Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 980

It’s not easy being a black Tarantino fan: He wants to be treated like a black filmmaker — and doesn’t get why that’s impossible

I’ve been a fan of Quentin Tarantino since 1997 when my best friend showed me “Pulp Fiction” on VHS one afternoon after a particularly awful day at our particularly awful high school. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. My favorite movies up to that point were “People Under the Stairs” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Like most, I fell in love with the cult classic’s dialogue and Tarantino’s audacity — his film dared to be shocking, sexual and ultra-violent. After that, “Pulp Fiction” occupied its own space in my heart. I wanted to know more about the new legend who created this amazing cinematic feat. I read magazine articles that showcased his madness. I waited patiently for my dial-up to connect so that I could scour the Internet for more info on my new favorite filmmaker. In each article, he seemed to be comprised of equal parts hubris and vision—an eccentric after my own heart. Over time, I consumed every minute of Tarantino’s catalogue and watched his new releases vigilantly (and repeatedly) on opening weekend — he was event cinema for me. His interviews only fueled by fandom — he was not afraid to speak his mind with fervor. Tarantino went to battle against critics who opposed his excessive use of the n-word in nearly every movie he directed. He combated and shot back—it was war for him. Sometimes, his response included cringe-worthy sentiments, but even at a young age I attributed these thoughts to the fact that he was a white man in a power position who sees things from a privileged scope. As a teen, and as an adult, I always understood this. But I appreciated his films as much as I disagreed with his opinions. I never viewed Tarantino’s movies as anti-Black or grossly exploitative. To be honest, I don’t cringe when n-bombs get dropped in his movies because I feel as though I do understand his intentions. I can’t say the same of Martin Scorsese, another controversial iconic filmmaker who likes to evoke the n-word in so many of his films. When Scorsese’s characters drop their copious n-bombs, it stings and I judge him for it. I understand his rationale but for me, his usage doesn’t serve the story, it takes me out of it. Tarantino’s characters live in a world veiled in brutal fairytale-like whimsy, where a Black person can be a hero in a world that uses the n-word. While in Scorsese’s cinematic universe the n-word is dropped constantly and Black people barely exist; they certainly aren’t the hero or even a featured player. Tarantino was roundly criticized for his rampant use of the word in 2013’s “Django Unchained.” (It is muttered, spoken, and yelled over 100 times) Some people were horrified, others negatively judged the movie sight unseen, while others understood its usage to be representative of how often the word was used during the movie’s time period. I remember seeing the trailer for the first time and getting butterflies in my stomach as I watched Jamie Foxx embody Django. It was unlike anything I’d seen before, and the fact that it was released during the Christmas season made it even more of an event for me. So I did what any Black Tarantino fan would do — I packed my mother, father, and sister in the car and we all went to see it on Christmas Day. Every showing was sold out and the theater was filled with people from all walks of life. We winced, marveled, cringed, laughed, became somber, and cheered when Django rescued his wife and took his ultimate revenge. Everyone walking out of the theater shared their thoughts with excitement. The images and actions from the film were undoubtedly thought-provoking and stirred strong emotions in every viewer I’ve spoken to. While controversial for its fantastical depiction of one of the most disgusting times in U.S. history, "Django" is at its base a story of love and revenge, which also happens to be set in a time of horrific adversity. It showcased moments like Mandingo fighting and slave auctioning in a way that were unseen in modern-day popular cinema. Many people have no idea just how sadistic and dehumanizing chattel slavery was because those details never made it into our high school history textbooks. My family silently acknowledged the discomfort of the white family sitting in front of us as they put their heads down and winced during the more raw elements in the movie. It was Tarantino-esque fantasy, but it was also a part of a brutal reality that some would rather wash away. When Tarantino set out to make a movie in this era, I knew the result would not be “12 Years a Slave.” He makes visceral work in the fantasy realm in worlds he manipulates and crafts in his own mind; and his action romance set in the slavery era would be no different. Unlike “Pulp Fiction,” though — a fun, raucous puzzle piece of re-watchable cinema — “Django” felt like Tarantino finally cracked the code and figured out how to make an emotional connection with his audience. There were hints of this maturity in 2009’s epic war saga “Inglourious Basterds,” primarily in most of the scenes featuring Shosanna, and in the sorely underrated “Jackie Brown,” which was visually so romantic. The way that Tarantino’s direction and lens captured Pam Grier, you could feel his awe of her. As the title character, Pam Grier was layered, flawed, and empowered in ways that aren’t commonly seen in black female lead characters in major motion pictures. Through his work, I see Tarantino operating out of love. So I have followed Tarantino from “Pulp Fiction” to “Django Unchained” and I understand that he enjoys Black culture and wants to be able to create his own take on the experience without criticism and backlash. But what he fails to understand is that this is impossible. He is asking to be treated like a Black filmmaker, which presents an interesting quandary. Black filmmakers rarely get a chance to tell Black stories on any scale, while Tarantino has carte blanche to tell any Black story he chooses. He’s too firmly in his privilege to see and understand this circumstance. People have the right to be critical of his characters of color and of his usage of the n-word; in this way alone, the color of Tarantino’s skin will always be an issue, the same way color is consistently an issue in Hollywood. We will always need to talk about race, even if a balance is achieved and proper representation is realized. Our racial wounds are deep, and they will not heal if left unacknowledged. For as long as Tarantino includes people of color in his ever-popular films, this criticism will shadow him. But if Tarantino makes a movie without Blacks or the n-word, people will have something to say about the absence. He’s caught in a Black Catch-22. Tarantino’s recent interview in the New York Times T magazine “Greats” issue, conducted by provocative “American Psycho” author Bret Easton Ellis, has rubbed people the wrong way and reignited controversy over his approach to race in his films. I read the interview and it was the same song he’s been singing forever. He’s a talented, egotistical, eccentric, successful Hollywood director who rebukes any and all criticism: "If people don’t like my movies, they don’t like my movies, and if they don’t get it, it doesn’t matter." To exacerbate matters, he also shits on Ava DuVernay’s “Selma,” stating that the epic civil rights movie was more deserving of an Emmy than an Oscar — and now admits he hasn't even seen it. The sentiment is unbecoming and incredibly rude, but also completely on-brand for Tarantino — this is the same man who recently took shots at Cate Blanchett and once dressed down “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross for questioning the violence in his movies. He is crass, blunt, and a goldmine for soundbites and eye-catching headlines. And as I see people of color assemble to get Tarantino out the paint, I hold steady and smother feelings of guilt. I do not agree with many of Tarantino’s opinions, rantings, or bullying. I just love his art. I enjoy seeing him remix movies from the past, with their inspired casts and modern day rapid fire pop culture saturated dialogue. It’s the same argument that many people make for enjoying the works of Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby, and a slew of other talented but problematic entertainment figures.Quentin Tarantino is the first artist that made me realize that I needed to learn how to separate the art from the artist, and I thank him for that and for his execution and vision of the cinema that I love. The truth is, a lot of our faves are ultra-problematic — some are even criminals. It’s up to fans in the audience to decide if we can enjoy their art despite their real-life actions.I’ve been a fan of Quentin Tarantino since 1997 when my best friend showed me “Pulp Fiction” on VHS one afternoon after a particularly awful day at our particularly awful high school. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. My favorite movies up to that point were “People Under the Stairs” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Like most, I fell in love with the cult classic’s dialogue and Tarantino’s audacity — his film dared to be shocking, sexual and ultra-violent. After that, “Pulp Fiction” occupied its own space in my heart. I wanted to know more about the new legend who created this amazing cinematic feat. I read magazine articles that showcased his madness. I waited patiently for my dial-up to connect so that I could scour the Internet for more info on my new favorite filmmaker. In each article, he seemed to be comprised of equal parts hubris and vision—an eccentric after my own heart. Over time, I consumed every minute of Tarantino’s catalogue and watched his new releases vigilantly (and repeatedly) on opening weekend — he was event cinema for me. His interviews only fueled by fandom — he was not afraid to speak his mind with fervor. Tarantino went to battle against critics who opposed his excessive use of the n-word in nearly every movie he directed. He combated and shot back—it was war for him. Sometimes, his response included cringe-worthy sentiments, but even at a young age I attributed these thoughts to the fact that he was a white man in a power position who sees things from a privileged scope. As a teen, and as an adult, I always understood this. But I appreciated his films as much as I disagreed with his opinions. I never viewed Tarantino’s movies as anti-Black or grossly exploitative. To be honest, I don’t cringe when n-bombs get dropped in his movies because I feel as though I do understand his intentions. I can’t say the same of Martin Scorsese, another controversial iconic filmmaker who likes to evoke the n-word in so many of his films. When Scorsese’s characters drop their copious n-bombs, it stings and I judge him for it. I understand his rationale but for me, his usage doesn’t serve the story, it takes me out of it. Tarantino’s characters live in a world veiled in brutal fairytale-like whimsy, where a Black person can be a hero in a world that uses the n-word. While in Scorsese’s cinematic universe the n-word is dropped constantly and Black people barely exist; they certainly aren’t the hero or even a featured player. Tarantino was roundly criticized for his rampant use of the word in 2013’s “Django Unchained.” (It is muttered, spoken, and yelled over 100 times) Some people were horrified, others negatively judged the movie sight unseen, while others understood its usage to be representative of how often the word was used during the movie’s time period. I remember seeing the trailer for the first time and getting butterflies in my stomach as I watched Jamie Foxx embody Django. It was unlike anything I’d seen before, and the fact that it was released during the Christmas season made it even more of an event for me. So I did what any Black Tarantino fan would do — I packed my mother, father, and sister in the car and we all went to see it on Christmas Day. Every showing was sold out and the theater was filled with people from all walks of life. We winced, marveled, cringed, laughed, became somber, and cheered when Django rescued his wife and took his ultimate revenge. Everyone walking out of the theater shared their thoughts with excitement. The images and actions from the film were undoubtedly thought-provoking and stirred strong emotions in every viewer I’ve spoken to. While controversial for its fantastical depiction of one of the most disgusting times in U.S. history, "Django" is at its base a story of love and revenge, which also happens to be set in a time of horrific adversity. It showcased moments like Mandingo fighting and slave auctioning in a way that were unseen in modern-day popular cinema. Many people have no idea just how sadistic and dehumanizing chattel slavery was because those details never made it into our high school history textbooks. My family silently acknowledged the discomfort of the white family sitting in front of us as they put their heads down and winced during the more raw elements in the movie. It was Tarantino-esque fantasy, but it was also a part of a brutal reality that some would rather wash away. When Tarantino set out to make a movie in this era, I knew the result would not be “12 Years a Slave.” He makes visceral work in the fantasy realm in worlds he manipulates and crafts in his own mind; and his action romance set in the slavery era would be no different. Unlike “Pulp Fiction,” though — a fun, raucous puzzle piece of re-watchable cinema — “Django” felt like Tarantino finally cracked the code and figured out how to make an emotional connection with his audience. There were hints of this maturity in 2009’s epic war saga “Inglourious Basterds,” primarily in most of the scenes featuring Shosanna, and in the sorely underrated “Jackie Brown,” which was visually so romantic. The way that Tarantino’s direction and lens captured Pam Grier, you could feel his awe of her. As the title character, Pam Grier was layered, flawed, and empowered in ways that aren’t commonly seen in black female lead characters in major motion pictures. Through his work, I see Tarantino operating out of love. So I have followed Tarantino from “Pulp Fiction” to “Django Unchained” and I understand that he enjoys Black culture and wants to be able to create his own take on the experience without criticism and backlash. But what he fails to understand is that this is impossible. He is asking to be treated like a Black filmmaker, which presents an interesting quandary. Black filmmakers rarely get a chance to tell Black stories on any scale, while Tarantino has carte blanche to tell any Black story he chooses. He’s too firmly in his privilege to see and understand this circumstance. People have the right to be critical of his characters of color and of his usage of the n-word; in this way alone, the color of Tarantino’s skin will always be an issue, the same way color is consistently an issue in Hollywood. We will always need to talk about race, even if a balance is achieved and proper representation is realized. Our racial wounds are deep, and they will not heal if left unacknowledged. For as long as Tarantino includes people of color in his ever-popular films, this criticism will shadow him. But if Tarantino makes a movie without Blacks or the n-word, people will have something to say about the absence. He’s caught in a Black Catch-22. Tarantino’s recent interview in the New York Times T magazine “Greats” issue, conducted by provocative “American Psycho” author Bret Easton Ellis, has rubbed people the wrong way and reignited controversy over his approach to race in his films. I read the interview and it was the same song he’s been singing forever. He’s a talented, egotistical, eccentric, successful Hollywood director who rebukes any and all criticism: "If people don’t like my movies, they don’t like my movies, and if they don’t get it, it doesn’t matter." To exacerbate matters, he also shits on Ava DuVernay’s “Selma,” stating that the epic civil rights movie was more deserving of an Emmy than an Oscar — and now admits he hasn't even seen it. The sentiment is unbecoming and incredibly rude, but also completely on-brand for Tarantino — this is the same man who recently took shots at Cate Blanchett and once dressed down “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross for questioning the violence in his movies. He is crass, blunt, and a goldmine for soundbites and eye-catching headlines. And as I see people of color assemble to get Tarantino out the paint, I hold steady and smother feelings of guilt. I do not agree with many of Tarantino’s opinions, rantings, or bullying. I just love his art. I enjoy seeing him remix movies from the past, with their inspired casts and modern day rapid fire pop culture saturated dialogue. It’s the same argument that many people make for enjoying the works of Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby, and a slew of other talented but problematic entertainment figures.Quentin Tarantino is the first artist that made me realize that I needed to learn how to separate the art from the artist, and I thank him for that and for his execution and vision of the cinema that I love. The truth is, a lot of our faves are ultra-problematic — some are even criminals. It’s up to fans in the audience to decide if we can enjoy their art despite their real-life actions.

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Published on October 14, 2015 16:00

“Evil Dead” meets “Jane Eyre” in Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak,” a lurid meta-Gothic ghost story

Here’s the thing about “Crimson Peak,” which is lurid and ghastly and immensely enjoyable and frequently spectacular and also thinner and less substantial than it wants to be, like a meal eaten in a dream. It’s not just the movie that Guillermo del Toro, the flawed, doomed Mexican genius of horror and fantasy, has wanted to make for years. It’s all of them at once. While the Brontë sisters were dying of fever in their dismal swamp, “Crimson Peak” might have been the über-Gothic yarn that flickered through their overheated brains – if they’d also had sexual congress with Satan and consumed a bunch of ‘shrooms. It’s part Mary Shelley and part Arthur Conan Doyle (both authors are specifically mentioned), but it’s also “Jane Eyre” and H.P. Lovecraft and Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” and Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” and a little 19th-century American realism by way of Edith Wharton or William Dean Howells. Indeed, the film’s title refers to a crumbling ancestral manse more dreadful than the Thornfield Hall of “Jane Eyre,” and perhaps even more toxic than Haworth Parsonage, where the Brontë daughters nurtured their literary genius and then died. (One gruesome hypothesis is that Haworth’s water supply was contaminated by the rotting human remains in the adjacent cemetery.) When the handsome but mysterious Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), the consummate English gentleman with a secret, brings his virginal, literary-minded American bride Edith (Mia Wasikowska) home to his estate in the remote hills of Cumbria, the only big surprise is that she doesn’t flee immediately. Edith has read a lot of books back in Buffalo, but apparently not the right ones. Sharpe’s garish and rambling manor house resembles the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland more than an actual English domicile of any vintage. It has an enormous hole in the roof, so rain and snow and birds and insects enter at will, and huge cracks in the floor, where the house is subsiding into the oozy red clay of the underlying hillside. That’s right: Bats upstairs, blood-colored goo coming through the foundation, and an old-fashioned cage elevator you can ride all the way down to the sub-basement. Clank, clank, clank; glub, glub, glub. There’s no need for ghosties and goblins to come in through either aperture, because they’re already here. Edith encounters several, among them a hideous corpse figure in the upstairs bathtub who’s an obvious nod to “The Shining” (one of perhaps three dozen literary or film references one could pick out). But the most frightening specter in Sir Thomas’ household is clearly his not-quite-undead sister Lucille, played by Jessica Chastain in a series of forbidding gowns and wigs that split the difference between spinsterly severity and “hot damn.” I suppose the problem with Lucille is the same as the problem with “Crimson Peak” overall, which is that she’s a magnificent creation but we’re never quite sure whether to view her as campy and hilarious or genuinely terrifying. Many of the influences that del Toro and co-writer Matthew Robbins have channeled into this passion project – which has been gestating ever since the release of “Pan’s Labyrinth” in 2006 – partake of both elements, to be sure: The Hammer horror films of the ‘60s (geek alert: Edith’s last name is Cushing!) or Lovecraft’s ludicrous tales of gelatinous entities from beyond time. Don’t get me wrong: I will happily watch Chastain in anything, and this movie is almost everything. So we see her here feeding butterflies to ants and seducing American provincials at the piano and bringing obviously poisonous tea to her new sister-in-law and prowling the corridors of her lugubrious home with a silky, serpentine demeanor that sets the rats to flight. It pains me to report that when we finally find out what Lucille is up to, it is A) not a surprise at all, and B) not a sufficient explanation for all her ritualistic, quasi-vampirical behavior, which really calls for worship of the Old Gods or fulfillment of some pre-Christian family ritual or cannibalism on a commercial scale. If Hiddleston’s Sir Thomas is something of a ditherer and dreamer, who can’t quite decide whether his loyalties lie with his blushing bride or his sinister sister, he belongs to the long tradition of Gothic semi-heroes who are weaker than the women around them. (I’ve only seen Hiddleston play upper-crust Englishmen, Shakespearean monarchs or the duplicitous Norse god Loki in the Marvel universe, so I’m eager to find out what he can do as Hank Williams in the upcoming “I Saw the Light.”) In “Crimson Peak,” Hiddleston’s best work comes before we even get to the Gothic manse of shrieking corpses and bubbling crimson glop, during the extended prefatory tale we’ve already had an entirely different story about Gilded Age social mores and venture capitalism set in turn-of-the-century Buffalo. That’s where Sir Thomas shows up, supposedly to find Yankee funding for a steam-powered engine that will extract the gore-tastic gunk from beneath Crimson Peak and render it into bricks for the American building boom. But does he really want to join the Industrial Age, or do he and Lucille have eyes only for the bookish, wide-eyed girl who stands to inherit a fortune if something should befall her self-made millionaire father (played by veteran TV actor Jim Beaver)? Dad smells a rat right away, and so does the lunk-like young doctor played by Charlie Hunnam, who’s too smitten by Edith to make a move. But all this drawing-room intrigue points back to the fact that “Crimson Peak” is effectively an imitation of 25 different kinds of things, in this case a certain variety of 1930s or ‘40s film that requires a long, genial windup in “normal” surroundings before it gets to the actual plot. If you’re not the exact kind of culture-vulture weirdo for whom del Toro has made this movie – a demographic that definitely includes me, and is not necessarily tiny – I’m not sure that “Crimson Peak” will make any damn sense at all. As the director has himself observed, it’s a female-centric film in a genre typically aimed at teenage boys and young men. It’s heavy on visuals, to the level of morning-after-Halloween candy hangover, but it also calls upon innumerable cultural references that are not massively popular. It’s mannered and stylized and layered to deliberate but almost suffocating excess – if production designer Thomas E. Sanders and costume designer Kate Hawley don’t get Oscar nods, then there truly is no God of movies. It’s unduly harsh, no doubt, to suggest that the master visual fantasist of our age has pursued his dream project, or at least one of them, into yet another creative and commercial dead end. (Del Toro got fired from the “Hobbit” trilogy, or fired himself. He has been unable to fund his proposed adaptations of “Frankenstein” or Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness.” Even though “Pacific Rim,” his expensive attempt to reanimate the kaiju genre, ultimately turned a profit, Hollywood scuttlebutt suggests that the planned sequels probably won’t happen.) “Crimson Peak” will find a loyal following – maybe not in movie theaters in the fall of 2015, but eventually. Still, I can’t help feeling that Guillermo del Toro’s career is like Sir Thomas’ haunted mansion, a magnificent and impossible concoction from another time, open to the sky and with a basement full of evil gunk.

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Published on October 14, 2015 15:59

Putin might be right on Syria: The actual strategy behind his Middle East push — and why the New York Times keeps obscuring it

One sentence in a news report the other day on Russia’s assertive new campaign to subdue Islamic extremists in Syria simply will not leave my mind. It was written by Michael Gordon, the State Department correspondent at the government-supervised New York Times. American officials, Gordon reported, are “confident” that Moscow will fail as it tries to return some semblance of order to what is now the world’s most tragic nation. This failure would be a good thing, we are to understand. Will you think this through with me, please? We want a big-picture look, from the altitude of, say, a Russian jet now flying sorties against one or another terrorist formation operating against the Assad government in Damascus. And we strip out all the names so our minds are free of the limitless propaganda Washington buries us in by way of clerks and gofers such as Gordon. What are we looking at? What is the thought buried in that sentence? Very simply, we have one secular nation helping to defend what remains of another, by invitation, against a radical Islamist insurgency that, were it to succeed, would condemn those Syrians who cannot escape to a tyranny of disorder rooted in sectarian religious animosities. And we have the great power heretofore dominant in the region hoping that the insurgency prevails. Its policy across the region, indeed, appears to rest on leveraging these very animosities. Now we can add the names back in. In the past week Russia has further advanced its support of Bashar al-Assad with intensified bombing runs and cruise missiles launched from warships in the Caspian Sea. Not yet but possibly, Russian troops will deploy to back the Syrian army and its assorted allies on the ground. This has enabled government troops to begin an apparently spirited new offensive against the messy stew of Islamist militias arrayed against Damascus. It was a big week for Washington, too. First it pulled the plug on its $500 million program to train a “moderate opposition” in Syria—admittedly a tough one given that Islamists with guns in their hands tend to be immoderate. Instantly it then begins to send weapons to the militias it failed to train, the CIA having “lightly vetted” them—as it did for a time in 2013, until that proved a self-defeating mistake. The fiction that moderates lurk somewhere continues. Out of the blue, they are now called “the Syrian Arab Coalition,” a moniker that reeks of the corridors in Langley, Virginia, if you ask me. In Turkey, meantime, the Pentagon’s new alliance with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan government starts to play out just as the Turkish prime minister intended. All the persuasive signs are that the government was responsible for bombs that killed more than 120 people in Ankara last weekend as they protested Erdoğan’s renewed violence against Turkey’s Kurdish minority. The Middle East’s crisis has just spread into another country. * Since Russia reinvigorated its decades-old support for Damascus last month, the vogue among the Washington story-spinners has been to question Putin’s motives. What does Putin—not “Russia” or even “Moscow,” but Putin—want? This was never an interesting question, since the answer seemed clear, but now we have one that truly does warrant consideration. What does the U.S. want? Why, after four years of effort on the part of the world’s most powerful military and most extensive intelligence apparatus, is Syria a catastrophe beyond anything one could imagine when anti-Assad protests began in the spring of 2011? After four years of war—never truly civil and now on the way to proxy—Assad’s Syria is a mangled mess, almost certainly beyond retrieval in its current form. Everyone appears to agree on this point, including Putin and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian leader’s foreign minister. There is no putting this humpty-dumpty back on any wall: The Russians readily acknowledge this, acres of groundless journalism to the contrary notwithstanding. In the meantime, certain realities are essential to recognize. The Assad government is a sovereign entity. Damascus has the beleaguered bones of a national administration, all the things one does not readily think of as wars unfold: a transport ministry, an education ministry, embassies around the world, a seat at the U.N. In these things are the makings of postwar Syria—which, by definition, means Syria after the threat of Islamic terror is eliminated. Anyone who doubts this is Russia’s reasoning should consider the Putin-Lavrov proposal for a negotiated transition into a post-Assad national structure. They argue for a federation of autonomous regions representing Sunni, Kurdish and Alawite-Christian populations. Putin made this plain when he met President Obama at the U.N. last month, my sources in Moscow tell me. Lavrov has made it plain during his numerous exchanges with Secretary of State Kerry. Why would Russia’s president and senior diplomat put this on the table if they were not serious? Their proposed design for post-Assad Syria, incidentally, is a close variant of what Russia and the Europeans favor in Ukraine. In both cases it has the virtue of addressing facts on the ground. These are nations whose internal distinctions and diversity must be accommodated—not denied, not erased, but also not exacerbated—if they are to become truly modern. Russians understand the complexities of becoming truly modern: This has been the Russian project since the 18th century. In the past week Washington has effectively elected not to support Russia’s new effort to address the Syria crisis decisively. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s latest phrase of the moment is “fatally flawed.” If he said it once he said it a dozen times: The Russian strategy is fatally flawed. We heard you the third time, Ash. As to Obama, he rejects any notion that Washington has effectively ceded leadership on the Syria question—with potentially wider implications—to Moscow. In his much-noted interview with 60 Minutes last weekend, he found Putin foolhardy for risking the lives of Russian soldiers and “spending money he doesn’t have.” Say what? Whose strategy in Syria is fatally flawed, Mr. Carter? I assume there is no need to do more than pose the question. (Memo to SecDef: Get a new scriptwriter, someone who allots you more than one assigned phrase a week.) As to Obama’s remarks, one wishes he were joking. We are $5 trillion into the mess that began with the invasion of Iraq a dozen years ago, and we are counting the fatalities one side or the other of a million. There are roughly 4 million Syrian refugees by the latest count. And Putin’s at fault for risking lives and blowing money? Who puts a smart guy like you up to this, Mr. President? A lot of interesting people, hailing from unexpected quarters, now come out against the Obama administration’s fateful choice in Syria. One is Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired colonel who served as Colin Powell’s chief of staff when the latter was secretary of state. Earlier this month Wilkerson delivered a speech entitled “The Travails of Empire,” in which he listed all the signs that the U.S. is an imperial power in rapid decline: an insistence on the primacy of military power, overreliance on mercenaries, disproportionate spending on perceived threats, ethical and moral bankruptcy. It is a moment, surely, when someone such as Wilkerson, who now lectures on government at William and Mary, starts to sound like the late and great Chalmers Johnson. Watch the video of Wilkerson’s presentation here. Tuesday’s Times carried a remarkable piece called “A Road to Damascus, via Moscow” on the opinion page—remarkable, not least, for appearing in the Times. “Moscow’s intervention in Syria may offer the first glimmer of hope for ending the quagmire,” argue Gordon Adams and Stephen Walt, two noted professors of international affairs. “American officials must end their table-thumping about Russian intrusion, recognize that we are passed the Cold War, and get down to the business of statecraft.” Clear-eyed, rational, devoid of ideology. Read the piece here. I would remind the two professors of Boutros-Ghali’s mot in the memoir he wrote after Washington bullied him out of the secretary-general’s office at the U.N.: Diplomacy is for weak nations, he wrote. The strong have no need of it. Here is another way to put our question: Why will the views of insiders such as Wilkerson and smart heads such as Adams and Walt go unheeded? As they will, that is. I see two answers. One, the world has just been advised that any kind of post-Manichean, straight-ahead rapprochement with Russia, as Kerry and a few others at State plainly advocate, is out of the question. We are beyond Bush II’s biblical references to Gog and Magog and the end-times battle with evil, but only by way of vocabulary. I will resort to the New Testament myself on this point: He is not defiled who is offended by others. It is our offenses of others that defile us. That is Matthew 15:11. Translation: We can demonize Putin, Russia, Iran, Assad or anyone else we like. We lose in the end, because we destroy our capacity to see and think clearly. What we are doing in Syria today is Exhibit A. Russia and its leader as Beelzebub is an old story. Obama, after his fashion, has simply bought into it. This is now irreducibly so, and the implications refract all over the place: Ukraine and the prospects for a negotiated settlement, Washington’s long-running effort to disrupt Europe’s extensive and complex interdependence with Russia. The unfolding events in the Middle East weigh heavily against any constructive turn in American policy on such questions. * The second explanation as to why Washington holds to a patently destructive course in the Middle East is more sinister than our practice of modeling foreign policy on the plot of a John Wayne movie. The argument here is that turning the Middle East into a violent anarchy of ethnic and religious rivalries renders the nations wherein these occur weak and incapable of serious political action—in effect, no longer nations. The chaos before us is exactly Washington’s intended outcome. I do not know where I stand on this theory. It is not new but is now emerging into the light, and there is considerable documentation in support of it. Thomas Harrington, a cultural studies professor (Trinity College) and a frequent political commentator, cites policy papers going back to the 1980s. These include this document from 1996, which argues (among much else) the strategic use of deposing Saddam Hussein and destabilizing Syria; Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, intellectual poseurs during the Bush II administration, are among the co-authors. “The U.S. strategic goal in Syria is not, as your faithful mainstream media servants … might have you believe, to save the Syrian people from the ravages of the longstanding Assad dictatorship,” Harrington wrote in a comment CounterPunch published Monday, “but rather to heighten the level of internecine conflict in that country to the point where it will not be able to serve as a bulwark against Israeli regional hegemony for at least a generation.” It is a teleological argument to say the strategy worked and is therefore authentic. But Syria is as we have it, and it is impossible to say how long it will be before Damascus is able enough to advance such ordinary things as a foreign policy, or a position on the Palestine question. We do have reports now, it must be noted, that Israel is rushing to fill the Golan Heights with settlers, West Bank-style, to take advantage of Syria’s near-total incapacitation. This line of thinking causes me to reflect on two other questions arising from the Syria conflict. One concerns the migration crisis combined with incessant insistence that there is, somewhere and the CIA will find it yet, a moderate opposition in Syria. It is time to reconcile these two phenomena. Were there refugees in any number before the rise of the Islamist anti-Assad formations? Where are the refugees going now that they number in the millions? Answers: No. As Gary Leupp, a historian at Tufts, argues in a superb piece of commentary CounterPunch also published recently, “The bulk of peaceful protesters in the Syrian Arab Spring want nothing to do with the U.S.-supported armed opposition but are instead receptive to calls from Damascus, Moscow and Tehran for dialogue towards a power-sharing arrangement…. What pro-democracy student activists and their allies fear most is the radical Islamists who have burgeoned in large part due to foreign intervention since 2011.” Thank you, professor. Now we know why the flow of refugees runs toward secular, democratic Europe and not areas of the nation Assad has lost to rebel militias. The former represents the refugees’ shared aspirations, while the latter fight not as Syrians but as religious fanatics and/or CIA clients. As a friend wrote the other day, “There are likely moderate Syrian forces, but you will I think find them mostly in the coffee shops of Istanbul.” This brings us to Turkey, a newly significant factor in the Syrian crisis. I cannot help viewing the eruption of sectarian and communal violence since the Erdoğan government signed a cooperation agreement with the U.S. last July in the light of the above-suggested American strategy: Make a mess and keep it messy. Erdoğan is heir to a singular tradition in Middle Eastern politics. Ataturk, faced with the same religious, ethnic and historic fractiousness as Syria and much of the region today, countered it with a modern notion of citizenship and belonging. It held for three-quarters of a century and its mark remains, obviously. Erdoğan comes along and sees political advantage exactly where Washington sees strategic advantage: in social, religious and cultural division. Another dimension to the Middle East’s many-sided tragedy. This is Erdoğan’s Turkey, and he has our blessing. I would say Erdoğan is a strange bedfellow except that he does not seem to be. I am with Lawrence Wilkerson on the nature of our moment: The veil is pulled back, and we witness decline in progress, real time. What is supposed to be “fatally flawed” is the only “glimmer of hope,” and what is supposed to be considered and humane is reckless and cynical. We all live through history, always. This is by definition. But there are not many passages as fraught as this one. Our leadership thrashes about in desperation. It is dangerous—this by definition, too.

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Published on October 14, 2015 15:59

4 outlandish things our ancestors used as lube

The $15 billion sex toy industry has provided us with some modern-day essentials, like condoms and vibrators. It’s also introduced us to some colorful inessentials, like animal-themed butt plugs, artificial hymens and Japanese schoolgirl armpit spray. But hey, however people want to spend their money is up to them. Of course, no good conversation about sex toys is complete without mention of sexual lubrication. Today’s market offers a spectacular variety, from warming lubes to cooling lubes, lubes that make you feel tingly and lubes that taste good. There are even some sperm-killing lubricants out there. But these luxuries are unique to modern times. Our ancestors didn’t have access to the wide selection we’re presented with today. So they had to get creative. Some options may seem obvious, like aloe, plant oil and animal fats. But historians haven’t made the evolution of personal lubrication a priority, and many early examples have gone undocumented. Fortunately, there is some literature that provides details about what our ancestors used to facilitate the old in-and-out. Listed below are some of the most popular lubrications used in pre-modern times. 1. Olive Oil It’s no secret that the Greeks were big into sex. Some early physicians even recommended it as a means of preventing depression, indigestion, lower back pain; even jaundice. And, as researchers at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute found a few years back, the best sex is often accompanied by some lube. Reports hold that the earliest written evidence of olive oil being used as lubricant dates back to 350 BCE, around the same time the leather dildo became popular. As we can well imagine, lube is most welcome when sex involves areas that don’t provide natural lubrication. Yes, we’re referring to anal sex, which we know the Greeks didn’t shy away from. Aristotle even makes a brief reference to the use of olive oil during sex in his text The History of Animals . Though he refers to it in terms of contraception, writing, “if the parts be smooth conception is prevented.” The physician Soranus would also recommend the use of olive oil as a contraceptive, insisting that the substance would cause “clogging,” causing the entrance of the uterus to close and preventing sperm from passing through. It’s said that during early times, olive oil was a staple product in brothels and in the bedrooms of wealthy landowners. It was also one of the hottest products on the marketplace. 2. Mashed Yams During Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868) couples would commonly use a substance called tororo-jiru, "a slick substance made by grating yams," to provide lubrication during sex. The Japanese were known to use tororo-jiru as a way of lubing up their animal intestine condoms. Images of sex created during the Edo Period are notably genital-focused. Women’s nipples, if included in the image, were rarely colored in. Perhaps the lack of eroticism surrounding the breasts heightened the importance of keeping the genitals ready for sex. Today, tororo-jiru is best known as a popular Japanese soup. 3. Seaweed In his paper "Medicinal Uses of Seaweeds," Ryan Drum reveals that, way back when, the people of China, Korea and Japan would boil red seaweeds to produce a thick, sticky liquid called carrageenan. That liquid, he writes, was used as a sexual lubricant. Today, the substance is used as an additive in products across the food, health and beauty industries. But before its introduction to modern times, it was used in crude form to help “stimulate and moisturize the tissues.” More recently, researchers have found that carrageenan-based gels may even work to prevent the transmission of HPV (human papillomavirus) types that can cause cervical cancer and genital warts. The researchers write that, “Interestingly, carrageenan is used as a thickener in some commercially available sexual lubricants and lubricated condoms.” 4. KY Jelly 1904 was certainly not “ancient times” but was a significant point in the timeline of personal lubrications as it was the year the first commercially prepared lubrication was introduced. The first owners originally released K-Y Jelly as a surgical aid, though it didn’t take long for its alternative purposes to become apparent. In 1917, it was officially introduced as a personal lubricant. In the time since, it’s been critiqued for its adverse effect on sperm and fertility. When the AIDS crisis hit, the company pulled a variety of the product off the shelves after it was found it could facilitate the spread of the virus. Nevertheless, K-Y continues to market itself as the “most trusted brand of personal lubricants.”

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Published on October 14, 2015 15:58

The real reason the Republican Party is imploding: It’s still all about race

It was only last week that Rep. Kevin McCarthy opted not to run for speaker of the House, effectively driving his party, and the U.S. Congress, into a brick wall. Yet despite having more than 240 options and a pressing need to save the world from another global recession, Republicans in the House are reportedly no closer to finding John Boehner’s successor. As a matter of fact, things have gotten so bad that the conservative establishment is begging Rep. Paul Ryan to take the job. He says he’d rather not. But over the weekend, it started to look like Ryan may not have to resign himself to the miserable fate of being one of the most powerful people on the planet — at least not yet. Because according to reports which first emanated from Breitbart.com and other tribunes of the far right, but which have since been corroborated by the New York Times and others, even Ryan may not be conservative enough to please the 30-40 extremists who felled Boehner, thwarted McCarthy, and call themselves members of the House Freedom Caucus. Yes, that’s right: The Republican Party is now beholden to a faction so zealously reactionary that Paul “Ayn Rand is the reason I got involved in public service” Ryan is, in its reckoning, much too far to the left. These are the rules of the Congress the Tea Party created. It’s enough to put the fear of God into even the most devoted of GOP apologists. David Brooks, for example, is castigating Republicans for “right-wing radicalism.” It’s gotten that bad. Still, recognizing the problem is the easy part. The harder part is acknowledging where it comes from. Brooks chalks the GOP’s militancy up to 30 years of “rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals” and suggests that Republicans are “addicted to a crisis mentality.” But although Brooks is right when he notes that GOP extremists “always” act like the country is “on the brink of collapse,” apocalypticism isn’t the problem here. No, as is so often true in American politics, the problem is race. Some hardliners pay lip service to his supporting the 2008 bailouts when explaining their opposition to Ryan. But if you follow the far-right press, or listen to rank-and-file activists, it’s blindingly obvious that conservatives’ real problem with Paul Ryan is that he not only supports comprehensive immigration reform, but supports higher levels of overall immigration, too. “There’s nobody in the Republican Party who could be worse than Paul Ryan,” said Roy Beck, a leading “immigration control” activist, to Breitbart. “Open Borders is in his ideological DNA. That’s the terrifying thing.” Erick Erickson, meanwhile, has described Ryan as “a dangerous pick for conservatives” and “a creature of Washington.” He’s also called Ryan “not a bad guy” and “a competent, good guy.” But only to soothe the burn of yet another sobriquet: “the draftsman for bailouts behind the scenes.” Conservatives who challenge Speaker Ryan “will immediately be labeled as fascist totalitarians,” Erickson warned. Conspicuous in its absence, though, was an acknowledgement of what they’d be fighting him about. It won’t be the 2008 bank bailouts; it’ll be immigration. That’s in the medium- or long-term. If it’s 2017 and there’s another Democrat in the White House, simply not bringing comprehensive immigration reform up for a vote will probably be enough. But in the short-term, the extremists have bigger plans. Reportedly, they want the next speaker to agree to use a debt-ceiling default and a government shutdown as “leverage” in order to force President Obama to acquiesce to his legacy’s dismantling. The lesson of 2011 and 2013, as they see it, is that the world economy and the federal government are damn good hostages to take. And if we keep in mind that these folks think the world is ending as it is already, their strategy makes sense. In fact, it’s a real mistake to dismiss these people as lunatics, as their critics, both on the right and the left, so often do. Far as I can tell, these “crazy” tactics have borne them plenty of fruit. Where they break from the rest of the political establishment is in their analysis; that apocalyptic stuff about the end of the republic, the New Black Panther Party, and immigration being akin to “invasion.” But that’s not craziness; that’s racism. They’re different. So if Brooks and others really want to know how this dysfunction got started, they’ll have to look back further. Before the Tea Party, and before Paul Ryan was even born. They’ll have to examine the roots of today’s Republican Party. I’d recommend they start with Richard Nixon and the presidential campaign of 1968.

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Published on October 14, 2015 14:49

Last night’s most important lesson: The GOP’s longstanding myth about Democrats is starting to crumble

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Published on October 14, 2015 14:05

Trump’s America vs. Hillary’s America: The most shocking contrasts between the Democratic & Republican debates

Everyone on the right agreed that the Democratic debate last night was dull as dirt: No fireworks, no pizazz. The candidates didn't insult each other's looks or tell gory tales of mayhem or brag about their poll numbers. In fact, they did the opposite. They behaved like human beings. When the debate moderators insisted on discussing the most tedious beltway obsession since Al Gore and the buddhist temple -- Hillary Clinton's emails -- Bernie Sanders drew huge applause from the audience, and no doubt from every Democrat watching the debate at home, when he said:

"I think the Secretary is right. And that is I think the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”

And that was the end of that. With the exception of some eccentric moments from former senators Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee, the Democrats held a lively debate about ideas and exchanged views on how to deal with problems facing the country. They talked about guns and college debt and Syria and Social Security and much more. Not one of them looked like deer in the headlights, clueless about the subject at hand (something that happened frequently in the GOP debates), nor did they weirdly launch into their stump speeches at the slightest provocation. Truth be told, they all seemed somewhat ... normal. (Or at least as normal as any politician can be.) And that is the last thing the Republicans wanted anyone to see. After all, some people who aren't deluded by Fox News and talk radio might then remember that this is serious business, and the GOP can't have that. One never knows how these things will go, but at the very least one hopes that a majority of the Americans are still looking for someone sane and sober to run the country. It may not be as entertaining as Donald Trump raving about his wall or Carly Fiorina delivering a torrent of gruesome accusations against Planned Parenthood, but it's important. There was little suspense -- after all nobody was waiting with bated breath to see what crazy thing one of these candidates would say next. What they got instead was a stage full of experienced public servants with deep knowledge of government policy. If there's one thing that was made obvious last night, it's that the GOP is one big heaping mess of a political party right now. The contrast between it and the Democrats couldn't be sharper and not just in the presidential race. After all, the backdrop of last night's event was a drama happening in the Capitol in which House Republicans can't agree on who should be Speaker. How do they expect, then, to bring the entire country together under one president? It's laughable. They're laughable. The candidates on the stage last night in Las Vegas, on the other hand, were serious. Now it's true that there might have been some Republicans on their debate stage who aren't entirely clownish and who, in other circumstances, could show themselves to better advantage. But it's their party and they can't cry about this even if they want to. Every last one of them has been instrumental in making the GOP what it is today. All of them would likely be happy to see Trump out of the race and most of them wouldn't be sorry to see Carson go either. Every day, those two are out there spewing vile racist and anti-semitic rhetoric (among a dozen other offensive comments), making it almost impossible for the Republicans to gain a national majority and win the presidency -- even if they could past the unpopularity of the mainstream GOP platform, which is only slightly less repellant. The differences between the two parties aren't just matters of debate style unfortunately. Now that we have seen the presidential candidates in both parties on the debate stage, it's clear that the two parties don't just have different political philosophies. They represent two different countries. Republican America is a dystopian hellscape in which evil, violent foreigners are trying to kill us in our beds while rapacious jackbooted government thugs try to wrestle our guns from our cold, dead fingers and Planned Parenthood sociopaths are committing mayhem on children and selling the body parts. And that's just for starters. Democratic America is a very powerful nation struggling with a declining middle class and economic insecurity at the hands of the ultra-rich, requiring some energetic government intervention to mitigate income inequality, solve the looming crisis of climate change and manage global crises without plunging the nation into more wars. They also must hold off that anarchistic opposition which sees the world as a dystopian hellscape and that may be the greatest challenge of all. A little over a year from now voters are going to decide which country they want to live in. Let's hope they choose wisely. The rest of us are going to have to live in it too. Democratic Debate Roundup

Everyone on the right agreed that the Democratic debate last night was dull as dirt: No fireworks, no pizazz. The candidates didn't insult each other's looks or tell gory tales of mayhem or brag about their poll numbers. In fact, they did the opposite. They behaved like human beings. When the debate moderators insisted on discussing the most tedious beltway obsession since Al Gore and the buddhist temple -- Hillary Clinton's emails -- Bernie Sanders drew huge applause from the audience, and no doubt from every Democrat watching the debate at home, when he said:

"I think the Secretary is right. And that is I think the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”

And that was the end of that. With the exception of some eccentric moments from former senators Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee, the Democrats held a lively debate about ideas and exchanged views on how to deal with problems facing the country. They talked about guns and college debt and Syria and Social Security and much more. Not one of them looked like deer in the headlights, clueless about the subject at hand (something that happened frequently in the GOP debates), nor did they weirdly launch into their stump speeches at the slightest provocation. Truth be told, they all seemed somewhat ... normal. (Or at least as normal as any politician can be.) And that is the last thing the Republicans wanted anyone to see. After all, some people who aren't deluded by Fox News and talk radio might then remember that this is serious business, and the GOP can't have that. One never knows how these things will go, but at the very least one hopes that a majority of the Americans are still looking for someone sane and sober to run the country. It may not be as entertaining as Donald Trump raving about his wall or Carly Fiorina delivering a torrent of gruesome accusations against Planned Parenthood, but it's important. There was little suspense -- after all nobody was waiting with bated breath to see what crazy thing one of these candidates would say next. What they got instead was a stage full of experienced public servants with deep knowledge of government policy. If there's one thing that was made obvious last night, it's that the GOP is one big heaping mess of a political party right now. The contrast between it and the Democrats couldn't be sharper and not just in the presidential race. After all, the backdrop of last night's event was a drama happening in the Capitol in which House Republicans can't agree on who should be Speaker. How do they expect, then, to bring the entire country together under one president? It's laughable. They're laughable. The candidates on the stage last night in Las Vegas, on the other hand, were serious. Now it's true that there might have been some Republicans on their debate stage who aren't entirely clownish and who, in other circumstances, could show themselves to better advantage. But it's their party and they can't cry about this even if they want to. Every last one of them has been instrumental in making the GOP what it is today. All of them would likely be happy to see Trump out of the race and most of them wouldn't be sorry to see Carson go either. Every day, those two are out there spewing vile racist and anti-semitic rhetoric (among a dozen other offensive comments), making it almost impossible for the Republicans to gain a national majority and win the presidency -- even if they could past the unpopularity of the mainstream GOP platform, which is only slightly less repellant. The differences between the two parties aren't just matters of debate style unfortunately. Now that we have seen the presidential candidates in both parties on the debate stage, it's clear that the two parties don't just have different political philosophies. They represent two different countries. Republican America is a dystopian hellscape in which evil, violent foreigners are trying to kill us in our beds while rapacious jackbooted government thugs try to wrestle our guns from our cold, dead fingers and Planned Parenthood sociopaths are committing mayhem on children and selling the body parts. And that's just for starters. Democratic America is a very powerful nation struggling with a declining middle class and economic insecurity at the hands of the ultra-rich, requiring some energetic government intervention to mitigate income inequality, solve the looming crisis of climate change and manage global crises without plunging the nation into more wars. They also must hold off that anarchistic opposition which sees the world as a dystopian hellscape and that may be the greatest challenge of all. A little over a year from now voters are going to decide which country they want to live in. Let's hope they choose wisely. The rest of us are going to have to live in it too. Democratic Debate Roundup

Everyone on the right agreed that the Democratic debate last night was dull as dirt: No fireworks, no pizazz. The candidates didn't insult each other's looks or tell gory tales of mayhem or brag about their poll numbers. In fact, they did the opposite. They behaved like human beings. When the debate moderators insisted on discussing the most tedious beltway obsession since Al Gore and the buddhist temple -- Hillary Clinton's emails -- Bernie Sanders drew huge applause from the audience, and no doubt from every Democrat watching the debate at home, when he said:

"I think the Secretary is right. And that is I think the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”

And that was the end of that. With the exception of some eccentric moments from former senators Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee, the Democrats held a lively debate about ideas and exchanged views on how to deal with problems facing the country. They talked about guns and college debt and Syria and Social Security and much more. Not one of them looked like deer in the headlights, clueless about the subject at hand (something that happened frequently in the GOP debates), nor did they weirdly launch into their stump speeches at the slightest provocation. Truth be told, they all seemed somewhat ... normal. (Or at least as normal as any politician can be.) And that is the last thing the Republicans wanted anyone to see. After all, some people who aren't deluded by Fox News and talk radio might then remember that this is serious business, and the GOP can't have that. One never knows how these things will go, but at the very least one hopes that a majority of the Americans are still looking for someone sane and sober to run the country. It may not be as entertaining as Donald Trump raving about his wall or Carly Fiorina delivering a torrent of gruesome accusations against Planned Parenthood, but it's important. There was little suspense -- after all nobody was waiting with bated breath to see what crazy thing one of these candidates would say next. What they got instead was a stage full of experienced public servants with deep knowledge of government policy. If there's one thing that was made obvious last night, it's that the GOP is one big heaping mess of a political party right now. The contrast between it and the Democrats couldn't be sharper and not just in the presidential race. After all, the backdrop of last night's event was a drama happening in the Capitol in which House Republicans can't agree on who should be Speaker. How do they expect, then, to bring the entire country together under one president? It's laughable. They're laughable. The candidates on the stage last night in Las Vegas, on the other hand, were serious. Now it's true that there might have been some Republicans on their debate stage who aren't entirely clownish and who, in other circumstances, could show themselves to better advantage. But it's their party and they can't cry about this even if they want to. Every last one of them has been instrumental in making the GOP what it is today. All of them would likely be happy to see Trump out of the race and most of them wouldn't be sorry to see Carson go either. Every day, those two are out there spewing vile racist and anti-semitic rhetoric (among a dozen other offensive comments), making it almost impossible for the Republicans to gain a national majority and win the presidency -- even if they could past the unpopularity of the mainstream GOP platform, which is only slightly less repellant. The differences between the two parties aren't just matters of debate style unfortunately. Now that we have seen the presidential candidates in both parties on the debate stage, it's clear that the two parties don't just have different political philosophies. They represent two different countries. Republican America is a dystopian hellscape in which evil, violent foreigners are trying to kill us in our beds while rapacious jackbooted government thugs try to wrestle our guns from our cold, dead fingers and Planned Parenthood sociopaths are committing mayhem on children and selling the body parts. And that's just for starters. Democratic America is a very powerful nation struggling with a declining middle class and economic insecurity at the hands of the ultra-rich, requiring some energetic government intervention to mitigate income inequality, solve the looming crisis of climate change and manage global crises without plunging the nation into more wars. They also must hold off that anarchistic opposition which sees the world as a dystopian hellscape and that may be the greatest challenge of all. A little over a year from now voters are going to decide which country they want to live in. Let's hope they choose wisely. The rest of us are going to have to live in it too. Democratic Debate Roundup

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Published on October 14, 2015 14:03

Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 980

October 15, 2015

“People are waiting for [politicians] to slip up so they can make fun of them on their late night comedy shows”: Late night hosts are nailing election coverage

Fox News got scammed: Turns out their CIA “terrorism expert” was never in the CIA

Stephen Colbert just did the impression that could forever define Bernie Sanders

October 14, 2015

It’s not easy being a black Tarantino fan: He wants to be treated like a black filmmaker — and doesn’t get why that’s impossible

“Evil Dead” meets “Jane Eyre” in Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak,” a lurid meta-Gothic ghost story

Putin might be right on Syria: The actual strategy behind his Middle East push — and why the New York Times keeps obscuring it

4 outlandish things our ancestors used as lube

The real reason the Republican Party is imploding: It’s still all about race

Last night’s most important lesson: The GOP’s longstanding myth about Democrats is starting to crumble

Trump’s America vs. Hillary’s America: The most shocking contrasts between the Democratic & Republican debates

Helen H. Moore's Blog