Taylor Sheridan continues to prove that he is one of the best working film makers right now with his directorial debut Wind River. Full review below the cut.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Saturday, August 19, 2017
The Defenders Review
It's not groundbreaking or spectacular, but it's a solid series that's fun to watch. Full review below the cut.
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
This Won't be 'It'
On Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia, a bunch of neo-Nazi's and other white supremacists groups gathered ostensibly to protest the city's decision to remove the statue of confederate general Robert E. Lee from a park. Really, though, the demonstration was to make a show of force after the same group of people got chased off after standing around for ten minutes back in May. Things went much better this time, they didn't get harassed by the cops, and-as a bonus- one of their own even got to kill someone. Publicly the groups have to disavow any affiliation with the asshole who plowed through twenty people in his car- can't have fascists supporting violence, oh no- but privately I'm sure they're positively giddy that at least there's one less race traitor in the world.
Condemnation came quickly and from all sides after the days events except, rather notably, from the President himself. Sure, he finally got around to saying racism is bad, m'kay on Monday after quite literally everyone pointed out that not condemning Nazi's killing people is the single worst thing he's done (so far). I just imagine Trump having multiple people surround him on the golf course holding pieces of paper that just has "Nazis=Bad!!!" printed on them and just trying to get him to sound out the words and say them out loud. To their frustration Trump's response probably went a little something like "But there are many sides. Many,many wonderful sides. Just, tremendous, you don't even know. Even that paper has a side that doesn't say Nazi's are bad, so how can you know?" Maybe they made him watch Crash to finally get the point to sink in.
There's no mystery has to why it took Trump so long to so begrudgingly denounce racism like he was plagiarizing an after school special; after all, these people fucking love him and we all know that, at the end of the day, Trump's only real evaluation of anything is how much does that thing like Donald Trump. It must've killed Trump watching his VP, Attorney General, basically everyone else with a functioning brain denounce all the Nazi's who loved him, who took time out of their busy lives to stroll about on a Saturday afternoon chanting his name and saluting him. It must have been like a child watching his parents throw away all their favorite lead painted toys. The child can't understand that all of his bright shiny friends are toxic and will kill him, all the child knows is that those toys are his and he wants to keep them safe and sound where he can always play with them. That, really, is the relationship Trump has with the neo-Nazi's and all the other white supremacists who came out of the woodwork to worship the ground he walks on: he doesn't care about losing their votes, he cares about losing their admiration.
Think about it, Trump won the electoral college, he's the most powerful man in the world, but, still, almost a year later, he cannot stop bitching about losing the popular vote. Anytime he talks about it he makes the same bullshit claim about millions of people voting illegally voting and that, literally only that, is what kept him from winning the popular vote. Really run that through your mind: The guy gets to lead be the head of government, but, because he lost a meaningless vote that showed people don't like him, he can't stand it. I'm sure that, given the chance, Trump would much rather live in a world where Hilary Clinton was President but he got the popular vote. That is his dream, to be adored, to be respected, to be the subject of awe. That's where I think people who are reading political decisions into his duddering are wrong; Trump could be kicked out of office tomorrow and if these people were still there tweeting #MAGA at him, he wouldn't give two shits about not being President anymore. But if they were gone, or had moved on to a new daddy figure? That would crush him. Basically, by this point anyone trying to read complex motives into Trump's behavior is giving the man way too much credit.
I would also be suspicious toward any claim that Trump's equivocating will 'hurt' him because, well, who exactly are those pieces expecting Trump to lose? All the white supremacists shit heads where out in full force in the primaries supporting Trump, but that didn't stop him from being the unquestioned lead candidate from the day he announced. The guy pretended to not know who the fucking KKK were but that didn't put a dent in anyone's support in him, so why would this? And don't say "because this is on the news more." Conservatives have spent almost thirty years brainwashing themselves into not believing any media except the kind that they produce for themselves. Having a bunch of swastika armband wearing assholes shouting "Heil Trump" on ABC will have no real effect at all on these people's mindsets. All you can really expect from them is to follow Trumps complaining lead, as always, that his johnny-come-lately "denunciation" just isn't enough for the mainstream liberals; it's a ridiculous standard, they'll say, expecting someone to trample on free assembling Nazi's like that. Why should it matter that it came two days later?
"What about the moderates?" you may ask next. Don't expect much out of them, either. If "moderates" really existed in large enough numbers to derail Trump, he wouldn't be President. Also, if someone held their nose at all the racist shit Trump represented and voted for him because of tax-cuts or repealing Obamacare or forcing women into the alley's to get their abortions or whatever, that person doesn't really have any principles you could appeal to anyway. At best, that same voter today is just frustrated that Trump has brought more unnecessary "drama" upon himself that will only further hamper his legislative agenda.
Trump's efficiency, not his bigotry, has always been the point of contention for the "moderates" so expecting them to jump ship now out of some moral decency is less than realistic. In fact, expecting anyone who voted or supported Trump to bail on him now out of ethical, moral, or just basic decency concerns is foolish because if those people had any of those qualities, they wouldn't be Trump supporters in the first place.
If anything, I wish people would stop hunting for that magic bullet that will forever de-legitimize Trump and all that he stands for. That isn't going to happen. What Trump and his followers represent is the ugly reflection of what America has always been, they're the America that was in love with fascism before the war started because they too saw that the only purpose of government was to facilitate all the profits of the business world. When those sad-sack Nazi's moan and wail about how the U.S. was originally a country exclusively for white men, they aren't wrong. Everything this country has ever done has been to make sure white people, and only white people, had access to the lives they'd always wanted. From the westward expansion to urban development, the laws were explicitly written to make sure that white families got the best of everything, and everyone else got shit if they got anything at all.
That is as much our heritage and culture as the Civil Rights movement and women's suffrage. We can't reject that people like Trump and Richard Spencer and all the other pieces of garbage with Tikki-Torches were the exact kind of people the country was created for until we acknowledge that and own it, out loud, with no caveats or excuses. Until then, all those fascistic bastards will stay as American as apple pie and that, is no way for any place to be.
Condemnation came quickly and from all sides after the days events except, rather notably, from the President himself. Sure, he finally got around to saying racism is bad, m'kay on Monday after quite literally everyone pointed out that not condemning Nazi's killing people is the single worst thing he's done (so far). I just imagine Trump having multiple people surround him on the golf course holding pieces of paper that just has "Nazis=Bad!!!" printed on them and just trying to get him to sound out the words and say them out loud. To their frustration Trump's response probably went a little something like "But there are many sides. Many,many wonderful sides. Just, tremendous, you don't even know. Even that paper has a side that doesn't say Nazi's are bad, so how can you know?" Maybe they made him watch Crash to finally get the point to sink in.
There's no mystery has to why it took Trump so long to so begrudgingly denounce racism like he was plagiarizing an after school special; after all, these people fucking love him and we all know that, at the end of the day, Trump's only real evaluation of anything is how much does that thing like Donald Trump. It must've killed Trump watching his VP, Attorney General, basically everyone else with a functioning brain denounce all the Nazi's who loved him, who took time out of their busy lives to stroll about on a Saturday afternoon chanting his name and saluting him. It must have been like a child watching his parents throw away all their favorite lead painted toys. The child can't understand that all of his bright shiny friends are toxic and will kill him, all the child knows is that those toys are his and he wants to keep them safe and sound where he can always play with them. That, really, is the relationship Trump has with the neo-Nazi's and all the other white supremacists who came out of the woodwork to worship the ground he walks on: he doesn't care about losing their votes, he cares about losing their admiration.
Think about it, Trump won the electoral college, he's the most powerful man in the world, but, still, almost a year later, he cannot stop bitching about losing the popular vote. Anytime he talks about it he makes the same bullshit claim about millions of people voting illegally voting and that, literally only that, is what kept him from winning the popular vote. Really run that through your mind: The guy gets to lead be the head of government, but, because he lost a meaningless vote that showed people don't like him, he can't stand it. I'm sure that, given the chance, Trump would much rather live in a world where Hilary Clinton was President but he got the popular vote. That is his dream, to be adored, to be respected, to be the subject of awe. That's where I think people who are reading political decisions into his duddering are wrong; Trump could be kicked out of office tomorrow and if these people were still there tweeting #MAGA at him, he wouldn't give two shits about not being President anymore. But if they were gone, or had moved on to a new daddy figure? That would crush him. Basically, by this point anyone trying to read complex motives into Trump's behavior is giving the man way too much credit.
I would also be suspicious toward any claim that Trump's equivocating will 'hurt' him because, well, who exactly are those pieces expecting Trump to lose? All the white supremacists shit heads where out in full force in the primaries supporting Trump, but that didn't stop him from being the unquestioned lead candidate from the day he announced. The guy pretended to not know who the fucking KKK were but that didn't put a dent in anyone's support in him, so why would this? And don't say "because this is on the news more." Conservatives have spent almost thirty years brainwashing themselves into not believing any media except the kind that they produce for themselves. Having a bunch of swastika armband wearing assholes shouting "Heil Trump" on ABC will have no real effect at all on these people's mindsets. All you can really expect from them is to follow Trumps complaining lead, as always, that his johnny-come-lately "denunciation" just isn't enough for the mainstream liberals; it's a ridiculous standard, they'll say, expecting someone to trample on free assembling Nazi's like that. Why should it matter that it came two days later?
"What about the moderates?" you may ask next. Don't expect much out of them, either. If "moderates" really existed in large enough numbers to derail Trump, he wouldn't be President. Also, if someone held their nose at all the racist shit Trump represented and voted for him because of tax-cuts or repealing Obamacare or forcing women into the alley's to get their abortions or whatever, that person doesn't really have any principles you could appeal to anyway. At best, that same voter today is just frustrated that Trump has brought more unnecessary "drama" upon himself that will only further hamper his legislative agenda.
Trump's efficiency, not his bigotry, has always been the point of contention for the "moderates" so expecting them to jump ship now out of some moral decency is less than realistic. In fact, expecting anyone who voted or supported Trump to bail on him now out of ethical, moral, or just basic decency concerns is foolish because if those people had any of those qualities, they wouldn't be Trump supporters in the first place.
If anything, I wish people would stop hunting for that magic bullet that will forever de-legitimize Trump and all that he stands for. That isn't going to happen. What Trump and his followers represent is the ugly reflection of what America has always been, they're the America that was in love with fascism before the war started because they too saw that the only purpose of government was to facilitate all the profits of the business world. When those sad-sack Nazi's moan and wail about how the U.S. was originally a country exclusively for white men, they aren't wrong. Everything this country has ever done has been to make sure white people, and only white people, had access to the lives they'd always wanted. From the westward expansion to urban development, the laws were explicitly written to make sure that white families got the best of everything, and everyone else got shit if they got anything at all.
That is as much our heritage and culture as the Civil Rights movement and women's suffrage. We can't reject that people like Trump and Richard Spencer and all the other pieces of garbage with Tikki-Torches were the exact kind of people the country was created for until we acknowledge that and own it, out loud, with no caveats or excuses. Until then, all those fascistic bastards will stay as American as apple pie and that, is no way for any place to be.
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