I am one of those people who knows the hypocrisy of society all too well, having been born into one world but forced to live in another by those who choose to be ignorant. Grandpa Sam...
...was an immigrant from Ireland, but the baby boy he was holding would more likely to be assumed to be an "immigrant"--probably "illegal" in the eyes of many, from day one. He was not and would never be seen as a "real" American to most people, and with what will certainly be the most important midterm election in this country's history just days away, we will find out what if people choose to live in a violent fantasy of ignorance, or say, wait, this is not what we want to be.
Of course sometimes things do turn out the way they should. I admit that in this world where moral and ethical corruption is practiced openly and without the slightest shame, it isn't difficult for some of us who think too much to squander time on the merely vicarious, like undue fascination with sports teams. OK, having "grown-up" in Wisconsin, I maintained some semblance of interest of what the local teams were doing, but even with the Packers that I discussed their seasons for years here, I eventually stopped seeing the point.
However, the Milwaukee Brewers did prove that they are in fact the best team in baseball in 2026, winning the most games, leading the NL in runs scored, team batting average and pitching ERA, by winning their first World Series, beating the Tampa Bay Rays in 5 games, after sweeping the Dodgers in the NLCS.
This was a team that up and down the line-up simply performed what they were expected to do as a team. No true power hitters, just putting the ball where no one was at. And for a game in which the starting pitcher was no longer the "star" but just in the game to pitch enough innings so the relievers could be rested enough to come in and pitch one or two scoreless innings, and more likely receiving the "win."
Still, the thing about baseball that's different from other sports is that it is "unpredictable," as one saw in the 5th inning of Game 3 and the 12th inning of Game 4. In the 1960 World Series, the Yankees crushed the Pirates 38-3 in three blow-out victories--and still lost the series in 7. But this year it was the best team in baseball that finished the year as champions.
But back to the "real" world. Even "smart" people make bad decisions, like the ABC executives who decided it would be a great idea to put the number one-rated television show the previous two seasons into a time slot slated for an entirely different audience that even an "alien" knew was "dumb"...
Of course the "real" world is usually more amusing to the people who don't actually have to live in it (you know, like billionaires, oligarchs, and wannabe dictators). For example. here we see a problem that would seem to have an "easy" fix--simply turning the wayward sprinkler in the correct direction:
But Metro, public works, the property manager, even the landscaper who installed it had an excuse for not being able to do such a simple thing. I might as well have asked this guy to do the job:
After working off the frustration for a long moment for that seal to poke its head out of the water...
...or watching this rat "dancing" that could use a few more "hits"...
....I knew that you simply can't take things for granted with humans:
Is the world a better place if we removed the human element? Well, not exactly...
...and we are only reminded that rote memory may make machines (or people for that matter) appear to be "smart," but the human thinking trait of common sense, nuance, and context can "outsmart" a machine at any time--when it isn't a source of frustration, as some of us who have observed Amazon's latest iteration of AI-generated delivery tracking, with its goofy "car" icon that can be here one minute...
...and then suddenly here the next minute...
...and then back again the next:
We are told that the message "a few more stops" means that the Amazon delivery driver has deviated from their AI-generated "route," and will not return to a hard number of "stops" until AI "senses" that the driver has "returned" to the "original" route it generated. The fact that AI can be easily fooled doesn't mean it isn't dangerous: the fact that it lacks "feeling," "empathy" or "guilt" means that it doesn't understand that mistaken information, or information that leads to harm, is not "wrong."
Of course humans are not infallible, even judges who are supposed to be the final arbiters of the truth. Unlike the jurors in a courtroom in Virginia, who were not related to the defendants or didn't have connections to various people with an "interest" in the case...
But we live in a world where while Satan may lay claim to his minions in the end…
...and Satan intervened to foul-up the human attempt to send her to him, since it had taken them so long to get around to it, so what was the hurry? Besides, he was fascinated by the potential of these people...
...giving the "love" hand signal for the person who strangled her three children to death, even after it was revealed that she purposely lied to doctors about the threat she posed to the children because she didn't want them put into the care of CPS, and that she sent her much-maligned husband on a trip to the drug store so that she could carry out the deed without witnesses, after hearing "voices" commanding her that she admitted she had never heard before that day.
Yet even when people want to do "good" things, it is often "transactional," meaning being "good" has a price tag. Take for instance this building I pass on my way to work...
...which on closer inspection is empty:
Civic Hotel is a hip new boutique hotel located near the world famous Seattle Space Needle in the rapidly developing South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle. Originally built in 1962 for the Century 21 World’s Fair, Civic Hotel reimagines the formerly dated motel, transforming it with modern interiors and outdoor spaces and capturing the essence of mid-century design, while bringing the design forward to meet the needs of travelers today.
Of course if you put your name on something, it will be hailed for all eternity as a "wonder of the world," just in case the man who pasted his "brand" to them has long since been left in the dustbins of history:
Today, that "brand" has turned the world into a painter's nightmare vision...
...with it's principle "face"...
...not by "coincidence" being introduced in 2025 (along with the facist recruiting ads) in the "fashion" of neo-Nazi and cowardly white supremacist militia gangs in order to conceal their identities (as KKK hoods once did):
So with the midterm elections coming up, people may not realize how important it is for Democrats to gain control of the Senate as well as the House with the likelihood that extremist justices like Alito and Thomas may “retire” and be replaced by two new fascist justices who will continue their fascist ways for a few more decades to come. It is important to know that this midterm election could have even more destructive consequences: unchecked power by the monied "elites," the diminishing of individual liberty, voting rights and press freedom for many more decades to come.
But I “digress.” What I really want to talk about are films. The Warner Archive Collection continues to do a great job in restoring its catalogue titles, and although it wasn’t David Lean’s best film, its new 4k transfer of Ryan’s Daughter (first time on non-pirated BD) certainly looks like it did deserve its best cinematographer Oscar, Warner archivists also dug-up the original print of the infamous “Rape of Christ” footage from Ken Russell’s The Devils, adding it to a 4k restoration and as justification for reviving the film for a limited theatrical release in the U.S. and UK. The UK “uncut” version has been released in Spain in a pirated BD; the “Rape of Christ” footage is not in it, although it is just a 90-second extension of an already “controversial” orgy scene involving nuns. I decided to go out for the first time in 25 years to watch the film at the SIFF theater, and it is deserving of it its "reputation."
Meanwhile, we are informed that far-right commentator Ben Shapiro has produced a highly fictional film called Pawn Shop shot in Montana, in which actors Harvey Keitel and Danny Trejo were apparently “duped” into making, not being told who was making the film and what it was about, save about a couple of veterans trying to protect a “cop” holed-up in their pawn shop. We are also told that a dozen members of the film who had been told that were making a “fun action film” walked away from the set.
Shapiro’s film is in fact far-right political fiction in the worst sense, twisting the Renee Good shooting in Minneapolis into his own political fantasy: After the killing a female protestor in her car, an ICE agent is killed by protesters, and his partner is on the run from a “mob” of said violent protesters and MS-13 gang members, and takes refuge in the said “pawn shop.”
First of all, not one ICE agent has ever been killed in the “line of duty” since its formation in 2003 when its stated “mission” was to uncover terrorist cells in the country, and there has never been an incident in which ICE agents—alone or as a group—have been chased by either a mob and/or by members of any “gang” in fear of their lives, since they tend to be armed to the "teeth" and not the protesters. The truth that Shapiro and other anti-immigrant racists are trying to overturn is that it is ICE thugs who are acting like violent, lawless “gangs.”
There is another film that has not received as much attention, and not at all surprising since film studios have avoided “antagonizing” the Trump administration by refusing to make films or television series that address the experience of immigrants (or descendants who are U.S. citizens) and the motivations of anti-immigrant extremists and the actions taken in their name. It isn’t surprising, then, that it is British filmmaker Alex Cox who has made a film—Dead Souls, loosely based on the Gogol novel but in the setting of a “spaghetti western”—addressing Trump world and the racism that permeates it.
Cox, who directed cult classics like Sid and Nancy and Repo Man, and went on to do films like Walker, which was a commentary on the Reagan administration’s involvement in Central America, and Highway Patrolman, which I talked about here 2 a Spanish-language film concerning an idealistic young patrolman in Mexico who eventually was consumed by the corruption around him, has now made what he is calling his “swan song” and recently released on BD by Kino Lorber.
Of course no major studio was going to back this last film, so Cox has made an “indie” film in which he himself plays the lead character along with actors you never heard of or seen before. The film follows him around as he purchases the “souls”—or rather, lists of names—of dead Mexican laborers. Why is he doing this? Is he really as rich as he appears, or is he a swindler who hopes to “sell” those names to people who need labor? Or is he a government agent, who is providing “proof” to a Trump-like administration that its Mexican “final solution” is being carried out?
Cox doesn’t beat anyone on the head with his politics, but he does show that whatever his character’s “flaws,” he wouldn’t succeed at any of this unless there are “MAGA” types who were more than eager to help him to the point where they would eventually “question” the “sincerity” of his motivations for helping them get rid of the “Mexicans” so that the evidence of their actual fates are not “known” because they never “existed” anyway.
Who do we choose to believe? Or do we fear to know the truth? What is the greater danger--believing the lies, or remaining ignorant of the truth? In the 1974 French paranoid thriller The Secret, the media simply reports what it is told by DHS-like government officials that this man (who knows a "secret" that government is willing to kill to keep it that way) is an alleged escapee from an insane asylum, although the opening sequences seem to suggest that he is being subjected to Chinese water torture (actually "invented" in Italy):
After he escapes he is aided by a vacationing couple who he tries to warn not to believe the claims that he is a dangerous criminal, but those after him are, and that they pose a danger to all of them if caught...
...but lies breed fear...
...but not to worry about their own fates, because you did what you were told by the "authorities" was "right"...
...and these "government agents" coming toward us will thanks us for our "patriotism"...
...although this one looks more like a sinister ICE agent...
...and acts like one...
...and the "official story" provided by the DHS-like government agency is of course the only "truth" the public needs to know:
Forget "Make America Great Again"; the world sees the US as a dangerous nation whose power is being used by a crazed man who leads a political party that John Oliver pointed out in his recent show has become increasingly connected and beholden to white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups...
What to do? Democratic leadership still insist that "vision" must remain of the non-threatening to thin-skins variety. Many videophiles are scratching their skulls over why one of Warner Brothers first DVD releases in 1997 was 1972's The Candidate (back when many initial releases were released in full-frame mode) and has not even seen a widescreen HD disc release since then. Word is that WB thinks there is still money to be made off of it streaming.
Now, in Spain licensing and copyright protection is somewhat lax, and a year ago November it released a bootleg Blu-ray...
...which of course was not made from any "original" print elements but "upscaled" from a 1080p webrip, probably from Amazon Prime; but it is better than the alternative, which is nothing.
Of course people who have seen the film know that despite being over 50 years old it still has something to say about politics today, and that is that a "progressive" vision on a national level frightens many people who apparently choose to believe that things like society is "best" served by doing as little as possible to oppose the corruption of those without vision.
Thus Bill McKay, an environmental activist lawyer and son of a popular former governor, is persuaded to run as a Democrat against an entrenched Republican U.S. senator who has no chance of being beaten, but the Democrats have to throw some candidate to the wolves, and McKay has name recognition. He is persuaded to run on the promise he can spread his message to a large audience even in the expectation that he will lose.
But his campaign manager sees that polls say he will be slaughtered in the election and something has to change, meaning his "message" has to be toned-down in a simplified way that voters can understand, like "Bill McKay--A Better Way." A media specialist is brought who tells McKay
...reminding us that the term "86" has many applications. Thus in order to "appeal" to more voters than just the youth movement and female voters, McKay must engage in generalities and avoid talking about race relations, poverty, environmental issues and the like. He eventually rises in the polls and during a debate his youth is contrasted with the incumbent's age and finally convincing enough people he is a viable option. When he temporarily can't hold off what he really believes and goes off script...
...he wonders if voters understood his intentions...
...his father assures him that voters have a short memory as long as he doesn't repeat such nonsense:
Of course that doesn't mean that many people sense that their own situations are not as pleasant as some other people. In the PBS documentary The Crash of 1929—part of its American Experience series The 1930s—described the run-up to the crash reflected by the sentiments of a song called “Blue Skies” that was a hit in 1929:
Blue skies smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies do I see
Bluebirds singing a song
Nothing but blue skies from now on
But only if you were rich or had money to waste on the stock market. As pointed out by the narrator,
As in an auction, if the stock is in demand, its price goes up. No demand and the price goes down. For almost eight straight years, stock values had been rising. By 1929, there seemed to be no upper limits in this world of paper, numbers and dreams.
Here was a whole new way to make a fortune. Unlike the Carnegies and the Rockefellers of previous decades, who built steel mills and dug oil wells, men like Michael Meehan, Jesse Livermore and Charles Mitchell had amassed their fortunes buying and selling stocks, pieces of paper. The public was fascinated. Bankers, brokers and speculators had become celebrities and they lived like royalty.
Sound "familiar"?
Of course a few economists at the time warned that buying stocks on margin as most people were doing, basically “gambling” that stocks would keep rising enough to cover the debt that would eventually have catastrophic effects if stock prices went into freefall and investors could not convince anyone to buy stocks that only kept going down in value.
Before the 1929 crash we saw that despite all the bragging about "record" stock prices as we see Trump sycophants doing today, the stock market was not reacting “logically” to actual economic data. Today's tech-fueled stock market betrays the reality of a weak job market, low consumer confidence, high consumer debt, a tech industry that is fueled more by AI “dreams” than actual revenue and jobs, and a federal government run by billionaires and blind bigots that seems to want to punish people in need to pay for its cruel and inhuman policies that make their suffering worse.
By the way, unlike Trump, FDR had an interest in environmental protection, and his first major New Deal project to put the unemployed back to work was the Civilian Conservation Corp, where 3 million mostly young men were eventually employed to plant 3 billion trees, create national parks and conducted other forestry services like fire control.
Of course Trump doesn't care about any of that, cutting down trees in the DC public golf course while his Interior Department is busy trying to force oil companies to drill-baby-drill for oil they don't (yet) want to do, or an EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, who can't exactly say what he has done with the "environmental protection" part of his job title.
We are living in a country today where you have moral or ethical principles, or you don't. Some people who think they do simply because they believe in the "scriptures" according to Trump, his lies and violent rhetoric and actions apparently reminds them of the vengeful God of the Old Testament. I found this "Passport to Heaven" at a bus stop...
...that seems to suggest by its cover that it is really more about white "christian" nationalism, and inside it tells you that God is not impressed by "good works" and simple human decency, or particularly frowns upon evil deeds. Everyone is a "sinner," but Jesus paid for all of our sins so we don't have to. All you need to do to be "saved" is to have "faith"--in other words simply believe that God and Jesus and all of that actually existed. All that stuff Jesus talked about on the Sermon on the Mount, that's just extracurricular activities to benefit family, friends and your minister's pocketbook.
Of course don't look to state-regime media Fox News for the truth. After the shooting at a mosque/school in San Diego that was covered non-stop for hours on MS Now, over at Fox on “The Five," left-wing Jessica Tarlov was absent, so they rest had free reign to talk about their usual racist, culture war opinions they pass-off as “facts.” Jesse Watters, who like Laura Ingraham is a white supremacist flamethrower in “human” form who leaves the truth in a charred and unrecognizable Rorschach blob for Fox News viewers to invent their own nightmare worlds, was inviting viewers to join him later in investigating the “Aliens Living Among Us” like he knows any personally, Meanwhile Greg Gutfeld was again demonstrating why far-right “jokes” are more nauseating than “funny” by introducing a lineup of “guests” on his upcoming late night “comedy” show, people who likely for good reason you never seen or heard of before.
Of course this is a man who is too busy with his ugly ballroom to be inconvenienced with reports that his best friend engage in killing and chopping up bodies, poisoning or throwing people out of windows just because they have the audacity to say things they don't like; Kim had his uncle and half-brother killed, and executed a former defense minister by anti-aircraft canon; you'd think that would be shocking even as a Internet meme, though certainly not to Trump who is not troubled by the fact that he is committing war crimes like bombing little boats without evidence or due process to add to his historical resumé.
Yet the cult of Trump still has its diehard supporters who will sell their souls to him for pennies on the dollar. We can get a feel for this In Eliza Apperly's review of Andres Veiel's 2024 documentary Riefenstahl 1 which we are told was
...made after six years of researching thousands of documents and recordings from the estate of Hitler’s favorite filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl--the director of the infamous Triumph of the Will which glorified Nazism in the name of what Riefenstahl insisted was actually about "peace and work"--which not only attests “to the seductiveness of evasion” but fosters an understanding of “the structure and necessity of legends.”
People like Riefenstahl whose moral and ethical credibility is at issue when they follow cult leaders, whose beliefs are underpinned by violence and racism, need to create a “breeding ground of untruths" that people whose psychology combines narratives of both self-superiority and self-victimization and ensnared in the web of propaganda need as an escape hatch, even if it leads to dead end when they can no longer run from the truth.
Thus "even when the gaps and inconsistencies in (Riefenstahl's) storytelling seem flagrant, she still finds her advocates and supporters” Apperly suggests, and “It doesn’t matter that she is obviously lying,” and after inserting Trump’s name into the proceedings, she quotes Veiel, “People want the lie. That’s the crucial point.”
So while the likes of “Mick Jagger, Madonna and Quentin Tarantino all gladly endorsed Riefenstahl’s art” as she attempted to scrub clean any trace of “official” evidence of her complicity in glorifying Nazism, especially through, as Veiel reported, “interview after interview—always the same questions, always the same answers: ‘I was just an artist, I was not interested in politics.’ It was suffocating.” But the evidence against her was too undeniable:
There was the scribbled note in a calendar to “Vote NPD.” a reference to the postwar neo-Nazi party. Recordings of private telephone conversations conveyed shared nostalgia for the ‘decency and virtue” of the Nazi years. There was a missing section of a 1934 interview Riefenstahl gave to the Daily Express which, when located in the newspaper’s own archives, described the “tremendous impression” made on her by Mein Kampf the first page of which had made her “a confirmed National Socialist.”
Apperly notes that the documentary does not rely on commentary, but simply makes deft use of cuts "to expose the inconsistencies in its subject’s storytelling. Her claim, in a 1993 documentary, that Triumph of the Will has 'no other political goal or motive' beyond 'peace and work and 'no mention of racial theory' is swiftly followed by her low-angle shots of the Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher thundering that 'a people that does not hold dear its racial purity will perish.'”
In a “lost” 1965 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, she is questioned about the filming of Tiefland (Lowlands) in which she uses Roma and Sinti (so-called “gypsies”) as extras to portray Spanish peasants. Although she denied it during a later trial for defamation, it was confirmed that she did receive permission to visit two concentration camps where Roma families were being held so that she could personally select those she wanted to appear in the film, many of whom were children:
What was not positively confirmed was that Riefenstahl knew most of the “extras”—including the children—would be transported to Auschwitz after the filming (apparently so no “pure-blood” German would ever discover the true “race” of such people in a German film); 90 percent of the 23,000 Roma would die there--including the remaining 4,000 who were sent to the gas chambers on the night of August 2-3 1944 as Russian troops were approaching. It was claimed that Riefenstahl had “promised” one man that his children would be “saved” and in the interview Riefenstahl claimed she personally met most of the Roma extras and knew them to be alive. But then the interviewer showed her a list of names of the Roma when they were all transported together to Auschwitz and their ensuing fates. Her reaction to the exposure of her evasions in the face of the truth is shown on the cover of the recent Kino Lorber video release:
Riefenstahl also called it “all lies” in another interview when during her temporary position as a war correspondent she was filming a war scene in a marketplace in a town in Poland. A letter was discovered in 1952 from the adjutant of her husband of three years, a Wehrmacht officer, which revealed that she had complained that it was a “bad look” for a group of Jews digging a trench as “background” in the scene she was filming. This was taken by the German soldiers present to mean “get rid of the Jews.”
Knowing what this meant, some of the Jews attempted to run away, but all were eventually shot and buried in the trench, which was clearly the purpose of it. 22 were killed, and it was stated that Riefenstahl had seen it all. Soon after she announced that she did not feel comfortable being a war correspondent and returned to Germany, but this is in contrast to her later denials that she ever knew anything about the atrocities that were committed by the Nazis.
But back to the present. You thought that Markwayne Mullin, Todd Lyons and Tom Homan (who himself should be in prison) were going to lead a “kinder, gentler” DHS and ICE? We learn here 1 that Mullin shut down the watchdog office that oversees conditions at detention centers, where many detainees have died, and children have suffered in horrible conditions. According Adam Isaacson of the Office of Latin America, the closing of the OIDO “fits in with a larger strategy here, of trying to get people to give up on their immigration cases — and give up on their asylum cases — by holding out the threat of detention and making sure that that detention will be in the most miserable conditions possible.”
The reality is that the Mullin DHS is more stealthy in its cruelty and sadism (except when he is "cosplaying" like Noem), and Mullin isn’t trying to hide that either:
What has the U.S. Supreme Court said about ICE and CBP lawlessness and violence? In his concurring opinion in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo involving U.S. citizens being detained by ICE simply because they “look” Hispanic, Kavanaugh justified racial profiling as being “common sense” to target people based on “apparent” race and ethnicity, type of work they do, type of workplace and if they speak Spanish (most of the Southeast Asian janitors I have encountered don’t speak a word of English, but immigration officials don’t seem too concerned about their legal status)—which of course is interesting in the fact that working people are “easier” targets than those alleged “terrorist gang members.” Naturally it was also convenient for Kavanaugh not to mention immigrants playing by the rules reporting to immigration courts where masked thugs just hang-out to snatch them up because, well, the “look” Hispanic.
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent, Kavanaugh was naïve at “best,” and in “practical” terms justified racist stereotyping, and it didn’t take long for ICE thugs to see themselves given the green light to throw Fourth Amendment rights into the gutter for anyone based on their appearance. U.S. citizens have been detained for days, weeks or even months because Kavanaugh placed no guardrails or restraint on ICE thuggery, which would soon be manifested in shooting white U.S. citizens dead on the streets.
Of course when Sotomayor’s warning that his opinion would normalize arbitrary stops and justify violence by federal agents, Kavanaugh added an “addendum” to a subsequent case in which he tried to “walk back” his opinion now infamously referred to as “Kavanaugh Stops.” in a footnote in Trump v. Illinois claiming that he really “meant” was that immigration stops must be "brief" and "based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence," and not just "race or ethnicity.”
But of course once Kavanaugh let that virus out of the Pandora’s Box there was no way he could stop it infecting the whole country, even as Mullin is trying to keep it “quiet" while Homan at a neo-Nazi "expo" admitted that U.S. citizens are still being "mistakenly" detained but assuring everyone that none of them are being held in detention longer than "required."
How about a little history lesson, say concerning Republican power-madness and hypocrisy? Corruption on the highest level since Nixon? The U.S. Supreme Court was once seen as a “brake” on all of this, or at least employing guardrails on threats to democracy and civil rights. But that has all changed since John Roberts became Chief Justice under the second Bush regime. Michael Tomasky in The New Republic points out the “moderation” Roberts likes to portray of himself was always a con-job:
If Chief Justice John Roberts has uttered two quotable sentences in his career that will likely appear high up in his New York Times obituary, they are these. The first comes from his 2005 confirmation hearing: “My job is to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.” The line was meant to convey to senators and America that he would be a neutral arbiter of constitutional interpretation, sans ideological agenda. It was later picked up by the entire conservative legal movement and repeated by numerous other right-wing judicial nominees at their confirmation hearings. It was a lie. He was there, as we have subsequently learned many times, to bat. And not to spray dinky little singles—to swing for the fences.
There was a chance that Roberts would not have had the opportunity to lead the most morally and ethically-corrupt court since Taney, and possible even in U.S. history. In February 2016, far-right justice Antonin Scalia passed away, still nine months away from the election, and here was an opportunity to mitigate the damage done by a justice who repeatedly discounted the Constitution and civil rights in favor of his own personal animosity and prejudices (his “wittiness” only underlining his essential inhumanity).
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had other ideas. He justified refusing to take up a confirmation hearing for Barack Obama’s pick to succeed Scalia, Merrick Garland, by falsely claiming there was a historical “precedent” and a “long-standing tradition of not fulfilling a nomination in the middle of a presidential year.” Yet when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died a few months before the 2020 election, he merely confirmed his own partisan hypocrisy, by adding this (again false) addendum: “Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year,” allowing Trump to anoint Amy Coney Barrett.
The result was that Trump was able to install not one, but three extremist judges hand-picked by the far right Federalist Society, whose “philosophy” is a confusing amalgamation of “culture war” beliefs that dispense with the Constitution, and opposition to one branch of government “checking” the overreach of another if it conflicts with its fascist agenda.
But we live in a "democracy," except that some of us do not want to be. There is a 2015 German film called Er Ist Wieder Da (Look Who’s Back) about Hitler suddenly materializing in modern Germany, filmed as a pseudo-documentary following him around speaking to people and their reactions to him and his attempts to convince people to allow him to be their “Fuhrer” again with the same racial paranoiac messaging.
While some people found him disgusting, many others didn’t seem to care if he was “real” or not, but that he was “speaking” for them. This film was made before Trump was first elected president, but you get the feeling that if Trump switched places with “Hitler” it would be the same movie.
We discover that people still find Hitler “fascinating,” even if they suspect he is just some lunatic or an actor playing Hitler; like Trump in this country, he "speaks" to them. When he is “discovered” by a freelance journalist who makes a film chronicling this Hitler’s escapades, it is only too late that he realizes that this may actually be Hitler come back to life.
First we see a smoky haze, supposedly from the former site of Reich Chancellery; it is interesting to speculate if Trump's "ballroom" with its 6-story "fortified bunker" is in fact "inspired" by Hitler's desire to replace the older chancellery with one that had "grand halls" and a "fuhrerbunker" in which he could hide himself.
Anyway, when this haze lifts, we see someone who appears to be Hitler:
While viewing a video of children he interviewed, the journalist sees this "Hitler" in the background and searches for him, finding him living in a newspaper kiosk. Since he looks and talks like Hitler, he thinks that he can use him to get the job he was just fired from back, and so he and "Hitler" go around town talking to people and posting these conversations on YouTube.
This woman, who was born in the former communist East Germany, admits she doesn’t believe in democracy, never votes, and is a racist:
Others encountered on the trip seem not to question that this is actually Hitler, and find it “refreshing” that they can speak openly about to someone who shares their hatred of non-Germans. Who is “responsible” for the problems of the “little people” in Germany? Well of course…
…when many “little people, little men and little women, come together to elect one strong person, then you can change something. He then speaks about the cross-breeding of dogs as similar to intermarriage between the German master race and “inferior” races. After this encounter Hitler observes that it is like 1930 all over again. Here, he finds a German homeless vagrant who Hitler who assures him that it is non-German immigrants who are at least “lower” than he is:
Some parts of the film are deservedly hilarious, like “Hitler” discovering that for this fantastic new propaganda tool called social media, he can’t even use his own name for his email address…
…but others not so much, like an anti-Nazi getting beat up and even Hitler taking part in the “fun”:
The freelance journalist who has trouble finding work assignments goes to a television station’s editor to tell him about his “discovery,” but is not taken seriously until he is shown that his latest YouTube video on his adventures with "Hitler" has a million hits. Hitler walks in on a board meeting, and while most present are skeptical, Hitler manages to charm the program director…
…who he likens to Riefenstahl. Seeing the potential for improved ratings, he is seen as "merely" a Hitler "impersonator" of "rare method acting talent." That he is not taken "seriously" is exposed by the fact that it is decided that he will be a "fit" for a comedy talk show. Not everyone is convinced...
...and the show's writers are not completely convinced of the value of the "humor" they are asked to compose:
Hitler's rants against foreigners and public services like free healthcare seemed to be admired by many Germans who think the current political system requires too much thinking on their part..
...and "Hitler" quickly becomes a social media sensation:
Then one day an editor who is not a fan has discovered an unreleased tape of "Hitler" shooting an aggressive puppy...
...and "Hitler" is at least temporarily the subject of media scrutiny...
...which leads to the firing of the program director. But the freelance reporter who "discovered" him still views "Hitler" as his meal ticket and they are off to traveling the country to various degrees of acceptance:
But when there comes the realization that there is something wrong with all of this...
...the reporter believes this is the "real" Hitler after all and when he tries to stop him, he finds himself in an insane asylum, and soon people with short memories are won over again, the former television program director has a new job as his "propaganda minister"...
...and Hitler, observing far-right and anti-immigrant agitation on the news, tells himself...
...because:
Whatever the vote is on Tuesday, is this the world people want to live in, or not.
