The Big Flail
Self-definition as an externally-derived commodity.
Wise up, folks. We're all alone out there and tomorrow we're going out there again.
The funeral procession in The Big Chill is a masterpiece of uncomfortable insouciance. Real concerns about aging, irrelevance, vanishing bohemian airs, companionship, sex, and even death become artistic instruments for personal aggrandizement and interaction in an at least temporarily pleasant pocket of the material world. The characters variously flail around at and with each other from the safety of bourgeois objective conditions.
All the while the actual alienation of their real lives is present beneath the surface. We the viewers may even feel some kinship with the characters through our own alienation.
[video:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kiw_3olyJ2c]
Even ultra-ambitious establishment politicians with faux homesteads in places like Chappaqua need reliable partners to help them escape the fate of being all alone out there. Comfortable former longtime congressional representatives have the luxury of mouthing banalities with little or no material consequences. Disseminators of public pablum who well know and well conceal the superficiality of DC power relationships are useful to an establishment political campaign.
In a mini-debate with Nina Turner, Barney Frank recently captured an almost cinematic mood in his fingerpicking, sleepy-eyed, semi-reclined, run-out-the-clock, chronic endorsement-citing verbal and physical positioning. The following decidedly unslick video captured the mini-debate.
Note the words and watch the body language of Frank and contrast both with Turner. Note also the unpolished commentary of the person who made the video, including his frustration with Frank’s name-dropping and distortions.
[video:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BV6h1znqrsA]
In the weeks and months ahead, we can expect the big flail to continue. It will be unremarkable in its content, designed by people like Dick Morris, but remarkable in its omnipresence in the MSM. Voices like Turner’s will often go second, not get equal time, and not get the last word.
Regular people will hear and see the bullshit and contrast this with the truthful and upright. Many of them, after all, are living lives of objective conditions that have little resemblance to the privileged lives of the characters in The Big Chill. A privileged politician’s road back to “real life” in "Chappaqua" is not anything like their real life journeys.
Bear political actors no ill will, but look carefully at who prepares their scripts.
Comments
not only did i appreciate your content
but loved the writing!
“There are moments which are not calculable, and cannot be assessed in words; they live on in the solution of memory… ”
― Lawrence Durrell, "Justine"
You're very kind.
Thank you!
What pf8 just said above
I second her comment. I do however bear the 'political actor's' ill will. I want them and their handlers off the political stage, along with the transnational puppet masters who sponsor them. This farcical electoral show has gone on too long and in this season's rerun the plot line cannot make me suspend my belief as all of the players are bad actors.
Unaspenser had the same
critique at TOP regarding the "ill will" point. I understand and respect that. I have thought a lot of my own "anger management" as a socialist (here's a webpage I have on the subject: http://gardenvarietydemocraticsocialist.com/the-socialist-commandments/) and was implicitly trying to emphasize that one perhaps could forgive a Clinton once she gets her walking papers, and that the bad system remains even if we change the actors, so we really need to change the system.
I don't hate these bad actor's
I just don't want them to have power. I know it's the system but feel it's a chicken egg kind of thing as the system we are living under these days was created by the complicit corrupt pols and globalized powerful interest's. They took away all checks and balances on power, rewrote the rule of law using endless war and unfettered global capitalism, and trashed our representational democratic republic.
The global oligarchical collectivist's have once again gone too far like they always do left unchecked. How can you change the system or even restore the damage done if you give your consent to be governed by the anti-democratic sociopathic madmen and women who derive their power from we the people? How can we address our grievance if we have no parliamentary means? The system is made up and held in place by people with power.
If they lose and walk away another one just takes their place. They do not seem to every stay away as per Kissenger being back onstage. I think it's a useless thing to love or hate a pol. I think it's okay to get righteously angry at what they have collectively done with their power. I'm not advocating violent revolution but people also collectively have power we need to use it to pry this current lot of vampire squids off humanities face. Shaking your fist at the sky isn't the only use of anger, but as they say if your not angry your not paying attention. Politics are not static people can and do demand and get change it's called progress. Never give up and enough is enough.
Why should I forgive any pol like Killary or Bush when they abuse their power and cause misery and death to humans globally and the planet because it's worth it. I may have compassion for these damaged sociopaths who rule the world but forgiving would mean I would have to believe that they know not what they have done. I think they do know damn well what they are doing but to them it's the way things are, inevitable and necessary.
Well said. I agree. n/t
Thanks for the link
and the great essay. I could use a little anger management these days. What calms me down and helps me not be blindly angry is that I see people globally pushing back both in and out of the system. Bernie is an example as is Corbyn and Trudeau's winning. These pols are not as important as the people who came together and supported them. I do not understand why in America more people aren't in the streets or even willing to vote for some real desperately need change. Stockholm Syndrome? Fear? Delusion? Who knows but OWS, BLM and Bernie's movement are only going to grow as things are getting worse despite all the misinformation we are fed. I'm sure glad your posting here at c99. Your a welcome addition to the other anti-capitalism members. I used to read your work on dkos but it often got lost in the flames and 2 minutes of daily hate.
Solidaridad.
You are very kind. Great critique. I think major factors in the docility of the U.S. working class is a twin of mass PTSD and mass self-medication. The drug war and criminalizing war on the poor do a wonderful job of making the lumpenproletariat substantially merge with the proletariat, which is my paraphrase of an observation one of the other members of ACM, Audrey Charbonneau, recently made much better than I can: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/21/1488860/-Anti-Capitalist-Meetu...
Barney Frank
They used to call Barney Frank "Barney Fag" because he was the first openly gay Congressman.
Today, with all the centrist and Turd Way crap he's been peddling since he didn't need us DFH types any more, I call him "Barney Quaalude", because watching/listening to him has the same effect on me as good old Rorer 714 used to.......
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Awesome.
I'm glad you get pharmacological benefit from Big Bank Barney.