Sponsor Me!

Currently, I'm publishing sporadically (as in, there has been a span of 10 months between the last post and the current post). I'd like to write and publish more. Unfortunately, I'm a super busy person, especially since I work a 9 to 5 job five days a week. If you want to help me free up more time, so I can write and publish more, please buy me a coffee or sponsor me through recurring Patreon payments (so you don't forget!).

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com


Become a Patron!


Showing posts with label World War II. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World War II. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

SPECULATIVE FLASH POST: Did the Great Recession End the Post-War Period?

This episode of American Shadows starts by looking at Samuel Adams as a conspiracist. The episode pushed me into a deep dive into Euro-American history since the American Revolution and earlier to understand Parliament of England, the French Estates General & various other legislative bodies in France, and the Habsburg Monarchy/Holy Roman Empire/Central Europe to WWII. This is a bit of history I tend to focus on from different angles.

But this time, I've reached a hypothesis: I believe future historians will consider The Great Recession as the point in history in which the Postwar Period ended and a new era started. . .

  • Ukraine
  • Putin
  • Brexit
  • Greece
  • Arab Spring
  • Libya
  • Syria
  • Trump
  • Viktor Orbán in Hungary
  • The Rise of illiberalism again
Frankly, I feel kinda bad for Obama since he won the 2008 POTUS Election just as people started realizing how really bad things were and would be getting because of the Great Recession. So many firsts, including watching the fall of Euro-American stability after many years of rising pluralism.

(I also received a shock today when I heard The Moment discuss the Doctor Who episode "Turn Left" and demonstrate that the episode has renewed resonance today when back in the day, the episode might have felt over the top.)

The beginning of a future holds much promise and a lot of negative possibilities. I hope the human race survives long enough for it to become a historical period since we could destroy human civilization by just not addressing issues of climate change, let alone our relations with each other. Hopefully we just have to push through an initial dark time to reach a time of maturity, prosperity, and peace rather than continued despair. But we can only reach that better future if we work together to create good will and the desire to solve problems before we destroy civilization.

So how about it? Thoughts? Ideas? Innovations? Can we avoid destruction?


If you like what you see here and in the past and want to free me up for more, support my endeavors by Buying Me a Coffee!

Posted by The_Lex at 9:12 PM 0 comments

Tags: , , , ,

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Trepidation for Post-2018 General Election, Eerie Quote, MastoTwittervism

CONTENTS

1. Brief Introduction without Header: Trepidation for Post-2018 General Election
2. Eerie Quote Relevant to Present & Possible Future
3. MastoTwittervism

I think I've been procrastinating on thinking about politics or getting involved too much in poltical discussions and arguments since returning from the 1-1/2 week trip to California a couple weeks ago (though I plan on posting some ruminations about regionalism and some videos of the landscape at some point, but that requries some sound editing). I only just caught up on local Chicago and Illinois politics over at the Chicago Tribune Clout Street section (the Chicago mayoral race has gotten crazy since Rahm declined to participate in the election). The podcasts have piled up a bit, but I'm making headway there.

This procrastination has a little more psychology to it, though. Part of me doesn't want to move past the Primaries and the 2018 General Election. Or a better alternative: fast forwarding my perception of time until the hands of government change drastically. Now sucks, I miss the old days when the United States government and the Western world felt sane, but I feel like things will get even more crazy and even more tense after the 2018 General Election.

The 2020 Presidential Election cycle will start, along with the 2020 House elections (2-year terms now feels like a breakneck pace, now that I've learned about it and have come to actually pay attention to the House), and also some of the 2020 Senate races. The Chicago mayoral race with the initial run-off election in February will feel somewhat like a pleasant diversion (and a follow up race later if one candidate doesn't get at least 50% of the vote, which I doub will happen). The 2020 races will start on November 7, and with Trump at the head of the GOP, all this shit will explode get even worse. Hopefully some other Republican(s) will run, too, and help to dampen Trump's impact.

Either which way, I expect the rhetoric and attacks to get tense, rapid fire, ugly, and even more divisive. The effects could expand further out from just rhetoric to action, which could get worse than ugly. Dang, I didn't even think about attacks on the media, social media scrutiny, and tampering in the US Elections, both from the aftermath of Election 2018 and the attempts to further secure and desecuritize Election 2020. Let's not forget voter and turnout suppression, either!

Admittedly, I've all but determined where my votes go in November. I expect to vote the first weekend that early voting becomes available in my district/precinct. I'll just want to get it over with, like tearing off a Band-Aid (TM).

While waiting for that day to come, though, part of me wants to avoid politics and news. That part of me just wants to pamper myself in escapism and enjoyable things. My sensible side, however, tells me not to succumb to this thinking, laziness, and lack of participation. I might enjoy myself by relaxing during these days of relative calm before the storm of the 2020 Election that will start in a little less than 50 days. I might become complacent, especially not good because I have that luxury.

I need to get my ass more into gear. I need to get my politics and news bandwidth open again. Things need to change. The present state of things is not tolerable. Eligible voters need more urging to get out to their polling places, whether through their own initiative or, if within my power, with the assistance of others that can help voters get to their polling places. Even though Trump's approval has declined below 40% again and the generic polls have stayed relatively steady (but still scary close), we can't take those polls for granted. Those polls don't become reality unless we get out there to vote.

So I need to get my ass into gear more to become active and facilitate other people's activity. I need to shake this funk. Come me, let's do this! Let's get into action and raise motivation among the people. Let's "be the change I want to see in the world." Let's revive hope again. I can do this, and so can you!


Return to Top

EERIE QUOTE RELEVANT TO PRESENT & POSSIBLE FUTURE (Crypto Pluralism Track)

From page 21 of The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazy Europe - What Led Ordinay Men and Women to Risk their Lives on Behalf of Others? by Samuel P and Pearl M Oliner (The Free Press, a Division of Macmillan, Inc., New York, NY 1988):
In Germany, the persecution of Jews was official government policy and had evolved gradually during the years when the Nazi regime attained the height of its popularity and power. Here, unlike conquered or satellite states, the assault on the Jews could not be discredited as a program imposed by a victorious foreign tyrant or enacted to ingratiate a dominant ally. Any German opposition to the persecution of the Jews was interpreted as a form of treason. This does not mean that most Germans shared Hitler's racism and sought the physical annhilation of European Jewry. Instead, the accepted anti-Semitic discrimination as just one plank in the Nazi platform for the restoration of German power. Their support for the Third Reih was predicated on Hitler's overall success in overcoming the civil strife and depression that plagued Germany in the early 1930s and in freeing Germany from the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles had clamped on the country's irredentist and military aspirations. When Hitler succeeded in achieving these goals between 1933 and 1941, the suffering of the Jews seemed to be either a necessary or small price to pay for this national revival.
Sound familiar?

Return to Top

MASTOTWITTERVISM

I've changed from Twittervism to MastoTwittervism because I want to switch over most of my social media activity to Mastodon. I appreciate, though don't fully understand the implications, the Federalism of Mastodon and also like that some Instances (servers) feel comfortable to assert more moderation than Facebook or Twitter, willing to take action against harassers, hateful, and abusive people. Mods and admins have a bit of learning and figuring out to do, but I like the idea and spirit.

The main worry/drawback at the moment: I don't have too many friends, acquaintences and/or followers using Mastodon. I had a lot of hope for Google Plus and the social media system they tried launching before that, but neither of them worked. Mastodon feels the same, but I think a fair amount of people feel excited about it, too, especially regarding the assertiveness that we hope the mods and admins feel and will act upon. Their presence and willingness to act feels more reassuring than the behavior that Facebook and Twitter will tolerate and neglect these two platforms present. Like voting, however, Mastodon won't amount to much unless people adopt the system and migrate over to it.

With that in mind, please do some research and come on over to join the party. I hang out over at mastodon.social with user name @screwjaw. If you have an account at another Instance/server that hasn't muted/blocked my instance, you can still connect with me at @screwjaw@mastodon.social. From what I've, though, even if your Instance mutes my Instance/server, you might still have the ability to follow me and vice versa. Come on over to the Mastodon side and hang out!

Until then, check out my MastoTwittervism:







































































































































































Return to Top

If you like what you see here and in the past and want to free me up for more, support my endeavors by Buying Me a Coffee!

Posted by The_Lex at 9:51 PM 0 comments

Tags: , , , , , ,

Monday, August 13, 2007

Literary Criticism of Slaughterhouse Five

in my entry titled "Vonnegut and Frankl," a fellow by the name of Chuckling and I had an interesting conversation about the differing reactions that Viktor Frankl and Kurt Vonnegut had to their experiences in World War II. Curious, they died roughly 10 years apart. A re-read of the conversation actually shows that Chuckling and I may have concluded that Frankl and Vonnegut may have agreed more than a surface of both their works may give.

I've just finished Slaughterhouse Five after having bought it yesterday. That's not typical of me, to read a 200 page book in probably really something like 6 or 7 hours. That's really all the time I had to read it. Finishing it this fast really comes as a surprise simply because I generally don't have the capability to fast as that. The wife can usually pull it off, but not so much me. So the book wins points from ease of reading that also allows for absorption of content.

It's not a spoiler that the book gets its name from the building that the main character was imprisoned in while captured by Nazis in Dresden. To some degree, however, Slaughterhouse Five reads like a more modern version of Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife and poems by William Carlos Williams.

The main character, Billy Pilgrim, becomes unstuck in time and at some point, gets kidnapped by aliens, put in a zoo and provided enlightenment by them. These aliens aren't apparently unstuck in time like Billy, but they perceive reality in four dimensions. So, essentially, Billy jumps through snippets of time from a moment where he's in World War II until his death. Unlike The Time Traveler's Wife, whereas the main character bodily transports in time and space, Billy switches his consciousness from one of his perceptions in time to another, sometimes retaining and sometimes not remembering his memories. Even after he dies, he simply transports back to an earlier version of himself. Vonnegut doesn't really do much to explain or really to allude to the mechanics of Billy's consciousness time exchanging with himself throughout his lifetime.

As a story with a plot or with emotion, Slaughterhouse Five didn't really grab me. I don't think it's meant to do so. The Time Traveler's Wife actually accomplished that job much better. Where the story didn't grip me with drama and feeling, however, the style and form of the book brought me in, pleasing me more on the level of aesthetics, form and theme. If any novel clearly showed its modernistic credentials, Slaughterhouse Five would be it.

With the protagonist being more of an observer retired to his fate than a character trying to do the right thing or aiming for glory, Slaughterhouse Five communicates a stark message, similar to Frankl's search for meaning, that becomes so much more vivid than some hero's exploits. The narrator shows his understanding of his own and the reader's consciousness of World War II's atrocities mixed with the ignorance of the characters experiencing the War, the virtues and vices of humanity and the semi-detached yet opinionated, the ambiguity of this phenomena's real existence and the serene acceptance of the protagonist seemingly learned from aliens except for a couple random instances of obscure emotionalism.

All of this understanding combines to create a surreal smack in the face, at least to people who believe in the truth of World War II's atrocities. And from this harsh impact comes questions and an answer: What's the point of it all if it's fated? Why live if just to die? What's the meaning? If there's no inherent meaning to life, what's the meaning to war? Why go to war? Does the meaning come in the form of people, their life, the various expressions of humanity, from good to bad, from virtuous to filled with vice? If it all ends with an experiment into alternative fuel, isn't it just absurd? If it's so absurd, why war? Don't we just make the meaning of this multifarious existence of ours? If so, if we create this meaning and have this power, then we only fight and war because we want it, it has something to do with our meaning making and make life feeling worthwhile. . .but aren't there other ways to do so without killing each other? But at the same time, all this multifarious existence of ours is kind of beautiful, no matter how it turns out. Sometimes it's just worth it to watch and appreciate the good things, like Billy right before the Americans and the Allies bomb Dresden to hell (the book provides a most certainly interesting statistic that concludes that the Dresden bombing had more casualties than the Hiroshima atomic bombing. Hmmmmm. . .).

Personally, I wouldn't put Slaughterhouse Five up there as one of the best books I've ever read, like a lot of people out there. If I had the choice to read it or The Time Traveler's Wife again, I think I would pick the latter. Time Traveler's Wife, however, comes many years after
Slaughterhouse Five and puts a twist on the plot device, making it more positive and possibly even more bittersweet. The emotional depth and realism to it most definitely wins out for me. On the other hand, Slaughterhouse Five has originality on it's side, more believable characters in all their variety, more of a global and even "enlightened" theme, a different mood and, on some level, more graceful and pleasurable language. I guess it all rather depends on my mood.

PERSONAL BABBLING

I have a forgiving community of friends and family who say that I feel guilty too much. Nonetheless, my current busyness (reach really translates to actually focusing and performing my duties at work, even though I would rather be at home, writing, blogging, researching, marketing my work and reading all the interesting stuff people have to say on their blogs and articles) and semi-incommunicado status makes me feel like such a recluse.

Maybe it isn't guilt that I feel but rather a sense of loneliness and fear of loss. Yes, not so deep inside me resides a shaky, insecure fellow who fears that people will disappear because of his irrelevance. But alas, there's the mature, healthy Adult me to bully the insecure me into submission, so I can get stuff done and live.

And, thankfully, I've started actually making some progress with my project after a month or so of floundering after the wedding. Yes, I've only written consistently for two days in a row and plan on seeing a movie in Grant Park tomorrow, but it's a start. Rome wasn't built in a day. . .a child doesn't instantly walk. . .etc. etc.

Well, I had better get back to working on that project!

Posted by The_Lex at 9:34 PM 2 comments

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Literary Criticism of Pan's Labryinth

I dedicate this entry to Jeremy Roby for his tips on writing movie reviews

Pan's Labryinth has gotten billed as "a fairy tale for adults." The billing does the movie justice. Do not take kids to this movie. It doesn't have excessive gore or nudity in it, but it has a good level of heartless violence, a scary demon-like creature that could cause nightmares and the level of depression-inducing content ranks quite high. The movie comes off as a theatrical masterpiece, though.

Set at a 1944 command garrison in Franco-controlled Spain, the movie tells the story of a young girl who has the soul of the Underworld Faerie (I'm throwing in the Faerie part) Princess and her attempt to prove that she has it. It also involves her desire to get away from the command garrison and her cruel new stepfather. Overall, it proves quite complex compared to most cinematic fare, with the multiple story lines that deftly and skillfully interweave, making political statements (which, from light Wikipedia research, probably proves quite intense for the Spanish), exploring the human condition, providing a variety of believably compelling horrible and beautiful characters and creating a relatively simple fantastic world.

The most striking aspect in the film comes from juxtaposing the fantastic world and the harsh mimetic real world. Brutalness exists in the fantastic world, but it comes in a different form. In the real world, it comes from humanity; while in the fantastic, from the animal and demonic. For some reason, as much as the animal and demonic may strike fear in the audience, it feels different than human cruelty and harshness. The animal and demonic brutality has an intuitive justice and order. Human brutality, however, destroys any kind of sense and meaning.

Humans have the capacity for great good but also for great evil. The girl's stepfather provides an extreme example of evil and harshness, killing and torturing near indiscriminately for Franco's nation and self glory. He has been stationed at the garrison to flush out the guerillas in the woods and destroy them, with no concern as to their humanity. Whatever it takes, he will do it. They are seen as a complication to the unification of Spain, in which citizens will receive their justified due, as long as they agree to what they are justified. And in the eyes of this captain and the leaders of Spain, their justification due could be death or torture, all for the "unification" of Spain.

Then we have Ofelia, the Underworld Faerie Princess. She embodies innocence. A powerless child in the world of power struggling, enchanted by fantastic fairy tales and looking for a simple, loving environment of support and care. In the mimetic real world parts of the movie, she becomes vulnerable to something that Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings says. I can't remember it exactly, but it goes along the lines of those who don't know how to use the sword can still die by the sword. Ofelia, however, doesn't seek power or glory, but simply safety and escape from the harsh human world, in which humanity has never seen an end. At the least, some humans have always seeked power, taking it at whatever cost and projecting it onto their legacy. Becoming the Underworld Faerie Princess will become her escape from the horrible world of humanity.

These two stories, Ofelia trying to prove her soul-right and the evil stepfather killing and torturing the enemies of Franco near-indiscriminately, advance seperately most of the time but come together in a gripping and bittersweetly just climax. They both develop and indirectly comment on each other for the audience. Ofelia and the fantasy world enchants and strikes fear, but in a meaningful way. The real world and the stepfather, however, terrorizes the audience without meaning. Ofelia strives for safety and order, of sorts, while the stepfather destroys, kills and tears down. Franco apparently will create order afterward and bring prosperousness on the people of Spain, but at what cost? Will Spain make a worthwhile place to live after the loss of humanity required for Franco's unity and nation? And since the Spain of today still grips with the legacy of Franco's regime and the whole world also dealing with all types of powermongers, can they translate the warning Guillermo del Torro tries to communicate about humanity?

Coming from a perspective of ignorance when it comes to the structure of fairy tales, traditional and Disneyfied, I feel that Pan's Labryinth reminds the audience about the harshness in the real world and the importance of fairy tales to synthetically create sense and meaning. In the real world, especially for those without power, things happen to most people because of depressing existential circumstance. Fairy tales, however, provide the double roles of helping an audience to escape from that unjust world into one that has reasonable rules of cause and effect (even when breaking rules of nature) while also providing hope that a just world can exist. Just as human minds can conceive of horrible atrocities, they can also imagine a world of meaning that makes sense. And if they make one world in which they can conceive, then they must be able to bring the other world of just relationships into existence.

Pan's Labryinth may not convince us that this other fantastic realm exists, but it holds a mirror up to humanity. With excellent acting, special effects, cinematography and every storytelling cinematic technique it used, it expertly shows us the many shades of human capability for evil, power and the helplessness that it can create. . .even if it may not tell the whole story (as in that every side of a war may have had the capacity to participate in atrocity). The presentation of drama embroiled Spanish politics that have occurred in the real world raises awareness about a horrible historical situation that hasn't received appropriate coverage, at least, not in the American public school system. In the end, however, it shows the moral depravity of war waged by powermongers, the destruction of meaning by war and powermongers and, on some implicit level, the complicity of those not in command.

Posted by The_Lex at 11:07 PM 3 comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)


Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com