Watched the most bizarre take on War of the Worlds last night; a Polish film on Mubi called THE WAR OF THE WORLDS: NEXT CENTURY. Not so much an adaptation as much as it is informed by War of the Worlds. And not just by the story itself, but by the story's lore, the fiasco surrounding Orson Welles' radio adaptation of piece in that THE WAR OF THE WORLDS: NEXT CENTURY utilizes the premise of an alien invasion to create a film about media and propaganda. It's like a War of the Worlds iteration filtered through an Eastern European Philip K. Dick. Bizarre stuff.
“You get married, you go on loving a bit longer, you work. And you work so hard that it makes you forget love.”
From THE PLAGUE by Albert Camus.
“The reward center of the European Americans' brains lit up much more when they received money themselves compared to when they gave money to their family members. The reverse occurred in the brains of Latino participants: Their reward centers lit up more when they gave money to their family compared to when they received money.”
“For while he himself spoke from the depths of long days of brooding upon his personal distress, and the image he had tried to impart had been slowly shaped and proved by the fires of passion and regret, this meant nothing to the man to whom he was speaking, who pictured a conventional emotion, a grief that is traded on the marketplace, mass-produced.”
From Albert Camus' THE PLAGUE.
Radical idea: Members of Congress and close family members should be barred from owning stock in weapons manufacturing companies.
Even more radical idea: Weapons manufacturing companies should not be allowed to go public to begin with. All that does is create a legal venue for war profiteering.
Today's background listening has been a playlist of the latest UNGA addresses, a great perk of life after the Internet. It used to be that the only speech you'd hear about was the one given by your head of state. Listening to all the addresses though, you realize that the world is ripe with far more problems than are represented in whatever media you have access to. Far, far more, and I am now genuinely depressed.
Some of the speeches were really quite interesting though. I may make a list of my favorite in the near future.
Extremely anxious with all the news coming out today. Like many—I'm sure—I worry about the greater geopolitical repercussions all this stuff may spawn.
Concentration completely shot.
Our bodies are hardwired to crank up the adrenaline and blood flow in the face of danger, but what to do with that when the danger is taking place thousands of miles away? But also, simultaneously, within pocket's reach.
Endorsing a presidential candidate shouldn't necessitate more than just that, stating one's endorsement, or at most stating some of the attractive ideas and policies said candidate is looking to bring to the table. Democracy in America however is so primitive and regressed that if said candidate is other than one of the two put forth by the only two political parties that have had a chokehold on American politics for the better part of the last 200 years, a much more elaborate explanation becomes mandatory. So, let's get into it:
Resisting Dictatorship
Too many people get hung up on the optics of dictatorship; the president/leader must don a military uniform, hail from military background, or have inherited their position in office from their deceased father. If not a single individual or family, then one single party must dominate politics and it is typically understood that they maintain power for multiple decades on end, typically with an iron fist. This is what most people think of when they think of dictatorships, completely overlooking some of the ways dictatorships operate and some of the tactics they employ to stay in power. A key misconception is the notion that a dictatorship maintains power solely through the rule of an iron fist. Of equal or even more importance are the psychological tactics employed by dictatorships to persuade the masses that considering any other options aside from their rule would be unrealistic or worse, dangerous. This is why people accept living under dictatorships for extended periods of time, because of the belief that “this is really the best we've got”. The inevitable uprising against the dictatorship finally occurs, not because iron rule has laxed, but because people's conviction that they can have a much better political system becomes more widespread.
Knowing the tactics employed by what we might call “Traditional Dictatorships”, it isn't difficult to see that they are quite exact to those applied in the United States. After all, each of the two political parties have managed to ingrain within the minds of their constituents that voting for anyone other than them is the most dangerous thing an American can possibly ever do. And every year when fresh young new voters register, this indoctrination is passed onto them by their elders, guaranteeing votes for none other than the two parties that have dominated politics for close to two centuries. When a voter wants to rebel, the best they can think of is voting for blue instead of red or vice versa! This practically guarantees that all votes, one generation after another, forever remain between both parties.
Now things start to look particularly sinister when you pause and consider the fact that it isn't only the State Department that is controlled by Republicans/Democrats, but practically every single position of political power in the country is. Congressman, representatives, senators, governors, supreme justices, mayors are all positions held by a member of one of both parties.
What we are looking at here is practically a rather peculiar two-party dictatorship.
Throw in the police brutality, mass incarceration, and military expansionism and you practically have one of worst-acting dictatorships on the planet.
The thing about what we understand to be traditional dictatorships is that, while most people fall into the trap of not accepting any alternatives for an extended period of time, they still know that they live under a dictatorship. They just tolerate it. In their minds, temporarily. Americans however like to think they live in the greatest democracy on Earth, while also simultaneously telling themselves that they have no choice but to vote for the lesser of two evils. The latter being mostly true for a good bulk of democrat voters in particular but not so much for most republicans who at least don't think they're making some kind of compromise when they cast their votes. This makes a very specific segment of democrat voters in particular the most dangerous and cumbersome barrier that keeps Americans from breaking away from the two-party dictatorship holding the country back from genuine progress.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” ― Goethe.
Votes in Translation
Dictatorships want people to vote. That is exactly how they are able to claim legitimacy. It is why they encourage people to vote, and in the process utilize all possible maneuvers for the votes to go in their favor. Chief among these maneuvers is of course the media apparatuses they exercise influence over. In America, it becomes quite laughable when citizenry take it upon themselves to encourage people to vote, thinking they are engaging in some great work of revolutionary activism, not realizing that all they're doing is the dictatorship's work for it. It is only activism if you encourage people to vote against the dictatorship, and in America that means voting against the two-party system.
Truth of the matter is that neither Republican nor Democrat politicians have any care for the interests of the greater American public. The only thing they do care about is your vote and donations. These are the things they ask Americans to give time and time again, but the thing they never ask for is people's thoughts, ideas, or needs. For those, they speak to the uber wealthy. It is precisely why the two-party dictatorship of the United States has continuously served the interests of the wealthy elite over the interests of the general public for the vast majority of the nation's existence, despite all the honey-coated speeches delivered at rallies during election season. Or the speeches televised before or after enacting catastrophic policies, speeches given just to manufacture consent.
Protesting a decision or policy after giving them your vote means nothing. You already legitimized their rule with your vote, and it's very easy to claim that any oppositional protest is only representative of a miniscule fringe of radicals (which is exactly what they do, every time: forget not what happened to Occupy Wallstreet when Obama was in office). The only way to depose of a dictatorship is through the ballot box or taking to the street, and I'm afraid the latter is a particularly tall order for a country the size of the United States. Your best bet is to utilize the ballot box. Don't allow yourself to be gaslit into utilizing it in favor of despicable people who care not for you or your wants.
“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone.” ― John Quincy Adams
Why Cornel
Cornel West is an accomplished intellectual with a very lucid view on the dangers of the corporate duopoly—as he calls it—that controls and manipulates American life. He understands fully well the inherent relationship between extortionist capitalism and environmental destruction, and places extreme urgency on the need to eradicate homelessness and poverty in the United States. Being an academic with a longstanding relationship with universities and college campuses, he's well aware of the increasing barriers that keep people from receiving quality education and the hurdles that deter the free flow of knowledge. He understands that mass incarceration is big business for a select few that is fueled by the systemic racism imbued within policing policies, and that America's appetite for global military expansionism helps prop authoritarian dictatorships the world over and inevitably does not bode well for America itself. He is vocal about the plight of the Palestinian people and oppressed people everywhere like no other politician, and damn is he a good speaker. Both pointed and poetic, with echoes of Martin Luther King Junior revibrating in every sentence. Cornel West speaks the truth, does the right thing, and takes shit from nobody, with the intellect and knowledge to back it up. Also, the man consistently dons his own unique uniform, and I always respect someone with a unique sense of style and personal identity :)
His running mate, Melina Abdullah, is awesome. An accomplished professor of Pan-African studies and co-founder of Black Lives Matter, that would be enough for me to support this woman. She is smart, knowledgeable, highly ethical and badass as all hell. Also cool enough to create and host not one radio show, but two.
As an aside, a note on the strain of American academics who like to lecture about dictatorships and resistance movements that take place halfway across the world: Yo, what the hell? For the first time in forever you have two highly accomplished and very well regarded academics running for office, and you aren't all over this shit? You are allowing yourself to be forced into keeping the long-standing American regime in place despite your reservations and you still have the nerve to teach about the terrible plight of “the other” elsewhere? For shame, honestly. Unless of course you've actually managed to convince yourself that you genuinely want the terrible war-mongering capitalists in office, in which case, America has a bigger problem on its hands.
As another aside, the struggle clearly does not start and end with the White House. Consistent organizing is imperative to free all positions of governance from the grip of two-party dictatorship and replace it with a genuinely varied political system reflective of the multiplicity of the American people and their interests. Steady work must be done if third party congressmen, representatives, senators, governors, and mayors are to be voted in. It will surely be a long uphill battle that is far from easy, but anything is doable with adequate organizing. And some things are better worth organizing for than others.
“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” ― Howard Zinn
P.S. The image at the very top of this post is available as a free hi-res download as well as a physical print. There is also a yard sign version.