The Trumpenreich

I did not laugh along with Bill Maher’s notoriously sheep-like Californian audience, but neither did I agree, at least not immediately, with Ann Coulter. When Ms. Coulter, without hesitation, told Bill Maher that of the declared Republican nominees, Donald J. Trump stood the best chance of winning the party nomination, I paid attention. I was not dumbfounded or gobsmacked, like Maher’s terminally liberal panel, nor was I cackling like a buffoon as his audience invariably does. But, my curiosity was definitely peaked. My engagement in the 2016 elections began on that day, June 19, 2015, on Real Time with Bill Maher, thanks to Ann Coulter.

The next pivotal moment occurred in the first Republican Primary debate, hosted by Fox News.

When Megyn Kelly highlighted The Donald’s various crude, harsh and “highly inappropriate” verbal smackdowns of Rosie O’Donnell in the first Republican debate, I remember sitting up in my chair. I remember thinking, this could be it. This question would wreck 99% of politicians by forcing a pathetic-looking, groveling apology, or a flat-out denial…

Let’s relive it, shall we?

Megyn Kelly: “One of the things people love about you [Trump] is you speak your mind and you don’t use a politician’s filter. But that is not without its downsides, in particular when it comes to women. You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, [crowd giggles] slobs, and disgusting animals—”

Donald Trump: “Only Rosie O’Donnell.” [crowd roars]

I had never seen the wind sucked so swiftly out of someone’s sail in my twenty-five years on this planet. Megyn Kelly was instantly deflated, like a sad balloon. In what has become, for many Trumpkins, a favorite and critical moment of the 2016 Presidential race, Donald Trump surprised everyone in the audience, including moderator and Fox News nemesis, Megyn Kelly.

I don’t think anybody saw it coming. I expected an apology from Mr. Trump, or a misdirection, or literally, literally anything except what he did, which was to deliver one of the leanest one-liners ever heard in US politics. (“Because you’d be in jail” is a close second.) Donald Trump, in current year, mined comedy gold from a question that would have toppled or handicapped a lesser candidate. As a persuasive tactic, Donald’s response was pitch-perfect because he put out the fire, won the crowd and delivered one of multiple blows to the suffocating reign of political correctness in the United States.

Bare in mind that this is no moral or ethical defense of Trump’s language or conduct, but merely a recognition that the tactic was a highly effective one, especially when aimed at his rivals. Trump leveled personal insults, attacks and interruptions that his Republican rivals were simply unable to handle, because no one had ever done it before. Were the GOP primary race a basketball game, team Trump ran a non-stop, full-court press. Mr. Trump did not abide by the traditional rules of decorum and his rivals were unable to adapt. Some of these attacks were repulsive beyond dispute, such as the attacks on Ted Cruz’s wife, and many believe that his attacks on illegal immigrants, a Mexican judge and several women disqualified Trump as a candidate from the outset.

That being said, Trump won the Republican nomination chiefly by bucking political correctness, by bucking establishment protocol and by appealing to a voter bloc that felt disconnected, hopeless and ostracized: Middle America.

Donald Trump went on to win the presidency of the United States in an electoral landslide by cutting out media intermediaries and connecting with his voting base in person. Trump rallies blasted previous records. Trump signs far outnumbered Hillary’s. Clinton was only able to compete in the rally race by enlisting the help of her dutiful celebrity friends, including Jay-Z, Beyonce, and Katy Perry among others. What seems obvious to many (myself included) is that Hillary Clinton took her support for granted. Donald Trump earned his by holding rallies three times a day and sometimes more. Hillary lost hers by expecting a higher degree of loyalty than existed. She expected her support to be given, not earned.

The results of this election amount to a staggering defeat, against all oddsmakers, of the epitome candidate of the establishment, Hillary Clinton, at the hands of the epitome anti-establishment candidate, Donald Trump. Polls gave Mr. Trump a 0-2% chance of victory right up until the night of the election, in which he broke the rust belt backbone of the Democratic party to win the presidency. Pundits generally agree that the Clinton dynasty has been finished, and that is a good thing for all Americans. During the primary season, Donald Trump eviscerated the GOP favorite and shoe-in, Jeb! Bush, effectively ending the Bush dynasty, which is also a great thing for all Americans.

What is most interesting, at least to me, about Donald Trump’s victory is the media “free agents” that supported him directly or indirectly. When the history of this election is compiled, it would be disingenuous, bordering on academic treason, to not dedicate a chapter to Julian Assange and his whistleblowing non-profit press, WikiLeaks. Additionally, behind Trump was a secret team of virtual unknowns, or at least underknown actors like new media pioneer Mike Cernovich, flamboyant culture critic and Breitbart senior editor Milo Yiannoppolous, Charles C. Johnson of GotNews, YouTube stars like Paul Joseph Watson plus a tireless army of Twitter, 4Chan and Reddit trolls and posters that helped disseminate crucial Wikileaks revelations as well as relentlessly persecute the Democratic opposition with weaponized memes, a new type of satirical, rough but effective image-based online political warfare. Charles Johnson was quoted recently saying this: “…It feels pretty good to meme a president into the White House.” The hordes of effective online supporters for Donald Trump should not have been underestimated, and if the Democrats learned their lesson, will not be underestimated ever again.

Contrary to pundits worldwide and to the protests across the United States, there is common ground to be found post-election, whether for Trump or against, Democrat or Republican. For one, political correctness, which has stifled public debate in the spheres of politics and higher education especially, has been dealt a well-deserved haymaker. Silencing the opposition is not how to beat the opposition, but how to motivate and strengthen it. Chipping away at the predominant notion that opposition can simply be shutdown and silenced is certainly not just a win for the Republicans, but is a win for many disaffected Liberals who feel alienated from their own party.

The massive disturbances in both the Democratic and Republican establishments resulting from the hostile takeover of the GOP by a rogue billionaire to the revelations of duplicity on the parts of CNN and the DNC should provide a legitimate opportunity for positive changes to both parties and to our national media. A reorganization of Democratic brass is incipient and will offer opportunities to shuffle the deck and perhaps in two or four years, the Democrats may again pick a winning hand.

The Republicans, on the very same note, will undergo as great or greater changes to its top brass, since it was effectively taken over by a political outsider with a different agenda than the GOP elites. Maybe, after the most splintering, vicious campaign in living memory has finally ended, both major parties of the United States just may begin to better resemble its citizens who live and work here and simply want the best for their country.

All-Star Democrats, JV Squad Republicans

I’ve played team sports for the better part of a decade. Mostly basketball, soccer and some ultimate frisbee. I was good, but never the star in team sports.

But I was a star on the track. I went to state for the 400m dash and the triple jump. I have loads of track ribbons and medals, but I have nothing to show for team sports.

Is this because I am a bad team player? I don’t like to think so, but it very well could be the case that I’m simply bad on a team. I like working alone. In fact I love working alone. I usually, almost always, despise the way other people do things.

The notion that the better team will end up on top, in national politics as in sports, holds equal water.

I think the Democrats are a better team.

Not only do I think they are a better team, in fact I think they are leaps and bounds ahead of the Republicans in this regard. (Keep in mind that I am dispensing with moral judgements in making this case. I will try to lay out some observations first and comment on their moral implication later.)

#1 The Democrats are unified. The Republicans are not. The Democrats, despite Wikileaks revelations that their primaries were not fair to Bernie Sanders, have rallied around their nominee. The Republican nominee, on the other hand, despite winning in a field of 17 contenders fair and square, is still battling his own party.

#2 The Democrats protect their own. In 1974, Republican President Richard Nixon quit the presidency. He got into a helicopter and just flew away. He did this because his surrogates were caught spying on the Democrats and he would have certainly been impeached. Democratic President Bill Clinton was actually impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice in relation to lying under oath regarding his extramarital affairs in Office. Clinton denied everything, was acquitted, and remains one of the most popular presidents in US history.

Has the character of the United States, in regard, specifically, to the principle of shame, changed since the 1970s? I would argue it certainly has, and it has changed in a very bad way.

#3 The Democrats always play a full-court press. This is the most crucial distinction between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Democrats are not merely a political party, they are a total cultural machine. Hollywood is obviously and overwhelmingly liberal, this can be verified by investigating which party all the major Hollywood players donate to, come election time, but more easily by a cursory analysis of the media they produce. (Check out Ben Shapiro’s book on this, Primetime Propaganda.) Republicans, with few to no exceptions, have no interest in exporting their ideas via cinema or television–perhaps the two most effective means of translating ideas and influencing culture. Conservatives write and sell a lot of books, but they refuse to catch up with the times, television and cinema are far more effective means of communicating ideas. Educational institutions are overwhelmingly leftist, from Kindergarten to Grad School. Some estimates say for every conservative professor, there are 10 liberal professors. My own experience at the University of Colorado, Boulder, verifies the ten-to-one ratio specifically in Arts & Sciences. Lastly, news media is overwhelmingly center-left to hard-left except for outliers like Breitbart and Fox News and a few other online producers (Drudge, Blaze, etc).

There are too many track stars on the Republican side, too many individuals and not enough team players. Although the rules and circumstances have changed over time, politics remains a team sport and the Republicans, ironically, are filled with Colin Kaepernicks.

I think what is happening in American politics can be reduced to a basketball game. You have two teams, team Red and team Blue, and team Blue is constantly breaking the rules. 6 Blue men on the court at once, rampant traveling violations, Blue players breaking the salary caps, numerous three-second violations and 2 pointers counted as 3s. Team Blue even gives away tickets for free, filling up the stands with Soccer fans and encouraging them to support team Blue even though they have no legitimate stake in the game. Some members of the audience boo and shout and the referees hold a whistle to their mouths, but never seem to blow.

I think there is a different standard of accountability, personal, moral, financial, that team Red and Team Blue abide by. Since team Blue dominates media and culture, it can get away with infractions that team Red suffers relentlessly for. (I’m constantly told that a great many years ago, this trend was the reverse of what it is now.) There may be a standalone game that Red team wins, sure, but never the series. Under present circumstances, team Red will never take home the trophy.

What is so maddening about this is that team Red, dear Republicans, RINOs and sellouts, do not care. Party heads are not so different. Team Red and team Blue seem to share common ownership.

If team Red refuses to play the game that team Blue has been winning for years, they will never win again, nor would they ever deserve to. The strings have been cut and the corpse of the GOP is rotting in full view. What will emerge from the debris after November 8?

After this election, I think a hostile takeover of team Red will occur, is in fact currently underway. Prediction: Team Red will cease to be team Red and will become team Red, White and Blue–The Nationals, equipped with their own media outlets, music and entertainment. The Republican base, in its support of free agent Trump, is currently splitting from its leadership. Washed-up players like Paul Ryan and John McCain are reviled and rightly so, since they no longer consider the interests of the people who elect them. Conservatism, whatever that even means in current year, has lost. It has lost for 30 years and its proponents, at least the honest ones, recognize this and want change and most of all, are prepared to adapt. First round draft picks like Cernovich and true stalwarts like Ann Coulter are encouraging this shift by changing the game themselves, by shouting right in the referees’ faces and talking directly to their fans.

And you know what? Their fans are loving it!

Why Mulholland Dr Sucks Balls

Nonlinear narrative style is nowhere more ambitious, nowhere more fragmented or assertive in the competitive filmography of David Lynch than in his baffling, frustrating, and plainly ludicrous postmodern opus, Mulholland Drive. Lynch’s ninth feature film is arguably most famous for defying comprehensive, critical narrative analysis. Published analytic reviews of the film tend to praise it; however, one common feature among this praise, perhaps the only consensus, is that ordinary sense simply cannot be made of Mulholland Drive. It is an unsolvable maze, comprised of a series of loose ends which never tie up no matter how many times the film is re-watched. Critical disregard of the nonsensical nature of Lynch’s work is most disappointing, irritating, and speaks loudly to the modern, vulgar pride of intellectuals.

If you want to feel like David Lynch is masturbating inside your brain, watch this movie.

It is the opinion of this blog post (and its author, obviously) that Mulholland Drive does not belong in the critically acclaimed light in which it currently resides; in fact, it belongs nowhere near it. The Matrix, a crucial postmodern film of actual intelligibility, currency, finesse, wild originality and intelligent applications of key postmodern concepts was released in 1999, the same year Lynch shot most of Mulholland Drive, and is superior to it in every conceivable regard, except perhaps for the number of nude female co-stars engaged in sexual congress, if such a thing may be regarded as a category.

In the same, wholly superior vein exists David Fincher’s Fight Club, a postmodern film (based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel of the same title) which calls attention to vapid, meaningless consumer society and the disenfranchisement of the individual and its inherent humanity and the resurgence of the id through a personality split at the expense of the conscious self. Fincher’s film employs non-linear narrative conventions but unlike Lynch’s film, Fight Club is intelligible, surprising, effective and highly entertaining.

Stripped of its undeserved accolades, Mulholland Drive is a failed television pilot (conceptually similar to Lynch’s Twin Peaks). Good directors integrate symbolism, dreams, and various meanings into coherent, narrative structures, exemplified by Fincher’s and the Wachowskis’ films respectively. Bad directors, as Lynch was in this case, do not. This blog post shall not entertain the notion that by not making sense, this film has somehow transcended or elevated itself above the standard mode of moviemaking and is praise-worthy simply for ignoring the rules. There are plenty of dreamlike, surreal films which make sense. Mulholland Drive is not one of them.

David Lynch originally conceived Mulholland Drive as a television show. Similarities to Lynch’s previous work Twin Peaks abound, from the close familiarity of the eerie electronic musical themes to Lynch’s characteristic use of femme fatale characters and women who are either in danger or who are, themselves, the danger. When pitching to ABC for a first season run, an executive recalled, “I remember the creepiness of this woman in this horrible, horrible crash, and David teasing us with the notion that people are chasing her. She’s not just ‘in’ trouble—she is trouble. Obviously, we asked, ‘What happens next?’ Lynch responded, ‘You have to buy the pitch for me to tell you’” (Woods, 206). Although the origin of Mulholland Drive as a television pilot may provide a reason for the film’s tangled, irregular plot, it offers no help to organize or explain the narrative mess on-screen.

David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive without question departs from traditional Hollywood forms. However, the departure enacted is not liberating, but contrarily painfully frustrating. Lynch’s film is a collection of plot set-ups and mysteries never developed, which have no business clumping themselves together and declaring themselves a film. The film’s two halves, if they may so be named, constitute the difference between the portion of Mulholland Drive which is composed of the roughly ninety minute pilot David Lynch originally shot, and the portion which David Lynch, quite entrepreneurially, made up in order to re-package his product in postmodernist, feature film wrapping.

Mulholland Drive is recognizably television pilot matter; firstly, it is cheap, as evidenced through its ill-fitting, out-of-date costumes and awkward, out-of-date effects, inexpensive sets and general lack of concrete detail. Additionally, the film contains lists of unnamed, undeveloped, inarticulate and senseless-seeming characters and fragments (loose ends), which, when included in the first episode of a television series logically create anticipation, eagerness and suspense for the viewer and logically urge the viewer to continue watching to observe their development throughout the season. When devices meant for a television series are unnaturally compressed into a feature film, they will invariably fail their function; they will create suspense, anticipation and eagerness, which Lynch’s work accomplishes, but will lose the aha! moments of reward for finally recognizing their reason and will correspondingly nullify the payoff. When Mulholland Drive ends, so do hopes of deciphering any rewarding meaning from the experience, thus rendering the application of multiple initial mysteries valueless. This film is no great exploration into a new cinematic form, but is rather a collection of misapplied television formulas which the academic community is apparently too intellectual to grasp.

(Mulholland Drive loose ends include but are not limited to: Cowboy character, dirt monster, pandora’s box, Betty’s convulsions, death of Singer at Silencio, man in underground chamber, Italian financiers, phone line characters, original Camilla, change of characters into other characters, white-trash hitman asking presumed prostitute “Any new girls on the street? a brunette maybe, a little beat up?” obviously alluding to Rita (still Rita) but this goes nowhere, etc. The fact that Roger Ebert rated this film 4/4 makes me want to resurrect him just so that I can murder him for gross stupidity and injustice.)

 Interestingly, the pilot portion of Mulholland Drive ends roughly around 1:30.00. Lynch shot a ninety minute pilot, meaning the succeeding hour of the film is new content which Lynch shot in order manifest a film from his pilot’s humble origins. More interestingly, the content which makes up the second half contains the lion’s share of desperate-seeming filmic attempts to build the fanciful, irregular and nonsensical narrative conclusion which this post is keen to address. The second half of Lynch’s film is a combination of pornographic imagery meant to distract the viewer from the narrative mess the film becomes, an incredible, ludicrous multiple character reversal, and a hodgepodge of loose ends featured at the conclusion in a very sorry attempt to justify their presence in the first half. The narrative construction of Mulholland Drive only becomes laughable after the first ninety minutes, supporting the theory that Lynch simply added content illogically to a failed television pilot.

The introduction of an unexplained key found by Rita at minute 45 and an unexplained, literal pandora’s box abruptly, truly magically, shifts the cinematic narrative when the blue box is discovered in Betty’s purse within Club Silencio, which Betty and Rita visit after having sex. The sex scene does not enhance nor lend meaning to the narrative structure of the film in any regard but rather sensationalizes the spectacle of female nudity, as do the succeeding sex scenes and portions of nudity. Once home, Betty magically disappears and Rita fits the key inside the box and the film’s narrative is quite literally thrown up into the air and the falling pieces randomly rearranged by Lynch. The fantasy life of Betty is magically transferred onto Rita. Rita’s amnesia, that is her forgotten life, the film attempts to claim is equal to Betty’s fantasy and as Betty explores Rita’s amnesia and falls in love with her (as she has fallen in love with the idea of Hollywood stardom), she (and the audience) begins to realize that her fantasy life is, somehow, the real life of Rita, which her amnesia was disguising. This transformation of character is so abrupt, so realistically unexplainable and so dependent upon suspension of disbelief that it must be regarded as a fault in the film’s construction, not a hidden gem explainable only through its inherent inexplicability.

After the pandora’s box is opened, Betty magically transforms into Diane, the waitress from Winkies. Rita magically transforms into Camilla, who is shown earlier auditioning for the film within the film. Betty’s (Diane’s) landlord turns into the director’s mother, which is nonsensical, as she would have mentioned that she had a Hollywood director son to Betty as she knew Betty was looking for acting work. Also, Betty (Diane’s) aunt conveniently dies, which conveniently explains the money Betty (Diane) uses to order the assassination of Rita (Camilla), after Rita (Camilla) is proposed to by the director, who is still the director. Then, Rita (Camilla) intimately kisses… Camilla, who is also present, for no justifiable reason, as Rita (Camilla) had won the film role introduced earlier. The second half of Lynch’s film is pure narrative comedy, only were the critics to realize. Though, despite extreme narrative inconsistency, Mulholland Drive does offer something of a Hollywood commentary worth considering.

Where Mulholland Drive is successful is its critical depiction of the oftentimes harmful desire, or craving, for fame and success achieved through the powerful machinery of Hollywood. Tools which bred machines have made possible the interaction between millions of people separated by hundreds, thousands of miles. Hollywood is a vehicle through which massive interaction and recognition is facilitated. Therefore, it is logical that humans who greatly value interaction and recognition, which all humans, to varying extents instinctually do, seek it out from an industry which is built upon the very impulse.

The danger in seeking such recognition from the amoral industry of Hollywood is accurately portrayed through the character Betty (prior to magically transforming into Diane). Lynch’s film describes Hollywood’s menace, the specter of fame which so often disguises the reality of poverty, crime, and abuse which constitutes the lives of many unsuccessful dreamers, a rank which Betty (Diane), inexplicably, joins. Betty’s initial girlish innocence is effective in rendering her later magical character transformation more potent, more painful to observe.

When addressing Rita, who borrowed her name from a poster of Rita Hayworth, Betty explains, “Well I couldn’t afford a place like this in a million years. Unless of course I’m discovered, and become a movie star. Of course I’d rather be known as a great actress than a movie star, but, you know, sometimes people end up being both. So that is, I guess you could say, sort of why I came here…and now I’m in this dream place!” (min 26). Within this scene Betty announces her whimsical naivety though her dreams of stardom by failing to offer any evidence that she knows or is aware of the potential sacrifices, consequences and risks of pursuing stardom. It is the destruction of this exact type of innocence for which Hollywood is disparaged. Lynch’s work is an interesting portrayal of such a loss of innocence, and a fair warning to would-be starlets that there is indeed a cancerous underbelly to the glitz and glamor, a dark reverse to the shining marquis; the price of fame can be as harmful as its rewards are desirous.

Rita’s amnesia, however, is a poorly explained, incoherent mechanism which is appropriated by the film to illuminate Betty’s fantasy life and to separate it from her actual experience in Hollywood. Betty discovers Rita hiding in the apartment in which she was staying, and pledges to help her discover the source of her amnesia and her real identity, which the audience plausibly suspects is the central plot of the film. Though, once the pilot content runs out and Lynch begins filming and writing blindly to turn failed television content into a film, things head south. The audience is endlessly confused, the plot is endlessly confused, characters’ sexual orientation is continually reoriented, and no meaning can be derived of anything.

Furthermore, Betty’s convulsions within Club Silencio serve no purpose, other than perhaps to allude to the magical nature of the club, which, in the opinion of this very serious blog post, is narrative cheating. The inclusion of an unexplainable event which may be applied to explain other unexplainable events is not professional, Hollywood-grade work by a long shot. Additionally, an unnamed character at Winkies in the beginning of the film faints at the sight of an unexplained dirt-monster. Perhaps these characters are convulsing in response to the ridiculous narrative their work is intended to support…

The final word of the film, Silencio, is most likely a personal message, from Lynch, to viewers who were able cut through the nonsense, something like please do not speak of this film if you realize what I did. The final shots of Hollywood through the window edited against shots of Betty’s beaming face seems to be a message of Lynch’s as well, saying Hollywood is to blame for not picking up the pilot, and now this is what you get!

But when the noxiously convoluted, inarticulate nature of the postmodern condition is applied as the measuring stick, Lynch’s work truly measures up. The postmodern condition is perhaps the only intellectual avenue through which a disorganized film such as Lynch’s can find an audience willing to entertain and even praise it. However, this film aught not to call itself postmodernist, nor should postmodernists call this film a postmodern work. Both the postmodern theory and the postmodern thinker suffer immensely to include this film among its ranks. Only if critical postmodernism is the misapplication of devices can Mulholland Drive be considered an expression of critical postmodernism. This post does not entertain the notion that critical postmodernism is the misapplication of devices; therefore, Mulholland Drive is absolutely not a form of critical postmodernism in any stretch of the, granted, highly stretchable, term, but has merely cunningly masqueraded as such.

This film is nothing but masturbation.

Thank you.

You do not talk about David Fincher!

In a cinematic world muddied by CGI and its patron saints Michael Bay and David Cameron, debauched by cheap sex and undermined by uninspiring performances, directors like David Fincher and films like Fight Club are increasingly rare Hollywood commodities. To illustrate: How many indistinguishable, idiot Seth Rogen stoner comedies directed by idiot Judd Apatow have come out in the last ten years? How many characters has this buffoon played? To answer, he’s played one character, himself, and has starred in derivative variations of the same shit movie. Sometimes funny, but mostly, just shit. 

However, directors like Fincher have taken on scores of material ranging from power hungry, powerfully contemporary Washington officials, the rise of the social network, psychopathic killers both fictional (Se7en) and historical (Zodiac) as well as one keen dissection of the postmodern condition outlying American cultural imperialism, consumerism and the death of masculinity and the American Dream. You know what I’m talking about. But we’re not supposed to talk about it, so…

Fight Club was sourced from the novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. Oftentimes film critics will automatically drop a film a few pegs if the screenplay is not original. But, to take a novel and to apply its contents on film and to do it as expertly and faithfully as Fincher in this case did, is no walk in the park. Battling imminent nerd rage over minute details (Brad Pitt’s character’s hair was long in the novel, short in the movie) and other trivialities is tough; creating a work that will appeal both to its original fan base and to an entirely new one, is daunting. Here is an excerpt from a DVDTalk interview regarding author Palahniuk’s take on the film version of his work:

“The first time I saw dailies of the movie was when I went down to the film’s location, and David Fincher would drag me off the set to his trailer to show me dailies. He would be watching me for my reaction, and I had little or no idea where these scenes fit together. Here were these wonderful reaction shots and things like that which seemed so random, beautifully composed, attractive and funny in their own way, but I had no idea how they went together. I felt so self-conscious with David watching me. Now that I see the movie, especially when I sat down with Jim Uhls to record a commentary track for the DVD, I was sort of embarrassed of the book, because the movie had streamlined the plot and made it so much more effective and made connections that I had never thought to make. There is a line about “fathers setting up franchises with other families,” and I never thought about connecting that with the fact that Fight Club was being franchised and the movie made that connection. I was just beating myself in the head for not having made that connection myself.”

Did you read that? The author himself basically just said the movie did a sort of better job of telling his own story than he did!

We all meet book snobs everywhere that say, no matter what, that the book is always better than the film. I’ve spoken to several of these book snobs myself, regarding Fight Club, and automatically they regurgitate the tired thesis: “The book is so so so so much better.” Sorry, in the case of Fight Club, you’re just wrong. The film is objectively as good, or better, than the book—as evidenced by the author himself.

I don’t think a disjointed, nonlinear narrative film has ever been shot (and edited) so cleanly and effectively as Fight Club has. When you see it for the first time, despite the fact that the film really, really tries to tell you that Brad Pitt’s character isn’t real (Watch the Fight Club Honest Trailer for an illustration of this), you still don’t see the end coming. And when you watch it a second time, your knowledge makes the film a completely different experience. Besides challenging the notion that the novel is always better, Fight Club additionally challenges the notion that the second viewing of something is never quite as good as the first. With Fight Club the second time around, you’re looking for the clues and you’re finding them because the director knew exactly what he was doing. Off the top of my head I can’t think of another movie which changes so radically from its first to its second viewing. Except maybe Mulholland Dr, but for entirely different reasons.

Suffice to say, film schools should be praising the work of Fincher over that of David Lynch. I liked Twin Peaks, I liked Dune for its highly imaginative production design, but I absolutely hated, and continue to hate, Mulholland Dr. I’ll be posting something else about that here in a second, stay tuned!

Brexit

The Ghost of Christopher Hitchens is proud.

I’ve been hitting the refresh button for a few hours now, and at 83% turnout, it’s safe to say that Britain has, in fact, saved its soul. Unlike the remaining Euro-trash countries.

I’m not British and I’ve spent no appreciable amount of time in Britain, but I do understand and respect the special relationship between Britain and the United States. Britain was once great, then became less great, while the United States became greater. That’s pretty much it, right?

In Milo speak, the United States is like the highest and best distillation of the values and principals developed and fostered in Britain up until the end of the WWI.

Being an EU member compromised Britain’s self-determination, nationhood, identity and culture through the Schengen agreement and the common market. The pound will take a plunge, markets will fluctuate, and things will probably be bad for a while. Who’s denying that?

But in the long run, Brexit will prove to be one of Britain’s finest hours. For one, they will at least have the opportunity to reform an immigration system which is destroying the fabric of their own nation. Their small business sector will be freed of the choking regulations imposed by a foreign and unaccountable government. They will sign whatever treaties they like with whomever they like.

And if they fail, at least they will fail on their own terms.

But I don’t think they will. A far more likely scenario is that a time will come when the hopelessly corrupted EU will dissolve in a mire of its own regulatory excrement, and Britain will watch, distantly, and laugh over a plate of fish and chips.

Milo @ UC San Diego

Milo’s live Twitter feed was a feast of allegations against a certain fabulous super villain. Watching Milo’s latest installment of the Dangerous Faggot Tour, Twitter reflected the very same notions that I experienced. Namely, that he was on a little too much… something (that comes from Columbia and is called cocaine).

Milo’s swag was off, as Patrice O’neal put it. His swag was off until the end of the talk, where he finished strongly and showed his Press Secretary chops during question time. Milo needs stimulus to be at his best; his events with multiple stage presences or an interviewer lend to his improvisational skill set. Although Milo can deliver a good speech, he is better on his feet and that’s where his fans like to see him.

One of the best bits of the night occurred during the end of question time when Milo was asked about LGBT: “The transgender thing is a sort of confidence trick…it’s a sort of show of strength by the left. I like to imagine them getting into a room and saying ‘guys, what’s the most fucked up thing that we could make people say they believe, and if they don’t, we’ll get them fired! What should we do? Guys, what should we do? (snaps fingers) Got it! How about we say, like, put a man in, like, a bad dress right, and a wig, and if you don’t say that that is now a woman, you’re a bigot, you’ll lose your newspaper column, or you’ll lose your job.'”

What Milo is saying is that nobody believes that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman. Nobody believes it because it’s absurd. It’s the emperors new genitals. Well, no it isn’t, because Caitlyn hasn’t gone under the knife, at least not down there. The hardcore trannies slice and dice that shit until it’s an incomprehensible mash of mutilated flesh. Why aren’t the post-ops, in particular, rejecting this Jenner pretender? Why isn’t everyone? If you claim to be a drag queen, that’s all well and good, but if you claim to actually be a woman? Shouldn’t there be like a test or something? A polygraph? A questionnaire? No, nothing at all?

The left trademarked womanhood through third wave feminism during the seventies, and the left does whatever it wants with the things it owns. It owns women, or at least it claims to. It also claims to own blacks and all other minorities. The only thing the left does not claim to own is white men, because hey, gotta have a boogeyman! It’s divided men into two camps: pathetic or ultra violent. It has reduced real womanhood to a play for attention and a political tool to silence dissent.

Someone who earnestly believes they are in the wrong gender deserves sympathy and treatment and help and support, but what they do not need is the infected pustule we call national media encouraging them to attempt what is biologically impossible, and what in the long run has shown no greater propensity to produce happiness or to mitigate suicide than therapy has shown. Were someone to tell you that they felt their arm did not belong to them, would you encourage they cut it off, or would you encourage they maybe should get some help? The shit between our legs is no different, you get what you get.

Overall not Milo’s greatest appearance, but nobody bats 1000. I look forward to the next installment.

Also, have you noticed the coverage of the UCLA shooter Mainak Sarkar just sort of, well, became incredibly vague? Do you know why coverage has been made intentionally vague? Because the shooter wasn’t the boogeyman. The shooter wasn’t, in the left’s estimation, the real bad guy. The real bad guy is White Male, so it’s not really bad unless a white guy does it.

The Dangerous Faggot Tour hits UC Irvine!

Lights blackout as Constable Yiannopoulos enters the UC Irvine auditorium. He is announced by Kevin Flum’s “You Mad Bro?”, a song as fitting as its title suggests. A soundbite plays, “President Obama, you’re fired!” courtesy of the Donald. Queen Milo takes the podium and revitalizes his slightly tired message: social justice is cancer.

I’ve been hoping Milo would make this transition. I’ve been following his college tour with great interest because a flaming gay Brit with more American patriotism than most Americans is just about the rarest thing you will ever see.

The “feminism is cancer” tagline has aged and was in need of a facelift. Social justice, indeed, is the new cancer. I was hoping Milo would make this transition because feminism is one of many heads on the same snake. It is the ugliest head, for sure.

Broadening his focus to social justice gives Milo more material because social justice, at this point, is now a bigger umbrella than even feminism and perhaps a more toxic one. The mission of feminism is primarily to reduce men and thereby elevate women, while the mission of social justice is to silence dissent, to right historical wrongs but only those committed in the last 200 years by a tiny percentage of white people, to promote foreign and Un-American cultures while disparaging or denying the existence of American culture, to end any remnant of capitalism and free markets, to convince five year old children that they are not the gender they were assigned at birth, to erase the concept of gender entirely, to erase the family unit, to promote violence and fascism through satellite groups like BLM, you get the idea.

 

When UC Irvine College Republicans President Ariana Rolands asked Milo about white privilege, his answer drew less applause than it deserved. “I don’t think it’s jealousy, I mean the fact that straight white men built most of literature, art, the internet, philosophy, music, space travel, democracy, property rights, freedom, the rule of law, gave women the vote, gave minorities the vote, emancipated blacks after slavery…I mean who could say, maybe it’s jealousy?” He is being facetious (at least a little) here, but he goes on to describe our current failed immigration system where immigrants are no longer required, no longer even encouraged to assimilate but are in fact encouraged not to assimilate and to instead demand that Americans accommodate them and their foreign attitudes, cultures and ways, and even pay for their lives through welfare, free access to institutions, healthcare, etc. Remind me, what does a house divided do?

I think this is the single most pressing issue in America and if we’re to fix anything, we must return to a sensible immigration policy that is in the best interest of Americans, not leftists or big business.

There are countless minority and female support groups, charities, lobbyists, affirmative action programs, advocacy groups such as La Raza (which translates directly to “the race”), NOW, NAACP, there’s a Korean liquor store association where I live, special loan programs exist for recent immigrants but nothing for the native population, the list goes on. Imagine an official white male-only anything, it would immediately be labeled racist-sexist-bigot-homophobe, even though men of any other race and all women, period, are allowed their exclusive, tax-payer aided clubs.

What leftists are doing is incentivizing foreign, primarily peasant cultures to either immigrate legally or illegally in order to enlarge their voting base because peasant cultures vote overwhelmingly Democratic, 8-2. Now, wealthy suburbs in Baltimore are being forcedly “integrated” with affordable housing projects. These will undoubtedly lower the value of the current real estate and will probably displace the current residents. This is disguised by some warped perception of fairness and the left’s favorite buzzword, diversity, but this is nothing more than an attempt to artificially enlarge the leftist’s voting base. The left dominates America’s largest cities. Detroit, Chicago and LA are not coincidentally some of the most dangerous places to live, this is the effect of leftists’ policies in action. The next move is the suburbs, and they will abuse statues, laws, common decency and fairness to accomplish their objective.

During Milo question time, one sad-looking fat dude waddled up to the podium and began a three minute speech where he failed to ask one coherent question, then tried to self-promote his YouTube channel. The talk is worth it to watch just for the crowd’s reaction to this Trigglycuck.

Look forward to the next talk!

Animals

No, not the awesome new animation from HBO which everyone should watch, I’m talking about regular-ass animals. Like the gorilla that got shot at the zoo because some four year old wanted to switch parents. Like Cecil the lion that got shot and became famous because… I can’t remember. I can’t remember why because I don’t care. I don’t care about animals.

I care about humans. But I don’t care about animals. I don’t hate them, I think dogs are great and fun play with and train and yada yada. I’m indifferent to house cats because house cats are indifferent to me. I’m indifferent to most animals. Birds are fine. Big cats are cool. Horses, sure. Salmon are delicious as hell so I guess I’d prefer if they didn’t go extinct. Chickens, too. And cows.

But like, if all the dogs in the world just disappeared, I’d be like, well, ok, that’s a bummer, but then I’d get on with my life. Can you imagine the worldwide outcry if every dog just suddenly disappeared?? I literally can’t imagine it, because dogs are closer to humans now than they are to animals.

The reason I don’t care about animals is because I can’t have meaningful conversations with them, they don’t affect my life and they can do little else except die and feed me, and that’s ok. Also, animals are not moral agents, and that’s a distinction that has been dangerously blurred over the past 30-40 years. In the sense that life only exists on our planet (as far as we know), all of it is, to some degree, precious. But human life is far more precious than any other type, because human life is unique. To the man or woman who claims that humanity is a virus and should be eradicated, how about you eradicate yourself first?

Over the course of history, just about 99% of everything that’s ever been alive is now extinct, gone, never to return. I don’t advocate driving species to extinction, unless of course that species is a disease like polio, then bring out the chainsaws! But I recognize that nature drives species to extinction all on her own, and in wide and astonishing sweeps. We have about 4 billion years until the sun explodes, so if we don’t figure out light speed and how to colonize other planets in that time frame, then we and the rest of the fluffy cute kingdom shall join the dust of history.

More about the gorilla: I’m no Jane Goodall, but if I was that kid’s parent I would’ve shot that thing in a heart beat. We don’t know animals well enough to accurately predict their behavior in these kinds of situations, it’s as simple as that. Jane Goodall doesn’t know what would have happened, the Cinci staff didn’t know, the parents didn’t know. Human lives are more valuable than animal lives, I would have done the same thing, the risks were simply way too high. Maybe the gorilla was playing and maybe tranquilizers would have worked, but I’m not ready to roll those dice with a four year old kid. Now, who’s to blame? I first thought the parents for not watching the kid, then I thought the zoo for building the enclosure in such a way that a four year old could fall into it. I think the zoo is more to blame, say 65% and the parents, 35%, for not paying attention. Thoughts?

Patreeky and the race that doesn’t have a color

America is not the land of opportunity any longer; it’s the land of opportunism.

I’m trying to imagine what it would be like if Patrice O’Neal was still alive and had a solid hour at Yale, Missouri, or any other fine institution of higher indoctrination. Patrice walks up to the stage… he cracks a rape joke… then what happens?

I know what would happen if I cracked a rape joke in public, or if any of my white male friends did for that matter. We’d be crucified on the front page of every liberal rag in the country, then we’d be actually crucified by a tribe of feral feminists with fake blood smeared on their ugly faces which they bought at Hobby Lobby with their Dad’s Amex. But, if Patrice did it? I don’t know, that’s a confusing combination of grievance hierarchies… Now, being a female or a minority in America and across the west is to have certain special permissions. The reason why minorities and women (women are not a minority!!!!!!) have these special privileges is because, according to leftists, white European men have been depriving them of their rights and property, well, basically forever. Now, since the left is in control of just about everything, they are in a position to right these cosmic racial wrongs once and for all! Well… no.

Concerning black Americans, I sort of agree with Ann Coulter’s position: something, and I don’t know how big or how small that something is, but something is owed to the black community for the legacy of slavery.

However, if you apply principles consistently, which the left consistently doesn’t, that means that every group in America that was once enslaved is also owed. Yes, whites were slaves too, did ya know that? Up to one half of all the arrivals to the New World were white slaves. I demand my reparations! Tons of white people were slaves, in fact that’s where the word slave comes from, the Slavs of eastern Europe who were enslaved by the Celts, Greeks, Romans then Barbarians, etc. What this means is that if you go back far enough, everyone at one point or another has been f***** over by everyone else. So, if you give reparations to one group, you must also do it for all others. Now, since this is obviously impractical and crazy and nonsensical and ridiculous (read: the left), we should scrap the entire enterprise because it would simply be impossible to accomplish with any degree of accuracy or justice.

The Irish were enslaved in the US. They were called Paddies and they weren’t worth as much or treated as well as Western African slaves were. But leftist marxist ahistorical assclown teachers won’t ever tell you that, because it undercuts their privilege-by-victimhood narrative which has worked and continues to work marvelously for them, to the detriment of everyone with a conscience, a brain, or even one scintilla of honesty and appreciation of Western culture, values and accomplishments. Slavery is not a race thing, it’s a cast thing. The very rich whites in the south owned slaves, the very rich free blacks in the south also owned other blacks. Whites owned whites, and every other combination imaginable. But the left would have you believe that only one color, or rather, the race that doesn’t have a color, is responsible for slavery and that only one color, black, was ever on the receiving end of it.

At the height of slavery in the USA, not more than 1.4% of white Americans owned slaves, counting the north and the south. Have you ever heard that figure? Probably not. What is also often forgotten is the US Civil War, remember that? 600,000 young men died to end slavery in the United States in 1865. Leftist cultural marxist SJW swine lunatics would have you believe that the United States was the only place that practiced slavery and is the only place that should ever be blamed for it. Slavery was a worldwide phenomenon that existed from prehistory until the 18th to 19th centuries, with some outliers: Ethiopia had slavery until 1942, Saudi Arabia until 1962, Peru until 1968, India until 1976, and finally Mauritania until 1980! The United States and Britain effectively ended slavery as a moral crusade, but has the west ever been thanked for this? Read: have the white European men and women primarily responsible for ending slavery ever been thanked for it?

Have you ever heard about the Islamic slave trade? And I don’t mean the current slave markets being held by ISIS, but the 10-18 million African slaves stolen from their homes and dragged to Arabia with their dicks chopped off so they couldn’t reproduce. The brutal Islamic slave trade spanned 1400 years. Western European slavery lasted about 300. Ever notice how there’s basically no blacks in Arabia? Yea, that’s pretty much why. But does the left launch brazen Tumblr and Twitter and Facebook and Buzzfeed and Salon campaigns against the middle east for this? Do they ever even mention it!? Do they even acknowledge it!!?!!? DO THEY EVEN KNOW ABOUT IT!!!?!?!?!? They probably don’t, because according to leftists, facts and other people’s opinions are illegal.

Time to watch Milo and Dave Rubin at UCLA!

The Dangerous Faggot Tour Continues

Here it is: Patrice O’Neal is the truth. Here’s some more truth: John Green can’t write male leads for shit. Some more, Milo Yiannopolous is my favorite queer. I watched Milo’s YouTube live stream at DePaul and have just now read that some delusional sociology professor named Ada Cheng apparently quit DePaul, and not because of the shameful apathy and disregard displayed by the university in regards to Milo’s personal safety, but because DePaul allowed free speech to actually occur on its campus. Here’s the article: http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/27/depaul-professor-offended-by-milo-resigns-calls-free-speech-delusional/

The Daily Caller reported the asian female professor (bronze medalist in the oppression Olympics) wrote some garbled, nonsensical, open-letter style Facebook resignation. In the last sentence of her opening paragraph, which, academically speaking, should be the paper’s thesis, she writes: “Please read this note from a woman of color faculty without dismissing it easily.” Keep in mind that east asians as a group are, by any metric, doing better than native whites in America. Also, keep in mind that women dominate in education and make up an increasingly larger share of student bodies across America. This illogical and fact-free moron thinks she can cannibalize the black experience in America, and the left is encouraging her to do it.

Let’s dissect this for a second… this nutbag professor first assumes that the president of DePaul will automatically disregard her because of her gender and race. That in itself is a sexist, racist and unsubstantiated moral judgement and vile attack on character, but such a thing is par for the leftist’s course. What Ada hopes this will accomplish is a rush of indoctrinated white guilt (DePaul President Dennis H. Holtschneider is a white man) and crippling fear of public reprisal. This is how the left operates. The left uses scare tactics clothed in indecipherable layers of postmodern jargon. Just read her letter and try to make sense of it. Here’s my summary of Ada’s position: Free exchange of ideas = racism, because racism. You have to call leftist’s on their bullshit every chance you get, or they will get away with it. You must demand that they operationalize their terms. For example, what the hell is social justice? It’s talked about like everybody knows exactly what it means, when in fact I don’t think anybody has a clue. All I know is you cannot improve the word justice; it’s one of the very best words we have, and it’s perfect just the way it is. The left is borrowing the integrity of the word justice, which is rigid, codified and easily comprehended, and, trading on the stock of this word, is merging it to another broad and fluctuating word, social, and building an entirely new concept which isn’t really a concept at all, just a cloak for fascism. And it’s working… 😦

Milo’s next talk, at UCSB on 05-26-2016, was dramatically less, well, dramatic. I think I was not the only viewer secretly hoping for another display of Jerry Springer fascism. But no worries, the left has a lot of crazy left in its tank and it’s only a matter of time… Milo’s talk concluded without any significant interruptions. While certainly dampening this fascism fun-factor, the respect afforded to Milo at UCSB was reassuring. Perhaps not all colleges are hotbeds of insanity after all.