The Momentum of the Moment

A. James Gregor declares, when introducing his intellectual history of Totalitarianism and Political Religion, “the unnumbered dead of the past century are surely owed some posthumous explanation.” Setting aside the other ~80 million people who died in World War II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties, consider the 419,000 Americans.

Bernie Sanders: "I don't care if you're a conservative Republican or a Progressive like me... Think about the men & women that fought and died against Hitler, fought & died against fascism, fought & died to defend American democracy! I think the majority of the American people will not, and cannot and must not sit back and allow us to move into an authoritarian-type society where people get picked up off the street and put in detention centers. Really? [This is happening] in the United States of America?!...a president SUING the media?!"

…expressing the moral indignation felt by all Americans who, maybe during history classes, books, ~100 documentaries made over 80 years, hundreds of US & foreign movies…(uh-oh, thought this might happen) Everyone should really watch more great movies, not the latest action or romcom feature. Soooo many, from Rosselini’s war trilogy… “The first neorealist film is generally thought to be Visconti's 1943 Ossessione [model for 1946’s The Postman Always Rings Twice], released during the occupation. Neorealism became famous globally in 1946 with Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City…” Watch 1945’s Ernie Pyle’s The Story of GI Joe, with the amazing Robert Mitchum in his breakout movie—dude just ‘walked into’ every role, never did a shred of acting, and was amazing.

Further digression from essay topic, cuz I thought of that Olivier story: “Wild at heart, Mitchum ran away from home to ride the rails as a hobo; was arrested for vagrancy but locked up as an adult when he lied about his age (he was only 13-14) to avoid being sent back home to Delaware. He was put on a chain gang for a week, where he learned from another prisoner that once you were on a chain gang in Georgia, you were never going to leave. They’d always find a reason to keep you locked up so you could work cheaply for the county. Mitchum ran at his first opportunity, but not before his ankle became infected from an open sore from the shackles. He fled home to Delaware, where a doctor said his leg would have to come off. His mother cured the infection with a home-grown poultice… After he became a star, he was embarrassed to be an actor.” He had a recurring idea of ‘everyone’ suddenly realizing that he couldn’t act, his career would end, and someday he’d be telling other hoboes that he used to be a big star, and they wouldn’t believe him. Anyway, Sir Laurence Olivier, ‘greatest actor in the world’, once wanted Mitchum to play Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. “Why do you want me to do this?” he asked, meaning “why would you want me?” “Because you’re the greatest intuitive living actor,” Olivier replied.

Most actors assume the role, and the role assumes them for a few. Jack Nicholson’s another, and Chinatown is a masterpiece homage to film noir that transcends genres— yea, transcends cinema, based as it is on LA history.

Infinite Digression Dept. Other faves include 1970s Catch-22, 1982’s Diva, 1985’s Repo Man, 2009’s Watchmen director’s cut but fast-forward thru the animated sequences that made sense in the graphic novel—the artist who drew The Tales of the Black Freighter comic-book was one of the people Adrian brought to ‘the island’ to work on the….thing—but the movie does away with the thing and makes the story better, imo… So, the animated version of the comic book the kid’s reading is only about the theme of inadvertently becoming a monster when you fight monsters—so plot-wise, it wastes plenty of time.

Infinite Digression Department Dept. I could go on about great movies to watch—imo, no accounting for taste, of course, but I came to write about cultural tragectories and stuff, so: The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, The Death of Stalin, a black comedy…Try 1985’s ‘Come and See’ sometime, if you want a Byelorussian teen’s graphic perspective on fighting Hiter’s Germany, based on the 1971 novel Khatyn and the 1977 collection of survivor testimonies I Am from the Fiery Village. If you really want to get inside Hitler’s head, watch The Architecture of Doom. Better if you watch it w/o reading about it first.

Miniseries WWII masterpieces or “just great” include HBO’s Band of Brothers, The Pacific, George Clooney’s Catch-22, tons of others that I didn’t come here to write about… Then there’s socio-cultural documentaries like BBC’s MUST-SEE The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares, all free on YouTube along with a thousand others.

Regressus Maximus: My point is, there’s a lot of evidence on why totalitarianism, Left (commie), Theocrat (religious fascist) or Right (political fundamentalist) is the worst way to go. Those who understand their US Constitution should feel doubly indignant. As Wiki sez, theocracy operates as such a fascist determinant because it represents in a sense 'holy' proto-fascism and generally proto-totalitarianism.

“In an article published in September 1939, in the very eye of the storm of twentieth-century Europe's ‘age of extremes’, British historian Christopher Dawson attempted to get to grips with the temper of his times. Opining on what he saw as the failure of 19c. liberal individualism and its deleterious encroachment on spiritual values, he wrote: ’Now the coming of the totalitarian state marks the emergence of a new type of politics which recognises no limits and seeks to subordinate every social & intellectual activity to its own ends. Thus the new politics are in a sense more idealistic than the old; they are political religions based on a Messianic hope of social salvation. But at the same time they are more realist since they actually involve a brutal struggle for life between rival powers which are prepared to use every kind of treachery and violence to gain their ends’.” https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/abs/political-religion-a-users-guide/8D83C3AC8B03A368C69258561A831933

Nuff said, but the question is, Do people have to wait until a totalitarian state affects them, their family or their close friends until they actively turn against it, risking their freedom? Answer: Yes, for maybe 80% of them. There are like, what, 15% who will love it or at least pretend to, for the power and the money and their contempt for the “not-us” group; and 5% who will try to inform and rally others to defend their freedoms…like Bernie, and AOC, and Pritzker JB, a high school buddy and a noble man...in Round 2 against those who would subjugate us…Round 3, if you count WWII.

“Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.” -Lu Xun, 1881–1936