I have changed my routine lately. I no longer read the news. There were a few blogs I read regularly, a couple of political YouTube channels I frequented, a podcast or two I’d listen to on walks. No more. I just can’t bear current events. I’m looking for distraction, and oh, what’s this? A movie review?
You see, I’m sick. I’m afraid it’s mortal but I don’t know–I mean, every second is a second I will never see again, so isn’t everything mortal? I have, for over a year now, watched Israel gleefully, defiantly wage genocide on the Palestinian people and consumed images of the human body in various states of dismemberment, violation, and humiliation that before this I had only glimpsed with horror in grainy photographs smuggled out of Nanking during WWII–that I had only imagined while reading war stories written by men destroyed largely by just the act of bearing witness. This is the shape of my astonishing privilege. If I didn’t want to see it, I didn’t have to. Something changed.
And I have noticed, from the first day to the 370th, that I can look at decapitated children now, held in the arms of parents maddened by grief and the tacit complicity of the United States and most of Europe, without looking away. I am a shell. I don’t sleep well anymore. I am hollowed-out and empty. I understand T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men, his warning about the apocalypse, for the very first time. “Our dried voices, when/We whisper together/Are quiet and meaningless/As wind in dry grass/Or rats’ feet over broken glass/In our dry cellar” and “Paralysed force, gesture without motion,” and “Remember us–if at all–not as lost/Violent souls, but only/As the hollow men/The stuffed men.” I understand who the “eyes I dare not meet in dreams” belong to now; I know where the “twilight kingdom” is, where the dead land “[u]nder the twinkle of a fading star” is, because I live there now. We live there together. The noise of us together sounds like the noise you make when you try not to make a noise. The dry rustle you hear is all our voices mouthing prayers to broken stones.
I understand Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp character, with his too-small hat and too-large shoes, the immigrant and eternal outsider who good-naturedly demonstrated the inhumanity of others through his interest in the weak and championing of the powerless. I understand why The Tramp appeared in the space between the mechanized mass slaughter and dismemberment of WWI and the rise of fascism and murder camps of WWII and fast became the most famous personality on the planet. Chaplin would play little tricks on despots and middle-managers, sly kicks and sleights-of-hand, and smile and wave if caught in the act. “You got me,” his grin says, which maybe has a dash of Bugs Bunny’s “Ain’t I a stinker?” as well. And I know why, at the end of his film The Great Dictator, Chaplin breaks character and the fourth wall, addressing the audience directly to plead with them to care again about the suffering of others. He spoke of a world rapidly tilting into totalitarianism: the best filled with despair and the worst locating that seam in the sheer rockface of our sense of righteous morality that allows them to find purchase, take root, spore. He begged us to remember who we were when we could still weep, when we had to look away.
How long has it been for you? How far has it progressed? I know. I’m sorry.
That’s from a review of Terrifier 3. I’d seen a bit of the first Terrifier movie, didn’t like at all, and didn’t even know they were already making sequels of the thing, but of course they are. Maybe if I gazed into the abyss a little harder, I’d be desensitized enough to witness more of the fascist state of America, but I’m not. If anything, I’ve become hypersensitized. I find refuge in science and work and my day-to-day routine, I’m afraid to look up and see the catastrophe coming.
That article gives me hope — more than hope, a sense that it is inevitable that someday my privilege will be bled away, that I will stop caring and can look on the horror without feeling battered and eviscerated, because my heart will have been burned out and meaning will have been murdered. Join me in the twilight kingdom, where the darkness waits for us all.
Isn’t that a happy thought? Don’t you want to chitter and murmur and rustle in the decaying attic of our dreams, together?
I’ve been skipping over any news article that has “Trump” in the title for 7 years now.
They are all the same, tens of thousands at least or more.
Trump does or says something either stupid or horrible.
That is it. He never, ever does anything commendable or intelligent.
And, since his mind is going, it will get worse rather than better.
The Guardian doesn’t.
The Guardian stops posting on Elon Musk’s ‘toxic’ X
I stopped paying much attention to the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza after the first 40,0000 Palestinians, almost all civilians, mostly women and children were killed.
It’s genocide.
I’m one person out of 8 billion on this planet.
There isn’t anything I can do to stop it.
There are huge numbers of people with far more power and influence than myself that could stop it or at least slow it down.
Where are they and what is their excuse?
As a related question, Israel has branched out to attack Hezbolla in Lebanon.
They’ve been bombing as far north as the capital, Beirut.
In all this, where is the government of Lebanon?
Missing in action.
AFAICT, they haven’t done anything or said anything.
My impression is that they don’t much like Hezbollah and don’t care if the Israelis attack it.
Hezbollah created their own problem by sporadically attacking Israel and the Lebanese government seems to think they should deal with it on their own.
“They’ll float,” it growled, “they float, Georgie, and when you’re down here with me, you’ll float, too-”
Egads man. Why? I just wikipediaed the three Terrifier films to get a feel for them and that series seems close to topping any over the top slasher stuff I’ve heard of. I made it through part of Cannibal Holocaust before I tapped out from profound disgust. I managed to watch Martyrs by fast forwarding a bit. I’m not proud of that. V/H/S is more my speed.
For stuff more relevant to what Israel is doing now I’d say Waltz with Bashir is in the ballpark. But instead of escapist (toward what?) horror it puts the consequences of military operations right in your face as a years later murky flashback via the main character.
I’m not good with suspense after the pandemic and the election of Trump has cast us back further into the darkness. I prefer comedy as an escape. But I manage to find interesting stuff in my Youtube feed. I have a Stoicism playlist and watched a good video by Philosophy Tube that takes the current hype down a few notches.
As for TS Eliot I had gotten the impression his Waste Land influenced The Great Gatsby. The Valley of Ashes. I have Waste Land but haven’t read it yet.
Hemidactylus @5: A snippet of “The Waste Land”;
Well worth reading and coming back to often, as is “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. One of the sections of “The Waste Land” inspired the song “Cinema Show” by Genesis. Tons of artistic references from that poem.
Trump can’t remove your mother from your memory.
I’ve been in that burned out place for a while.
I learned on Monday that at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century the Spanish Cortes Generales was run by “an artificial two-party system called El Turno Pacífico (peaceful rotation) in which elections were informally fixed so the Conservatives and Liberals would have alternating periods as the majority.” (Wikipedia) Sounds familiar. There were some smaller parties of “extreme republicans” known as “los intransigentes”, a name adopted by the group of French artists that were eventually called Impressionists. Apparently we don’t have any “intransigentes”…certainly not in government.
Anyway, the BS is pilling up. I can’t even read Heather Cox Richardson.
Yes, PZ, there are a lot of menacing dark clouds approaching.
How long have I been commenting: WELCOME TO THE NEW DARK AGES
Anyone want to try to criticize that? Just read the snews. tRUMP is appointing a news hack from FUX snews to as secretary of defense, WTF
Convicted felon ahole tRUMP shouldn’t get a clearance to see or work with ANY classified material. But, I’m sure the officials will roll over and pee on themselves like a scared puppy and acquiesce to him.
Biden was mediocre, NEVER a good president. But, he wasn’t anywhere as much of a destructive maniac as tRUMP is and will be.
In the words of the 60’s soul hit: ‘nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide’
I’ve already been tuning out the news besides local news for a bit now so glad to know that’ll continue for the foreseeable future. Being fortunate enough to live in a sane state and having no social media definitely helps too. As to pass the time, I’ve been catching up on movies and shows recently which is great because I have a backlog. I’ve also gotten back to reading comics, doing jigsaw puzzle and playing board games. As you can imagine, I’ve been frequenting my local nerd shop much more lately. I recommend everyone to unplug and just do stuff you enjoy right now. I just realized how much fun I was missing out on by doom scrolling or reading articles all day. Try your local hobby/book/comic/record shop for example and play or hang out with friends, families or strangers that want a good time. It really helps.
@7 Lynna, OM wrote: Trump can’t remove your mother from your memory.
I reply, thanks, Lynna, yes there are a few comforting lights in the darkness.
But, they will grow dimmer and fewer if what has been promised by tRUMP comes to pass.
On Thursday, I told my students, “The difference between religious people and spiritual people is that religious people are scared to go to Hell, and spiritual people have been there and back. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Hell.”
I can’t even enjoy the late night monologues anymore. They’re all the same horrible shit now.
The morning after the election I checked the results, screamed “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” three times then closed the tab. I haven’t consumed any news since, not even Canadian news. I discontinued my daily scroll through Mastodon. As one commenter put it, we have doomscrolled all the way down to the actual doom. Your country has jumped the rails and is starting a years long slow motion train wreck that I am completely powerless to do anything about and I can’t bear to watch.
I now start my day by opening my Japanese study app and follow it up with some light hearted anime.
Myers’ post just about sums up how I feel about things in this world going to hell.
I watched the first Terrifier last night. It has nothing on Cannibal Holocaust or Cannibal Ferox. The gore was really cheesy looking.
Agreed there. Reminded me more of the gore in later Friday the 13th films. The second one isn’t much better (earth worms really don’t spend much time hanging out in corpses and the blood looked more like Spaghettio’s spaghetti sauce) but will admit I found it funnier and more enjoyable than the first. Better plot, I suppose. I may watch the third one at some point.
It has been reported that at the time when Biden was refusing to get out of the race, his own internal polling was showing that Trump would get over 400 electoral college votes. And yet he insisted that he wouldn’t step down, and a significant portion of the party who had access to that information — including the people who were kept on to run Harris’ campaign — defended him and said he was still the best possible candidate to run. The party never actually cared about winning. All the panic about Trump was purely theater, they never meant to even try to prevent any of this. If you don’t like Trump, you were betrayed from the start — the betrayal actually happened back in 2020 when nearly all of the party fell into line behind Biden (and obviously terrible candidate) to keep Sanders out. Fuck anybody who still talks about “Bernie Bros” — they were right all along, and their critics were idiots and fools who now have been given what they were asking for; at this point, if you are still angry about that, you are absolutely unforgivable.
The only reason the Democratic Party exists is to keep people like you from voting for somebody who might actually roll back Republican policy. Despite the Democrats repeatedly getting control of the government since then, we’ve still got Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich (as well, of course, as GWB’s and Trump’s), we’ve got Reagan’s union-busting NAFTA (strongarmed through Congressional ratification by Clinton), we’ve got GWB’s USA PATRIOT Act (which Biden claims to have written, incidentally) and the Hague Invasion Act (passed with overwhelming bipartisan support) and the open-ended AUMF Against Terrorism (ditto) and the replacement of Glass-Steagall with Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank (which is failing before our very eyes to stop banks and traders from risky trading, the alarm bells are being rung as we speak) and multiple increases to GWB’s drone bombing (which the CIA, who started it, says is counterproductive). At every step of the way, you have had the opportunity to step away and cease supporting these traitors, but instead at every opportunity you decided to support them, even when every candidate they ran who had the opportunity had voted for the Iraq war, even when they ramped up support for DHS and ICE, even when they ran arch-racist Joe Biden.
This didn’t start now, this didn’t even start in 2016. This started certainly no later than the Clinton-Democratic Leadership Council takeover in 1992, and probably not even then. But despite them being the most obvious culprits and works money-sinks, we can’t get rid of the Clintons and their army of highly-paid consultants, not even when Bill goes off to give vote-killing speeches in favor of genocide while his wife’s old consultant team takes more than half of the campaign funds to run a losing campaign — again.
But hey, at least your guy got to kill a whole bunch more Palestinians. Despite the whining, that’s apparently one of your core values, since Harris’ full-on embrace of it didn’t keep you from voting for her, so take some solace in the fact that your passive support murdered some extra kids in the final days before Trump came to power. It’s a good thing you like that, because if you didn’t and still supported Harris rather than voting third party, it means you gave up the moral high ground and signed on to genocide for nothing. Be proud, and have hope: if you organize extra-hard, maybe in 4 or 8 years you can put the next right-wing lying asshole — who the DLC’s successors will choose for you and the Blue No Matter Who crowd will back despite all the obvious red flags — into the White House and they’ll kill some more brown-skinned people in the global south at a cost of tens or hundreds of billions, while being decorous and less abrasive than the Republicans on social media, which is another of your core values in place of those tedious, difficult-to-stand-up-for things like “not supporting genocide at all costs” or “not increasing funding to the military and police in response to unpopular wars and police brutality”.
Vicar (singular): https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/israels-far-right-government-celebrates-trump-win-plans-west-bank-annexation/
(sigh) I stopped looking at the news after that POS💩 got elected. . I just can’t anymore.
Sounds similar to the place Goya was in when he painted his black paintings. That is, depressed after the the failure of liberalism in spain, culminating in the restoration of the monarchy, and after the horrors of the peninsular war in which liberal forces took part.
@ The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs) :
It has been reported? By who? Where? Citation and source needed for the credibility of that to be asssessed. Given your history and known bias sure NOT taking your word for it.
I somehow doubt very much indeed that the Democratic party “didn’t care” about winning. Talk about an extraordinary claim lacking extraordinary evidence.
StevoR @23:
It’s disappointing that you haven’t yet cottoned on to The Vicar’s bullshit. He has repeatedly lied about what has ‘been reported’. You should know better. Don’t give the sociopath the oxygen he craves.
Pete Hegseth, a Christo-fascist defender of war criminals and weekend Fox News host, has been picked for SecDef.
Matt Gaez has the nod to be AG.
Putin puppet Tulsi Gabbard will be Secretary of Intelligence.
This country is so screwed.
@ 19
And now that Trump has been elected, that killing is going to stop, right?
StevoR @23:
AFAIK, the source for this claim is “Pod save America”. See e.g. The Hill
ondrak @27
The Independent reported the claim was made by Obama aides. Perhaps the aides were on Pod Save America.