Everbody Is Going South and West
I have a bad habit. Because I am not getting enough sleep, which I define as seven hours, I tend to fall asleep during the movie of my choice late at night. That is hardly a unique failing. It seems whomever I have staying with me at my home tends to do the same thing, probably even more than I do. Kim has the good sense to go into bed when she is tired. I am usually too committed to the movie I’m watching to do something so sensible. I have been getting about six to six and a half hours pretty consistently (my CPAP keeps me current on my exact sleep time each night and I view it as my first vital datapoint of the day to know that number). Strangely enough, the movie I stay with and that Kim punts on is usually the one she has chosen. Tonight was typical in that I started a movie I chose when I sat in front of the TV for dinner. That ends at a time when its too early to go to bed and usually Kim is sitting with me and I let her choose. She knows I dislike movie selection indecision, so she has learned to pick quickly as we rifle through the offerings on Prime or Netflix (I go with Prime two times to every time I choose Netflix for some reason). Once in a while, we try a series, especially if she has had a suggestion for one given to her from someone or somewhere, but I am a movie guy and I strongly prefer a story with a start, a middle and an end, which is what a movie offers.
Tonight I chose a very weird Kevin Kline film I had never heard of (I should have known there was a reason for that). It co-starred Paul Dano and John C. Reilly, which meant it had a great cast. It was called The Extra Man and it was released in 2010 and gets only a 56 Metascore on IMDB. It’s about an eccentric old guy who plays the gigolo to old rich NYC ladies. He takes in a young roommate who turns out to be even weirder than him and he has an especially weird neighbor as well. All too weird to describe further other than to say that we were both ready for a better second movie. Kim quickly picked Absence of Malice, the 1981 movie with Paul Newman (very much in his silver-haired prime) and Sally Fields (very much in her youth, 20 years his junior). The movie is about the balancing act between the value of a free press and the abusiveness that the press intentionally or accidentally inflicts in the pursuit of its primary mission. It is a movie I have seen several times many years ago and remembered it as a powerful film that was decidedly not weird. That made it seem perfect for the evening.
Kim pulled the plug half-way through and I did what I seem to do these days and stayed with it only to fall asleep for about a half hour of the second half. The good thing about watching movies I have already seen is that the gap in my viewing is not a tragedy of understanding. I woke up for the final scene when Newman, who’s honest liquor distribution business has been ruined by false claims made about him in the press by Fields, which she was duped into writing by an overly-aggressive Federal prosecutor. He is loading his possessions onto his old wooden cruiser boat since he has sold his house and is clearly feeling that he needs to move on from his lifetime Miami home. Fields has gone through her own purgatory, herself now the object of vilification in the press for falling prey to a false narrative. When she asks Newman where he is going, he says, “Everybody is going south and west, so I guess maybe I’ll go north and east.” I love that line and I love this movie because it shows a reality we often fail to recognize that the bad guys can come in many forms in life and it is key to truth to understand where truth resides.
Newman is the son of a Miami mobster who is decidedly legitimate and doggedly unyielding to the mendaciousness of “justice”. He exhibits the backbone of a mobster without being less than ethical. Meanwhile, Fields is judicious and deliberate, but also naive in believing that the system and its actors are well-intentioned. She says that the press does good, but that she just did her job badly, which is probably too self-deprecating, but was probably also important to state for the main theme of the story.
Meanwhile, now that I am wide awake, having fulfilled my daily seven hour sleep need, I am watching the wrap up of the news with Brian Williams. The theme of the moment is all about the intersection of Trump’s Big Lie and the devastating path that voting rights in America seem to be taking. Republicans have thrown themselves wholeheartedly behind Trump and his Big Lie and have somehow convinced themselves (whether delusionally so like Trump or strategically with their ubiquitous cure-all of “the bigger picture”) that voter suppression legislation is a righteous way to insure elections in America remain winnable by Republicans at any cost. These are tragic and perhaps the most devastating false narrative yet. It’s a self-serving act that may be the worst we have seen in this country since the attempts to justify human slavery on economic grounds or bogus genetic rationalizations. It makes Watergate, Iran-Contra deceit, Intern schmoozing, falsified WMD claims in Iraq, or even Supply Side trickle-down Lafer-curve economics seem like righteous narratives by comparison.
The demographics of changing ethnicity in America is as inevitable as the sun rising every day and now heating us into our too warm and too drought-stricken reality (at least here in California…thank you Climate Change). I used to wonder how Republicans and especially racist Republicans dealt with the coming demographic wave. Now I think I understand. For twenty years they have subtly pushed an agenda of extreme immigration control (build the walls higher) and gerrymandering (make sure the deck is stacked to favor electoral success at the Federal and state levels). However, I naively thought those were just agenda items that either followed their belief system and their desire for continued control. My new realization, a truth we now see plainly in front of us, is that Republicans have begun to understand through first the Obama presidency and now the Biden election (that would be the 100% valid and overwhelming Biden election) as well as the Senate win, that this wave is starting to wash over them and their outdated and narrow thinking. The world is changing and they don’t like it one bit. They are desperate, so desperate that they have decided that the only course for them is to change the playing field. To do that they have to start by invalidating prior and future free elections. What was a subtle effort in years gone by now has to be blatant and reflective of the tradition of autocratic regimes seeking to retain power in their waning moments. They are out and out lying and resorting to direct efforts to overthrow the democratic process.
I never thought I would see that in my lifetime, but I am as naive as Democrats have been. What is unthinkable to me is not out of the question for desperate people and Republicans are showing their desperation more and more every day. Donald Trump has led a life of not-so-quiet desperation, so it is not even that strange that he is their leader in this effort. He has continuously gotten away with the absurd, so why not now once again for something Republicans are so passionate about…maintaining their control of the world as they see it. Everybody is going South and West. The world is headed for a reckoning of biblical proportions.