We Are The Cause Of Genocide

“Had there been YouTube and Instagram and TikTok around Auschwitz, this is what we would have seen, people burning alive. And it’s beyond horrendous, it’s beyond comprehension.”

-- Dr. Gabor Mate, on Israeli atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.

Why don't people hear this? Because they refuse to hear it.

Why don't people see this? Because they refuse to see it.

Here in the West, in our hypothetically "open" societies, we have the hypothetical freedom to reach moral conclusions at odds with our governments, the hypothetical freedom to be empathetic, and principled, and angry. We have no one to stop us.

Instead, we stop ourselves. We refuse to hear, we refuse to see. We are the cause of genocide.

By ourselves, we must overcome our moral weakness, our apathy, our cowardice, to oppose genocide. No one else will force us to wake the hell up.

More Stray Thoughts on the Hideous American Election

"Garbage"...? Quite a statement from a sitting president.

Given his regrettable cognitive impairment, Biden might not have intended to sabotage the Harris campaign.

But given his mean-spirited character (he is, after all, Genocide Joe), he might very well have intended to stab the backs of those who stabbed his. Consider them stabbed, Joe.

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What if Kamala Harris were honest?

"I know the ambitions, the aspirations, the dreams that exist in our community. Ambitions to win the support of neocon Republicans, to stamp out, once and for all, the remnants of a Democratic left, to isolate the United States globally, to make ourselves hateful psychopaths to the rest of this planet. Aspirations to fuel proxy wars, to make countries fight and die for the sake of our own narcissistic self-interest, to provide cash and bombs for mass murder and genocide. Dreams that drive us to turn economic rivals into hated enemies, to clamp down on anti-war protests and freedom of speech, to disgust voters of all political inclinations, to wipe out the Democratic party for years to come.

"My plan is to build an opportunity for Western collapse and thermonuclear suicide. Let's burn together, all of us, for the joy of burning, for the ambitions, aspirations, and dreams of World War Three, of joyful human extinction."

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If the Democrats had really considered Trump to be the danger they declare him to be, they would have allowed people to choose amongst delegates for a candidate most likely to beat him.

Instead, the DNC appointed a candidate of limited experience, limited intellect, limited empathy, limited vocabulary, limited rhetorical skill, limited appeal to wide sections of the American electorate, limited awareness of policy options, and above all, a candidate complicit with genocide. Genocide!

What's more, this appointed candidate has stumbled through a campaign that seems intent on winning over neocon Republicans, while driving away voters who have traditionally chosen Democrats.

If, in the end, Trump turns out be as dangerous as the Democrats maintain, then the Democrats, through their own stupidity or malice or smug over-confidence, will be remembered as a party that abandoned the American people. That will be their legacy.

Stray Thoughts Before the Looming American Election

Tribalism, idolatry, an utter lack of self-awareness, a pathological disregard for those "other" people we murder as we pursue complacent comforts and psychotic dreams of power:

The four horsemen of Western collapse.

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If the polls reflect reality, then one half of the voting public in America will bow before a party that arms and supports genocide right now, today, while the other half will choose a party that merely promises to arm and support genocide.

No matter which party wins, Americans lose.

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When Trump wins, do you suppose the Democrats will suddenly discover that genocide (GASP!) is a crime against humanity, that aiding genocide (WHAT?!?) is evil, and that, by sending weapons and military support to Israel (HOW DARE HE?!?), Trump has become a war criminal who must be prosecuted?

I know, I know: it's wishful thinking, because genocide is a bipartisan policy; but still, given that the Democratic party are seasoned hypocrites, why not use their hypocrisy to save lives... and to stop Trump?

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When Trump wins -- or, to be precise, when Harris loses -- American voters are likely to turn against each other, to blame each other for the crisis of Trump.

This would be not only unfair, but a tactical mistake.

The Democratic party expected voters to legitimise the Biden-Harris policies of proxy war, direct confrontation with armed nuclear powers, and genocide. No sane voter on the planet would have swallowed these options, and no one should blame them for staying at home on election day.

At the same time, Americans faced with Trump in office will have to realize that they are now on their own, that any political opposition to Trump will have to come from the American people themselves.

Americans might discover, as they did during Trump's first term, that the threat of Trump is nowhere near as apocalyptic as the professional managerial classes had insisted; that Trump, like every American president of our day, is constrained and compelled by national security priorities, imperial structures, and financial demands of the donor class. Yet even if this becomes true, Americans will remain under the rule of this imperial warfare consensus, and will be no better off than they were under previous Democrat and Republican administrations. Once again, Americans will be left to fend for themselves.

When American voters blame each other for political outcomes, they leave untouched the people, the institutions, and the ideologies that have slowly made American lives intolerable. Without interruption from the street, this political-economic decay of the United States will go on until the country falls apart, or until fascism steps in to sort things out on its own terms.

Either way, the American people can no longer afford the luxury of hating each other. Somehow, against the odds, Americans must learn to speak with each other, to hear each other, to work together against the mindless, heartless forces that rule them.

When A Film Falls Apart: HEREDITARY

HEREDITARY (2018), written and directed by Ari Aster.

When a story or film falls apart, we can examine this failure to understand why certain approaches work for us, while other methods do not. From this we can learn about craft, or, at the very least, gain insight into our own subjective responses.

Not every failure to connect is a failure of craft. I have read stories and seen films that did nothing for me, but only because of my own tastes and limitations; I could find nothing objectively wrong in their techniques. Yet in certain cases, things fall apart because of expectations established by the work itself, expectations that are then abandoned or evaded. In my view, HEREDITARY sets up hopes for one type of narrative, but then runs away from the implications of that narrative.

It seems to me that most narratives using the supernatural or the uncanny approach this use in two ways. (I say "most" because there will always be exceptions -- absurdist or surrealist narratives, for example, along with accounts of actual dreams, or fictions that simulate the effect of dreams.)

I call these two approaches intrusion and externalization.

In a story of intrusion, a person, family, or community is invaded by some uncanny or supernatural threat from outside the group. Stories of this kind are perhaps the most common, and they succeed or fail based on the skill and conviction brought to them by their creators.

On the other hand, in a story of externalization, a person, family, or community is faced by a threat that seems to reflect or echo conflicts within the group. These conflicts existed before the supernatural event began, or become most apparent when supernatural events force them to stand out. Either way, any firm line between inner conflict and outer manifestation can become difficult if not impossible to find.

In films, the master of this approach might be Bergman, but it shows up elsewhere with equal effectiveness in THE BIRDS, in LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH, and in THE INNOCENTS.

Inner conflicts need not be clear for externalization to work powerfully. We can recognize the isolating psychological struggles of JESSICA, the projected sexual anxiety of THE INNOCENTS, but the personal conflicts that drive THE BIRDS remain half-glimpsed, murky: they are not so much perceived as they are suspected. If anything, this makes THE BIRDS even more suggestive and haunting.

Because these two methods are both valid even as they set up different expectations, a story can succeed or fail by how it confronts the implications of its method. Craft and conviction matter, but so does honesty in following through.

Here is the danger:

A story of supernatural intrusion can reveal itself, gradually and with no loss of conviction or power, to be a story of supernatural externalization. But can a story that sets up expectations of supernatural externalization hold itself together, if it reveals that its conflicts were never actually internal, but were the results of manipulation from outside?

I would have to say, No, not likely.

Veering away from externalization to intrusion runs the risk of cheapening the human drama, the human pain, that fuelled the story in the first place. We empathize with suffering; we understand that we, too, have suffered in similar ways and will suffer again. If we are told, eventually, that this relatable pain is nothing but a plot device, then we might feel cheated.

This danger becomes even more stark when a narrative shows human pain with exceptional honesty and power. For example, the first half of the film HEREDITARY builds up a dread of mental illness that seeps from one generation to the next. It presents mental suffering and family tensions with an impact that, in better hands, might have rivalled THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, but while Bergman adds uncanny personal visions to enhance the urgency of this mental crisis, HEREDITARY veers away from its intense honesty to show that this family struggle has been prompted and perpetuated by nothing more than melodrama.

In other words, HEREDITARY flees from its implications of human pain by using the supernatural not as a mirror, not as an extension or intensification of this pain, but as a replacement, an evasion. Suddenly, this pain is no longer something that we can all feel, that we can all fear, as it is in a Bergman film, as it is in THE INNOCENTS, in THE BIRDS, or in LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH; suddenly, this pain is the work of cliched movie villains.

To quote from the Sonnet 94 of Shakespeare: "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." HEREDITARY fails drastically, infuriatingly, because it had set itself up as a powerful example of one type of story, only to veer away into something different, something less emotionally confrontational and much less dangerous.

Some viewers might call this evasion a lapse in judgment. I suspect a loss of nerve. Either way, I regret the death of something good.

Lemora

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LEMORA, 1973, directed and written by Richard Blackburn.

During the 1970s, a few notable films overcame the hurdles of a low budget through sheer brutal conviction (THE HILLS HAVE EYES), through an unsettling, dreamlike atmosphere (LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH), through a merciless demolition of its characters' principles and confidence (RITUALS), through guerrilla filming techniques (GOD TOLD ME TO), through the implications of disturbing concepts (THE BROOD), or even through the irrepressible joy of amateurs who wanted to prove their abilities (PHANTASM).

A favourite of mine, and a film that has never gained the reputation it merits, raised itself through pure style. Richard Blackburn's LEMORA provides a consistent visual scheme, and a consistent mood, that overcome its one weakness: an amateur cast with more enthusiasm than skill. Yet even here, two performances are able to stand out: the naturalistic and convincing work of its heroine, played by Cheryl Smith, and the mannered yet interestingly alien performance of its antagonist, played by Lesley Gilb. Smith is clearly a seasoned actress; Gilb might not be an actress at all, but she does offer a strong, unearthly presence.

"Presence" becomes the ultimate virtue of LEMORA. The photography, the lighting and colour schemes, the music, the constant evasions and implications of the script, give the film a tone unique not only for its decade, but for today. Despite a few unconvincing make-up effects, LEMORA succeeds in building dread, and although it might seem viscerally mild when compared to something like THE EXORCIST, LEMORA carries its own dark fairy-tale spells of uncertainty and mystery. It explains very little: although its antagonist reveals vampiric traits, her actual nature is never clarified. She seems like something pretending to be human, like a mimic or a mechanism; her intentions remain foggy right up to the ending and beyond, which might frustrate certain viewers but which leaves me impressed.

In his commentary on the Synapse DVD, Richard Blackburn cites as an influence on his film Arthur Machen's "The White People," and Mervyn Peake's "Boy in Darkness." Although his film cannot reach the heights of these influences, it does echo certain of their ideas and moods, and in digesting the sources, gains a certain originality of its own. This, in part, is what makes LEMORA strange, perhaps too strange to gain a wide audience, but strange enough to win admiration from those, like me, who love the indefinable, the chimaeric, the neither here nor there that somehow becomes an unforgettable landscape of its own.

Genocide Then, Genocide Now

Imagine, for a moment, that the United States had never gone to war with the Axis powers, and that American politicians, American media, had called the French resistance fighters "terrorists," the Warsaw Ghetto uprising "an unprovoked act of violence," and had expressed admiration for the "precision," the "efficiency," of German extermination methods.

Go ahead: imagine.

Or, instead, you could just watch American television right now, read American newspapers right now, listen to the blather of Democrats and Republicans right now, as America provides cash and bombs and fist-pumps for genocide.

Go ahead: watch, read, listen.

And after all of this attention paid to the current genocide, would you still swallow the lies and brain-dead slogans of these presidential ghouls? Would you still be "with her"? Would you still want to "make America great again"?

Go ahead: ask yourself.

SHRINKING OLD -- A Sonnet

SHRINKING OLD.

Why do you flee, you faces of the night?
You crowd my dreams, but vanish when the day
Arrives to chase my scattered loves away.
I die a little more beneath your flight.

You friends who shared my scrapes, my grins, my fright,
You fragrant women, tearful as you play,
And you my mother, you my father: stay
A moment longer with me in this light.

The sumac reds of autumn line my path.
I hear symphonies and songs while I remain
Alive in my desire, in my grief,

Alive within my creaking shell of wrath.
Yet often, I pursue the reds in vain:
Your faces dim the flame of every leaf.

Kubrick's THE SHINING

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THE SHINING forces me to wonder why a film so well-directed, so splendidly-photographed, should fail so thoroughly to scare me.

I could blame the source, a book that did nothing for me at all, but this would be unfair to a director as transformative as Kubrick. Like Tarkovsky, Bergman, and Lynch, Kubrick had his own perspective on the world, and his films owe more to that perspective than they do to any adapted text.

But unlike these other directors, Kubrick seemed to lack any strong sense of the non-rational. He was always good with the horrors of misapplied rationalism, and so we have the trial in PATHS OF GLORY, the megadeath plans in DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, the failure of Hal 9000 to understand the need for human beings on a human mission. In a Kubrick film, tools of reason are often put to work on goals unreasonable.

The non-rational demands different methods. To create atmosphere and anxiety in a dreamlike story, directors can manage well without any belief in the supernatural, but they do need to accept -- and perhaps even to fear -- the subconscious. IVAN'S CHILDHOOD, SOLARIS, THE MIRROR, THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, THE SILENCE, HOUR OF THE WOLF, PERSONA, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, INLAND EMPIRE: these are nightmare films, and they speak directly to those functions of our brains that explore nightmares. Kubrick seemed more at home with fears of rationality gone cold: the military industrial complex in PATHS OF GLORY, DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, and FULL METAL JACKET; the manipulative state in CLOCKWORK ORANGE; the polite society unable to accept ordinary human strangeness in BARRY LYNDON; the tool that develops a will of its own beyond human concerns in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. These are nightmares of the conscious mind.

For this reason, the breakdown of Jack Torrance begins to seem as ridiculous and stylized as the antics of the cartoon characters who lurk at the margins of this film. Leering, rolling his eyes, lolling his tongue, he becomes Wile E. Coyote, and like the Coyote, he fails because of his own bull-headed stupidity. I, for one, have never been afraid of Wile E., neither in the Road Runner films, nor in THE SHINING.

This overblown, cartoonish view of madness becomes all the more unfortunate to me, when I consider the one moment of THE SHINING that left me unsettled. In the sequence where Danny sneaks up to the family apartment to get his toy fire engine, only to find his father seated on the bed and staring at winter light, Jack Torrance is calm and loving and, in his words, at least, reasonable -- yet I can see an odd glint in his eyes that hits me in places where his later bellows and prancing fail to reach. And the frozen alarm in Danny's eye tells me everything I need to know about his response to this calm and loving father.