-The fact is that everything he’s saying so far is simply a lie. I’m not here to call out his lies. Everybody knows he’s a liar.
Interesting. Impugn the character.
Liar.
Trump came with examples.
Trump: Joe, you’re the liar. You graduated last in your class not first in your class.
[crosstalk]
Wallace (existential crisis): Gentlemen, you realize if you’re both speaking at the same time.
Biden “strategy”:
-And the fact is this man doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Trump has to become the moderator. Trump has to ask the hard questions.
Trump: Are you going to pack the court?
And again…
Trump: Are you going to pack the court?
Trump becomes the journalist and gets the answer.
DONALD TRUMP: He doesn’t want to answer the question.
JOE BIDEN: I’m not going to answer the question.
And here Biden loses his temper. Trump has ALREADY gotten under his skin (and won).
Biden: Will you shut up, man?
Very liberal.
“Free speech”.
Just remember, kids…if you want to be a true liberal, you will call everything your opponent says (no matter whether it is or isn’t borne out by the facts) a lie. And, furthermore, you will (one way or another) try to shut your opponent up. Sleepy Joe is weak, but his mic was hot enough to drown out Trump for much of this debate. Like a little kid saying, “Nah nah nah…I’m not listening” while sticking his fingers in his ears.
Biden “strategy”:
-This is so un-Presidential.
But he’s the fucking President, Joe. And you’re a fucking former VICE President. But, of course, you know what is and isn’t Presidential…
Who’s looking down on whom???
Biden “strategy”:
-Keep yapping, man.
-You should get out of your bunker…
Whoa!
Yes, you right that right: Biden told TRUMP that Trump should get out of a “bunker”. Biden tried to spin it immediately into a golf allusion. But it was (at least) the first of many huge missteps by Biden.
Trump then correctly points out the skewed reporting over the past FOUR years.
Trump: They give you good press, they give me bad press because that’s the way it is, unfortunately.
But when Biden questioned Trump’s intellect, the POTUS dropped a MOAB on Biden.
DONALD TRUMP: Did you use the word smart?
[boom]
Trump: So you said you went to Delaware State, but you forgot the name of your college. You didn’t go to Delaware State. You graduated either the lowest or almost the lowest in your class. Don’t ever use the word smart with me. Don’t ever use that word.
Biden “strategy”:
-Will he just shush for a minute?
[crosstalk]
Turning the captured cannons on the battlefield.
DONALD TRUMP: Wait a minute, Joe. Let me shut you down for a second, Joe, just for one second. He wants to shut down the country. We just went through it. We had to, because we didn’t know anything about the disease. Now we’ve found that elderly people with heart problems and diabetes and different problems are very, very vulnerable. We learned a lot. Young children aren’t, even younger people aren’t. We’ve learned a lot, but he wants to shut it down. More people will be hurt by continuing. If you look at Pennsylvania, if you look at certain states that have been shut down, they have Democrat governors, all, one of the reasons they shut down is because they want to keep it shut down until after the election on November 3rd.
Biden “strategy”:
-re: masks –> He’s a fool on this.
Again impugning Trump’s character (specifically intellect and/or judgement). Thin ice.
Let’s take a look at the Biden “intellect” for a moment.
Biden: That’s why I’m going to eliminate the Trump tax cuts. And I’m going to eliminate those tax cuts.
DONALD TRUMP: Why didn’t you do it over the last 25 years?
JOE BIDEN: Because you weren’t president and screwing things up.
Wha?
JOE BIDEN: You’re the worst president America has ever had. Come on.
Wow…
A lot of anger. A lot of emotion. And not a lot of logic.
Biden “strategy” then starts to really tank:
-buying American
Really? A little late to the game, Joe.
Where did you get that idea?
Continuing…
JOE BIDEN: By the way, I’m going to eliminate a significant number of the taxes. I’m going to make the corporate tax 28%. It shouldn’t be 21%.
Hmm. Last time I checked, 28% was MORE than 21%. So…he’s going to “eliminate” taxes by making them HIGHER?
Biden “strategy”:
-JOE BIDEN: Yeah, because what he did, even before COVID, manufacturing went in the hole. Manufacturing went in a hole-
Right…
So Biden isn’t a cozy-with-China globalist who would prefer America to be a service-based economy while offshoring nearly all manufacturing to the PRC?
I think not.
His record says otherwise.
Trump is the first U.S. President (over the course of DECADES) who has tried to claw back good-paying manufacturing jobs FROM China. No Democrat (or Republican) before him has tried to do this since China’s cheap labor became the beneficiary to the deindustrialization of the USA.
JOE BIDEN: I’m the guy that brought back the automobile industry.
What the fuck is he talking about?!?
Biden “strategy” continues:
-That is not true.
DONALD TRUMP: China ate your lunch, Joe. And no wonder your son goes in and he takes out billions of dollars. He takes out billions of dollars to manage. He makes millions of dollars. And also, while we’re at it, why is it just out of curiosity, the mayor of Moscow’s wife gave you a son three and a half million dollars?
Biden “strategy”:
-That is not true.
-None of that is true.
[and again]
-None of that is true.
-That is not true.
[it gets a little old, doesn’t it]
That was a rhetorical question.
DONALD TRUMP: It’s a fact.
JOE BIDEN: It is not a fact.
Under Joe’s skin again. Sensitive topic. Hunter Biden.
JOE BIDEN: Well, it’s hard to get any word in with this clown. Excuse me, this person.
Chris Wallace’s true colors come out. To the question, “Can I be honest?”, Wallace shuts down all dialogue…because Trump veers into asking about Joe’s quid pro quo to get a Ukrainian prosecutor fired (a prosecutor investigating corruption related to his son Hunter). The quid pro quo involved a billion dollars in American taxpayer money.
DONALD TRUMP: Chris, can I be honest? It’s a very important question-
JOE BIDEN: Try to be honest.
CHRIS WALLACE: No.
DONALD TRUMP: He stood up-
CHRIS WALLACE: The answer to the question is no.
DONALD TRUMP: … and the threatened Ukraine-
CHRIS WALLACE: Sir-
DONALD TRUMP: … with a billion dollars-
JOE BIDEN: That is absolutely not true.
Wallace: Why should I be different than the two of you?
Chris Wallace doesn’t want to “report” the news. He doesn’t want to give facts. Instead, he wants to shape public opinion. As good as he is (compared to literal CIA hacks like Anderson Cooper), he is still beholden to his own jealousy…nay, envy (if not also beholden to an untoward entity).
Two summers at Langley.
Operative line:
“For a couple months over the course of two summers, I worked at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.”
Joe having trouble remembering that equity and equality mean two different things:
JOE BIDEN: It’s about equity and equality. It’s about decency. It’s about the constitution. And we have never walked away from trying to require equity for everyone, equality for the whole of America.
More cognitive dissonance (bland propaganda):
JOE BIDEN: … second point I’d make to you, is that when Floyd was killed, when Mr. Floyd was killed, there was a peaceful protest in front of the White House. What did he do? He came out of his bunker, had the military use tear gas on them so he could walk across to a church and hold up a Bible.
[sidenote…the church in question was set on fire…by the “peaceful” protesters…and later visited by Trump (who indeed had a Bible)]
DONALD TRUMP: You did a crime bill, 1994, where you call them super predators. African-Americans are super predators and they’ve never forgotten it. They’ve never forgotten it.
There is quite a lot of truth in this. Biden did indeed use this term. He very much seemed to be referring to black people when using said term.
DONALD TRUMP: I don’t think you have any law enforcement. You can’t even say the word law enforcement. Because if you say those words, you’re going to lose all of your radical left supporters.
It does certainly appear that Joe Biden has backtracked on his “tough on crime” stance from years ago. It does certainly appear that he has caved to AOC and BLM. Because he NEEDS those votes Scary.
Trump re: racial sensitivity training (shaming white men solely because of the color of their skin and because of a heritage they had no choice but be born into):
“They were teaching people that our country is a horrible place. It’s a racist place. And they were teaching people to hate our country. And I’m not going to allow that to happen.”
BS:
JOE BIDEN: Nobody’s doing that. He’s the racist.
Very quick to impugn character. Very quick. And very hackneyed. Never a new trope.
Chris Wallace setting the agenda again…because he’s really so worried about “hellholes” like Tulsa and Fort Worth… Give me a fucking break:
CHRIS WALLACE: That’s exactly my question. There has been a dramatic increase in homicides in America this summer particularly, and you often blame that on Democratic mayors and Democratic governors. But in fact, there have been equivalent spikes in Republican led cities, like Tulsa and Fort Worth. So the question is, is this really a…
You can’t compare those two cities with Chicago. Or Minneapolis. Or Portland. Or Seattle. Or Oakland. Or Baltimore. Apples and motherfucking oranges.
JOE BIDEN: I was raised in the suburbs. This is not 1950. All these dog whistles and racism don’t work anymore. Suburbs are by and large integrated. There’s many people today driving their kids to soccer practice and/or black and white and Hispanic in the same car as there have been any time in the past, what really is a threat to the suburbs and their safety is his failure to deal with COVID. They’re dying in the suburbs. His failure to deal with the environment, they’re being flooded, they’re being burned out because his refusal to do anything. That’s why the suburbs are in trouble.
Translation:
Trump’s a racist and the main problem plaguing the suburbs is “climate change”. Not in Chicago. Not in Portland. Not in Seattle.
In Portland, months of riots…every night. And then (voila!) the fires. Very convenient, these fires, for indebted states like California.
There are a plethora of examples of fires being intentionally set this season…particularly in Oregon:
Another Biden gaffe happens on the topic of cities which have literally been burned by arsonists, but again: it’s Trump’s fault.
Biden: He just pours gasoline in the fire constantly and every single solitary time.
Trump is mocking the fact that Wallace and Biden (and the entire liberal [media] establishment) have him on trial.
#Kafka
DONALD TRUMP: What do you want to call them? Give me a name, give me a name, go ahead who do you want me to condemn.
Then Biden makes a startlingly-moronic statement:
Biden: Antifa is an idea not an organization-
Wow.
BS:
-You have no idea about anything.
Trump: And that’s despite the impeachment hoax and you so what happened today with Hillary Clinton, where it was a whole big con job. But despite going through all of these things where I had a fight, both flanks and behind me and above there has never been an administration that’s done what I’ve done. The greatest, before COVID came in the greatest economy in history, lowest unemployment numbers, everything was good. Everything was going.
DONALD TRUMP: When you leave office, you don’t leave any judges. That’s like, you just don’t do that. They left 128 openings and if I were a member of his party, because they have a little different philosophy, I’d say, if you left us 128 openings you can’t be a good president. You can’t be a good vice president but I want to thank you because it gives us almost, it’ll probably be above that number. By the end of this term, 300 judges. It’s a record.
#TheyNeverThoughtSheWouldLose
DONALD TRUMP: Are you talking Hunter, are you talking about Hunter.
JOE BIDEN: I’m talking about my son, Beau Biden, you’re talking about Hunter?
DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know Beau. I know Hunter. Hunter got thrown out of the military. He was thrown out dishonorably discharged.
JOE BIDEN: That’s not true he was not dishonorably discharged.
DONALD TRUMP: For cocaine use. And he didn’t have a job until you became vice president.
JOE BIDEN: None of that is true.
DONALD TRUMP: Once you became vice president he made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow and various other places.
JOE BIDEN: That is not true.
BS:
-That is not true. That report is totally discredited.
Two against one.
CHRIS WALLACE: I’d like to talk about climate change.
JOE BIDEN: So would I.
BS 2.0:
DONALD TRUMP: Not true. Not true-
JOE BIDEN: It’s all true.
Deft counterpunching ensues [BS]:
-JOE BIDEN: Not true-
-JOE BIDEN: Not true.
-JOE BIDEN: Not true.
Ending with a hyphen on the first iteration was really a subtle way of changing it up…
BS:
-That is simply not the case-
Truth bomb incoming:
DONALD TRUMP: So why didn’t you get the world… China sends up real dirt into the air. Russia does. India does. They all do. We’re supposed to be good.
Denial and deception only goes so far:
DONALD TRUMP: He called the military stupid bastards.
JOE BIDEN: I did not say that-
DONALD TRUMP: He said it on tape. [crosstalk]-
CHRIS WALLACE: Please, sir. [crosstalk] Stop.
DONALD TRUMP: I would never say that [crosstalk]-
JOE BIDEN: Play it. Play it-
CHRIS WALLACE: Stop. Go ahead-
DONALD TRUMP: You’re on tape-
“Clap for that, you stupid bastards! Man, you all are a dull bunch. Must be slow or something here, man.”
Main takeaway.
As fake as Kamala Harris is (and she is fake as fuck), Biden is a thoroughly corrupt career politician masquerading as a common man.
He can’t even remember what lie he told yesterday.
He is a pathological liar AND has senile dementia.
Bad combination.
He will do or say ANYTHING to become President.
JOE BIDEN: No, I don’t support the Green New Deal.
DONALD TRUMP: Oh, you don’t? Oh, well, that’s a big statement.
JOE BIDEN: I support [crosstalk]-
DONALD TRUMP: You just lost the radical left.
[MOAB incoming]
DONALD TRUMP: So when I listen to Joe talking about a transition, there has been no transition from when I won. I won that election. And if you look at crooked Hillary Clinton, if you look at all of the different people, there was no transition, because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won, and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with our first lady, they were a disaster. They were a disgrace to our country, and we’ve caught them. We’ve caught them all. We’ve got it all on tape. We’ve caught them all. And by the way, you gave the idea for the Logan Act against General Flynn. You better take a look at that, because we caught you in a sense, and President Obama was sitting in the office.
This is probably the craziest year most of us have ever lived through.
When has the world, in its entirety, faced such chaos in recent memory?
9/11 brought us terror on a horrific, spectacular* level.
Guy Debord predicted this in 1967 with his seminal book La société du spectacle.
No, he did not pull a Nostradamus (who happens to share my birthday).
He did not predict the three towers (including the 47-story WTC7) falling into their own footprints.
But he predicted something much more useful, or at least applicable, to our present times.
The “locus of illusion” that Debord talked about remains (though it be besieged on all sides) television.
For our purposes, we shall call it “video”.
Moving pictures.
Debord also predicted our current age of social-media dominance.
Though he could not name it then, he described it perfectly as, “a social relationship between people…mediated by images.”
What does the word “Facebook” evoke when you hear it?
Does it sound a bit like a dating site?
What role do memes (manipulated images) play in our social discourse?
“The spectacle”, Debord told us, “…turns reality on its head.”
How much of what you hear “on the news” (whether that be television, radio, Internet, social media) do you trust?
Because you are smart, dear reader, you consider the source.
And so do I.
Debord wanted to say something about fakes.
The epigrammatic beginning to the first chapter of The Society of the Spectacle gets right to this point.
It was the philosopher Feuerbach who said that in, “…the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to essence…illusion only is sacred, truth profane.”
Ludwig Feuerbach wrote those words in the 1800s.
But the Irish rock band U2 would come to a similar epiphany in their song “Even Better Than the Real Thing”.
Debord wanted to talk about fake-ness.
But he also wanted to qualify his description of “the spectacle”.
For Debord, “reality erupts within the spectacle, and the spectacle is real”.
To translate (from French to English to philosophy to layman’s terms), there are some aspects of our image-driven information culture that are real (though a good deal of fake news exists). But owing to the lack of a competing narrative to the overwhelming chorus of voices in agreement (corporate news), “the spectacle” (whatever the talking heads tell you) is, de facto, real. Never mind that it might all be rubbish. The sheer repetition of certain truths–day after day, hour after hour (from all the many “options” [ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post])–renders those “truths” the currency of “factual” discourse. Without an independent, competing narrative from alternative news sources (which currently lack the scale and reach to pose a symmetric threat to “legacy media”), whatever the aforementioned “usual suspects” (ABCBSNBC…) tell you is TRUE becomes “truth” the moment they report it. The national news coverage of American current events is indistinguishable whether one has ABC, CBS, or NBC dialed up on the tele.
But the times, they are a-changin’.
Donald Trump’s 3+ years in office have been “a moment of falsehood”, which is to say, truth.
As Debord wrote, “In a world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.”
Debord seemed to be describing the “legacy media” when he wrote of an entity “out of reach and beyond all dispute”.
Of particular concern in this current situation (which already existed in Debord’s day) is the role that vision plays in our mediated understanding of the world.
As Debord wrote, “…it is inevitable that it should elevate the human sense of sight to the special place once occupied by touch…”.
He goes on to describe “sight” as, “…the most abstract of the senses, and the most easily deceived…”.
Think about a painting by Monet.
Waterlilies.
What are you seeing?
You are seeing the work of someone [Monet] whose eyesight was impaired. Literally. But though it be impaired, he still painted wonderful, huge canvases which EVOKED the atmosphere of a pond with waterlilies.
You are seeing blurry images.
Your brain has to fill in the details.
You are not seeing a high-definition photograph.
Furthermore, you are seeing oil paints which have been applied to a cloth canvas.
You are seeing a depiction.
This takes us all the way back to Plato’s “cave”, but I digress…
What happens when the big three TV networks in the U.S. get something wrong?
What about the New York Times and Washington Post (to just name the two most widely-distributed offenders)?
Do any of these entities make a concerted, SINCERE effort arising from true integrity to correct their previous, faulty coverage on events?
Debord could answer before the question was asked…because he knew the nature of these organizations (even in his native France).
He wrote, “The spectacle is by definition immune from human activity, inaccessible to any projected review or correction. It is the opposite of dialogue.”
Social media changed this briefly.
But now, Twitter is acting like the generalissimo of a banana republic by banning accounts which “promote” the “conspiracy theory” known as QAnon.
This is just one example–from one social media platform–where the fleeting dialogue which threatened (?) “the spectacle” has been shut down.
Google, working closely with the communist Chinese government, is all too happy to facilitate similar totalitarian censorship in China…all for a buck (or yuan).
So let’s talk about vision/sight for a moment.
Did George Floyd die under the knee of Derek Chauvin?
All of the “usual suspects” (ABCBSNBC) tell me he did.
And there’s video!
Video never lies, does it?
I mean…movies are all true, right?
Is the video that Darnella Frazier ostensibly shot on her cell phone “documentary” footage?
It may be more than one thing.
It is possible to honestly document fake-ness (without knowing you are filming a pageant).
Have you ever seen an actress cry on command?
I have.
It is quite an astounding thing.
I have a friend who is a major motion-picture actress.
She once burst out in tears…right next to me.
I started to offer my condolences.
I was generally concerned.
I almost started crying.
Then she abruptly jumped out of character with a smile…to let me know she was just pranking me.
It was VERY convincing.
She had never done that to me before.
It was novel.
I had no experience against which to measure her crying fit.
I thought of her as a friend first and as an actress second.
I forgot, temporarily, that she was unequivocally a professional faker.
But Guy Debord saw more to “the spectacle” than just a stream of fake-ness.
Debord seemed to also sense an approaching hour when human relations would become totally stifled.
To hear Debord tell it, “Separation is the alpha and omega of the spectacle.”
Both its goal and its essence.
While mass media seems to bring us together (shared touchstones, talismans…), in actuality, it separates us more from one another.
We are always obliged to mention what “the news” says about a certain topic.
It is rare (almost impossible) that two people have a conversation where they each give their opinion of a recent event and “the spectacle” (a mass, homogenized media) is not invoked (in deferential terms) at some stage as a reference point.
Debord describes the “weapons of that system” as ranging “from cars to television”: all meant to “reinforce the isolation of ‘the lonely crowd'”.
But Guy Debord was not merely taking aim at television and mass media. He saw further. He seems to have, though writing in 1967, seen the inevitably of the Internet.
As he describes it, “The spectacle is a map of this new world–a map drawn to the scale of the territory itself.”
While this is indeed a reference to a story by Borges (the world=the map), Debord’s insight in applying this to mass communication and information dissemination is extraordinarily prescient.
Guy Debord, it must be said, was not without fault.
Most importantly, he was an avowed Marxist.
So his perspicacity ended where mass media stops and economics begins.
Which brings us to the film Anchorman…
Will Ferrell is awkward here.
And gloriously so!
We get gender division.
1970s.
As today we continue to get race divisions.
Who is driving this?
Cui bono?
The British were quite good at “divide and conquer”.
In the Indian subcontinent, Hindus and Muslims had lived relatively peaceably together…until the British decided to stoke this latent division for cynical ends.
“If the Hindus and Muslims are fighting each other, they can’t pose a unitary threat to us.”
That is what I can imagine British military strategists saying at the time when India was under their occupation.
And it worked.
It was brilliant.
Evil, but brilliant.
Ask yourself a question: who benefits (cui bono) from blacks and whites and Hispanics and Asians and police and civilians in America being divided and at each other’s throats?
What series of events led to the isolation (frustration) needed to create the current powder keg that went up in smoke with the George Floyd event?
Ron Burgundy will read anything that is put in front of him on a Tele-Promp-Ter.
…as evidenced by his most unfortunate sign-off, “Go fuck yourself, San Diego!”
Which brings us to Joe Biden.
FDR managed to keep it a secret that he was stricken with polio.
He was carted around in a wheelchair during his Presidency.
He had the Resolute desk in the Oval Office modified so that a panel on the front obscured the prying eyes of news cameras.
You could not see his legs fastened to his wheelchair.
And the press obliged.
They loved FDR.
Good old liberal, Democrat FDR.
Elected to the Presidency FOUR times (an American record).
In the White House for over 12 (!) years.
Our Constitution was amended to make this impossible from there on out.
Now the limit is eight years (two terms).
All that notwithstanding, FDR never lost his mental faculties to any significant degree.
He had a physical disability which prevented him from ambulating fully.
Joe Biden can walk fairly well.
Sadly, there is no desk panel that can hide his mental deterioration.
It is there. It will be there. And it will get worse.
Which makes Joe Biden a FAR MORE RIDICULOUS candidate than Donald Trump.
And again, “the spectacle” is running defense for Biden.
Making excuses.
Tossing softball questions (if any at all).
The best thing that vicious, Marxist Democrats in the United States can come up with is a dud missile named Joe Biden.
He is harmless (to extend the missile metaphor), and in that he is very harmful.
He is, as regards the responsibilities of the Chief of the Executive Branch, useless.
Which gives us just one more example of how fakes are being foisted upon us.
Never has there been such a poor candidate for the American Presidency as Joe Biden.
It is becoming apparent to all that, if elected, he would not run his own government.
What a sham!
Why didn’t the Democrats have the foresight to nominate Cory Booker or Kamala Harris?
It couldn’t be because they are RACIST, could it?
Remember, Donald Trump is such a horrible misogynist.
How was it that the Democrats failed to nominate Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar?
Democrats REALLY care about Latinos in the U.S.
That’s why they failed to nominate a guy named Castro.
Democrats are so diverse!
That’s why they passed on nominating a guy named Yang.
And what did the Democrats end up with?
A halfwit, old, white man named Joe Biden.
Halfwit is really too kind a descriptor here.
The mobs wanted Ron Burgundy’s head.
Because he told them to “go fuck themselves”.
But it was a false-flag.
Did Ron Burgundy write the line, “Go fuck yourself, San Diego!” on the Tele-Promp-Ter?
No.
Veronica Corningstone did.
Did the truth about who REALLY wrote it come out?
No.
Not even from a news organization.
Burgundy was summarily fired and his life went to shit.
He ended up wandering the streets like a cross between fat Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer-influenced) and Brian Wilson.
Bathrobe and cheeseburgers.
Nilsson Schmilsson.
Drinking milk in the…hot sun!
But what goes around comes around.
Ms. Corningstone is pushed into a bear pit at the zoo.
An unenviable position, that.
And it takes a little dog to diffuse the situation.
A mob of bears.
A proud species.
Wronged by this intrusion into their hibernation.
But Baxter, the little dog, has a message.
“These are not the droids you are looking for.”
The bears consider the source.
They will not take Ron Burgundy’s word for it.
They will not take Veronica Corningstone’s word for it.
But they will listen to a fellow creature from the animal kingdom.
“I know your cousin,” Baxter says (and I paraphrase).
Baxter’s message rings true.
The bears reconsider.
They are able to retreat gracefully.
Baxter has just acted as crisis negotiator.
A feel-good movie ends with former enemies expressing respect for one another.
Respect.
Not total reconciliation.
But a cessation of the mad chaos.
Brick Tamland (played brilliantly by Steve Carell) ends up (we are told) becoming a “top political advisor” to the Bush administration.
Mass media.
The spectacle.
Hollywood could not help taking a pot shot at a Republican President (even in a light-hearted comedy [and even though the bastard Bush deserved it]).
Why?
Because Bush was a (shitty) Republican (and a war criminal).
But for the eight years of Obama’s Presidency (and the eight years of Bill Clinton’s Presidency), you never saw Hollywood comment (on film) about the merits of these two Democrats.
Why?
Because the Democrat Party is inseparable from the mass media in the United States.
So let me ask you one final question:
do you think you are getting the truth about President Trump, coronavirus, George Floyd, or anything else from this tight-knit cabal of fakers?
It is getting taken down using methods suspiciously-similar to those used by the CIA in their regime change activities around the world.
Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile…
You know their work.
But this time it’s different.
Just as the American intelligence community was weaponized by President Barack Obama against Presidential candidate (and President-Elect) Donald Trump, so is the Deep State (chockfull of former CIA officers) now attempting to bring down the United States to save their asses.
Does China have any reason to attempt to totally destroy the United States AT THIS TIME?
No. [but they are a part of (willing accomplice to) the takedown]
Does Russia have any reason to attempt to totally destroy the United States AT THIS TIME?
No.
Is there any intelligence organization in the world capable of orchestrating the total war to which the United States has been subjected over the past three months?
Only China and Russia.
And perhaps Israel.
But Israel has absolutely no reason to attempt to depose their greatest ally (Donald Trump).
Iran does not have the capability or sophistication.
Nor does North Korea.
[and North Korea, even if they had the capability (which they do not), has no reason to run a regime change campaign against the most formidable counterintelligence apparatus in the world AT THIS TIME]
And so that leaves us but one “country”: a country within a country.
The American (Globalist) Deep State.
It is almost synonymous with the CIA.
And the CIA’s methods and signatures are all over the multi-pronged onslaught we have witnessed these past months.
It’s not necessary at this time to point out the biggest players.
Soros? Yes.
The Clintons? Yes.
Obama? Yes.
Bill Gates? Yes.
What is most important is to locate the quarterback.
And that man is (in my opinion) none other than former Director of the CIA John Brennan.
There are other traitors involved.
But let’s outline the structure of what we have endured:
Biological Warfare–Here, China sacrificed one of its own cities [Wuhan] to create plausible deniability that they were in any way waging offensive BIOWAR. As China miraculously shielded the rest of ITS country from COVID-19, they made sure the virus made it (in droves) to the homeland of their arch nemesis: the USA
Economic Warfare–Here, the Deep State (with a giddy China looking on) watched as the U.S. economy ground to a halt because of COVID-19. Record unemployment. All economic activity ceased. The greatest economy on Earth was ruined (for the time being). Each U.S. citizen received a pittance of $1,200 which has not been enough to really sustain anyone.
Psychological Warfare–The masses of Americans were told to stay home. They were cooped up in their houses for two months. They had nothing to do. No place to go. Underlying depressions and anxieties were exponentially amplified. The populace grew frustrated. Most of all, the PANIC was conveyed daily by news organizations with heavy connections to the CIA and Democratic Party. This propaganda terrorized the populace into being afraid to leave their homes–being afraid even to breathe.
Divide and Conquer–Whether the death of George Floyd was a real or synthetic (staged) event, the news coverage would have been the same. In terms of planning, it is likely that the event never took place at all. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume for a moment that a man named George Floyd actually did die as a result of an incompetent and cruel police officer. Magically, the big bogeyman (COVID-19) WAS COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN. All of a sudden, the pent-up rage and frustration and poverty (see #3 and #2) were activated. This is the “match in a tinderbox” scenario. After two months of wall-to-wall coverage of the coronavirus (which ostensibly killed 100,000 Americans by Memorial Day), ALL OF A SUDDEN…THE LIFE OF ONE MAN (george floyd) has become more important than the lives of the 100,000 coronavirus victims (assuming that death toll is accurate [which it is not…it is grossly-inflated]).
So what we have here is a VERY SOPHISTICATED campaign designed to remove Donald Trump from the Presidency. Worst case scenario (for the Deep State), it is supposed to prevent him from being reelected.
It is also a last-ditch effort to save the asses of those Deep State members whose treason has been pinpointed and for whom justice may not be far off:
-Loretta Lynch
-Sally Yates
-John Brennan*
-James Clapper
-James Comey
-Andrew McCabe
-Bruce Ohr
-James Baker [FBI]
-Peter Strzok
-Lisa Page
-Rod Rosenstein
-Susan Rice
It is my guess that these will be the first pawns to fall.
John Brennan is very important.
More than a pawn (in some ways).
But still a pawn.
How deep will this go?
Barack Obama?
Hillary Clinton?
Bill Gates?
George Soros?
So much depends on each move in this chess game.
Which brings us to Boogie Nights.
There’s a riot goin’ on.
Each of us has a gift.
Heather Graham is great here.
Mark Wahlberg does a really nice job.
We get the Corvette.
Symbol of summer.
Porn with “plots”.
An admirable pursuit.
Burt Reynolds is really phenomenal in this film.
But like Lovelace, this tale of sexual freedom gets darker and darker as it goes along.
You got the touch.
Feel, feel, feel, feel my heat.
Darker and darker.
But very real.
There is a great realism to certain scenes here.
Paul Thomas Anderson really does an amazing job with this one.
Even the usually-vapid Julianne Moore has some actual moments of artful acting herein.
They’re taking her children away.
Black people can like country music.
Definitely a bit of Tarantino in the donut shop scene.
But Anderson is a far superior director to QT.
QT is very talented, but very overrated.
Lots of hype…very little timeless filmmaking.
Anderson is a much more solid auteur.
There is something of Aronofsky here too.
Funny thing is, Anderson got there first.
But Requiem for a Dream goes MUCH DEEPER into drug darkness.
And yet, Anderson paints a portrait of a period of time.
So vividly.
And the colors are washed out.
The soul-eating burn of cocaine is depicted as it really is: torrid.
Desperate.
Exciting.
Elusive.
Utterly destructive.
Psychosis-inducing.
How many more nights will the “divide and conquer” boogie?
Military police.
82nd Airborne.
101st Airborne.
1st Infantry.
10th Mountain Division.
The United States is under attack…mainly from within.
China played a small (though not insignificant) role.
The main culprits are liberal globalists.
4B.
A second wave of coronavirus will hit the U.S.
This will happen as a result of the fake-news media pushing the narrative that one man’s death (george floyd) is more important than 100,000 ostensible fatalities.
The CIA/liberal media is distracting the country from being vigilant about hand washing, social distancing, etc.
They told Beethoven it was a horrible way to begin his 5th Symphony.
With a rest.
It’s unheard.
Of.
Unheard.
Only the players see it.
Only the conductor pays it much mind.
So the first “note” (beat) is silent.
The conductor must give it.
But there are at least two schools of thought on how this is to be done.
First, a conductor might do as they always do and swiftly move their baton downwards to indicate visually that the first (silent) beat is occurring.
The only problem with this is that the symphony players must then abruptly jump onto the very next beat (which is an “upbeat”).
They happen in very quick succession.
Nothing/Everything.
The whole orchestra.
Tutti.
And they get one shot.
To come in together.
Like an attack.
[rest] da da da daaaaaaaaaa
[rest] da da da daaaaaaaaaa
The second school of thought is more practical.
It advises that, in this particular situation, a conductor giving a downbeat is not particularly helpful to the orchestra (because no sounds occur on that downbeat).
Therefore, the conductor motions the orchestra that the UPBEAT is happening.
When the baton (or hand(s)) come down, that is the precise time to make noise.
It is not hard to see why this might lead to a more successful outcome.
For the goal is to have the orchestra stick together.
An orchestra of individuals who are a mere microsecond off from one another creates a sound which is generally not highly-valued in Western music (at least not in the performance of Beethoven).
But this STILL leaves a problem.
The conductor of this second school, whose job it is to try and lead his orchestra to a faithful rendition of this masterwork, is thereby IGNORING what Beethoven wrote (or, more precisely, HOW Beethoven wrote it).
The beginning.
Godard comes back more fit and trim in this episode of his greatest work.
1a is probably the nuke.
1b is a psychological warfare manual (perhaps)
2a returns us to kinetic warfare.
More or less.
With some lulls.
But there is genuine artistry within these 26 minutes.
Like a symphony by Beethoven or Bruckner.
The beginning is weighted heavily.
1a = 51 mins. (the longest of all eight parts)
1b = 42 mins. (the second longest “movement” of the bunch)
The entire first section is, therefore (carry the zero), 1 hour and 33 minutes.
That’s the first quarter of this “ring cycle”.
And it is truly operatic.
So now we are into a bit of a scherzo.
26 minutes.
Now you can see the influence of television.
The “producers” of this film.
Canal+ (French TV channel)
CNC (part of the French Ministry of Culture [and Godard is Swiss!])
France 3 (a French TV channel)
Gaumont (a French film studio)
La Sept (a defunct French TV channel)
Télévision Suisse Romande (a defunct, French-language Swiss TV network)
Vega Films (Godard’s production company at the time)
26 minutes.
Enough time for eight 30-second commercials.
Arriving precisely at a sum total of 30 minutes’ programming.
It’s generous (no doubt owing to the fact that this was educational programming).
If you look at the true running time of an American half-hour sitcom these days, it is roughly 21 minutes of what you want to see.
The other 9 minutes are reserved for at least 18 30-second commercials.
In the tradition of James Joyce.
The pun.
Which Hitchcock so admired.
…and the Oscar goes to.
Oscar Wilde.
Irishmen in France.
The recurring scene from Salò…
Julius Kelp.
Literary history vs. cinematic history.
Godard has a curious frame which reads, “Your breasts are the only shells I love.”
It is a line from the poet Apollinaire.
[tes seins sont les seuls obus que j’aime]
But I must say, the exciting parts here are the “booms”!
The fighter jet exploding in midair.
Bernard Herrmann’s music from Psycho juxtaposed with scenes from Disney’s Snow White…(1937).
The agitation of Stravinsky.
Cluster chords on the piano.
Godard’s voice fed through an Echoplex.
And, just as in 1a, world-class editing!
Let me be clear.
EDITING is what makes Histoire(s) du cinéma the greatest film ever made.
It’s what makes F for Fake the second-greatest film ever made.
And what makes Dog Star Man the third-greatest film ever made.
It is more pronounced in Histoire(s) and Dog Star Man.
Orson Welles’ “editing” (montage) in F for Fake is done more at the story level.
It is a juxtaposition of content.
The Kuleshov effect with ideas rather than images.
[more or less]
Godard’s camera-pen makes some of its boldest strokes in this episode.
It rivals the 1a excerpt involving Irving Thalberg.
Which brings us to a very important point.
Godard CHOSE to use the concept of “double exposure” (two images–one on top of the other–but both seen to a greater or lesser extent) to ILLUSTRATE the subject and title of his greatest film.
Though it runs 266 minutes, that amount of time STILL wasn’t enough in which to lay out the history of cinema.
So images needed to be doubled up.
Tripled up.
Simultaneous to that, words needed to be spoken.
And furthermore, DIFFERENT words than those being spoken NEEDED TO BE WRITTEN ON THE SCREEN.
If you are not a native French speaker, you will probably need to have the subtitles on when viewing this film.
Which gives you A-N-O-T-H-E-R visual stimulus which must be taken into account.
Yes.
This film should be mandatory viewing for fighter pilots.
Practice your OODA loop here.
Observe.
Orient.
Decide.
Act.
Constantly looping.
If you want to survive in this jungle of meaning.
Night of the hunter…
Klimt.
Fred Astaire.
James Dean.
Burt Lancaster.
It’s all true.
That weary look.
From Hollywood.
It’s all true.
Which brings us to value (that thing which capitalism so gloriously creates…far more efficiently and in much greater abundance than with any other economic system).
“What is the value of knowing how to read this film,” you ask?
Just this.
It allows you to know how to read the complexity of the world.
It is a brain teaser.
With an infinite layering of meaning.
Like Finnegans Wake.
Joyce’s masterpiece should be the only required reading for a codebreaker.
Or a codemaker.
Take heed, National Security Agency.
Your curriculum needs adjusting.
Assign only Finnegan.
And reap your gains.
And what of Histoire(s)?
Its most direct application would be for analysts.
Whether they be Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, or INSCOM.
Know how to read the image.
Know how to analyze the video.
You must think outside the box.
Sudoku the fuck out of your employees.
And thereby fight crime and keep hostile actors in check.
Which is where we musicians come in.
To analyze the phone call.
To make sense of the audio…from the video.
It cannot be taught in a bootcamp.
It has to be loved.
Nurtured.
If you had one analyst like Godard, you would have a super-soldier equal to an entire special forces unit.
The trial of Joan of Arc.
Not to be confused with her passion.
Laurel and Hardy.
Gustave Courbet.
Marcel Duchamp.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Which brings us to a very delicate situation.
What is the President planning this weekend?
And with whom is he planning it?
If Ronald Reagan was an actor (and he was), then how much more talented is Donald Trump in getting a reaction with his lines…and his gestures?
HIS lines.
HIS gestures.
Accordion music.
Munch’s vampire.
A President who has been attacked from ALL sides UNRELENTINGLY for nearly four years.
And now finds himself in the midst of the hottest biological/psychological/economic war in recorded history.
Where complexity reigns.
As globalization magnifies each twitch of activity.
And this same President STILL finds himself under attack from the same “bad actors” who have unremittingly assailed him.
Is it a flypaper coup (as Wayne Madsen might call it)?
I don’t know.
But there is an essential point to consider:
A party/person in power cannot (by virtue of their ruling position) effect a coup
In the event of a coup, is a “counter coup” then justified?
Ottoman countercoup of 1909, 1960 Laotian counter-coup, Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66, 1966 Nigerian counter-coup, 1967 Greek counter-coup, 1971 Sudanese counter-coup…
Notice the grouping. How likely is it that Steve Pieczenik came to know of these countercoups during his PhD studies (international relations) at MIT?
A simple search on Google of a specific term (“counter coup d’état”) will presently yield a very intriguing pair of videos featuring Dr. Pieczenik.
Clinton silent coup of November 1, 2016. Silent countercoup “through Julian Assange and WikiLeaks” effected the next day (11/2/16) by element of the American intelligence community. Corruption. Clinton Foundation. Both coups initiated through the Internet. “Second American Revolution”. Forced Comey’s hand re: Weiner investigation.
If this video is to be understood in the context of other statements by Pieczenik, it appears that Donald Trump gained power by way of a (counter)-coup.
Which is to say, the coup has already happened. Yet another reason to embrace the counterintuitive truth that QANON IS NOT A COUP.
Counterintuitive because QAnon indeed SEEMS like a coup.
Baudrillard.
Debord.
Who is America?
Bernie is exasperated at Billy Wayne Ruddick, Jr., PhD
Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello and his conservative hosts both fancy Herman Miller chairs
Rick Sherman does some “spirit cooking” art with his bodily fluids and excrement
Erran Morad dupes some dense conservatives (but not Matt Gaetz*)
Jason Spencer yells, “Nigger! Nigger! Nigger! Nigger!!!” and thereby has his legislative career ended by Sacha Baron Cohen
Corinne Olympios (!) stood no chance
Dick Cheney
redneck “dream mosque”
Show becomes indistinguishable from political op with extremely mean-spirited character assassination of Judge Roy Moore
Rohypnol in the guacamole at a quinceañera
jokes about human trafficking…stacking girls 20 or 30-high in compartments aboard a luxury yacht (attributed to Bashar al-Assad)
OMGWhizzBoyOMG! Finland hipster Shopkins
Rick Sherman as DJ Solitary walking ground already tread by Matmos on A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure
Lewandowski doesn’t fall for it
OMG Antifa dig at black sheriff (implied to be a fascist) by way of inaccurate reference to 1930s Germany
Truth reveals itself. “Anti-fascists” were communists. And “fascists” were anti-communist. A worthwhile movement would be anti-totalitarian (irrespective of right/left paradigm)
You don’t realize you’re under its sway…until you’re no longer under its sway 🙂
Ahh…
Like that great song by the Stones.
Just what ARE those lyrics???
But never mind.
Let’s back to the point.
JUST WHAT KIND of propaganda would this be?
It is with every bone of logic in my body that I soberly assess National Treasure to be Masonic propaganda.
Watch it.
Prove me wrong.
Especially from the beginning.
Near the top of the film.
This is OVER THE TOP endorsement of Freemasonry AND of the Knights Templar.
Ok.
So what?
It’s STILL a good film.
A REALLY ENJOYABLE FILM!
And we’re gonna get down to the nuts and bolts of it…
But I just want to point out another thing which had previously escaped me about this flick.
Nicolas Cage is effectively channeling Alex Jones throughout the entirety of this motion picture.
The accent.
The posture.
The wardrobe.
THE MANNERISMS!
I can’t believe I never caught this!!!
So there you have it.
The protagonist (not at all an “anti-hero” in the context of this film) is a “conspiracy theorist”.
But! BUT!!!
The protagonist also emanates from a clear lineage in thrall to Freemasonry.
You think I’m kidding?
Watch this flick and observe the clear propagandistic tone* re: George Washington and the rest of America’s “founding fathers”.
“At least nine…”
Signers of the Declaration of Independence.
But I fucking love this movie.
Let me get to a very important component right off: Diane Kruger.
Though she seriously sullied her career by appearing in what might be the worst film ever made (Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds), Kruger is a goddess of IQ herein.
And her chemistry with Cage is palpable.
Not least, Justin Bartha makes this whole thing quasi-believable.
On its own merits, National Treasure “works”.
Bartha is a lot like Ben Whishaw in the recent Bond films.
A computer geek cast in a very sympathetic light.
And Jon Turteltaub made a pretty fucking great film here.
A lot like a 007 flick!
Witness Cage as he shucks his janitor uniform for a tux.
Straight out of the opening from Goldfinger.
But Benjamin Franklin Gates [Nicolas Cage] is more a “workingman’s” Bond.
A nut job.
A reader.
A NERD!
Yes.
Although Gates tries to use his “Submariner” as collateral to get his $100 bill back, we don’t really believe it.
We don’t for a second believe that Gates wears a Rolex.
Cage yes, Gates no.
Which is one of the ways this film goes off the rails.
For all of Cage’s acting prowess, he comes off more as a “star” than a true nerd.
Unfortunately, that is damaging for the narrative of this picture.
But all-in-all, National Treasure is a film I want to return to time and again.
The story seduces.
For God and country.
The Freemasonry stuff is a little weird.
[ok, a LOT weird]
But it makes us face the facts re: George Washington, et al.
And brings up a tangential and potentially-timely question:
“Is President Trump a Mason?”
I must admit: I have seen Trump make this hand gesture ABOUT A MILLION FUCKING TIMES!
So what?
In fact…there is AT LEAST another possibility.
Is Trump’s ostentatious display of “Freemason” hand signals a PRETENSE?
In other words, is Trump PRETENDING to be a Freemason??
It’s possible.
But who the fuck really cares???
If George Washington was a Freemason (and he was), then that kinda serves as a cornerstone of expectations (to say the least).
I’m not a Freemason.
I could care less.
Fuck ’em.
But there is an important caveat.
Q:
Was the secrecy of Freemason lodges an essential aspect of communications security leading to victory in the American Revolution?
And what about the French Revolution??
Again, these possibilities seduce.
Suffice it to say, National Treasure can be a strangely enthralling work if viewed through the lens of theory on propaganda films as well as through the kaleidoscopic peephole of current events.
Something certainly seems afoot in the USA.
I am even reluctant to utter its name.
Mostly because I know not what it is.
This new era of the republic.
Trump as President.
Hard-pressed on all sides.
The winner, fair and square.
Elected by the rules of the country.
The Electoral College.
Which rewards the residual “statehood” of lands which chose to join the USA.
At any rate, things seem far from settled.
Indeed, there is a war going on in the United States.
And it is mostly being waged in the realm of “the spectacle”.
President Trump has an OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of the mass media AGAINST HIM.
It is almost comical 🙂
I would liken it to rats having been driven from a burning ship.
Or termites running for cover during a house fire.
Something is off.
Clearly, the media “darling” (that repulsive shell of a human being, Hillary Clinton) did not ascend the throne.
And the owners of the corporate mass media continue to take her defeat VERY POORLY 🙂
Indeed, Trump is positively “mature” compared to the childish response of the U.S mass media.
Which begs the question: WHAT ARE THEY SO AFRAID OF???
And further: did an “outsider” REALLY win the White House 12 months ago?
Judging from media reaction, Trump must be a fucking Messiah.
And further judging from the bungling media info warfare, the psychological operations techniques being employed IN CONCERT by the U.S. mass media ARE HOPELESSLY DAFT 🙂
Every time Jim Acosta tries to rip Trump, it just adds fuel to the #MAGA fire.
Every time the White House press corps comes off as a Mormon Tabernacle Choir of homogeneity (anti-Trump in tenor), the “deplorables” who voted Trump in are proven right.
To be quite frank, I would hate to be on the other side.
The U.S. Democratic Party appears to be trying to reinvent the wheel…AND FAILING BADLY 🙂
But let us leave the chisel of disingenuous chiselers behind for the time being.
Merry Christmas.
May you know joy.
May the Lord Jesus Christ shine upon you today.
May that grace which surpasses all understanding soothe your heart and uplift your spirit.
May a twinkle of love float lightly into your life tonight.
And may it bloom into charity and generosity forevermore.
An erudite film critic shouldn’t admit such, should they?
But I learned long ago that I must have my own voice.
I can scour the Earth for every film to which Jean-Luc Godard made reference in Histories(s) du cinéma, but I still must contend with my own personal predilections.
We like stuff because it resonates with us.
For me, the realization was with the Romanian New Wave…and ’80s American comedies 🙂
The serious, austere, heartrending, bleak works of the Romanian New Wave have not been canonized by Godard.
Godard, the man, will (sadly) pass away.
Which is a terrible thought to me.
Because he has made his best films [sic] in his “later” years.
But the Romanian New Wave was “mine”.
I discovered it by accident.
And I dug a little deeper.
I would say about 90% of Romanian film resonates with me in a powerful way.
Almost as much as French film resonates with me.
But then I had to come to term with ’80s American comedies.
These were the things on which I grew up 🙂
And there is no greater joy in my film-viewing experience than to see a film which elicits hyperventilating belly laughs 🙂
And so, Borat [directed brilliantly by Larry Charles].
If Sacha Baron Cohen never again makes a good film, he’s still a genius in my book…based solely on this one masterpiece.
No, it is not Citizen Kane.
But it is something.
Something closer to Cohen’s hero Peter Sellers.
And to the bent mind of Andy Kaufman.
Borat Sagdiyev is the epitome of awkward…once he is placed within American society.
He is from the “backwards” land of Kazakhstan.
[of course, there is a great deal of exaggeration in this film…because such caricature can be quite funny]
The special thing about Borat (and Cohen, working through Borat) is that HE INSULTS EVERYBODY 🙂
Borat very much prefigures the Trump Presidency.
Not to mention the young Trump supporters fond of Pepe the Frog 😉
The idea is, “Lighten the fuck up!”
Laugh a little.
Laugh at yourself.
And, naughty naughty, laugh at what you’re not SUPPOSED to laugh at.
The forbidden subjects of laughter make us laugh the heartiest.
Our conscience kicks in.
We feel BAD about making light of such and such.
But it is a reflex: it just simply is fucking funny 🙂
Nothing is going to take the fun out of this world quicker than those who scrub history, those who censor films, those who impose sensitivity training liberally…
Let’s get nitty-gritty.
Ken Davitian is excellent as Borat’s assistant Azamat Bagatov.
Nothing like having to hairdry the balls of your boss 🙂
[not to mention “back pussy”]
Yes, the humor is SO WRONG.
So bad!
But, as I overheard two days ago at the video story, white guys still reminisce fondly about Eddie Murphy standup routines.
Not exactly my bag, but I get it.
[and black guys, hispanic guys…Eddie Murphy was very much a “taboo” comedian]
Which brings us to Lenny Bruce.
I love Lenny Bruce.
Guy was messed up.
But he was brave.
So the point is, crude humor is maybe not the smartest…maybe not the best influence on society…but we need a little of it, it seems.
Maybe it’s because we’re all sinners?
I don’t know.
I don’t want to get too theological.
If I was a better Christian, perhaps I would repudiate Borat.
But I simply cannot do that.
And so I’ll keep it brief:
God works in mysterious ways.
I may be wrong.
But this film helps my heart with a laughter unlike any other.
paulydeathwish 