Clarissa's Blog

American Sniper

It’s hilarious that the people who are freaking out about American Sniper and writing screeds on how evil it is are so often the same ones who loved Imitation Game. Both movies are about exactly the same thing: the transformation of warfare and the changing discourses on war. The protagonists are tortured by the same questions arising from the same power to kill from a distance when your victim doesn’t know you exist and might have done nothing wrong whatsoever.

War is leaving the realm of massification and is becoming individualized. That’s what these movies are about.

Inequality

I hate discussions about inequality because they are so useless. All that anybody ever says about the issue is, “Tax somebody who isn’t me.” And then there is a bunch of very silly arithmetic exercises to carve out that somebody so that it doesn’t touch me and leaves me feeling self-righteous.

47%, 1%, 10% of imaginary evildoers who just have to be taxed to make everything magically right are simply a fantasy that many people mistake for political convictions.

Guarantors

Abortion rights, an issue that has long been at the center of the feminist struggle, has been utterly transformed by today’s realities. Government is no longer an institution that guarantees this basic human right.

Today, the main guarantor of abortion rights is the website cheapairtickets.com.

Doom-and-Gloomers Get Their Reward

“It’s a tragedy, a human tragedy, that the middle class in this country by and large doesn’t believe that the future will be better than the past,” he said. “We haven’t seen rising incomes over decades.”

 “The rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before under this president,” he added.

I can’t tell you, folks, how tired I am of always being so right. How many times did I say that the correct message to be pushing was “Obama dramatically improved the economy”? First of all, because that’s the truth. And second of all, because the message you so adore and that I quoted above is very easily co-opted by the Republicans in 2016. Is there any doubt in anybody’s mind that if a Republican president achieved, in terms of the economy, what Obama has in his presidency we would be hearing it celebrated and yelled from the rooftops all day and every day?

In case there are people who have been asleep for the past two days, the “he” in the quote above is Mitt Romney. Prepare to hear more of the same in the coming two years from overfed billionaires who have suddenly discovered the words that will make the entire country go weak in the knees.

We could have avoided this if we had gotten over our profound need constantly to feel sorry for ourselves and accepted that the recession was over and it was cause for celebration. It is highly likely that your love of apocalyptic thinking guaranteed us a Republican in the White House come 2016.

We had the 2016 election in our collective pockets until you had to go and piss it all away with your insistence that anything short of paradise is beneath you and any achievement that doesn’t bring your directly into heaven on Earth is not an achievement but an offense to your sensibilities. And now this wave of infantile resentment will be exploited to carry a Bush or a Romney into the White House. Good job! The enjoyment you must have derived from ridiculing any suggestion that the economy was improving must have totally been worth it.

Oh well. At least, it will be good for Ukrainians. 

Update on Ukraine

The fighting has intensified in Ukraine this week. The Russians are using Obama’s obvious reluctance to act on the bill adopted by Congress that promised aid to Ukraine. At the same time, everybody is distracted right now by the massacre in Paris, and the Russians are using this to conduct a full-scale offensive.

Yesterday and the day before there was another big battle for the Donetsk Airport. The Russians brought fresh troops and sophisticated weaponry to the airport. After a long and exhausting battle, Ukrainians won yet again.

This is the worst type of warfare for Ukraine: a simmering low-intensity conflict that flares up every once in a while. The whole point of the Ukrainian revolution of 2013 was to conduct reforms and transform the country from a corrupt, sleepy mafia haven to a vibrant European state. This is precisely what the Russians don’t want. They sabotage Ukraine ‘ s project of reform by slowly draining the country of resources through an endless simmering conflict. It’s easy for Russia to do that since it isn’t pursuing any creative project of its own. Its entire creative agenda right now is limited to “Let’s stick it to the Americans.” So they can go on and on fighting. There’s nothing else to do in Russia that’s fun.

Realistically, the only hope for Ukraine right now is to resist until 2016 and then hope that a Republican gets elected in the US.

Imitation Game: A Review

Imitation Game is a very good movie that follows a very traditional Hollywood model. Many changes might take place in the world but it’s comforting to know that Hollywood movies will not deviate even by a hair’s breadth from the tested and true model.  I’m not entirely happy that I went, though, because N had no idea why Turing had killed himself and now that he’s found out he is extremely sad.

On the positive side, the actor who plays teenage Turing is truly talented. I hope he sticks with acting because he has a great future in it.

In what relates to the collapse of the nation-state  (what, did you think it wasn’t going to make an appearance?), the film offers a very curious retelling of WWII from today’s understanding of war not as a series of grand battles but, rather, as a game played by complex
machines operated by nerds who never see any military action. The actual soldiers have descended from their pedestal of heroes and have become unimportant pawns who will only live if the nerds allow them to. The true war heroes are now gadgets and those who know how to use them.

Of course, in order for such a plot to make any sense at all it has to be pinned together rather inelegantly from very incongruous elements. The Soviet spy crammed into the middle of everything in quite a jarring manner allows the story to remain somewhat believable  (but only if you flunked history in high school). It doesn’t matter, however, because the movie isn’t about history. It’s about a new vision of warfare trying to colonize the past and impose itself over previous narratives.

Highly recommended but with a warning that the ending is very tragic.

Movie Choices

N and I decided to go to the movies.

“There is this movie Selma that everybody says is great. It’s about MLK and the Civil Rights movement, very topical. And there is a movie about some guy called Tubing or Turing. . .”

After hearing the name “Turing”, N started making incoherent but happy noises, indicating an immediate readiness to be reunited with a movie about this fellow. He also delivered a small lecture on something called “Turing machine”, from which I gathered that Turing is very meaningful to programmers.

So the Turing movie it is.

World Cup in Russia

Blatter said he had spoken with Putin during a visit to Russia on Friday and was assured “there is no intention to ask FIFA to change anything in the pattern and the program of the World Cup and we trust Russia will find a solution.”

Oh, I  wouldn’t worry either. The oligarchs are getting restless, and Putin needs the World Cup to give them a chance to compensate themselves for the pain and suffering of the sanctions. The Olympics were a phenomenal opportunity for the lucky few to siphon off an enormous portion of the state money set aside for the Olympics. Now the same thing will happen during the preparations for the World Cup.

Of course, this will impoverish the people of Russia even further but that’s OK. They are ready to go hungry in return for everybody noticing their existence. If you want to understand what a narcissistic trauma on a collective level looks like, observe the Russians.

Regionalism?

Imagine a situation when somebody brushes you slightly with their shopping cart, opens the door without seeing that you are there, cuts in front of you in the line by mistake and says, “Oh, I’m sorry” or “My apologies.”

What is your response?

The reason I’m asking is that in this region people invariably respond with, “Oh, you are fine.” Not “I’m fine” or “it’s fine”, which would make sense to me but “You are fine.”

Example:

“I’m so sorry!”

“You are fine!”

I haven’t been able to get used to this in six years. The response sounds so bizarre to me. My question is: is this a regional thing or is it more wide-spread?

Friday Night Dinner

I’m experimenting with traditional American food: steak and a basil – mozzarella – tomatoes – strawberry balsamic vinegar dish. And asparagus. And a loaf that I had to bake in the oven. It is one of those premade loaves that have to be baked.

P. S. For those who asked: N’s martial art was called shotokan.