I'm glad you took the time to lay out precisely what your background is and where you are coming from because it really contextualizes what bothered you the most out of that repugnant shitshow, and why. So many things are taken for granted when talking about politics, so much is left to 'common sense' or 'that's just obvious', particularly when writing to a specific audience, that so much of what would provide the most valuable discourse winds up never even being addressed. I have to confess, this is the kind of commentary that I wish was more predominant right now. Trump's first term was marked by strong, vocal opposition from day one. It wasn't always effective, but it was there, and it inarguably helped curtail some of the more odious attempted policies. His second term, on the other hand, has been marked by the opposite: capitulation, normalization and a lack of organizing. To quote another T S Eliot poem: this is the way the world ends/not with a bang but a whimper.
As someone who was lived in the US for extended periods of time, at different points in my life, but is not from the US, my thoughts on Ukraine-Russia are a little more complicated. There is absolutely no question that this is an expansionist war of aggression on the part of Russia, that they have no moral standing whatsoever and that, legally (and morally) speaking, invading armies have no rights, they have responsibilities, the chief responsibility being reparations. I know that might seem 'common sense' or 'obvious', but I want to get it out of the way because I don't want what I'm about to say next to be misconstrued: NATO expansionism has been antagonizing Russia since 1989. The organization was created (supposedly) as a military alliance of US-aligned countries to combat the military alliance of Soviet aligned countries. But as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed, and the threat disappeared, NATO didn't go away. It got bigger, recruiting more and more countries, adding more and more bases, encroaching closer and closer to Russia year by year until it reached its very border. The US can claim that there were never any official talks for Ukraine to join NATO, and that may be technically true, but its eventual incorporation has been treated as a foregone conclusion for a while, and NATO officials have repeatedly reiterated (as recently as 2021) that Ukraine would eventually join NATO, despite the fact that before the Russian invasion the population of Ukraine expressed relatively low support for joining NATO (since 2022 support has skyrocketed, which is completely understandable). None of this justifies Russia's invasion, which is completely unjustifiable, but it helps explain it. I don't think it's too difficult to imagine what US reaction would be if China entered into a military alliance with Mexico and installed a series of bases there, for example.
Which brings me to the Trump-Vance-Zelensky shitshow. I don't think it's controversial to say that NATO has been using the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a proxy war, or that the US and UK sabotaged ceasefire talks during the earliest days of the invasion. I also don't think it's controversial to say that the only realistic resolution has to be a diplomatic one, and that any armed conflict between nuclear powers (proxy or not) has potentially world-ending consequences. But that's not where Trump is coming from. He implies that it is, in order to curry favor among a certain segment of the population, but that debacle made it abundantly clear to anyone with eyes and ears that the only thing he cares about is extorting Zelensky into giving the US access to Ukranian natural resources, and humiliating the man in order to prove a point to his base (America first, bullies of the world, we take what we want and give nothing back, medicaid? what medicaid? never heard of it). He's not the first (or the 46th) US president to extort another country out of their resources, but he's the first one (of my lifetime, at least) to have been so shameless about it, so naked, to have so actively pursued the public humiliation of his counterpart, even at the potential expense of the deal. It was a display of power by a one-dimensional psychopath (I don't think that's controversial to say either) intended as both entertainment and anesthetic for a base of frightened and insecure little boys and girls with a seemingly pathological need for an authoritarian father figure who will protect them from the dangers of people who don't look exactly like them simply trying to exist.
Apologies for the wall of text, but I guess I was in a mood. I know this isn't exactly the main theme of your Substack, and I wouldn't want you to wind up permanently drifting too far from more (directly) film-related commentary, but you've been knocking it out of the park with your posts about politics and morality. There's way too much of the both-sidist, walking-on-eggshells, let's do everything but call a spade a spade crap out there. This is real. And it's good. And it's valuable. And it's necessary.
Thanks for the kind words about the post. It's really nice to know that these things are landing somewhere - like so much writing on the internet, it can sometimes feel like firing things at random off into the void.
I think there's a ton to be said for your Russia/Ukraine thoughts. And I think there's always a danger (which perhaps my thinking in the piece runs close to the edge of) in thinking about international relations in solely moral terms. It's not, and never has been; it's about power and competing interests and all that good stuff, and it comes, as you point out, loaded with history and provocation and duplicity. Thanks for putting your thoughts about it down - I find them really valuable.
I think your line about it being "entertainment and anesthetic" is the most devastating of what you wrote, basically because it's so absolutely true. The radical American insularity that so many people here take a kind of perverse pride in - a kind of celebration of ignorance - is again rearing its head, and it's a scary thing.
I think overall I'm trying to find my way towards a kind of statement of organic American cultural leftism. I've been thinking a lot about your comments in an earlier post about Godard, and about why so much of the best leftist thought, both in politics and art, comes from outside the country; I've been wondering if one reason the left has overall been such a dismal failure here is an inability to find an articulation of it that arises from within. Americans are, I think, almost all innately chauvinistic about their own culture, and in many senses it's a deeply conservative culture. And yet I can't seem to break from the idea that true democracy (which, somehow, astoundingly, has a grasp on some small part of the American soul) is a leftist project; this as opposed to conservative thought, which can't avoid being captured by the market, which leads inevitably towards corporate power, monopoly and authoritarianism. Trying to convince people to be good to one another and treat one another with dignity and value one another (for what is the leftist project but that, at heart?) is perhaps a quixotic mission. Better people than I have thrown themselves against it. But, hell, why not give it a shot?
My thoughts are a bit scattered this morning - I'm getting worn down. But thanks as always for reading and putting down your response. I appreciate it.
I can't even imagine what it's like in there right now. As exhausted and worn down by it as I am, I always have to remind myself that it's nothing compared to what my friends and loved ones who are most directly impacted by living it are going through. Hang in there as best as you can. If writing thing out here helps, keep it up. As long as I'm around I guarantee there won't be a void. But if you find that it isn't helping and you need a break, then by all means do that. This isn't the time to burn the candle at both ends.
As far as your idea about a statement of organic American cultural leftism, maybe looking to history might help? The labor movement in the US during the early 20th century was instrumental to progressivism throughout the world. And despite staunch opposition from the right, the New Deal was overwhelmingly popular.
Great post.
I'm glad you took the time to lay out precisely what your background is and where you are coming from because it really contextualizes what bothered you the most out of that repugnant shitshow, and why. So many things are taken for granted when talking about politics, so much is left to 'common sense' or 'that's just obvious', particularly when writing to a specific audience, that so much of what would provide the most valuable discourse winds up never even being addressed. I have to confess, this is the kind of commentary that I wish was more predominant right now. Trump's first term was marked by strong, vocal opposition from day one. It wasn't always effective, but it was there, and it inarguably helped curtail some of the more odious attempted policies. His second term, on the other hand, has been marked by the opposite: capitulation, normalization and a lack of organizing. To quote another T S Eliot poem: this is the way the world ends/not with a bang but a whimper.
As someone who was lived in the US for extended periods of time, at different points in my life, but is not from the US, my thoughts on Ukraine-Russia are a little more complicated. There is absolutely no question that this is an expansionist war of aggression on the part of Russia, that they have no moral standing whatsoever and that, legally (and morally) speaking, invading armies have no rights, they have responsibilities, the chief responsibility being reparations. I know that might seem 'common sense' or 'obvious', but I want to get it out of the way because I don't want what I'm about to say next to be misconstrued: NATO expansionism has been antagonizing Russia since 1989. The organization was created (supposedly) as a military alliance of US-aligned countries to combat the military alliance of Soviet aligned countries. But as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed, and the threat disappeared, NATO didn't go away. It got bigger, recruiting more and more countries, adding more and more bases, encroaching closer and closer to Russia year by year until it reached its very border. The US can claim that there were never any official talks for Ukraine to join NATO, and that may be technically true, but its eventual incorporation has been treated as a foregone conclusion for a while, and NATO officials have repeatedly reiterated (as recently as 2021) that Ukraine would eventually join NATO, despite the fact that before the Russian invasion the population of Ukraine expressed relatively low support for joining NATO (since 2022 support has skyrocketed, which is completely understandable). None of this justifies Russia's invasion, which is completely unjustifiable, but it helps explain it. I don't think it's too difficult to imagine what US reaction would be if China entered into a military alliance with Mexico and installed a series of bases there, for example.
Which brings me to the Trump-Vance-Zelensky shitshow. I don't think it's controversial to say that NATO has been using the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a proxy war, or that the US and UK sabotaged ceasefire talks during the earliest days of the invasion. I also don't think it's controversial to say that the only realistic resolution has to be a diplomatic one, and that any armed conflict between nuclear powers (proxy or not) has potentially world-ending consequences. But that's not where Trump is coming from. He implies that it is, in order to curry favor among a certain segment of the population, but that debacle made it abundantly clear to anyone with eyes and ears that the only thing he cares about is extorting Zelensky into giving the US access to Ukranian natural resources, and humiliating the man in order to prove a point to his base (America first, bullies of the world, we take what we want and give nothing back, medicaid? what medicaid? never heard of it). He's not the first (or the 46th) US president to extort another country out of their resources, but he's the first one (of my lifetime, at least) to have been so shameless about it, so naked, to have so actively pursued the public humiliation of his counterpart, even at the potential expense of the deal. It was a display of power by a one-dimensional psychopath (I don't think that's controversial to say either) intended as both entertainment and anesthetic for a base of frightened and insecure little boys and girls with a seemingly pathological need for an authoritarian father figure who will protect them from the dangers of people who don't look exactly like them simply trying to exist.
Apologies for the wall of text, but I guess I was in a mood. I know this isn't exactly the main theme of your Substack, and I wouldn't want you to wind up permanently drifting too far from more (directly) film-related commentary, but you've been knocking it out of the park with your posts about politics and morality. There's way too much of the both-sidist, walking-on-eggshells, let's do everything but call a spade a spade crap out there. This is real. And it's good. And it's valuable. And it's necessary.
Thanks for the kind words about the post. It's really nice to know that these things are landing somewhere - like so much writing on the internet, it can sometimes feel like firing things at random off into the void.
I think there's a ton to be said for your Russia/Ukraine thoughts. And I think there's always a danger (which perhaps my thinking in the piece runs close to the edge of) in thinking about international relations in solely moral terms. It's not, and never has been; it's about power and competing interests and all that good stuff, and it comes, as you point out, loaded with history and provocation and duplicity. Thanks for putting your thoughts about it down - I find them really valuable.
I think your line about it being "entertainment and anesthetic" is the most devastating of what you wrote, basically because it's so absolutely true. The radical American insularity that so many people here take a kind of perverse pride in - a kind of celebration of ignorance - is again rearing its head, and it's a scary thing.
I think overall I'm trying to find my way towards a kind of statement of organic American cultural leftism. I've been thinking a lot about your comments in an earlier post about Godard, and about why so much of the best leftist thought, both in politics and art, comes from outside the country; I've been wondering if one reason the left has overall been such a dismal failure here is an inability to find an articulation of it that arises from within. Americans are, I think, almost all innately chauvinistic about their own culture, and in many senses it's a deeply conservative culture. And yet I can't seem to break from the idea that true democracy (which, somehow, astoundingly, has a grasp on some small part of the American soul) is a leftist project; this as opposed to conservative thought, which can't avoid being captured by the market, which leads inevitably towards corporate power, monopoly and authoritarianism. Trying to convince people to be good to one another and treat one another with dignity and value one another (for what is the leftist project but that, at heart?) is perhaps a quixotic mission. Better people than I have thrown themselves against it. But, hell, why not give it a shot?
My thoughts are a bit scattered this morning - I'm getting worn down. But thanks as always for reading and putting down your response. I appreciate it.
I can't even imagine what it's like in there right now. As exhausted and worn down by it as I am, I always have to remind myself that it's nothing compared to what my friends and loved ones who are most directly impacted by living it are going through. Hang in there as best as you can. If writing thing out here helps, keep it up. As long as I'm around I guarantee there won't be a void. But if you find that it isn't helping and you need a break, then by all means do that. This isn't the time to burn the candle at both ends.
As far as your idea about a statement of organic American cultural leftism, maybe looking to history might help? The labor movement in the US during the early 20th century was instrumental to progressivism throughout the world. And despite staunch opposition from the right, the New Deal was overwhelmingly popular.