Frost/Nixon, Nixon/Lincoln

Watched it again, tonight, for the second time in a month.

Compared to Nixon, Trump is a lost child, an empty clown, completely out of his depth outside "reality TV".

But anyway.

I admire Lincoln almost unreservedly for his strength of character, for his ability to trust himself, the little nobody from nowhere, surrounded by his cabinet of people vastly his social superiors, and who all knew it.

Nixon, also from the little people from nowhere, was filled with resentment all his life of the big people all around him who looked down on him.

Lincoln actually incorporated his backwoods origins into his political persona, and his devotion to his singular conviction and his singular mission enabled him to keep on, keep on, until victory.

His singular conviction that dominated his entire political life, that slavery ought to be crushed and abolished throughout the entire United States of America, forever.

His conviction and his knowledge that in the end he could only trust himself made him a man prepared throughout those terrible years of war to do the right thing at the moment to get the best result possible at that moment.

He had, for instance, in the beginning, to be ready to stop the war and accept the seceded states back into the Union immediately with no change at all to the status of slavery.

But in a few short years he could and did attack slavery, emancipating all slaves in those states still in rebellion, knowing that now he could do it.

And then in victory he could insist that slavery was over, that it be forever abolished throughout the Union by constitutional amendment.

What a hero he was.

He was as courageous a brilliant nobody with a mission as was Joan of Arc, sent by God himself to save France.

So much smaller was Nixon in that regard, compared to him.

Despite his many and real achievements.

Update.

Between the two of them, LBJ and Nixon sent the South into the Republican Party and out of the Democratic Party.

That made the latter less and the former more sympathetic to racism, shifting the Klansmen, hidden and overt, from the one party to the other.

It also made the Dems more consistently liberal and the GOP more consistently conservative, especially in all things culture war-ish.

Evangelicals and gun rights, you know.

So the two presidents together set the stage for our politics becoming much more polarized and each party more homogeneous as to values and agenda.

Deadwind Season One

The action over the whole season seems to take a few weeks at most.

The first few episodes were filmed in the depth of winter, then there is an episode filmed in the fall, then another filmed in summer, and then episodes filmed in winter.

God knows what that's all about.

Good show, though.

It's Finnish name is that of the female lead, Karppi.

Makes sense, she being a moderately dialed back Marcella.

It is no accident . . .

. . . that Frost/Nixon is now on Netflix.

I had forgotten what a swine Nixon was in ways tawdry and contemptible as well as larger and more frightening.

He and Trump are much of a muchness, the key differences being that Nixon was by far much better informed, much smarter, took his job a lot more seriously, and did it way, way better.

He really was a loyal man who wanted to leave America better off and stronger, within the limits of his insuperable petty vindictiveness and consuming ambition.

Trump would trash America in a fit of pique - if he hasn't already - and otherwise could not care less about the country or his actual job as president.

He is useless or worse in pretty much all respects, and has been since day one.

The Death of Stalin

Well, that was a waste of time, talent, and money.

Into the Night

Netflix, one season, six episodes, each about 45 minutes.

There had better be a season two.

It's that good.

Marcella a blonde?

Undercover in Belfast?

Weird.

The fourth season of Money Heist is excellent

Also good are the most recent Bosch and The Expanse.

You wouldn't believe how much TV I have watched and how much weight I have gained this spring.

The Two Popes

Quite a film.

I knew about Ratzinger and his outlook, former head of the Inquisition, but much less about Bergoglio.

Although I did not remember R's piano skill. At 86, if you can believe it.

After Borat I never would have expected The Spy

Sacha Baron Cohen.

Better than us

It was a great season and I hope there is another.

But they never really did confront the issue of robots replacing humans on the job.

Better than us

So many surprises

That For Greater Glory is on Netflix, about this.

And that Peter O'Toole is in it, even in a absurd role.

Playing a martyred priest!

Liberals used to be for freedom of religion, and not only for freedom from it.

But not for many years, now.

Of course, it is not a surprise that so many critics panned it.

Remember The Passion, which was a really brilliant and moving film, and the reception it received from our contemporary liberal and Jewish critics?

In Mexico and elsewhere the cultural revolution against Christendom was quite forthright, violent, and frank, back in the day.

Coexistence, in that time, did not seem a viable option to enough of the population and the classe politique.

And the question is forced upon us.

How can we compare a society ruled by the traditional Christian sexual morality and one ruled instead by the post-Christian, liberal and libertarian alternative?

The latter, other things equal, would be much better for adults.

The former would be better for children, both born and unborn.

For openers.

Watching Io

At the end, she goes to the Museum of Art and sees, next to a painting, Yeats' beautiful poem Leda and the Swan, an excellent sonnet about a very odd myth.

And about the Trojan War.

Io.

Good film

Agatha and the Truth of Murder

On Netflix.

The Francophone Belgians are the Walloons, by the way.

Not the Flemings.

Hard to believe Conan Doyle would make that error, apparently alluding to Poirot.

So, the screenwriter?

Absolutely brilliant television

Maybe not brilliant history, or brilliant political comment.

But amazing TV.

Black Earth Rising

How did John Goodman know to jump into this?

How on Earth did they find Michaela Coel, who is amazing in her role?

Wonderful.

Is this the best thing Blick has ever done?

Thank you, Netflix.

Travelers

The third season is the best, so far.

Still hoping there will be more.

Netflix.

As stupid as his voters

He sees some TV airhead whose belched right wing stupidities ring his bells and thinks, "That woman ought to be in charge. Drain the swamp. Build a wall. Down with fake news and globalism."

And that's how so many fuckwits decided to put him in the White House, mate.

(Yes, I've been watching the Australian series Rake on Netflix.)

A Fox & Friends Host for UN Ambassador

Nothing in this world can make stupid white trailer trash - and they don't all actually live in trailers - understand that the GOP is the party of their class enemies, and all the standard conservative bullshit as well as all the Trumpist, Buchannist, authoritarian, white Nativist, white nationalist bullshit are sucker bait aimed exactly at them.

As Asimov once wrote (and I think he was quoting someone), "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."

POPULISM! Trump Economic Advisor Says Federal Minimum Wage Is 'Terrible Idea'

Cops and robbers

I have watched dozens of foreign procedurals on Netflix and Amazon in the past few years, Swedish, Danish, Russian, Finnish, French, Spanish, and many others, and never have the cops lied under oath or planted evidence or beat information or a confession out of anyone.

They work within the law to find and convict violators of the law.

But in American cop shows the police lie, torture, plant evidence, take bribes, commit murders, and otherwise almost always behave disgracefully and shamefully.

Why is that?

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Just seen on Netflix.

Wow.

Fine television

The Money Heist is superb.

Netflix.

"Unthinkable" on Netflix

The argument from The Bomb, acted out on screen.

This is by no means the only movie to depict government officials dealing with a criminal who has done something or is about to do something that will result in the death of at least one innocent victim, and finding they can only save the prospective victim or victims by torturing the criminal for information.

Child abusers who have kidnapped children hidden somewhere.

Serial killers who have a kidnapped girl buried alive, about to run out of air.

You know the genre.

So, of course, they do it.

They use torture and find the children or the buried girl.

Or the nukes.

Remember Jack Bauer of 24?

And few in any audience object, that I know of.

The point is not to punish the criminal.

The point is not to obtain evidence for use in a trial.

The point is to prevent the criminal killing innocents, to save the prospective victims.

Think on the analogy of an active school shooter.

May police - or for that matter any armed passers-by - shoot to kill to stop or prevent such slaughter?

You bet.

May they do whatever else may be needful, provided they don't harm innocent people?

Yeah, pretty much.

Legally, use of torture to find the victims or find the bombs may not be in the same boat as use of force to stop an active shooter.

All the same, I'm not only OK with it, I would do it myself.

But I'm sure there are well trained people who would do a better job.