was that he no longer fit in his current party. Throughout our two years of interviews, I heard Romney muse repeatedly about leaving the GOP. He’d stayed long after he stopped feeling at home there—long after his five sons had left—because he felt a quixotic duty to save it.”

So even someone as dense as Mitt Romney recognizes that the Republican party is being pushed away from its current orientation, as a sham conservative organization.  Of course, Romney thinks that what he believes is the true conservative creed.  But he’s an idiot so he can be excused.  Who can’t be excused are people like Mitch McConnell and his henchmen or Paul Ryan.  These are men who used their power in Congress to sell out their constituency to the Left and to the vested interests that are their paymasters.

But the problem is that pushing the Republican party toward the right is a herculean task that only glacially makes any progress.  The inertia toward the priorities of people like Mitch McConnell is overwhelming and is continuously reinforced by the culture and business that Washington is built on.  That’s the reality.  So be it.

And that’s why anyone who is at all serious about trying to change this country has to come up with a new approach that doesn’t depend on trying to reform the Republican Party from within.  And I’m not talking about trying to create a third political party.  That would just waste incredible resources and probably achieve nothing.

What is needed is a stand-alone organization that can effect change directly at all levels and in all facets of life.  In the political arena it can be a PAC lobbying at the federal, state and local level.  When lobbying fails it can fund the campaign of a primary challenger against the recalcitrant law maker.

It can provide legal defense when the federal government and some state and local governments unfairly persecute those on the Right.  It can bring cases to the Supreme Court (for as long as we hold a majority there) to end unconstitutional laws.

It can act as a community advocate complaining to corporations about products or even corporate policies that disadvantage or anger our constituency.  In this capacity this organization can use media coverage or even advertising to embarrass or put on notice corporations disrespecting their own customers.  And if all else fails it can sue them to force change.

And finally, this organization can act as an incubator for any initiatives or programs that would facilitate conservatives flourishing inside of the progressive prison, we find ourselves in.  Maybe there could be a program for providing credit to private and religious schools in blue states so that more people can bring their children up safely.  Maybe whole industries could be financed like a real attempt to foster a conservative (or at least non-woke) film industry.  Or any one of a thousand business opportunities that would be happily patronized by the Right if they provided a competitive alternative to the woke competition.

Now none of this is new.  I’ve said it a dozen times before (my apologies to my faithful readers).  My point in repeating it here is this.  Until such time as something like this is begun there won’t be any chance of progress for our side.  Right now, we’re like the lab rats pressing the lever and waiting for the food tablet to appear.  We’re not in charge of anything.  We’re just part of the experiment.  If we want to take control of our lives we’ll have to bust out of the cage.  And until we see one of the lab rats with a file sawing through the bars of the cage we might as well stop hitting the food lever.  Starvation would be a cleaner death than what they have in store for us.

The Nitwits that Blew Up the World Whistle Past the Graveyard

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I was reading this article about how the destruction of the Minneapolis downtown would have to be repaired by turning all the office buildings into hipster artisanal breweries and drag-queen day care centers.

And I thought to myself, “Sure why not?”  In fact, really the whole Summer of George Floyd/Winter of COVID thing was an enormous stroke of luck.  All those small businesses that employed white supremacists from Old America were standing in the way of the future.  Now those areas are available for the businesses of tomorrow.  All kinds of entrepreneurs like human resource managers (pimps), pharmaceutical supply chain (MS-13) and retail redistribution (flash mob theft).

In fact they’re super-available.  Whole business districts are emptied out.  The telecommuting office workers are afraid to come back to the downtown because of rampaging gangs of looters and carjackers.  So all the lunch shops and retail stores that depended on the foot traffic from these office workers have gone out of business and their owners and workers have joined the ranks of the urban poor.

“Using the mill district as a measure, the makeover of downtown will be a long, costly process. It took decades for developers to replace mills with a lively 24-hour neighborhood, and much of it was done during a period of low interest rates. Rates are now at a two-decade high.   

The Minneapolis mayor said the city has no choice but to try. The central business district remains the city’s biggest concentration of jobs and real-estate investment, connected to the rest of the city with highways and light-rail lines.

“Downtowns are always going to be a centrifugal force,” he said. “What’s going to have to change is how we view it.””

Now this is the mayor who ordered the Minneapolis Police to stand down and allow the rioters to burn down the police precinct near the George Floyd martyrdom site.  Based on his track record I don’t think I’ll hold my breath waiting for the Minneapolis downtown to revive.

Search for Intelligent Life on Cable TV

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Tonight, I watched for the first time Charlton Heston’s 1988, made for television version of “A Man for All Seasons.”  So, of course, when I watch it, I’m comparing it to the 1966 film starring Paul Scofield.  And that was a great movie.  Great acting, all around.  If I’m being honest the Scofield picture is better.  But the later film is still a pleasure to watch.  And that is because it is essentially the same story.  Both movies are based on the same stage play and for that reason both provide the same story and characters.  Even large chunks of the dialog are the same.

Both plays include an argument between Thomas More and his future son-in-law about the value of man’s law in God’s world.  It’s one of my favorite parts of the play.  He tried to make his daughter’s very idealistic and self-righteous fiancé understand that man’s law was made to deal with imperfect humans not angels.  And without it we would all be at the mercy of the powerful.

‘William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”

Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!’

The image of the law as a windbreak that protects us from the winds of merciless powers that rule the Earth.  Wonderful image.  The author is a poet, I’d say and a good one.

So even though the later film is not as great as the earlier one it is true to the play and this trueness to the story, even if in the hands of less able actors still manages to provide the same general experience.  There’s a satisfaction in watching a play that provides that successful theatrical effect.  It draws the audience in and immerses them in the scene, in the words, in the interaction of characters that you care about and believe in for the short time that you sit there and watch and listen.

And that’s a theatrical experience.  Most movies do not possess this.  Because the rule of movies is, “Don’t tell them, show them.”  And even a play is showing us something.  But to pull together a scene where the characters are in a space together and they collide and we get to see who they are by what they say is still a very powerful experience.  No special effects needed.  No need for fancy camera angles.  Think of how many great courtroom scenes you can think of.  Or a death scene between lovers.  The dramatic scene is charged with meaning and all that is needed is a poet’s soul to breathe life into it.  Even mediocre actors can take a wonderful scene and give the audience the catharsis that the writer created.

But the truth is this is a relatively rare event.  Out of the thousands or tens of thousands of movies that have been made in the last century or so what percentage have this quality?  I’d guess it’s much less than one percent.  I don’t have any figures to back this up but I doubt it’s a tenth of a percent.  Most of the “entertainment” produced is awful.  It has no soul.  And I’m not even talking about its morality.  I can imagine that art can be made that’s immoral or even amoral.  But what it can’t lack is an honesty about what it’s trying to say.  You can claim that the world is a meaningless maelstrom of death and destruction and out of that you can make art that could touch the human heart.  Or you can show us sublime love and the selfless sacrifice of a mother for her child.  And that could be art too.  But mostly what we get is dreck.  We might as well be watching a surveillance camera of traffic moving on a street.

I have three good movie versions of “A Christmas Carol.”  And I like to watch all three of them.  All three provide a close approximation of the story and therefore a similar feeling of catharsis.  And likewise, there are some other classic movies that tell a story that was so good that they’ve been redone.  One of Shakespeare’s plays or some other talented author’s work.  So, I’ll own several versions of the same work.  And seeing how different actors and directors bring the classic scenes to life is interesting to compare.  But the underlying experience is based on the skill with which the story was crafted and given human meaning.

All that was a lot of words.  Maybe it made sense to you.  I guess it can be boiled down to the fact that there are such things as timeless classics and they exist because they resonate with something inside our brains or minds or souls.  Look for these and own them so that when the crap that you can “stream” on some particular night is just too soul-deadening for you to stand you can reach for this DVD or Blu-ray or whatever technological incarnation exists and feed your soul with something that has meaning and maybe joy.  Or at worst find the book.