The state of my political world

I haven't talked about politics in this space for a long time because, frankly, the state of politics in this country bores the shit out of me. My friend, David Palmer, has tried to get me involved in a couple different efforts in the last couple years. One of them was to help Rashida Tlaib in 2018. Another one was a project oriented around voting patterns and trying to use that info to help campaigns that we were interested in (like Rashida's, by and large.) And, y'know, I was willing to help, but I didn't do either effort any justice, mostly because I've become something of a political nihilist in the 15 years since I got out of regular activity.

When I helped build the Green Party in this state and was its chair for five years, I was still an activist. There were still principles that I was willing to work a second full-time job without pay for. There were principles that I was willing to ruin my marriage for (although that likely should have ended a lot sooner than it did, anyway.) I still hold those principles among the guiding truths of my life. But most other people don't give a shit. Quite honestly, most people didn't give a shit then, which is why I walked away from it, having burned out on doing most of the work myself because everyone else had better things to do when they weren't spending a couple hours a week in a local meeting, thinking that the more they talked, the closer the world came to suddenly transforming. When Tricia and I met up with David after a concert one night, he asked her: "So, what's it like living with an actual revolutionary?" We all laughed because it was kind of a joke. I laughed at least in part because I knew that almost everything I'd done was a complete waste of time. Most revolutionaries at least have the integrity to spend a long time in prison or be assassinated or something like that.

Both of Tricia's kids, Keller and Simone, are Bernie supporters. Being from the current generation, they recognize the obvious injustices of American society and understand, as much as they instinctively understand breathing, that things need to change. I don't know how much of my occasional ranting has influenced that outlook, if at all, since they both seem to have developed opinions on their own based on their open-minded view of society. I remember when Simone was in eighth grade and mentioned that a couple of her classmates had already declared themselves to be transgendered. I just shrugged, but I chuckled inwardly, trying to imagine any set of circumstances where I could've been at the age of 13 where anyone would even consider doing that, much less actually following through. There are many things that have changed for the better on a social level in the last 37 years. And, of course, there are many things that really haven't. Such is life.

But I was having a discussion with a guy I know on that Michigan board I've been hanging out on for 23 years. I don't even watch Michigan anymore, but I've known these people for a long time and they're still worth the conversation. He's a Biden supporter because he's a former Republican, appalled at the party's descent into Trumplandia, and he just wants to remove the game show host from the Oval Office. In other words, "anyone but Trump." That's not an unreasonable position and it's been supported with Biden's victories in most of the primaries and with his support from the DNC that Sanders has continually attacked and derided (possibly not the best strategy when trying to win the party's nomination, as a non-party member. Just sayin'.) But it's also emblematic of the status quo, which is essentially "put things back to where they were", pre-Trump.

Those of you who've listened to Mike Duncan's superb Revolutions podcast will have heard him regularly opine on the difference between a political revolution and a social revolution. The former is what founded this country. It was a bunch of wealthy, highly-educated, landholding White guys who objected to being denied any way to govern themselves and to having their money taken just because they weren't part of a few particular families. It wasn't about slavery or poverty or the inability to find a job or any other basic human right. It was mostly about money. I've always said that America was founded as a way to make money and it has never changed. This event was no different. These guys were part of the Haves in 18th century America, even if they didn't have the coat-of-arms to prove it back in the old country.

A social revolution is a very different animal. It's almost always initiated by the Have Nots who have been denied those basic rights, typically because the Haves have kept those things from them. Why? Because denial of basic rights usually makes money. This class division has existed throughout human history and the consequent revolutions have occurred whenever that chasm has gotten so wide that the Have Nots on one side of it see no way that they're ever going to close it without violence. And here we are.

The trigger event, in this case, may be a global pandemic, which has suddenly kickstarted conversation on topics that were formerly taboo. Could you imagine middle schoolers declaring themselves to be TG in 1985? 1995? Of course not. By the same token, could you imagine anyone talking about a universal basic income on the floor of Congress before the last couple weeks? Or seriously discussing national healthcare as a necessity, rather than a political prize? Or, for that matter, even envision the idea of Congress discussing just giving... money... to people.., that actually need it...? I can't. It violates so many tenets of the pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps America that it's hard to comprehend. It's absolute heresy to the give-more-money-to-the-rich-and-they'll-be-kind-and-generous religion. But those are the realities we're facing, as the trickle-down crowd shouts that grandma should be sacrificed to their ever-failing experiment, and they somehow fail to see that "the economy" also won't recover if a good chunk of the population ends up in mass graves instead of, y'know, buying shit on Amazon. And who is our hero to carry the banner of these new, transformative measures in society?!

Joe Biden.

Joe Biden, long-time senator from Delaware, the most corporate-friendly state in the Union. Joe Biden, scion of credit card companies and the leading supporter of the 2005 bankruptcy act that makes student loans non-dischargeable (You may have heard that that's a small issue to many young Americans and Democrats.) Joe Biden, vociferous proponent of both of George W. Bush's decades-long wars, which cost ungodly amounts of money. In many ways, Biden is the model, establishment Democrat. He's the perfect example of what I usually refer to as the "I got mine!" Democrats; giving lip service to a lot of issues, but only really following through on the ones that keep the status quo for the Almost Haves. You may know them as America's diminishing middle class. They have some money. They do OK. They're never going to be a Bezos or a Bloomberg, but they're content as long as things stay the same. In other words, Biden just wants to bring us all back to pre-Trump, when the poor got poorer but there weren't as many kids in cages at the border. And the president didn't act like a spoiled child. And professionals weren't dismissed from government service for making the president feel bad. But, uh, the poor still got poorer and nothing much else really changed, especially for those young people looking to make their way in the world. "Let's get back to the time when you still didn't have much chance at finding the American Dream!" isn't much of a slogan, but it's all he's got.

And now he's the nominee. The Democrats' constant "boogeyman" approach to elections has finally reached the bottom of its barrel. Now it's not just "You have to vote for us because, if you don't, THAT GUY will win!" It's that and "You're going to help us elect a guy whose only worthwhile attribute is that he's not THAT GUY!" Get fired up, yo. And all I can do is look back at the work I used to do and think, again: What a complete waste of time. Because I'm still looking for jobs that I'll hate in order to afford the drugs that keep me alive to be miserable, since Joe doesn't want national healthcare. Most people will never be free of the mild terror of knowing that, if they lose their job, they've not only lost their health coverage but will soon be out of their home because Joe's in favor of our all-or-nothing system. A lot of people are crashing face-first into those realities right now because of that global pandemic and the inaction of the current idiot in the Oval Office. And do you know what Joe's response is?

He doesn't want to fight the president.

Millions are outraged at the president's delays, where he refused to listen to his own HHS secretary, because a health crisis would make Trump look bad. But Joe doesn't want to point that out. Despite the attempts to put a $500 billion slush fund in the emergency aid bill that was directly requested by the White House when Trump realized that 6 of his 7 biggest properties were shuttered by state lockdowns, Joe doesn't want to fight about that. Millions are appalled that news sources like the New York Times and CNN won't simply call the president on his lies, especially when they're indirectly leading to people dying from coronavirus or directly leading to people poisoning themselves with various forms of quinine. But Joe doesn't want to call the president a liar. That would be unseemly.

So, this is where we are. And I think back to David's comment... "Revolutionary." I wish it was still funny.

Deep burn

I had an odd delay with Portrait of a Lady on Fire. We saw it last week and I haven't gotten around to writing about it until now; not for any particular reason, like disinterest, but because I simply haven't. But I was writing something for ThereWillBe.Games about women in gaming and it occurred to me that I hadn't actually put down any thoughts about this film that's about as "woman-centric" as any major release is going to get.

In most cases, I make an effort to not get any of these reviews hung up on questions of identity, unless that topic is central to the story of the film, as it was in Les Misérables. I don't want to call out Portrait as a film about women because it really isn't that broad in its approach. It's a very simple story about a love affair that just happens to be between two women. Whether the discussion of its quality should be identity-focused seems to veer somewhere between irrelevant (it doesn't matter what kind of people it's about if it's a good story and a good film) and stilted (Are we talking about it being good because it's so unusual (all female cast, vast majority of the crew including writer, director, and producers also women)?) I think the former distracts from the quality of the film and the latter possibly detracts from it. People should be looking at Portrait as a work on its own merits, rather than whom it was created by. But the other thing that occurs to me is that this is a film that would often be derided as a "chick flick" and, notably, I think I, as the only male in our little film-going group, was the one who liked it best.

Now, again, that shouldn't determine or predetermine anything. The fact that I identify as male and the movie was made by women shouldn't affect anything about how I feel about it. It's either a good story and/or a good film or it isn't. But in our typically aggressive, masculine society, the phrase "chick flick" is usually meant to dismiss things that "guys aren't supposed to like" and it struck me as funny that all three women that I watched it with seemed to have reservations and I really didn't, aside from the usual French tendency to make little things have dramatic import when they often don't need to. It makes me wonder if my delay in writing about it was a subconscious instinct not to talk about those "non-male" things like (gasp!) emotion and how I felt it was the basis of a good film whereas everyone else I was with (i.e. three women) felt it was less so. The popular concept is that women generally engage their positive emotions more often than men do and are more comfortable expressing themselves in that fashion. Is that an implicit bias? Am I assuming something on the part of my girlfriend and friends that may be doing them a disservice simply because they didn't think a movie was as good as I did?

The story is set in the 18th century, as a painter (Marianne; Noémie Merlant) is hired to create a portrait of a young woman of Brittany (Héloise; Adèle Haenel) who is being married off to a Milanese noble. Héloise isn't interested in this whole transaction and, over the course of Marianne's attempts to complete her contract, the two have a brief and intense affair. The story doesn't need to be more complicated than that and director Céline Sciamma does a good job of keeping the focus on the intensity between Merlant and Haenel, as they explore life outside of 'adult' supervision (Héloise's pragmatic and traditional mother, The Countess; Valeria Golino), around the studiously indifferent glances of the housemaid, Sophie (Luâna Bajrami), and from altered perspectives (recreational opium.) The most important aspect to any tragic romance is that the audience go away not feeling like it was a completely downbeat tale, but appreciating it for the time that was spent enjoying it, whether in sympathy with the main characters or simply because it was a good story. One can hearken back to the basis of modern Western literature and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as a case example of this. Again, I think Sciamma does a good job of keeping the audience aware that the story is simple, but allowing the emotion to play out in any number of ways; from the obvious to the mildly surreal. One moment that was especially poignant was when Sophie had traveled to a local wise woman for an abortion and had to lie in a bed waiting for it to take effect while the woman's adorable infant crawled over her.

Those are the small moments that I thought brought depth and feeling and a realistic veneer to an occasionally phantasmagoric story (Marianne seeing ghostly images of her lover in a wedding dress throughout the house.) They were moments that resonated with me because of the ability to tie them to moments in my own life, even if they were based on scenarios that I have never encountered and, very likely won't, such as Sophie's abortion. That speaks to me of the essential humanity of the picture and the players, which I think was the central premise of the film: Even these people not like you are still like you and they inhabit a scenario that you'll know, even if it initially feels like a far off painting of a woman in flames.