Monday, December 23, 2019
A Galaxy Divided (Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker Spoiler-Filled Review)
As Mao’s health was failing him, there were two people vying for his position as paramount leader. His chosen successor, Hua Guofang, advocated what came to be known as the “Two Whatevers”, which stated, “We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave.” The other person who was maneuvering for paramount leader—and who eventually did outmaneuver Hua Guofeng—was Deng Xiaoping, who, advancing his “Four Modernizations”, put far less emphasis on ideology, refused to concede on the utterly disastrous Cultural Revolution, and advocated a policy agenda that sought to rapidly advance the country’s agricultural output (China had still not recovered from the Great Leap Forward), industrial development, defensive capabilities, and economic development (it should be noted that Xiaoping, for all of the good he did for China, also ordered the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4th, 1989).
The reason why I bring this up is that, Star Wars, particularly the latest trilogy, seems to be an ideological and cultural struggle in its own right, between JJ Abrams, who directed The Force Awakens and Rise of the Skywalker, and whose vision for Star Wars might be categorized as the “Two Whatevers”; and Rian Johnson, who directed The Last Jedi, who might more closely resemble the “Four Modernizations” in that he sought to change Star Wars and compel audiences to look at it more critically. Unfortunately for the trilogy, and Star Wars as a cultural entity, I think that its version of the “Two Whatevers” (“Whatever George Lucas would have wanted...”) won out with the final film.
I loved The Last Jedi, as I believed that it pushed the Star Wars saga to a close, and, in a very meta way, asked fans to examine it more critically, particularly when Phantom Yoda and Luke Skywalker were discussing the legacies of past Jedi. It was obvious that they were talking about Star Wars, and Rian Johnson very obviously wanted to change Star Wars—I think—for the better.
The primary theme of The Last Jedi was that the heroics of the original trilogy were no longer working against the First Order, and survival required not one single hotshot pilot running suicide missions, but everyone working together. It left the Resistance on the run from an insurmountable enemy, calling for help from the Outer Planets (the idea that the FO doesn’t control and cannot reach sections of the galaxy is very interesting to me and I wish the political situation was more fleshed out in the series), and on the verge of total defeat. It also introduced more diverse characters, and unfortunately the actors who played these characters—like Kelly Marie Tran—were harassed incessantly by die-hard fans who liked Star Wars when it was much less diverse. Again, pushing Star Wars forward.
Of course, because of the tsunami of vitriol and harassment against the people involved, JJ Abrams was called back in to deliver a salve in the form of what one could call the “most Star Wars of all the Star Wars movies,” which not only erased much of what The Last Jedi was trying to say about Star Wars (like how Rey was a nobody—and then, oops!--she’s a nobody but also of Palpatine lineage, and also the final scene of the kid working in the space stables who lifts the broom using the Force, implying that anyone could be Force-sensitive), but also delivered a highly rushed, extremely crowd-pleasing finale built on a narrative house of cards. 25 years later you are going to tell me that Emperor Palpatine survived not only being tossed into the Death Star fusion reactor, but also the explosion itself, and then somehow made it back to the Sith home system? Upon this house of cards, they further piled on brick after brick of fan service moments—Lando shows up! Phantom Luke Skywalker! A touching funeral for Leia/Carrie Fisher! Han Solo gets Kylo Ren to abandon the Dark Side! Totally sidelined Rose Tico!--specifically designed to, like HBO begging people not to cancel their service after Game of Thrones ended, beg the neo-Nazi fanbase not to have a Unite the Right rally outside their offices.
Did I describe Rise of Skywalker as a house of cards? It would be more accurate to call it a bullet train made of rice paper. The two-and-a-half-hour runtime is jam-packed with loud noises, quick edits, few slow transitions, and no character development whatsoever. I said earlier that it is the “most Star Wars movie of all the Star Wars” because it is filled to the very second of Star Wars “stuff”--little character dialogue, a lot of lasers and lightsabers, and a lot of “this is where we need to go next.” There is no tension, no build-up, no uncertainty. There is no logical consideration for anything that happens; no justification. Early in the film, the Squad falls into what is basically quicksand after a speederbike chase, and they find the dagger which tells them where the Sith starmap is, and then suddenly a giant sandworm/snake thing appears. Later, they go to the ruins of the Death Star II (which is very cool, but I hoped that Rey got her tetanus shot beforehand), and all of the sudden she knows that in the handguard of the dagger is an outline of the ruins and a marker showing the exact location of the Sith starmap. She just takes it out of her pack and bam!—she knows everything. The only real narrative tension in the film—up until the end—is when C3-PO gets his memory wiped so they can break the lock on the Sith language in his programming, but this isn’t Data at the end of Star Trek: Nemesis; toward the end of the film, R2 jabs him in the head and restores his memory lickety-split.
Look, I know Star Wars is supposed to be a Big, Important Thing, but the lack of narrative tension is a real issue. The incessant breakneck pace of the film desensitizes the viewer to everything happening on the screen, and what makes matters worse is the foreknowledge that everything is going to happen a certain way. There is no time to build that tension, to ask what or why the characters are doing a certain thing. It’s Star Wars as told by JJ Abrams: Shit just happens and we’re only here for the laser-light show.
Some pretty amazing things happen in the last twenty minutes or so. The Outer Planets’ massive fleet shows up. Neo fights Agent Smith in the rain and ion lightning. Agent Smith unleashes a massive EMP/lightning storm that disables the fleet’s ships. Kylo Ren kisses Rey before he dies (using the last of his life Force to resurrect her in a necessary sacrifice so that Carrie Fisher can be at peace). And, like Independence Day, all of the Star Destroyers are miraculously annihilated after the Sith base is wiped out (someone needs to explain to me how Ewoks—who have never reached space and have been oppressed by the Empire basically since forever—managed to get rid of a Star Destroyer).
JJ Abrams’ “Two Whatevers” won over Johnson’s “Four Modernizations,” and I really think that the entire series as a cultural mecca suffers for it. It is set in the same black stone, a large mass in space that produces its own gravity, and all of us are just orbiting it now, enjoying the pretty lights and not thinking very hard.
Monday, July 29, 2019
The Joy of Reading a Debut Novel
A new book comes in the mail. You've been waiting over a week for it, and you just finished a previous novel the day before. You read a review of it on your favorite literary outlet, and you crack it open. The author hasn't written anything prior. Maybe nobody's heard of it. Maybe it exploded all over the cultural news. But here it is, on your lap, open to your eyes. Here it is, only having existed for a month. Maybe only a year or, perhaps, two. Untested. New. Novel.
I have finished just shy of sixty books so far this year (and it's only the end of July!). It's a lot. Many are excellent, and some are just average. I like to read the classics; I like to read about history, philosophy, politics; I like novels from around the world. But something that gives me particular joy is reading debut novels. I have read many.
I have read There There by Tommy Orange, who won the PEN/Faulkner Prize for a Debut Novel, who had just won the Hemingway prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer--on his first book! I was not the first person to read There There; I had read it early in the year after it was published, but I found it wholly deserving of the praise heaped upon it at the time and the prizes and accolades it continues to win.
I have just started Idaho by Emily Ruskovich. I am about 1/3rd of the way through it. It came out in 2017, it earned a Kirkus Star, and The Guardian had an article about it, which I only found recently, despite the date of publication. Idaho is the story of a woman whose husband is developing dementia, and the husband's previous wife inexplicably murdered one of their children. She wants to know why before dementia overtakes him.
But one debut novel that had been completely forgotten--and that I absolutely love and still mention to people--is The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato. She has yet to publish another novel. The Ghost Network came out in 2015, and I still think about it. It's not a perfect novel, but it is one of the only two novels I have ever read (the other being House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, which I will discuss later) written in a nonfiction, investigative style. I forget how I even found it, but I remember reading the NYTimes review of it at some point, and decided that I must read it. I was looking for another novel in the same style as House of Leaves, and I had found it.
The Ghost Network is about a celebrity journalist who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of a Lady Gaga-like pop star named Molly Metropolis. The investigation leads a little bit into the weird, featuring an avant-garde architectural movement, among other curiosities. It somewhat borders on magical realism. I felt that it was brilliant and weird enough for me, and I sing its praises wherever and whenever I can.
This is perhaps the biggest reason I enjoy debut novels so much. I am always hungry for something new, something different. Something so totally bonkers, like Animal Money by Michael Cisco (which is not a debut novel, but is wonderful nonetheless. Go ahead, check out that sexy cover!), that no one else would ever even think to look for it.
I do not, however, want to give the impression that I do not also enjoy the classics. I am as big a literary snob as they come. My favorite novelists are Emile Zola and Dostoevsky. I read everything from Dickens to Dune (I'm bringing Dune on vacation next week. I plan to start it after Idaho). But sometimes I need something really, really, really different. That is where my love of debut novels comes from. As well as my other, secret, love of something called Weird Lit, or, more specifically, New Weird...
Are you ready for this rabbit hole?
Weird Lit encompasses authors like Lovecraft or William Hope Hodgeson, as well as Ambrose Bierce or Robert Chambers. It is fantasy and science fiction, but without traditional monsters or events; things that are indescribable or unexplainable. New Weird builds on this tradition, and incorporates offbeat science fiction like Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation, Borne, or Danielewski's House of Leaves, The Cipher by Kathy Koja, novels by China Meiville, and Animal Money by Michael Cisco. The famous Japanese horror master Junji Ito (Uzumaki, Tomie, Gyo) is also considered a part of this tradition.
Earlier, I had mentioned Animal Money and House of Leaves, two radically different novels--totally unique from anything else I had read before and since--both in substance and style, that have really opened up new worlds to me, and new literary possibilities. Let's start with House of Leaves, which is a little bit less weird than Animal Money.
If you are familiar with the Slender Man phenomenon, it helps to think of that as a point of reference for the kinds of things that happen in this book. The main character's landlord dies, and, among his belongings, is a heavily annotated manuscript that reads as an investigation into a series of home videos called the Navidson Report.
Main Character > Manuscript > Home Video. Three layers. But we aren't yet done!
The Navdison family has just moved into their new house, and it isn't long before they discover that the external and internal dimensions of the house do not line up. They discover a gap, and in this gap is a dark, possibly infinite, labyrinth that extends into the earth. Mr Navidson decides to spelunk into the labyrinth, and he brings a video camera and lights as far as he can into the labyrinth.
So far so good.
Layer two, the landlord's manuscript, talks about the Navidson Report as though it were real, and includes citations from real publications, just like The Ghost Network does. It is a heavily researched book on the Navidson Report, trying to figure out what it is and where it came from.
It is as if Slender Man were real and was reported about on the news not as some bizarre pseudo-religious phenomenon, but as actual fact.
Some parts of it are hard to read. I read it on ebook and I feel like I missed out on some important parts of it, because there are annotations, some text changes depending on who is speaking, and one section where you have to only read the first letter of every word, which is very difficult and sometimes didn't make sense.
HOWEVER.
It was the only book to ever keep me awake until morning. I've been reading Stephen King since middle school. I read Joe Hill (King's son). I read the supposed "scariest novels ever." Nothing, I tell you: nothing scared me the way House of Leaves did.
And, I think there's a minotaur in that labyrinth....
The other novel that is completely bonkers was not scary, but it did have Communist aliens, occult economists, money that could sexually reproduce, and a character who did not even exist in the world of the novel itself! Animal Money by Michael Cisco was a complete satire on economics and monetary value, and it was as hysterical as it was brilliant. Once again, look at that cover!
I will close with one final Weird Lit novel, this time by another science fiction author who is famous if you know where to look.
The City & the City by China Meivelle (who also wrote Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Embassytown) was made into a BBC miniseries a few years ago. Reviews of the series were mixed and I never watched it, but the novel itself is perfect for our current political situation. The story is as follows:
Two cities exist in the same physical space, but different psychological dimensions. Citizens of one city are conditioned to "unsee" events, people, and places in the other. "Breaching" this law is the most serious offense a citizen can commit. The main character is charged with investigating a murder of a citizen of one city by a citizen of the other.
When I think of this novel, I think about how it could be that Democrats and Republicans occupy the same physical space, but completely alien psychological spaces. As our political situation grows more severe, the more relevant this fascinating novel becomes.
One of Meivelle's other novels, The Scar, takes place entirely on a city far out in the ocean constructed entirely of boats.
I am always looking for something new, something different, and debut novels are a big part of exactly that, whether they are of the Weird tradition or not. Reading something that few have ever seen before, that has only existed for a short time, brings the joy of discovery, of surprise, and occasionally, of terror.
I have finished just shy of sixty books so far this year (and it's only the end of July!). It's a lot. Many are excellent, and some are just average. I like to read the classics; I like to read about history, philosophy, politics; I like novels from around the world. But something that gives me particular joy is reading debut novels. I have read many.
I have read There There by Tommy Orange, who won the PEN/Faulkner Prize for a Debut Novel, who had just won the Hemingway prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer--on his first book! I was not the first person to read There There; I had read it early in the year after it was published, but I found it wholly deserving of the praise heaped upon it at the time and the prizes and accolades it continues to win.
I have just started Idaho by Emily Ruskovich. I am about 1/3rd of the way through it. It came out in 2017, it earned a Kirkus Star, and The Guardian had an article about it, which I only found recently, despite the date of publication. Idaho is the story of a woman whose husband is developing dementia, and the husband's previous wife inexplicably murdered one of their children. She wants to know why before dementia overtakes him.
But one debut novel that had been completely forgotten--and that I absolutely love and still mention to people--is The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato. She has yet to publish another novel. The Ghost Network came out in 2015, and I still think about it. It's not a perfect novel, but it is one of the only two novels I have ever read (the other being House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, which I will discuss later) written in a nonfiction, investigative style. I forget how I even found it, but I remember reading the NYTimes review of it at some point, and decided that I must read it. I was looking for another novel in the same style as House of Leaves, and I had found it.
The Ghost Network is about a celebrity journalist who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of a Lady Gaga-like pop star named Molly Metropolis. The investigation leads a little bit into the weird, featuring an avant-garde architectural movement, among other curiosities. It somewhat borders on magical realism. I felt that it was brilliant and weird enough for me, and I sing its praises wherever and whenever I can.
This is perhaps the biggest reason I enjoy debut novels so much. I am always hungry for something new, something different. Something so totally bonkers, like Animal Money by Michael Cisco (which is not a debut novel, but is wonderful nonetheless. Go ahead, check out that sexy cover!), that no one else would ever even think to look for it.
I do not, however, want to give the impression that I do not also enjoy the classics. I am as big a literary snob as they come. My favorite novelists are Emile Zola and Dostoevsky. I read everything from Dickens to Dune (I'm bringing Dune on vacation next week. I plan to start it after Idaho). But sometimes I need something really, really, really different. That is where my love of debut novels comes from. As well as my other, secret, love of something called Weird Lit, or, more specifically, New Weird...
Are you ready for this rabbit hole?
Weird Lit encompasses authors like Lovecraft or William Hope Hodgeson, as well as Ambrose Bierce or Robert Chambers. It is fantasy and science fiction, but without traditional monsters or events; things that are indescribable or unexplainable. New Weird builds on this tradition, and incorporates offbeat science fiction like Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation, Borne, or Danielewski's House of Leaves, The Cipher by Kathy Koja, novels by China Meiville, and Animal Money by Michael Cisco. The famous Japanese horror master Junji Ito (Uzumaki, Tomie, Gyo) is also considered a part of this tradition.
Earlier, I had mentioned Animal Money and House of Leaves, two radically different novels--totally unique from anything else I had read before and since--both in substance and style, that have really opened up new worlds to me, and new literary possibilities. Let's start with House of Leaves, which is a little bit less weird than Animal Money.
If you are familiar with the Slender Man phenomenon, it helps to think of that as a point of reference for the kinds of things that happen in this book. The main character's landlord dies, and, among his belongings, is a heavily annotated manuscript that reads as an investigation into a series of home videos called the Navidson Report.
Main Character > Manuscript > Home Video. Three layers. But we aren't yet done!
The Navdison family has just moved into their new house, and it isn't long before they discover that the external and internal dimensions of the house do not line up. They discover a gap, and in this gap is a dark, possibly infinite, labyrinth that extends into the earth. Mr Navidson decides to spelunk into the labyrinth, and he brings a video camera and lights as far as he can into the labyrinth.
So far so good.
Layer two, the landlord's manuscript, talks about the Navidson Report as though it were real, and includes citations from real publications, just like The Ghost Network does. It is a heavily researched book on the Navidson Report, trying to figure out what it is and where it came from.
It is as if Slender Man were real and was reported about on the news not as some bizarre pseudo-religious phenomenon, but as actual fact.
Some parts of it are hard to read. I read it on ebook and I feel like I missed out on some important parts of it, because there are annotations, some text changes depending on who is speaking, and one section where you have to only read the first letter of every word, which is very difficult and sometimes didn't make sense.
HOWEVER.
It was the only book to ever keep me awake until morning. I've been reading Stephen King since middle school. I read Joe Hill (King's son). I read the supposed "scariest novels ever." Nothing, I tell you: nothing scared me the way House of Leaves did.
And, I think there's a minotaur in that labyrinth....
The other novel that is completely bonkers was not scary, but it did have Communist aliens, occult economists, money that could sexually reproduce, and a character who did not even exist in the world of the novel itself! Animal Money by Michael Cisco was a complete satire on economics and monetary value, and it was as hysterical as it was brilliant. Once again, look at that cover!
I will close with one final Weird Lit novel, this time by another science fiction author who is famous if you know where to look.
The City & the City by China Meivelle (who also wrote Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Embassytown) was made into a BBC miniseries a few years ago. Reviews of the series were mixed and I never watched it, but the novel itself is perfect for our current political situation. The story is as follows:
Two cities exist in the same physical space, but different psychological dimensions. Citizens of one city are conditioned to "unsee" events, people, and places in the other. "Breaching" this law is the most serious offense a citizen can commit. The main character is charged with investigating a murder of a citizen of one city by a citizen of the other.
When I think of this novel, I think about how it could be that Democrats and Republicans occupy the same physical space, but completely alien psychological spaces. As our political situation grows more severe, the more relevant this fascinating novel becomes.
One of Meivelle's other novels, The Scar, takes place entirely on a city far out in the ocean constructed entirely of boats.
I am always looking for something new, something different, and debut novels are a big part of exactly that, whether they are of the Weird tradition or not. Reading something that few have ever seen before, that has only existed for a short time, brings the joy of discovery, of surprise, and occasionally, of terror.
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
The Tyranny of the Living Dead
I have, up to now, purposefully resisted writing about our current political crisis both out of sheer nausea and the fact that I do not want to have written Thinkpiece # 6,734,595,409,215,179 about a certain president and how America is falling into fascism (it is). What I want to write about instead is what I think is going to happen to the people who voted for him, and what has been my emotional state as a liberal Democrat when I watch them get economically erased.
There are a few sources, first of all, that I would like to draw from, as a background for why I think they voted for Trump, and how the Republican party has thoroughly captured them and entirely alienated them from their history. The first is Thomas Frank's wonderful What's the Matter With Kansas?, which tells the story of how Republicans use social issues as a smokescreen to entice voters before turning around and exacting economic devastation upon them. This, I think, despite being written in 2005 (The "Before" Time, if you watch South Park), tells a story of exploitation that continues to be accurate into our current Black Mirror universe. The second source is A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, which tells the history of labor in its conflict with capital since before the birth of the country, and before the Republicans conned voters and alienated them from their history. The third source is Nothing to Fear by Adam Cohen, which was about FDR and the creation and implementation of the New Deal.
I would also like to remind everyone of who voted for Trump: Union members voted for Trump. Veterans voted for Trump. Farmers voted for Trump. And, in fairness, we also have to point out that women also voted for Trump. HOWEVER, the reason why I do not crucify women the same way that I am willing to crucify other groups is that they have now mobilized against him and are now leading the resistance against him and running for office in record numbers because of the shock of his election.
The shocking and sad part about many of these groups isn't necessarily that they were duped, but rather that their attachment to their oppressors had been cultivated--literally a cult--over a period of decades. This is what Frank wrote about in his book: The strategy is to promise to fight for them on social issues (which Trump is actually doing) and crush them economically. Except that at the same time that they are passing legislation designed to hurt them, Republicans will turn around and blame "market forces" or "the Free Market" or other such nonsense. And they believe it! Steinbeck had reportedly remarked that "socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
It cannot be overstated that the very principle of the free market ideology and the "self-made man" is specifically designed as propaganda intended to bestow a false sense of power in the people at the bottom, and provide moral justification for the ruthless machinations of capitalism. It turns the very goal of ethics on its ear! It serves only to give license to oppression in its Nietzschean ideal:
"I made my money, so I have a right to treat you like this. But don't worry! With enough hard work in the mines, the factories, and the farms, you and your children can be as rich as me."
Here I would like to make one detour and talk about the teacher strikes in the southern midwest. There is a simple reason why teachers are able to strike when no one else is, and that is that those teachers are the only people who remember, who are connected to knowledge. And the fact that they are successful means that the rich have forgotten as much as the people they have erased.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, both before and after Karl Marx wrote his books, workers in the United States began to organize in the factories, in the mines, and on the farms. People staged strikes, boycotts, and picket lines in order to win higher wages and better working conditions. In response, the United States government, at the behest of the capitalists, routinely resorted to violence. In 1914, a miners' strike in Ludlow, Colorado lasted for 6 months before it was suppressed by the National Guard and their Gatling guns. Howard Zinn also points out that the wages of the soldiers ordered to suppress the strike were provided by Rockefeller. This kind of violence, as I noted before, was routine all the way up until FDR and the creation of the New Deal. It is worth noting that A People's History of the United States is banned in prisons, and last year the Arkansas legislature wanted to ban it.
What I am trying to demonstrate is that the people who voted for Trump are ahistorical; they are severed from their history with no real way to recover. They have no way to relearn, and no way to get away from the garbage that has replaced their knowledge (Fox News and Alex Jones, among others). Knowledge is power, and if people lose their knowledge, they become the living dead. The reason that there is no return for for the people who lost this knowledge lies in the emotional strength of what has replaced it; the knowledge purged from their minds has been replaced by complete and utter nonsense that, to outsiders (people living in the nontotalitarian world) is absolutely unintelligible. In this way, even their very humanity has been stolen from them. Evangelicals (who love Trump more than Jesus) now do not believe that the US should accept refugees, and are completely OK with Trump and Stormy Daniels.
This is a big reason why I never understood why we say that there's a "liberal bubble" while we deny the existence of a "conservative bubble." Let me ask: Which ideology incorporates the existence of different people? Which ideology incorporates objective knowledge? Is the only real crime of the liberals the denial of the existence of poor white conservatives? Do they in fact deny it, or do they--for reasons of maintaining sanity--merely deny their power? But that, again, is a conservative feint: The FBI chose to prosecute Timothy McVeigh as an individual, and deny his connection to a wider fascist movement, despite the fact that these movement were--and are--powerful.
Then why--in whose interest--are the conservatives being coddled--against the health of both the society and the United States government itself? Forcing them to participate in society as enlightened individuals, restoring their humanity, is not of economic interest. Above and beyond reasons of capitalism, undertaking such a project would be an immense burden, and it's not like other attempts at nation-building have been successful. On the other hand, it may be necessary, lest the rest of us become their hostages. Reconstruction was in fact successful until it was aborted, but it failed to change the South in any fundamental or permanent way.
This isn't the first time this has happened. A significant amount of time in A People's History of the United States is dedicated to explaining how racism between African slaves, Native Americans, and the European settlers was almost entirely artificial--it had to be manufactured through changing social norms and passing legislation criminalizing any kind of cooperation between Europeans and the slave population. Zinn goes to great lengths to explain the long process of creating what we see in the South and the fear and urgency felt on the part of the capitalist class against the real threat of interracial cooperation. What happened in recent decades, as described by Frank, and that we see in the age of Trump, is simply another manifestation of these same processes.
Their disconnection from reality is indeed frightening, and their ability to discern substance from spectacle is in doubt. Despite the fact that little was actually accomplished at the Trump-Kim Summit, the mere appearance of something could be enough for them. On top of that, they are not even concerned that a hostile foreign government violated the sovereignty of their country; rather, they have embraced their enemy and thanked Putin for the assist. Their sheer indifference to--or even outright hostility to--knowledge that that a foreign adversary attacked us is extraordinarily dangerous. The only people they are willing to believe are their oppressors, and that imperils all of us.
I would also like to remind everyone of who voted for Trump: Union members voted for Trump. Veterans voted for Trump. Farmers voted for Trump. And, in fairness, we also have to point out that women also voted for Trump. HOWEVER, the reason why I do not crucify women the same way that I am willing to crucify other groups is that they have now mobilized against him and are now leading the resistance against him and running for office in record numbers because of the shock of his election.
The shocking and sad part about many of these groups isn't necessarily that they were duped, but rather that their attachment to their oppressors had been cultivated--literally a cult--over a period of decades. This is what Frank wrote about in his book: The strategy is to promise to fight for them on social issues (which Trump is actually doing) and crush them economically. Except that at the same time that they are passing legislation designed to hurt them, Republicans will turn around and blame "market forces" or "the Free Market" or other such nonsense. And they believe it! Steinbeck had reportedly remarked that "socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
It cannot be overstated that the very principle of the free market ideology and the "self-made man" is specifically designed as propaganda intended to bestow a false sense of power in the people at the bottom, and provide moral justification for the ruthless machinations of capitalism. It turns the very goal of ethics on its ear! It serves only to give license to oppression in its Nietzschean ideal:
"I made my money, so I have a right to treat you like this. But don't worry! With enough hard work in the mines, the factories, and the farms, you and your children can be as rich as me."
Here I would like to make one detour and talk about the teacher strikes in the southern midwest. There is a simple reason why teachers are able to strike when no one else is, and that is that those teachers are the only people who remember, who are connected to knowledge. And the fact that they are successful means that the rich have forgotten as much as the people they have erased.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, both before and after Karl Marx wrote his books, workers in the United States began to organize in the factories, in the mines, and on the farms. People staged strikes, boycotts, and picket lines in order to win higher wages and better working conditions. In response, the United States government, at the behest of the capitalists, routinely resorted to violence. In 1914, a miners' strike in Ludlow, Colorado lasted for 6 months before it was suppressed by the National Guard and their Gatling guns. Howard Zinn also points out that the wages of the soldiers ordered to suppress the strike were provided by Rockefeller. This kind of violence, as I noted before, was routine all the way up until FDR and the creation of the New Deal. It is worth noting that A People's History of the United States is banned in prisons, and last year the Arkansas legislature wanted to ban it.
What I am trying to demonstrate is that the people who voted for Trump are ahistorical; they are severed from their history with no real way to recover. They have no way to relearn, and no way to get away from the garbage that has replaced their knowledge (Fox News and Alex Jones, among others). Knowledge is power, and if people lose their knowledge, they become the living dead. The reason that there is no return for for the people who lost this knowledge lies in the emotional strength of what has replaced it; the knowledge purged from their minds has been replaced by complete and utter nonsense that, to outsiders (people living in the nontotalitarian world) is absolutely unintelligible. In this way, even their very humanity has been stolen from them. Evangelicals (who love Trump more than Jesus) now do not believe that the US should accept refugees, and are completely OK with Trump and Stormy Daniels.
This is a big reason why I never understood why we say that there's a "liberal bubble" while we deny the existence of a "conservative bubble." Let me ask: Which ideology incorporates the existence of different people? Which ideology incorporates objective knowledge? Is the only real crime of the liberals the denial of the existence of poor white conservatives? Do they in fact deny it, or do they--for reasons of maintaining sanity--merely deny their power? But that, again, is a conservative feint: The FBI chose to prosecute Timothy McVeigh as an individual, and deny his connection to a wider fascist movement, despite the fact that these movement were--and are--powerful.
Then why--in whose interest--are the conservatives being coddled--against the health of both the society and the United States government itself? Forcing them to participate in society as enlightened individuals, restoring their humanity, is not of economic interest. Above and beyond reasons of capitalism, undertaking such a project would be an immense burden, and it's not like other attempts at nation-building have been successful. On the other hand, it may be necessary, lest the rest of us become their hostages. Reconstruction was in fact successful until it was aborted, but it failed to change the South in any fundamental or permanent way.
This isn't the first time this has happened. A significant amount of time in A People's History of the United States is dedicated to explaining how racism between African slaves, Native Americans, and the European settlers was almost entirely artificial--it had to be manufactured through changing social norms and passing legislation criminalizing any kind of cooperation between Europeans and the slave population. Zinn goes to great lengths to explain the long process of creating what we see in the South and the fear and urgency felt on the part of the capitalist class against the real threat of interracial cooperation. What happened in recent decades, as described by Frank, and that we see in the age of Trump, is simply another manifestation of these same processes.
Their disconnection from reality is indeed frightening, and their ability to discern substance from spectacle is in doubt. Despite the fact that little was actually accomplished at the Trump-Kim Summit, the mere appearance of something could be enough for them. On top of that, they are not even concerned that a hostile foreign government violated the sovereignty of their country; rather, they have embraced their enemy and thanked Putin for the assist. Their sheer indifference to--or even outright hostility to--knowledge that that a foreign adversary attacked us is extraordinarily dangerous. The only people they are willing to believe are their oppressors, and that imperils all of us.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Epilogue
The only thing I haven't touched on is my schadenfreude. In the course of hashing all of this out, if I'm correct, it's not necessarily that any of this is deliberate, but that rather they are enslaved. On the other hand, they chose to believe the capitalists. They were seduced by blatant lies, and, even in the face of brutal economic oppression, they believed them still. Should I laugh? Should I cheer and jump up and down when an entire class of people faces complete economic erasure as a direct result of their own choices? It makes me feel better on the long slide down to Hell. In a way, it's the only consolation, having voted against it, having known that my state voted against it, but other people saw a tsunami as a clear blue sky. I am angry. I am angry that my country is being gleefully debased, that the people we need here in order to prosper are being kicked out, and that we are now facing things that I had hoped we would never see again because a people so completely alienated from their history believed the biggest lie ever perpetrated against them. We can't help them, and sometimes all we can do in the face of such absurd misery is simply laugh.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Atheism Has Failed
This post is a long time coming, as years ago, I've systematically unsubscribed from every atheist Youtube channel I used to follow the minute Thunderf00t switched from lampooning Creationism to ranting about feminists and "social justice warriors."
Every single atheist intellectual that I followed--up to and including Michael Shermer, by whom I have read two books--has been revealed to be a complete and utter fraud. Sam Harris, who is possibly the worst of these, has revealed himself to be a total bigot and a crybaby after he publicized an email exchange he had with Ezra Klein.
Retrospectively, it's not hard to see where atheism went off the rails. It's certainly not the first time that science has provided the justification for bigotry, but it is extremely ironic, given what was atheism's mission in the climate from which it had arisen.
What could be described as "Movement Atheism" or "A"theism (with a capital A) arose as a response to the ascent of religious extremism--particularly Christian and Muslim varieties following 9/11 in the early 2000s. Michael Shermer's The Science of Good & Evil, which I read in my senior year of high school, was published in 2004. Sam Harris's The End of Faith was published, according to the copyright date in my paperback copy, "2004, 2005". The point is that Atheism's mission had been one of global enlightenment, an alternative to the right wing religious zealotry that had been sweeping both the United States and the Middle East in the aftermath of the WTC attack.
Something else happened instead. An anti-dogmatic movement became relentlessly dogmatic. Atheism became, instead of a viable, liberating alternative ideology, an equally oppressive and, later, extremely misogynistic, ideology. It became the monster it had hated, and participated in the propping up of voices antithetical to its enlightenment aspirations. It has descended into Scientism.
Scientism only allows for what is measurable through physical science, and, as demonstrated in the Sam Harris/Ezra Klein Debate, does not allow for historical experiences or political realities to get in its way; seeking biological justifications which can be measured through a microscope in the place of of sociological and political evidence of long-existing discrimination. Science was supposed to take us forward, but here we are reliving debates from the 19th century. The severity of this crime is hard to exaggerate, as the Neo-Nazis have latched on to this new form of scientism as justification for their policies.
Atheism's callous treatment of political and historical evidence of discrimination against minorities bleeds into its horrific treatment of women both inside and outside its own movement. Atheism has bled into RedPill and MRA cultures, and, if you've read Klaus Theweleit's Male Fantasies, this is where fascism begins.
Atheism has failed. It has failed so horribly in its original mission that it is categorically no better than the religious ideologies it had originally intended to combat. It has failed so horribly and so completely that it has become the threat to the very thing it had originally promised to defend and uphold. While Evangelical Christianity is paying for the Faustian bargain of electing Donald Trump, Atheism has provided fuel for the resurgence of Nazism in the United States. I would be more than glad to see it go away.
Every single atheist intellectual that I followed--up to and including Michael Shermer, by whom I have read two books--has been revealed to be a complete and utter fraud. Sam Harris, who is possibly the worst of these, has revealed himself to be a total bigot and a crybaby after he publicized an email exchange he had with Ezra Klein.
Retrospectively, it's not hard to see where atheism went off the rails. It's certainly not the first time that science has provided the justification for bigotry, but it is extremely ironic, given what was atheism's mission in the climate from which it had arisen.
What could be described as "Movement Atheism" or "A"theism (with a capital A) arose as a response to the ascent of religious extremism--particularly Christian and Muslim varieties following 9/11 in the early 2000s. Michael Shermer's The Science of Good & Evil, which I read in my senior year of high school, was published in 2004. Sam Harris's The End of Faith was published, according to the copyright date in my paperback copy, "2004, 2005". The point is that Atheism's mission had been one of global enlightenment, an alternative to the right wing religious zealotry that had been sweeping both the United States and the Middle East in the aftermath of the WTC attack.
Something else happened instead. An anti-dogmatic movement became relentlessly dogmatic. Atheism became, instead of a viable, liberating alternative ideology, an equally oppressive and, later, extremely misogynistic, ideology. It became the monster it had hated, and participated in the propping up of voices antithetical to its enlightenment aspirations. It has descended into Scientism.
Scientism only allows for what is measurable through physical science, and, as demonstrated in the Sam Harris/Ezra Klein Debate, does not allow for historical experiences or political realities to get in its way; seeking biological justifications which can be measured through a microscope in the place of of sociological and political evidence of long-existing discrimination. Science was supposed to take us forward, but here we are reliving debates from the 19th century. The severity of this crime is hard to exaggerate, as the Neo-Nazis have latched on to this new form of scientism as justification for their policies.
Atheism's callous treatment of political and historical evidence of discrimination against minorities bleeds into its horrific treatment of women both inside and outside its own movement. Atheism has bled into RedPill and MRA cultures, and, if you've read Klaus Theweleit's Male Fantasies, this is where fascism begins.
Atheism has failed. It has failed so horribly in its original mission that it is categorically no better than the religious ideologies it had originally intended to combat. It has failed so horribly and so completely that it has become the threat to the very thing it had originally promised to defend and uphold. While Evangelical Christianity is paying for the Faustian bargain of electing Donald Trump, Atheism has provided fuel for the resurgence of Nazism in the United States. I would be more than glad to see it go away.
Monday, December 12, 2016
What the Constitution Means to Me
In the weeks following Trump's election, Evan McMullin, in an interview with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show, suggested that the Left and the Right (the part of the Right that cares about the Constitution) should unite and articulate what the Constitution means to them.
The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (and, by extension, France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, though it isn't ours) articulate a vision for a society under a government that is responsible both to and for its people. It is my personal understanding that the founding documents have transcended the limitations of their authors, and are, by necessity, through advancing technology and demographic shifts, expanded to include, instead of just "all men are created equal" to "all human beings are created equal."
This is extremely important because we cannot have a society that is so proud of itself for being a model for a free and democratic republic that is at the same time is actively--or even passively--oppressing certain groups within its population. It cannot be more necessary to, in order to believe authentically and assert on the world stage that the United States is an ideal democracy, treat every citizen--regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic background, sexual orientation, or any other yet unknown identifier--with dignity and respect under the law.
I further believe that the Preamble of the Constitution gives the government the responsibility to advocate for the good of the people and their resources. The government thus has a responsibility to ensure that people have access to healthcare, that natural resources are protected, that citizens receive adequate education, that citizens are being treated fairly in their work, and that citizens who cannot work or take care of themselves are properly looked after. The government also has a responsibility to regulate and safeguard the economy to minimize calamity caused by financial malfeasance, and to protect citizens from the oppression of monopolies.
The United States government is intended to be a government By the People and For the People, and therefore is a direct reflection of our values and our community. We have decided as a country that it is important to have clean air and water; that it is important to receive a decent education; that it is important that those much less fortunate than us are not subjected to squalor and debasement; that we have fair choice of commodities; that our economy should be stable, with opportunity for all citizens; and that all citizens are entitled to affordable healthcare. Additionally, it is important that our government behaves rationally and consistently in safeguarding our resources for future generations, and reacts appropriately to developments in science and technology.
Our rights come not from God or even the government itself; the government cannot revoke our rights because the government did not grant those rights. Our rights come to us through the very fact of our humanity: We have rights solely by virtue of the fact that we are human beings; these rights depend neither on God nor government. Our rights exist a priori, and no one--neither Donald Trump nor anyone else--can take them away from us.
The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (and, by extension, France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, though it isn't ours) articulate a vision for a society under a government that is responsible both to and for its people. It is my personal understanding that the founding documents have transcended the limitations of their authors, and are, by necessity, through advancing technology and demographic shifts, expanded to include, instead of just "all men are created equal" to "all human beings are created equal."
This is extremely important because we cannot have a society that is so proud of itself for being a model for a free and democratic republic that is at the same time is actively--or even passively--oppressing certain groups within its population. It cannot be more necessary to, in order to believe authentically and assert on the world stage that the United States is an ideal democracy, treat every citizen--regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic background, sexual orientation, or any other yet unknown identifier--with dignity and respect under the law.
I further believe that the Preamble of the Constitution gives the government the responsibility to advocate for the good of the people and their resources. The government thus has a responsibility to ensure that people have access to healthcare, that natural resources are protected, that citizens receive adequate education, that citizens are being treated fairly in their work, and that citizens who cannot work or take care of themselves are properly looked after. The government also has a responsibility to regulate and safeguard the economy to minimize calamity caused by financial malfeasance, and to protect citizens from the oppression of monopolies.
The United States government is intended to be a government By the People and For the People, and therefore is a direct reflection of our values and our community. We have decided as a country that it is important to have clean air and water; that it is important to receive a decent education; that it is important that those much less fortunate than us are not subjected to squalor and debasement; that we have fair choice of commodities; that our economy should be stable, with opportunity for all citizens; and that all citizens are entitled to affordable healthcare. Additionally, it is important that our government behaves rationally and consistently in safeguarding our resources for future generations, and reacts appropriately to developments in science and technology.
Our rights come not from God or even the government itself; the government cannot revoke our rights because the government did not grant those rights. Our rights come to us through the very fact of our humanity: We have rights solely by virtue of the fact that we are human beings; these rights depend neither on God nor government. Our rights exist a priori, and no one--neither Donald Trump nor anyone else--can take them away from us.
Monday, November 28, 2016
"Land of the Free" No Longer
It has been a few weeks since Donald Trump, whom I lambasted as a dangerous cartoon, won the 2016 Presidential Election. I have finally decided that I had better say something before I can't anymore.
Today, one of my students was doing a paper comparing the US Declaration of Independence with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and I couldn't help thinking about what we are going to lose on January 20th, 2017. A long, long, tradition of political and scientific thought culminated in the creation of the United States government and its representative democracy that we have enjoyed and cherished (well, I have, anyway) for 240+ years.
Benjamin Franklin's remark, "A republic, madame, if you can keep it," is less a joke than a warning that we have not heeded.
For 18 months, we have watched now (*grimace*) President-Elect Trump threaten the pillars of our society, and sweep the Republican primaries like a terrifying wildfire. He and his surrogates have since used the Japanese internment camps as a basis for a Muslim registry; promised to pull out of both the Paris climate accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal, and have also threatened to destabilize NATO. And that its only the beginning. He is also appointing known bigots to important cabinet posts and advisory positions, and his new head of the EPA accelerates climate catastrophe. His Secretary of Education is an advocate for school vouchers, has connections to the Christian right, and her main draw for Trump is that her family donated $9.5 million to his campaign. On top of all of that, it gets worse: The NYTimes has published two days ago a full expose of the enormous web of private ventures that threaten to jeopardize his fealty to the country and citizens he will swear to serve. Oh yeah, and say goodbye to Net Neutrality. (Did I cover everything so far? Deep breath!)
As President-Elect, Donald Trump has recently claimed on Twitter that "millions of people voted illegally." In fact, Trump has gone after the NYTimes, protesters, the ballot, and the cast of Hamilton with his Twitter account. Next year, he will be launching personal attacks from @POTUS, and, if he is so inclined, he will have the full force of the executive branch of the federal government at his disposal. Plus the nuclear codes. What happens,in 2020, if Trump decides, "Hey, I'm President. What do we need another election for?" Who is going to stand up to him?
Foreign Policy had an excellent article that detailed what we should be looking out for to see if our democracy is actually being eroded, and there is one part that I would like to discuss in detail. Donald Trump is likely to run the country "like a business," but few people know what that is going to mean until it is too late. Donald likes to reward his friends and punish his enemies, and with the FBI having inserted itself into the election, it is likely that public institutions that citizens previously expected to behave the same toward everyone regardless of political or economic standing, are going to play favorites in a way that will be devastating to public confidence and the integrity of our institutions. One such example will be CNN.
There is an AT&T-Time Warner merger in the works. Bernie Sanders said "This merger represents a gross concentration of power that runs counter to the public good and should be blocked." Trump, however, hates CNN, but might be willing to trade a green light for the merger in return for positive coverage. As Hamilton Nolan put it in his Deadspin article, "So if you are a CNN journalist, ask yourself: Do you believe that the CEOs of Time Warner and AT&T value your editorial integrity more than they value this $85 billion merger?" This is how democracy withers away and dies.
So, what happened? Trump won with about 27% of the total electorate, with less than the number of voters than Mitt Romney in 2012. The fact that Clinton lost by less than a percentage point in battleground states means that about 50% of the electorate actually turned up to vote. This is not unusual in recent elections, but it should alarm people simply for the fact that a democracy depends on participation, and if the people in whose interests policies are being proposed and decided do not vote, well...Donald Trump happens.
I have a sinking feeling that the demographic that brought us the Tea Party in 2010 gave us Trump in 2016: Undereducated white people living in the south and midwest. He's promising many of the same things. The problem is that this is twice now they've traded medicare and collective bargaining for racial animus. At one point during the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders said something prescient: He explained at one of his rallies how people like Donald Trump use racism to divide and conquer: To simultaneously disenfranchise poor whites and at the same time keep them complacent by comparing them to minorities who are even more oppressed. We can expect racism to be catharsis for accelerated income inequality. As soon as it was announced that Donald Trump won the election, reports of violence toward minority populations skyrocketed. The GOP built a coalition of smoke and mirrors for 40 years, and there is no reason why we should expect any different for the next 40 years. Elections have consequences.
Furthermore, the proliferation of fake news sites and conspiracy theories makes it even harder to inform the public, especially as supposedly progressive Democratic voters switch sides or vote for a third party over false and bizarre stories. In order to maintain a democratic society, we must maintain a shared reality, and as fake news sites and previously pro-democratic organizations such as Wikileaks actively work toward trampling democracy in the United States, we are not going to be able to trust anyone.
In fact, the Internet itself has become an instrument of de-democratization. It isn't just that social media is insulating, but that anyone can write anything and that people will believe it. There are few effective ways for society to counteract the corrosive influence of fake news and conspiracy theories, and even fewer for those who are likely to fall into the trap. Belief in conspiracy theories, I have discovered, are a kind of mental illness in that they are nearly impossible to counteract with reason and logic; "No, Clinton does not have Parkinson's." "Well, you're trusting the mainstream media!" The critical thought process completely breaks down, and very likely the person will move deeper into the rabbit hole, reading Breitbart and watching Alex Jones and Ancient Aliens. I thought the 9/11 Truthers were bad. In the 90s, aliens were a fun diversion. But now there are conspiracy theories about nearly everything, and our ability to communicate with one another as a democratic society is severely compromised, and is likely to get worse. (One silver lining about Trump getting elected is that any world body like the Illuminati or the Bilderberg Group or the John Birch Society or what have you, would have never permitted Trump to get elected because they would value order and stability, so we can safely conclude once and for all that these do not exist.)
Unless a miracle happens, Trump will be the 45th (and very possibly--probably?--last) President of the United States of America. Part of me thinks that this was inevitable, that if Clinton won in 2016, someone worse would have won in 2020. They would investigate her perpetually. Her entire term would be consumed by wasteful and inept congressional hearings, FBI investigations, and then at the end of it all they would still have nothing. In 2020, someone else, maybe Trump, probably someone worse, would be voted in, toss Clinton in prison without actionable evidence, and then our country would surely be dead, more surely than we are right now.
Today, one of my students was doing a paper comparing the US Declaration of Independence with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and I couldn't help thinking about what we are going to lose on January 20th, 2017. A long, long, tradition of political and scientific thought culminated in the creation of the United States government and its representative democracy that we have enjoyed and cherished (well, I have, anyway) for 240+ years.
Benjamin Franklin's remark, "A republic, madame, if you can keep it," is less a joke than a warning that we have not heeded.
For 18 months, we have watched now (*grimace*) President-Elect Trump threaten the pillars of our society, and sweep the Republican primaries like a terrifying wildfire. He and his surrogates have since used the Japanese internment camps as a basis for a Muslim registry; promised to pull out of both the Paris climate accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal, and have also threatened to destabilize NATO. And that its only the beginning. He is also appointing known bigots to important cabinet posts and advisory positions, and his new head of the EPA accelerates climate catastrophe. His Secretary of Education is an advocate for school vouchers, has connections to the Christian right, and her main draw for Trump is that her family donated $9.5 million to his campaign. On top of all of that, it gets worse: The NYTimes has published two days ago a full expose of the enormous web of private ventures that threaten to jeopardize his fealty to the country and citizens he will swear to serve. Oh yeah, and say goodbye to Net Neutrality. (Did I cover everything so far? Deep breath!)
As President-Elect, Donald Trump has recently claimed on Twitter that "millions of people voted illegally." In fact, Trump has gone after the NYTimes, protesters, the ballot, and the cast of Hamilton with his Twitter account. Next year, he will be launching personal attacks from @POTUS, and, if he is so inclined, he will have the full force of the executive branch of the federal government at his disposal. Plus the nuclear codes. What happens,in 2020, if Trump decides, "Hey, I'm President. What do we need another election for?" Who is going to stand up to him?
Foreign Policy had an excellent article that detailed what we should be looking out for to see if our democracy is actually being eroded, and there is one part that I would like to discuss in detail. Donald Trump is likely to run the country "like a business," but few people know what that is going to mean until it is too late. Donald likes to reward his friends and punish his enemies, and with the FBI having inserted itself into the election, it is likely that public institutions that citizens previously expected to behave the same toward everyone regardless of political or economic standing, are going to play favorites in a way that will be devastating to public confidence and the integrity of our institutions. One such example will be CNN.
There is an AT&T-Time Warner merger in the works. Bernie Sanders said "This merger represents a gross concentration of power that runs counter to the public good and should be blocked." Trump, however, hates CNN, but might be willing to trade a green light for the merger in return for positive coverage. As Hamilton Nolan put it in his Deadspin article, "So if you are a CNN journalist, ask yourself: Do you believe that the CEOs of Time Warner and AT&T value your editorial integrity more than they value this $85 billion merger?" This is how democracy withers away and dies.
So, what happened? Trump won with about 27% of the total electorate, with less than the number of voters than Mitt Romney in 2012. The fact that Clinton lost by less than a percentage point in battleground states means that about 50% of the electorate actually turned up to vote. This is not unusual in recent elections, but it should alarm people simply for the fact that a democracy depends on participation, and if the people in whose interests policies are being proposed and decided do not vote, well...Donald Trump happens.
I have a sinking feeling that the demographic that brought us the Tea Party in 2010 gave us Trump in 2016: Undereducated white people living in the south and midwest. He's promising many of the same things. The problem is that this is twice now they've traded medicare and collective bargaining for racial animus. At one point during the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders said something prescient: He explained at one of his rallies how people like Donald Trump use racism to divide and conquer: To simultaneously disenfranchise poor whites and at the same time keep them complacent by comparing them to minorities who are even more oppressed. We can expect racism to be catharsis for accelerated income inequality. As soon as it was announced that Donald Trump won the election, reports of violence toward minority populations skyrocketed. The GOP built a coalition of smoke and mirrors for 40 years, and there is no reason why we should expect any different for the next 40 years. Elections have consequences.
Furthermore, the proliferation of fake news sites and conspiracy theories makes it even harder to inform the public, especially as supposedly progressive Democratic voters switch sides or vote for a third party over false and bizarre stories. In order to maintain a democratic society, we must maintain a shared reality, and as fake news sites and previously pro-democratic organizations such as Wikileaks actively work toward trampling democracy in the United States, we are not going to be able to trust anyone.
In fact, the Internet itself has become an instrument of de-democratization. It isn't just that social media is insulating, but that anyone can write anything and that people will believe it. There are few effective ways for society to counteract the corrosive influence of fake news and conspiracy theories, and even fewer for those who are likely to fall into the trap. Belief in conspiracy theories, I have discovered, are a kind of mental illness in that they are nearly impossible to counteract with reason and logic; "No, Clinton does not have Parkinson's." "Well, you're trusting the mainstream media!" The critical thought process completely breaks down, and very likely the person will move deeper into the rabbit hole, reading Breitbart and watching Alex Jones and Ancient Aliens. I thought the 9/11 Truthers were bad. In the 90s, aliens were a fun diversion. But now there are conspiracy theories about nearly everything, and our ability to communicate with one another as a democratic society is severely compromised, and is likely to get worse. (One silver lining about Trump getting elected is that any world body like the Illuminati or the Bilderberg Group or the John Birch Society or what have you, would have never permitted Trump to get elected because they would value order and stability, so we can safely conclude once and for all that these do not exist.)
Unless a miracle happens, Trump will be the 45th (and very possibly--probably?--last) President of the United States of America. Part of me thinks that this was inevitable, that if Clinton won in 2016, someone worse would have won in 2020. They would investigate her perpetually. Her entire term would be consumed by wasteful and inept congressional hearings, FBI investigations, and then at the end of it all they would still have nothing. In 2020, someone else, maybe Trump, probably someone worse, would be voted in, toss Clinton in prison without actionable evidence, and then our country would surely be dead, more surely than we are right now.
RIP United States of America.
July 4, 1776 - January 20, 2017
July 4, 1776 - January 20, 2017
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Kentucky Route Zero is a Magical Experience
From the opening moment, as Conway pulls up to the Equus Oils gas station, one gets the sense that Kentucky Route Zero (KR0/KRZ) is not going to be like any other adventure game. KR0 is a more malevolent version of Haruki Murakami, building an American folklore all its own.
KR0 is not a traditional adventure game; in fact, I don't really think it's a "game" at all. There are no puzzles, very little exploration, and the only thing that the player is really doing is choosing dialogue options along the way. The player--the one "controlling" the story--is more or less along for the ride, an audience to what is one of the strangest, most hauntingly beautiful, and unsettling adventure games (term used VERY loosely) ever made.
Kentucky Route Zero, developed by Cardboard Computer, first began in January of 2013, and as of July 2016, is currently on Act 4 of five. The 4th episode took 2 whole years to come out, and I replayed the entire game on the night it came out. I feel the game gnawing at my mind the same way Serial Experiments Lain did, and I feel inspired to write about what makes it so interesting.
KR0 starts with an antiques delivery driver named Conway stopping for gas at Equus Oils. It's his last delivery before he retires, and he's supposed to deliver to someone on Dogwood Drive. The gas station attendant, named Joseph, informs him that Dogwood Drive is located along a mysterious highway called the Zero. Joseph then asks Conway to turn the power on via the breaker in the basement as a favor to him.
So, Conway ventures down into the basement of the gas station, and there are...wait what? A group of people playing a board game, set up right in font of the breaker that you need to hit! A glow in the dark die rolls to the floor to the left, they say, but they can't hear Conway and they never acknowledge him. Conway turns his lamp off, finds the die that rolled off the table--and the group entirely DISAPPEARS! Conway, having done the favor to Joseph, goes back upstairs, and asks him about the group playing the board game in the dark basement, to no avail. (This is only the first, maybe 2 minutes of the game I'm describing, by the way.) Things sure do get strange, and fast.
What makes KR0 so excellent, beyond the aesthetic and the plot itself, is that it asks the player, beyond controlling movement, to choose characters' responses. This game isn't about being stuck, or even finding pieces of the plot (though, there are a few times later in Act 4 where the player can choose to see certain plot points or not); the game is purely focused on the narrative and the characters. That's it.The joy and beauty of this game is uncovering the mystery of the Zero and illuminating the motivations and histories of the characters through dialogue choices. And I assure you, the dialogue is excellent.
What is also very interesting is that the player's character and perspective frequently shifts, in that the player is making choices for other characters, and at one point in Act 4, what is "current" for the characters is being narrated from a future perspective via surveillance tapes and commentary, at a point, I believe, at least months into the future in terms of the game's timescale, for no other reason (that I could tell) than experimentation. It was a great technique. Beyond that, about halfway through the game, the player's perspective gradually shifts from one character to another, so that the player becomes less sure who the "main character" is. There is a reason for this, but again, "Spoilers!"
Sometimes, it's hard to see where all of this is going, or if it means anything at all. It isn't until Act 4--or, if you are paying attention, Act 2--where certain patterns begin to emerge (unlike Lain, which is 18 years old, I don't want to spoil KR0 because it isn't even finished yet, and I want people to play it for themselves), and after everything the player has seen up to the ending of Act 4, the ending becomes pretty clear (though I'm sure Act 5 will break expectations as much as the previous acts have).
 |
| Our Journey to the Zero Begins |
Plot & Atmosphere
KR0 is not a traditional adventure game; in fact, I don't really think it's a "game" at all. There are no puzzles, very little exploration, and the only thing that the player is really doing is choosing dialogue options along the way. The player--the one "controlling" the story--is more or less along for the ride, an audience to what is one of the strangest, most hauntingly beautiful, and unsettling adventure games (term used VERY loosely) ever made.
Kentucky Route Zero, developed by Cardboard Computer, first began in January of 2013, and as of July 2016, is currently on Act 4 of five. The 4th episode took 2 whole years to come out, and I replayed the entire game on the night it came out. I feel the game gnawing at my mind the same way Serial Experiments Lain did, and I feel inspired to write about what makes it so interesting.
KR0 starts with an antiques delivery driver named Conway stopping for gas at Equus Oils. It's his last delivery before he retires, and he's supposed to deliver to someone on Dogwood Drive. The gas station attendant, named Joseph, informs him that Dogwood Drive is located along a mysterious highway called the Zero. Joseph then asks Conway to turn the power on via the breaker in the basement as a favor to him.
So, Conway ventures down into the basement of the gas station, and there are...wait what? A group of people playing a board game, set up right in font of the breaker that you need to hit! A glow in the dark die rolls to the floor to the left, they say, but they can't hear Conway and they never acknowledge him. Conway turns his lamp off, finds the die that rolled off the table--and the group entirely DISAPPEARS! Conway, having done the favor to Joseph, goes back upstairs, and asks him about the group playing the board game in the dark basement, to no avail. (This is only the first, maybe 2 minutes of the game I'm describing, by the way.) Things sure do get strange, and fast.
What makes KR0 so excellent, beyond the aesthetic and the plot itself, is that it asks the player, beyond controlling movement, to choose characters' responses. This game isn't about being stuck, or even finding pieces of the plot (though, there are a few times later in Act 4 where the player can choose to see certain plot points or not); the game is purely focused on the narrative and the characters. That's it.The joy and beauty of this game is uncovering the mystery of the Zero and illuminating the motivations and histories of the characters through dialogue choices. And I assure you, the dialogue is excellent.
What is also very interesting is that the player's character and perspective frequently shifts, in that the player is making choices for other characters, and at one point in Act 4, what is "current" for the characters is being narrated from a future perspective via surveillance tapes and commentary, at a point, I believe, at least months into the future in terms of the game's timescale, for no other reason (that I could tell) than experimentation. It was a great technique. Beyond that, about halfway through the game, the player's perspective gradually shifts from one character to another, so that the player becomes less sure who the "main character" is. There is a reason for this, but again, "Spoilers!"
Sometimes, it's hard to see where all of this is going, or if it means anything at all. It isn't until Act 4--or, if you are paying attention, Act 2--where certain patterns begin to emerge (unlike Lain, which is 18 years old, I don't want to spoil KR0 because it isn't even finished yet, and I want people to play it for themselves), and after everything the player has seen up to the ending of Act 4, the ending becomes pretty clear (though I'm sure Act 5 will break expectations as much as the previous acts have).
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| Act 3 -- The Lower Depths Bar "Too Late to Love You" |
The Zero
Setting and worldbuilding are crucial to fiction, from Middle Earth to Skyrim to Westeros to MYST. Kentucky Route Zero's highway, the Zero and its mechanics, call to mind the magical realism of Haruki Murakami or Catie Disabato (The Ghost Network). The Zero is weird, and it is one of the most intriguing environments that I have encountered in all of my years of gaming. As the story goes on, the Zero extends from being a bizarre highway in the first three acts to a vast and tumultuous river in the fourth act. Dubbed the "Echo River", it is populated by restaurants, gas stations, and flooded subway tunnels. None of this can physically exist in the "real" world, and instead inhabits its own pocket universe, or "subdimension." I don't even want to post screenshots or describe it in detail because that would ruin the experience. The Zero feels alive, lived in, populated by ordinary people. Like the best fictional worlds, it feels like it could be real, even as it also feels separate in time and space.
What's interesting about the Zero in terms of being an environment in a game is that the player has direct control over Conway's truck in the first three acts, but the fourth act becomes a Choose Your Own Adventure as you choose whether to see a destination or not, as you travel along the Echo River on a tugboat.
What's interesting about the Zero in terms of being an environment in a game is that the player has direct control over Conway's truck in the first three acts, but the fourth act becomes a Choose Your Own Adventure as you choose whether to see a destination or not, as you travel along the Echo River on a tugboat.
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| Traveling Along the Echo River |
Rock Paper Shotgun did not particularly like Act 4 compared to previous episodes of the game, but I have to be completely honest: I felt it was the strongest episode. Act 4 focuses almost exclusively on character development, while also containing important plot developments which I cannot spoil.
Conclusion
The game is not finished yet, and I don't expect it to be finished until late next year (Act 4 took 2 years to complete). That said, I implore my readers to play the game at this point. There is enough to see and experience in this bizarre world that I don't think it's much of a problem to wait for Act V. There are people I personally know who definitely need to play Kentucky Route Zero. The game is frequently on sale for 50% off ($12.50), and I highly recommend picking it up when it goes on sale.
I wish that I could say more about what makes this game so special, but alas, I don't want to ruin it when it isn't even finished yet. You'll just have to see for yourself!
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