Monthly Archives: July 2020

Three movies about immortality vs mortality and not being an asshole have arrived for your viewing pleasure!

Whats more fun than a trilogy you assemble yourself? The correct answer is Hugging a family member without fear that your touch could infect them with a deadly pathogen. Still, finding three streaming movies that weirdly go together is arguably the second safest way to have a good time right now, after nap until phase 3 vaccine trials are over.

Three new sci-fi/horror-adjacent films recently dropped that weirdly explore oddly similar themes about the horrors of immortality/mortality and how empathy is the only way to fight the bogeyman. In the spirit of 2020, lets start with the sad one!

Relic (Available via most streaming rental services)

Although possessed of less baba and zero dook, Relic does follow in The Babadooks footsteps. Its an Aussie horror flick that offers a metaphor as explicit as can be metaphored.

When grandma Edna (Robyn Nevin) goes missing, daughter Kay (Emily Moritmer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) move into her place and look for her. Edna suddenly returns, but she aint right. What follows is a grief-laden exploration of dementia as a literal monster and the pressures and perils of what different generations of women owe one another.

Writer/director Natalie Erika James and cowriter Christian White somehow timed their film about compassion towards the demons faced by the elderly to a moment in history when we seem to have stopped giving a shit about old people. Too literal to be a parable, Relic uses the horror genre as the social magnifying glass it can be, demanding that we see the shared humanity in those who are suffering around us.

Oh, and if COVID didnt already have you decontaminating your domicile like a proper lunatic, Relics copious mold will get you scrubbin bubbles. So its good for your emotional growth and your hygiene!

Grade = A-

The Old Guard (Netflix)

A squad of immortal mercenaries are being hunted by big pharma while also adding a new recruit to their team. Is that silly? Yes. Does it feature Charlize Theron whacking bad dudes across the face with a colossal axe-type weapon? Also Yes! Does something real bad happen to the evil pharma boss? My lips are sealed, but Martin Shkreli voodoo dolls can take some time off!

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood and writer Greg Ruckawho also penned the comic this was adapted fromdeliver an oddly sentimental, deceptively thoughtful film that remembers people actually like to see and follow the action in an action movie. Weird, right?

Editor Terilyn A. Shropshire and cinematographers Tami Reiker and Barry Ackroyd dont cower behind shaky-cam or epileptic editing but compose simply impeccable fight sequences. Meanwhile, Prince-Bythewood gives us the first comic book team that actually feels like a family. And all of this is set in a story that emphasizes how caring for others and doing whats right sets of ripples that are felt for millennia.

Were it not for its wholly inappropriate, incredibly distracting, poorly chosen, Europop-trash soundtrack, it would have been as flawless as Charlize Theron whacking bad dudes across the face with a colossal axe-type weapon!

Grade = B+

Palm Springs (Hulu)

Of all the Groundhog Day riffs, Palm Springs is the first to allow JK Simmons to hunt another man for sport. Finally!

This timey-wimey rom-com sees Andy Samberg as Nyles, a narcissist in need of a haircut, who gets trapped in an infinite time loop after stumbling into a magic-laden cave. When Sarah (Cristin Milioti) gets accidentally sucked in as well, the two repeat the same day together until the inevitable happens: She learns quantum physics, and he learns hes an asshole.

Writer Andy Siara and director Max Barbakow deliver absolutely nothing new. But they deliver on every cliched expectation with clever and quirky humor. This, while condemning callous, me-first behaviors that dont consider the implications of personal actions on others. Totally unrelated, but wear a mask out there folks!

Samberg remains charming, even if the reforming manbaby trope feels like its been stuck in a recycling time loop itself. Milioti is less endearing, although perhaps thats what happens to the female lead when your rom-com has very few women behind the scenes

Palm Springs is ultimately a wholly endearing diversion perfectly suited for a year where we all feel like were living the same day every goddamn day.

Grade = B+

Other critical voices to consider

Austin Collins at Vanity Fair says Relic exposes the problems with elevated horror.

Sherin Nicole at Idobi describes Old Guard as deeply human and circumspect.

Adrian Gomez-Weston at The Cinema Soloist points out how Palm Springs tackles the big questions.

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Fun, Guns, and Mum: New Stuff to Watch! - Omaha Reader

Warrior Nun. It's a show about warriors who are also nuns. Pretty simple stuff, right? But for a show with a two-word premise, things get pretty complicated over the course of the Netflix series' 10-episode first season.

The show tells the story of Ava, a 19-year-old ward of a Catholic orphanage who is implanted with the angel Adriel's halo and finds herself imbued with mystical powers. It turns out that she's the latest in a 1,000-year-old line of women who've borne the halo, women who have all been nuns of the Order of Cruciform sword. Here's how the story shakes out in the end.

Throughout the first half of the season, Ava grapples with her newfound powers and debates whether or not she wants to align herself with the OCS. But by the end of the season, she's decided to team up with Father Vincent, Shotgun Mary, Sister Beatrice, and the rest of the warrior sisters. Inventor Jillian Salvius, who has built a portal to other realms called the Ark with the help of the mystical element divinium, initially seemed to be the Big Bad, but was revealed to be doing her research to help her ailing son Michael, and she too teams up with the OCS.

Instead, the real problem player is Cardinal Duretti. The OCS pieces together that he was behind the killing of prior halo bearer Sister Shannon. He wants the halo to pass to someone loyal to him, as he needs to use its power to allow its bearer to pass through walls to enter the tomb of Adriel. The angel gave up his divine immortality when he gave his halo to Areala, the original warrior nun, and now his bones lie in the catacombs of the Vatican, behind a stone wall that's 20 feet deep. His remains are said to have the power to make whoever controls them the "lord of demon kind," and Duretti, who's elected to Pope near the end of the season, seems to like the sound of that. So the OCS heads off to Adriel's tomb to foil Duretti's evil plan.

Courtesy of NETFLIX

Ava, Father Vincent, and the sisters locate the tomb, and, pumped up from a phasing workout regimen, Ava successfully travels through the stone. Inside, she finds not Adriel's bones, but Adriel himself. As it turns out, he never lost his immortality, and has been trapped there for centuries.

At first, Ava and Adriel are pretty chummyhe's an angel, she's pretty much a novitiate, it's a match made in heaven. But when Adriel touches her, Ava receives flashes from Areala's memories that make her suspicious. When Adriel tries to take the halo from her, she blasts him with its power, just as the OCS dynamites its way in and saves her.

Meanwhile, Mother Superion confronts now-Pope Duretti, only to find out that he has no clue about the killing of Sister Shannon or the underground tomb. He's not the bad guyand Adriel's no angel. Ava reveals to the team that Adriel is in fact a devil. Father Vincent calls the newly-freed Adriel his master and tells him that his machinepresumably the Ark, which Michael has just leapt into, bound for dimensions unknownis waiting for him. Vincent killed Shannon, and he's been the baddie all along.

The sisters fight Adriel while Ava waits for her halo to recharge its mystical batteries, but Adriel summons an army of demons who posses the bystanders and swarm the women. And that's where the season ends! The fate of the OCS, the duplicitous Father Vincent, and little Michael, wherever he is, will have to wait for season two.

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Warrior Nun Ending Explained What Happens to Ava and Adriel at the End of Warrior Nun? - Esquire

The 8 desires of human life 

Desire is an intrinsic part of human life. We all wish for a variety of things; many are materialistic and some emotional. We want health, wealth, comfort, good relationships, success, good progeny and fame. There are also spiritual desires - we have a desire to know about life after death, about how to remain detached and equanimous under all kinds of circumstances and we want to be at peace. But these myriad wishes arise from some basic human desires. On Day 10 of Hari Katha during Lockdown, Morari Bapu, the well-known narrator of Ram Katha analysed the innate desires in any human being.

He felt that there are eight contraptions of human want:

Morari Bapu explained how Ram Charita Manas through different sequences shows how these desires can be fulfilled as per our patrata (eligibility).

PEACE, STRENGTH AND KNOWLEDGE

Shantam sasvatamaprameyamanagha nirvanashantipradam

(Ram - the bestower of supreme peace in the form of final beatitude, placid, eternal, beyond the ordinary means of cognition, sinless and all-pervading.)

II Ram Charita Manas Sundar Kaand Shloka 1II

In the first Shloka of Sundar Kaand, Lord Ram has been described as the bestower of peace and it is to him that his holy name that we need to turn to obtain serenity of mind.

Another basic characteristic we would need to imbibe in our endeavour is to take refuge at the feet of a spiritual master. Our strength will derive from our complete surrender to a Guru. And such a strength which derives from a spiritual master is superior from personal power as it is free from our ego.

Not only physical strength, Ram Charita Manas explains that an intellectual prowess is also a form of power.

Dana parasu budhi shakti pracanda, bara bigyana kathina kodanda.4.

(Again, charity is the axe; reason, the fierce lance and the highest wisdom, the relentless bow.)

II Ram Charita Manas Lanka Kaand Ch 80 (A)II

In addition to a sharp mind, if we have nirmal mati (uncontaminated thinking or), it can also lead us to Vishram or peace.

Takey juga pad kamal manavu, jasu kripa nirmal mati pavau 4.

(I seek to propitiate the pair of Her (Sitas) lotus feet, so that by Her grace I may be blessed with a refined intellect.)

II Ram Charita Manas Bal Kaand Ch 18II

FREEDOM

To remain a dependent or under the shelter of a Guru can provide us real freedom.

Ram gives Bharat full freedom to choose the way forward after the demise of their father Dasratha, but Bharat chooses to choose whatever Ram chooses.

Bharat shows complete surrender as he pleads:

Jehi bidhi prabhu prasan mun hoi, karuna sagar kijiye soi 1.

(Do that, O ocean of mercy, which may please your heart, my lord.)

II Ram Charita Manas Ayodhya Kaand Ch 269II

BEAUTY AND IMMORTALITY

Beauty should not be seen as only externally extant but must manifest as an inner magnificence. And immortality should be interpreted not just by the measure that we are alive. The quality of our thoughts and our contribution in adding to the vitality of the world during a lifetime also lend to our immortality.

LOVE AND BLISS

Immortality can be understood only by those who are ready to consume poison (hardship, criticism etc.) like Mira. Sacrifice is a by-product of love, which in turn helps us obtain bliss.

However, anyone who is free from these desires can be called as ascetic or a Sanyasi. In the Bhagvad Gita, Lord Krishna in his address to Arjun defines such a person Nitya Sanyasi who holds no malice for anyone, neither does he desire anything.

The views expressed by the author are personal and do not in any way represent those of Times Network.

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The 8 desires of human life and how to fulfill them - Times Now

SUN-GAZETTEFILEPHOTOLoyalsock players pile on each other after winning the 2013 PIAAClassAA championship in State College against Beaver, 5-4.

Coach Jeremy Eck gathered his players in the Loyalsock gym this Friday morning not to talk last-minute strategy, but to provide a history lesson.

Loyalsock would compete against Beaver late that afternoon for the Class AA state championship at Penn States Medlar Field. Eck wanted his players looking around at all the championship banners surrounding them and pay close attention to the 2008 baseball state championship one. His Lancers now had a unique shot at gaining high school immortality.

As Bailey Young drove a pitch into right field and Caleb Robbins rounded third base that moment was at hand. Robbins sprinted home and Loyalsock entered the hallowed halls which few high school teams ever walk. For the second time in program history, Loyalsock was a state champion.

Youngs walk-off single scored Robbins from second and Loyalsock defeated Beaver, 5-4, in one of the most exciting state title games in PIAA history. Beaver had tied it with two outs in the top of the seventh, but Loyalsock immediately fought back and Young lived a dream so many have but never get to experience.

Ill be talking about this year for years, Young said as Loyalsock received their gold medals. Its a great feeling.

Im speechless. Im stuttering right now, shortstop Ethan Moore, the teams lone starting senior, said. Its been a long road. Just to be here looking at this field, I keep asking all the players if we just won states. Its unbelievable.

It really was.

Loyalsock returned a strong group from a 2012 district champion, but was hit hard by injuries throughout the season. The Lancers persevered, then survived one-run games against Towanda and Montoursville, but Hughesville defeated it, 7-5, in a nine-inning district final. It was a crushing loss, one that can be hard to recover from. The Lancers still qualified for states, but would have to go through four district champions which finished their seasons a combined, 81-9.

Against the odds, that is what they did. Loyalsock outscored Lakeland, Delone Catholic and 25-win Salisbury, 23-6 en route to reaching the state final. It erased a four-run fourth-inning deficit against Delone and hammered a Salisbury team with just one loss, 8-1. At the most crucial time, the Lancers rallied around each other and played their best baseball.

I dont think we caught a break all year. We had injuries everywhere. We had some losses from the team, but we pulled through and came together as one, third baseman Tommy Baggett said after going 1 for 2 with two RBIs against Beaver. Everyone steps up at the right time. Whoever is up there, they step up and get the job done.

It was a similar formula which would get Loyalsock past a 24-win Beaver team which had won 17 straight games. Beaver had not allowed a run in three state tournament victories and surrendered just two runs in its six previous games. Radford-bound pitcher Austin Ross had been untouchable, but Loyalsock showed early that it was not like Beavers victims. The Lancers scored a second-inning run to tie the game and then struck twice in the third, taking a 3-1 lead. After Luke Glavins two-out RBI single tied it in the second, Kyle Datres smashed a double and scored a batter later when Jimmy Webb belted an RBI double. Baggett hit a sacrifice fly to score Webb and Loyalsock seemed to be picking up where it had left off against Salisbury.

Datres pitched a complete game, striking out seven and allowing just two earned runs, but Beaver scored twice in the fourth and tied it, 3-3. Again Loyalsock answered. Moore reached on an error, Robbie Klein singled and Baggetts RBI single put it up, 4-3. It stayed that way until the seventh when Loyalsock moved within one out of its second state title. Instead, Nick Hineman hit an RBI single and tied the game. Datres ended the rally with a strikeout but Beaver had the momentum now.

This 2013 season had been about overcoming a series of obstacles and it was time for Loyalsock to clear its final one. Klein was hit by a pitch to open the seventh and Moore came up with only one goal. The team leader had delivered timely hits all year and came up huge again without producing a hit.

In the bottom of the seventh he (Eck) said if Robbie gets on you have one job and thats to get the bunt down, Moore said. I said Damn right. Im getting that bunt down, were moving him over and were winning this game.'

Moore did his part, dropping the bunt exactly where it had to go and moving Robbins, running for Klein, to second. Baggett was intentionally walked and now it was time for Young and Robbins to fulfill Moores promise.

Young had hit a go-ahead sixth-inning RBI single in the semifinals against Montoursville and drilled two doubles against Salisbury. He was heating up at the right time and never doubted himself, even after falling behind Ross 0-2. Young fouled off three straight pitches and then destiny came calling in the form of a fastball on the outside corner. Young went with the pitch, drove it the opposite way to right field, rounded first and watched Robbins complete the run of his life. Robbins was moving faster than ever and there was no play at the plate with the relay throw being cut off. The team surrounded by championship banners that morning now had one of the most unique, becoming state champions.

I told them this morning that if we win this one, we walk together forever, Eck said while holding his young son Elijah. I asked them how do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be a good team that got to the state final or do you want to hang on that wall for the rest of your life? They showed us what its all about. It really is a dream come true. Every one of these guys has so much heart and theyre all gamers.

Young epitomized Loyalsocks drive and selflessness that year. Eck had replaced him with Evan Moore at catcher during the Delone game, moving him to DH. Young never sulked and continued working and producing. After shining against Salisbury the next game, Young delivered the hit of his life and biggest in this illustrious programs history.

Once I saw the throw come in I looked back at home and saw him score. The first person I saw coming at me was Kyle Datres. He told me I was going to get a hit that at-bat and it gave me confidence, Young said. This is amazing. You cant explain the feeling after a state championship win.

What an unbelievable way to end the season, Robbins said. I was scoring no matter what. It was pure adrenaline. As soon as I touched third base I was running as fast as I could. I had to do it for our town and my for my family and my pop. I cant find the words to explain it. It was so awesome.

A year later, Loyalsock returned to Penn State and became just the third Class AA team in PIAA history to repeat as state champions, defeating Central, 5-1. That team also overcame injuries and adversity, rallying from an 8-5 start and winning its final 15 games.

Many of those Lancers played for the 2013 state champion. They knew anything was possible if they continued fighting. Just as important as that title banner those 2013 Lancers earned was the example they set, one that helps the program continue flourishing to this day.

It was a Cinderella story, Robbins said. Were never going to forget this moment and this experience.

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Decade's best No. 1: Loyalsock's baseball team won 2013 PIAA Class AA title in one of state's most exciting finals | News, Sports, Jobs - Williamsport...

Date published: Friday 17th July 2020 8:10

No shame here for Liverpool fans they should do nothing other than shrug their shoulders at their club stumbling before the 100-point mark who have celebrated and will continue to celebrate a first title win in 30 years claimed with consummate ease and with football that transcended all other iterations of this great club in the Premier League era. The only shame may be that the trophy was both won and presented without fans but that still leaves them with a delicious cake only shorn of icing. And the icing is often too sweet to eat anyway.

Jurgen Klopp insisted that he would lose no sleep over failing to breach Manchester Citys 100-point mark but the telling part of his denial were the six words that followed I dont know if it comes because anybody with that degree of competitiveness and perfectionism will obsessively reflect on any missed opportunity. And this was undoubtedly a missed opportunity to claim a place at the table of immortality.

A place at that table would not automatically make this Liverpool side any better in the minds of those that watched those relentless victories claimed with both style and resilience, but it would make at least the idea of this Liverpool side better, especially to those looking back in the next decades. Is that important? It might not seem that way now but in 2032, when we are looking back at 40 years of the Premier League, will people credit this Liverpool side if this is their only title? When stacked against the Treble winners, the Invincibles and the Centurions, will Liverpools extraordinary season look ordinary on paper?

Dropping two points in 27 Premier League games and leaving an accomplished Manchester City side trailing in their wake should be enough to ensure this wonderful Liverpool side will never be forgotten but to those poring over league tables in the years to come, it will look like City failure rather than Liverpool triumph. And they really do deserve more than that. They deserve to be spoken about in the same terms as those great teams because their dominance was remorseless.

Some have argued that records mean nothing before listing records already broken (consecutive home wins, earliest title win) but unless you knew who held those records before, its ridiculous to claim that they should carry any importance now. Rightly or wrongly, only certain measures count and Liverpool have breached none of them. There is no catchy moniker available to a team aside from perhaps the self-referential Unbearables that will be remembered more for the circumstances of this season than their own brilliance. Unless they win more Premier League titles to leave their own legacy, they will always be the Covid champions who received their trophy in an empty stadium. The ignorant will even claim that was a factor when decades lie between this triumph and half-arsed analysis.

Its not fair and there will be many who say they do not care, chief among them Liverpool fans high on triumph, but as the history of football gets longer and longer and it becomes harder to spot the bright spots of brilliance, we use records and milestones as our guide. It is inevitable. And the extraordinary nature of this Liverpool side will fade over time, just as Carlo Ancelottis free-scoring Chelsea side have become a footnote in the history books.

This is not a time to laugh at Liverpool for falling short of an arbitrary number its embarrassing for any other clubs fans to laugh after being force-fed so much dust but it might be a time to commit the excellence of this near-faultless team to memory before it is forgotten. Now that would be a shame.

Sarah Winterburn

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The only shame is that Liverpool brilliance will escape history books - Football365.com

Its pretty difficult to come up with an original idea in this day and age. Most movies tend to repeat the same beats of those that have preceded them, changing up the details so the copying doesnt seem too blatant. The new action movie The Old Guard has many familiar elements, but its unique story is where it stands out.

Charlize Theron stars as Andy, the leader of a group of mercenaries who have one defining quality: They are all immortal. Their immortality is unexplained, but the group which also includes Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe (Marwen Kenzari), and Nicky (Luca Marinelli) has used it to fight various battles over the course of many centuries.

Andy, the eldest, is starting to experience a dissatisfaction with their ability to actually solve any of the worlds ills. Shes both disheartened and reinvigorated when a new person, Nile (Kiki Layne) joins the group after being killed in action in Afghanistan. At the same time, they are being hunted down by Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who works for Merrick (Harry Melling), the head of a secretive pharmaceutical group who wants to study and dissect them so their traits can be used to treat others.

Immortality is certainly not a new idea, nor is being an immortal mercenary, as Deadpool would gladly tell you. But theres something about this multi-ethnic, female-led group that makes it supremely fascinating and entertaining. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and written by Greg Rucka (who also wrote the graphic novel on which it is based), the film is more progressive than your typical comic book movie, even prominently including a same-sex relationship.

It is also ruthlessly bloody, whether it's the violent ways each member of the group is either killed or maimed multiple times, or in the brutality they unleash on others. Theres something balletic about the fight scenes, coordinated by Daniel Hernandez. The female fight scenes in Marvel movies have developed an expectation for such sequences, but Hernandez, the actors, and the stunt performers come up with a variety of different touches that make these impress every time.

If the story gets a bit wonky toward the end, Rucka and Prince-Bythewood can be forgiven as theyve already delivered a great introduction to characters that most people dont know. It looks like theyre aiming for franchise status Rucka has written 10 issues, so theres no lack of source material and the end of the film sets up a possible sequel extremely well.

From Mad Max: Fury Road to Atomic Blonde to The Fast & the Furious series, Theron has established herself as a legit action star, and she doesnt disappoint here. Combined with her top-notch acting skills, she is magnetic throughout. Layne, who was captivating in If Beale Street Could Talk, holds her own, carving out her own space in a film dominated by Theron. Schoenaerts, Kenzari, and Marinelli each get their own moments to shine, and Ejiofor makes the most of his limited time on screen.

The Old Guard brings something new to the table for the comic book action genre, popping off the screen despite being limited by its debut on Netflix. Its equal to or better than many recent big screen action movies, with a lot more to say than most of them as well.

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The Old Guard is now available onNetflix.

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The Old Guard revs up the senses with great action and fascinating story - culturemap.com

As would-be dictators of variable girth and invariable cruelty attempt to seize the world, we have grown accustomed to drawing easy, maybe lazy, parallels with that seemingly eternal counter-point, Nazi Germany.

But what historical precedent would a dissenting German have looked for during the monstrous growth of the Third Reich? I had never thought of it, until I came across a dissenting German making the attempt.

Friedrich Reck (sometimes Reck-Malleczewen) kept a secret diary from mid-1936 until almost the end of the second world war, an illegal watcher among the barbarians he calls himself, observing with increasing horror and disgust the German peoples capitulation no, devotion to their mad Fhrer. During these years, Reck also produced a more public work, a history of Mnster, a sixteenth-century city-state established by a radical sect called the Anabaptists. It wasnt a specialised interest in this obscure bit of history which led Reck to it. I am shaken he wrote in his diary by how closely Mnster resembled the Third Reich.

As in our case, he continued, a misbegotten failure became the great prophet, and the opposition simply disintegrated. As in Germany, Mnsters alternative for allegiance was death; as in Germany, endless distraction kept the people from a moments pause to reflect. In every detail, it seems, Mnster anticipated the Third Reich: that its propaganda chief limped like Goebbels is a joke which history spent four hundred years preparing.

Reck did not draw such explicit parallels in the history he published he wrote it camouflaged in footnotes, and even so, it was eventually banned but he minced no words in his diary. Diary of a Man in Despair speaks as clearly, as cathartically, to anyone who fears the transformation of her world under authoritarian leadership as Mnster spoke to its author.

Friedrich Reck. Photo: Twitter

Take for example, the ungrudging, limitless obedience that authoritarians inspire in their flock, even when especially when their orders are so very thoughtless, or cruel, or just plain flops. In the final months of the second world war, it was clear that Adolf Hitler had led his country into defeat; German towns were rubble, German currency was waste-paper. Even then, writes Reck, he heard a woman extoll the greatness of her Fhrer, for in his goodness, he has prepared a gentle and easy death by gas for the German people in case the war ends badly.

I discovered Reck via Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendts account of the trial of a Nazi captured and tried by Israel. Arendt recounts his anecdote along with another, similar story of a woman speaking fondly of Hitlers gracious death-wish for his people. Then, she takes a scalpel and cuts to the selfish, spiteful heart of such devotion: The story, one feels, like most true stories, is incomplete. There should have been one more voice which, sighing heavily, replied: And now all that good, expensive gas has been wasted on the Jews!

It was in this account that Arendt coined her famous phrase, the banality of evil. Arendt meant no simple-minded, innocent banality, but rather to what Reck calls a gigantic psychosis the product of your radio manipulation-stupefied mass-man, and the conversion of human societies into heaps of termites!

To live among such thoroughly coarsened people filled the diarist with rage. He writes with grim satisfaction of how a revolutionary executive emerged in the final months of Hitlers rule, sending warnings of retribution to men and women who had been most enthusiastic in their commitment to Hitlers cause. One amongst them, a doctor, had stopped treating Jews. Now, his wife told Reck, he had received a warning from the resistance and had trouble with his nerves, complained constantly about the purposelessness of life and the unreality of the Party pronouncements, and was even toying with ideas of suicide.

Reck-Malleczewens craving for vengeance upon those who enabled Hitlers rule may have been rare in Germany, but it was not unique. His diary describes, for example, how workers in an electric plant planned to brand Nazi foreheads with swastikas when the Third Reich fell. A fine idea, he writes, with the glee one reserves for angry daydreams of justice long-awaited, which needs only the addition of a single detail to be quite perfect: how would it be if they were forced to wear brown shirts for the rest of their lives?

Also read: Promise me Youll Shoot Yourself: Nazi Germanys Suicide Wave

It wasnt these supporters alone, however, these mass men as he calls them, these canaille literally, a pack of dogs that Reck showered with his rage and contempt. It was also their seeming anti-thesis: big business. The instrument of power is terror, he wrote, and the industrialists hold tight to it. They control every means of influencing public opinion, and have thereby stupefied the great unproductive masssalaried peopleto the point of idiocy.

And it was business, Reck argued with aphoristic aplomb, that underpinned the other great scourge of his time: it has long been a theory of mine that the basic substance of nationalism is of a commercial nature. Again, he makes the point in brilliant bit of polemic that cannot but resonate with anyone watching countries torn to shreds by divisive politics, all in the name of making them great: in 1500 there was a German nation, but no nationalism, whereas today, when our eyes are supposed to light up at every trouser button Made in Germany, we have the reverse: nationalism, and no nation.

But his greatest anger is reserved for Hitler himself, often expressed with such biting wit, you will laugh out loud. Once, for example, shortly before he was elected and appointed Chancellor, Hitler came to eat, alone, at a restaurant where Reck was meeting a friend. There he sat, writes the diarist, a raw-vegetable Genghis Khan, a teetotalling Alexander, a womanless Napoleon, an effigy of Bismarck who would certainly have had to go to bed for four weeks if he had ever tried to eat just one of Bismarcks breakfasts

Often enough, Recks invective against Hitler carries more than a whiff of contempt for his class. With his oily hair falling into his face as he ranted, [Hitler] had the look of a man trying to seduce the cook, he writes. Reck, with his country manor, his literary career, his claims to aristocracy, disdained Hitlers petit-bourgeois origins; but what he loathed was his evil. It was Hitlers evil that drove the diarist to despair for his country, that provoked some of the most blistering passages in his book: I hate you waking and sleeping; I hate you for undoing mens souls, and for spoiling their lives; I hate you as the sworn enemy of the laughter of men

Love is often claimed as a force against the divisive, hate-filled politics of authoritarian states and their devotees. Love is powerful, yes; the call for togetherness has the soaring quality, the idealism necessary to sustain any movement. And yet, reading Recks white-hot denunciations of the regime that destroyed all that was good in his world, I began to wonder why must hate be surrendered to the right?

Hate speech for example, the intellectual preserve of bigots and trolls, what is that except shallow taunts by schoolyard bullies? How can it compare with hate that punches upwards; hate that is born of despair, recognises its own ugliness, yet turns its own soul into a battering ram against the high walls of power?

Also read: Operation Bagration: A June 22 Hitler Had Not Bargained for

You, up there: I hate you waking and sleeping. I will hate and curse you in the hour of my death. I will hate and curse you from my grave, and it will be your children and your childrens children who will have to bear my curse. I have no other weapon against you but this curse, I know that it withers the heart of him who utters it, I do not know if I will survive your downfall.

But this I know, that a man must hate this Germany with all his heart if he really loves it. I would ten times rather die than see you triumph.

Love is essential for building trust and communities and better futures but when a monstrous power grows before your eyes, do you seek to envelop it with love, or to destroy it with hate? Do you write of hope and try to soar, or do you let your angry tears burn the page?

Reck did not confine his dissent to his diary alone. He continued to use the old greeting Grss Gott! God be praised while others called out Heil Hitler! He walked out of a movie hall showing a propagandist film; his exit evoked nasty remarks from the audience. In a caf, he joined a table at which the conversation was about fitting punishments for Nazis: For the Herr Propaganda Minister, an appearance, naked, in the monkey cage at the Hellabrunn Zoo

Such minor acts of resistance were fatal. We learn of Hitlers rise and fall through the horrors of the Holocaust, but Recks journal makes clear how any German no matter how blue-eyed lived in danger of denunciation, prison, execution. Joking about the Fhrer was outlawed; you might be guillotined for undermining the morale of the German army. Reck witnessed the trial of an elderly doctor sentenced to eight years in jail for possessing foreign currency (he missed the guillotine by a hair).

Our diarist was denounced, eventually, too. Possibly, his mistake was to write a letter to his publisher complaining about the falling value of German currency; his royalties were worthless. He was imprisoned, first locally, then at Dachau. In February 1945, just months before the war ended, Recks wife was told that her husband had died.

Writers rarely get the royalties they hope for, but sometimes they get the immortality they crave. Reck speaks, still to his children, and their childrens children of what it is to stand against a tide, of what courage may be derived from hating with all your heart.

Only so, as he wrote, will we earn the right to search in the darkness for the way of love.

Parvati Sharma is author of Jahangir: An Intimate Portrait of a Great Mughal (Juggernaut, 2018).

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When There is Despair, There Will Be Hate Too. And That's Not a Bad Thing - The Wire