One would imagine because of the ugly history and current situation of Black Americans: Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, pogroms, constant police brutality and murder, genocidal hate groups, Confederate apologists, etc, that Black Americans would be the biggest and most vociferous proponents of the Second Amendment and armed self-defense that one might find in any nation in history.
Well one would be wrong. Still, eventually, I suppose it finally might get thru to folks that when you're dealing with hateful irrational unstable armed people, it's in your best interest to be armed as well.
You may recall that the recent anti-shutdown protests in Lansing, Michigan saw mostly white armed individuals enter the Capitol building, shrieking and yelling. Some had Nazi flags, Confederate Battle Flags and nooses.
Despite all this, given that Michigan law allows open carry (and that the protesters were Caucasian), the Michigan State Police refused to take any aggressive action against the protesters. Somehow other various police forces haven't always shown such restraint when a Black person has attempted to exercise his or her right to open carry in Michigan but I digress.
Anyhow, either to make a point or because she was honestly scared, Michigan Representative Sarah Anthony accepted escort by armed Black citizens.
WEDNESDAY, May 6 — After a horde of armed and angry protesters swarmed Lansing last week, State Rep. Sarah Anthony brought some extra protection on her way to the State Capitol today.
Look Away
directed by Assaf Bernstein
This 2018 movie is something that was another take on a very old idea-what if, tired of not getting what you want out of life, you could unleash all your darker instincts to attain all of your deepest desires?
Would that be a good thing? What if your deeper desires include things that actually disgust or horrify you?
This goes back at least as far as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The viewer must decide whether this is a psychological thriller of a repressed id given free reign or something actually supernatural unleashed from beyond the grave. Either way there are some very HEAVY Freudian/Elektra overtones, so if you don't care for or can't stand that sort of thing in your viewing entertainment then this film won't really do much for you.
All the pervy psychological stuff aside, I thought that this movie was a little too heavy and dark. It moved slowly and ponderously because it had a lot of points to make. The director apparently doesn't believe in "show don't tell". Along with the moral darkness of much of the story the film itself is quite often physically murky.
Maria Brennan (India Eisley) is an introverted shy "loser" high school student. Maria's on the verge of an eating disorder.
Midnight Special
directed by Jeff Nichols
For older people such as myself this 2016 movie may bring to mind the film Escape to Witch Mountain, the original that is, not the remake with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
Midnight Special also referenced films such as Superman and Firestarter.
Most good parents will do anything for their children. Midnight Special has a theme of parental sacrifice. The film also raises the awesome power, both legal and logistical, of the Federal government. There are so many Federal laws on the books that a determined and motivated Federal prosecutor can often easily, if he or she so desires, transform a law abiding person into a hunted fugitive with one click on a keyboard.
And even in a continental sized nation, it's hard for anyone to disappear when the full machinery of the United States government is repurposed to searching for that person. At its core this is a chase film. The hook or problem with this is that both at the beginning and the end of the film the viewer may not be sure who's the hero.
Human Capital
directed by Marc Meyers
This is a remake of an Italian movie. I decided to watch this because of what looked like a frontline cast. That was a mistake.
This movie had a decent plot, which seemed incredibly familiar to me for some reason.
It touched a little bit on class differences and could have with some reworking gone down the same path as Parasite, Crash, or other movies that examined familial, class, racial, or social conflicts. Human Capital also made a nod to Rashomon, with several different narratives exploring the same events from different viewpoints or different times.
But all the same, despite the cast, the writing and therefore the story drags. The writer(s) and director chose to spend a great deal of time of storylines and subplots that I thought were uninteresting and in some cases almost irrelevant.
There's almost too much going on in this movie. When you have Liev Schreiber and Marisa Tomei as leads why not let them carry the story a little more? I thought there were missed opportunities galore in this film. Large portions of the film are dull. The first third of the movie showed promise but I just didn't feel the same about the rest of the movie.
1917
directed by Sam Mendes
This was a fictionalized tale that touched on the experiences of the director's grandfather during WW1.
The most noticeable thing about this film was the cinematography and photography which appears to all have been taken in one or two continuous shots. This film won various awards at the Oscars, Golden Globes and British Film Awards.
Although this is a war film it's far closer in spirit and style to Dunkirk than to Saving Private Ryan. Depicted combat is very rare though the effects of the pointless violence are constantly around for all to see. There are long periods of silence or where only a few people are talking. As much of the film's events take place in no-man's land, this makes sense though I have to say it felt unrealistic a few times.
In part because of the sense of unreality I couldn't really get into the story's characters as easily as I might otherwise have. The characters and plot aren't all that important here.
This is the director's film all the way from the amazing sight of lines of men jumping out of the trench and running over the green fields through the beautiful, quiet, and yet ghastly riverbanks. The colors are lush and intriguing. Close to the end of WW1, the German and British armies are locked in a grindfest in northern France.
I don't know if presumptive 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate, former Vice-President Joe Biden sexually assaulted Tara Reade in 1993. People who dislike Biden will be likely to believe that he did it.
Alleged sexual harassment or assault aside, Biden does inarguably have a very long and public history of putting his hands on women or girls to whom he is not married and with whom he presumably has not had consensual intimacy. Biden has behaved in a way that in today's corporate world could see a man of lesser status reprimanded or even terminated. Does the existence of smoke mean that there's fire?
Biden partisans or those who just want control of the Presidency will be less likely to believe that Biden sexually assaulted Tara Reade. They will scream about Republican dirty tricks, say that Trump's gotta go no matter what, claim that Reade is a (insert contemptuous word for woman of low morals), or simply say that the Biden they know would never have done anything like that.
For too many people across the political spectrum, due process, proof, and skeptical inquiry (especially) for sexual crimes have become concepts that are ONLY to be granted to people that agree with you or look like you. They are NEVER basic human rights guaranteed to people who differ from you politically or have the "wrong" set of chromosomes.
In the movie Sin City, Senator Roark (Powers Boothe), the corrupt father of a pedophile rapist murderer, tells the wounded hero that the Senator could shoot the hero dead and walk away without any charges at all, because power is the ability to lie and make other people believe and repeat the lie.
I recall that way back in the day apparently insane and profoundly wicked cult nut job Reverend Jim Jones convinced, tricked or forced hundreds of previously rational but emotionally damaged people to drink poisoned Kool-Aid in Jonestown, Guyana.
I was reminded of those people, fictional and real, because President Trump, who has also boasted of being able to shoot someone in public and walk away clean, recently asked his experts if it was the case, as he believed it might be, that the coronavirus could be treated or eliminated by the ingestion/injection of disinfectants.
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?” Trump said. “Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So you’re going to have to use medical doctors with — but it sounds interesting to me.”LINK
Unsurprisingly, when someone says something so stupid and can't deny that he said it, he later says that he was joking. And there will be plenty of people happy to repeat that lie.
But quizzed on his proposal Friday, Trump falsely claimed he was in fact “asking a question sarcastically to reporters” about the efficacy of disinfectants, “just to see what would happen.”
