Category Archives: Nihilism

'World is Crumbling. An Email Doesn't Matter': 2022 Was the Year of Nihilism. How Do We Move On?  News18

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'World is Crumbling. An Email Doesn't Matter': 2022 Was the Year of Nihilism. How Do We Move On? - News18

Russias Foreign Ministry was responding to French backing for a 'quasi-judicial mechanism'

Any tribunal formed by the West in an attempt to investigate Russias actions in Ukraine would not have any jurisdiction over Moscow, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday. It went on to slam France for backing the idea.

The current attempt by Western countries to whip up a quasi-judicial mechanism is unprecedented in its legal nihilism and is yet another example of the Wests practice of double standards, the ministry wrote in a statement published on its website. It added that such a cabal will never have jurisdiction over Russia.

The response comes after the French Foreign Ministry backed EU proposals for a special tribunal investigating Russia for crimes of aggression in Ukraine. Such a tribunal would try senior Russian officials, potentially including President Vladimir Putin, for alleged war crimes amid the ongoing military conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it is outraged by the statement and accused Western nations of trying to create another politicized judiciary body which has nothing to do with justice.

We never cease to be amazed at the cynicism of the French authorities, the ministry wrote. It accused Paris of turning a blind eye to the legal lawlessness of the Kiev regime, its violent repression of objectionable media and numerous documented war crimes committed by its forces against the people of Donbass.

The ministry suggested that France should instead create a special tribunal for its own crimes committed in the course of colonial wars, various punitive operations, interventions in various parts of the world.

The war crimes committed by the French [...] have remained unpunished and deprive France of the moral right to level accusations at other countries, the ministry said.

Moscow has repeatedly denied Western accusations of committing war crimes during its military offensive in Ukraine, insisting that Russian forces have not been targeting civilians.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said Russian investigators were, however, carefully documenting crimes committed by the Kiev regime since 2014 when a violent coup ousted a democratically elected government and Kiev sent its military to Donbass. Peskov said Moscow had not seen any critical reaction from the so-called collective West on those wrongdoings.

Originally posted here:

Moscow accuses West of legal nihilism RT Russia & Former Soviet Union

Photo: Charles Darwin in 1855, by Maull and Polyblank, Literary and Scientific Portrait Club, via Wikimedia Commons.

In a series of posts, concluding today, I have been exploring the competing visions of nature in the work of William Wordsworth and Charles Darwin (find the full series here).When Darwin came to publish hisOrigin of Speciesnine years after Wordsworths death, the British publics understanding of the natural world had already had ample time to absorb the poets influence. His was in essence a rival philosophy of nature whichoffered a counterweight to Darwins vision of a godless universe evolving by fixed, mechanical laws.

Paradoxically, Wordsworths theology may have formed a more effective counterforce to Darwins ideas than Biblical orthodoxy itself since the latter had been undermined by the German Higher Criticism. The Wordsworthian vision, on the other hand, was invulnerable to the kind of attacks suffered by orthodoxy since the poet did not have recourse to miraculous elements or claim truth status for them as empirical fact. The Wordsworthian worldview could not be disproved by cold-eyed Germanic logic.

It is unsurprising that in his classic study of the popular reception of Darwinism in the decade or so following the publication ofOrigin, Alvar Ellegard found considerable resistance to Darwin on a number of counts.1Some of the publics objections were based simply on logical grounds. For instance, the transmutational, descent-with-modification theory was rejected since, as Darwin himself was obliged to admit, there was no fossil evidence to support his conjecture. People were also unwilling to accept the enormous role of chance postulated for evolutionary processes. For the later Victorian writer Samuel Butler, proponents of Darwinism were essentially apostles of luck with little statistical credibility on their side.2

Yet aside from logic there were other reasons for peoples more positive affective response to Wordsworth when contrasted with their reactions to Darwin. This related to the basic moral stature of the two mens different philosophies. Darwins philosophy of natural selection derived from his reading of Thomas Malthus and the demographers survival of the fittest / devil take the hindmost ideas. Not surprisingly, such a brutal philosophy won him many enemies on the Left and it is thought that Charles Dickens chose Malthus as a basis for his deeply unappealing character of Scrooge in order that the iconic curmudgeon might act as an implicit reproach to a Malthusian philosophy deemed to be ignoble and inhumane.

No greater contrast to Malthus/Darwin could be found than Wordsworth with his radically different attitude to social issues. Many of his poems such as Michael and The Old Pedlar derive from conversations Wordsworth initiated with dispossessed or otherwise unregarded members of society whom he encountered on his Lakeland wanderings persons whom most people of Wordsworths social station might have elected to avoid. For the poet, on the other hand, his interlocutors possessed as much dignity and worth as their ostensible betters.

In that sense, Wordsworths poems might be understood as a fitting accompaniment in their political orientation to the novels of Dickens. Wordsworth shows the outworking of a spontaneous practical Christianity without benefit of doctrine or dogma. As Robert Ryan observed, his poetry was found to be of continuing service in the maintenance of religious belief, even if the faith was so attenuated as no longer to resemble [orthodox] Christianity.3That contention seems to me to be a fair one, and one might add to it that the poet played some considerable part in the fact that his native land, often now labelled a post-Christian country, is, quite contrary to the spirit of Darwinian nihilism, far from being a land without deep spiritual roots and convictions.

Link:

Wordsworths Challenge to Darwinian Nihilism | Evolution News

Here we go, the same story heard over and over again, but in reverse. The girl goes from Hollywood to a small town. Margot is young, almost famous, and lonely, a daughter of celebrity parents and grandparents who has been emotionally neglected. Her rock star father, Steve, is only attentive to her in public. Her mother, Rose, is a big withholder: she cares for Margot but she doesnt know how to be with her. More often than not, Rose leaves Margot with her own mother, Josephine, a former dancer who pulls the family strings. As a girl, Margot cuts and electrocutes herself craving attention, she hardly notices the fact that she experiences no physical pain.

Stephanie LaCavas second novel opens as Margot is abandoned by a controlling boyfriend and quits New York for rural Montana. Everyone wants to go to the big city. Why never the reverse? Of course, escaping to the country is not quite as renegade as Margot seems to believe. Shes folded in on herself in a shrunken world, lost in that strange combination of hypersensitivity and callousness that miserable feelings can bring on. She replaces an overturned stone gently, to avoid harming the bugs beneath. But she wipes her bleeding nose on the bathroom mirror; the cleaner will remove the blood. She pays extraordinary attention to clothing and decor: a chokers tiny flickering gold bars, a butter-coloured leather cushion. I tried to think of something to take my mind off myself.

In Montana she drifts around an isolated late-modernist mansion (perhaps the most desirable interior Ive ever read), until an encounter with a former neurologist, Graves, leads to an abstruse diagnosis. Margot doesnt complain about a bad cut on her leg, and Graves makes a startling inference. You were born with an insensitivity to pain.

Its an elegant premise: to explore the suffering and disaffection of privileged girlhood, through the experiences of one who cannot feel pain. I Fear My Pain Interests You suggests that Margots invulnerability is precisely what makes her defenceless. She becomes a magnet for controlling and abusive men. The book is seeded with references to jazz music and to body-horror French arthouse film, and these frame LaCavas attempt to do something transformative with violence and suffering.

But its problem, as a novel, is that it just doesnt seem very interested in being a novel. LaCava is cultivating a narrative experience of emptiness. There are allusions to numbness, negation and detachment. Everything is performance or reproduction. Relationships are explicated before they arise (In time, I would see that his was the pathology of disconnection), or long after they have ended (Her love for me was the same as her love for my father, which had been either all in or all out), but they rarely come to life on the page. Action is often deferred, conditional or continuous She would glare at me three more times throughout the meal and conversation blank:

You should have told me you dont like pizza.

Were you gonna cook?

I was gonna order sushi.

Oh yes, thats more like it.

You want to call?

Nah. Its cool.

The banality here is purposeful its how Margot converses with her father but the words themselves just dont land. Try saying it aloud: Sushi? Oh yes, thats more like it. Events, characters, and descriptions, all have that hollow feel.

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The book is structured like a short story with an extension. Its first half is introductory: Margot picks semi-interestedly through scenes from her youth. Then there is some meandering. Margot leaves her apartment. She buys tobacco from a bodega. She asks the cashier where she might find a good coffee shop, and notices a blind black cat. The cashier says that he calls the cat Miles Davis. Cool, says Margot and the chapter ends. Towards the end of the novel, two catastrophic events happen in quick succession.

Any of this could be interesting. The vacated characters and mannered dialogue; the rejection of current literary preferences for direct action, for proportionate structure, for a payoff for every setup these things could be what makes this book distinct, if they were brought to a consistency or force that would invite attention. But LaCava doesnt seem to want to make it hurt.

I Fear My Pain Interests You by Stephanie LaCava is published by Verso (9.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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I Fear My Pain Interests You by Stephanie LaCava review numb nihilism ...

OpinionsEditorialThe Link Published October 4, 2022 3 minutes

Each and every one of us will one day eventually die.

This undeniable fact is knownyet rarely openly spoken aboutand often put to the back of our minds for the sake of mental health.

The same can be said about the climate crisis and the inevitable downfall that our excessive way of living is bringing upon us. Our extreme red meat consumption, car usage, food wasteandoil spillings, are just a few examples.

Since we have realized the extent of our responsibility for the planets climate disruption, our self-awareness may have evolved, but our actions haventat least for the vast majority of the population.

Indeed, our society of consumption isnt as well looked upon as it was in the last century. However, the economy keeps growing along with globalization. No one is truly reconsidering our way of living;promises of carbon neutrality are being made by governments and large corporations with goals as far as 2050, as to absolve themselves of their ecological responsibilities until its too late.

But why would we, as a species, and fully aware that we are sprinting to our own destruction, not want to turn back while we still can? Is it selfishness towards future generations, is it cowardness, is it the fear of shaking up our comfortable lifestyles?

Facing the truth comes with deep sorrow: science says were doomedand we knowingly choose to ignore it. A recent major reportby the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identified nine irreversible impacts, tipping elements which affect the Earth and threaten the existence of all species, including human beings.

If we were to economically grow green, as planned by the 2016 Paris agreement, and reach 1.5C to 2C of global warming, six critical tipping points became likely to happen (with four more possible).

On our current trajectory however, we will reach 2.5C by the deadline given by the agreement. This would indubitably trigger a cascading series of irreversible events, forever changing the face of the planet we call home.

Massive fires, hurricanes, flash floods, extreme heat waves are already on the increase, occurring more and more at such a fast pace that it hasnt gone unnoticed by the news cycle.

There will arrive a time when governments cannot financially help everyone recover from damages. Where the global supply chain will be disrupted by natural disasters and shatter the economy. Where entire pieces of land become uninhabitable leaving hundreds of thousands without a home, without a country and without a place to live. This is all highly likely to happen within our lifetime.

All the best scientists on Earth point to those conclusions. Yet, we still get up in the morning and work nine-to-five, contract decade-long debts to attend school or buy a house, bear children into a world we know for a fact is on the verge of collapse.

Climate nihilism is the defining feature of our current approach to climate change. Scared to put back into question the capitalist system as a whole, companies, governments and individuals hide behind emission targets, green growth and sustainable developments.

As new reports come out, we are reminded of the urgency of the climate crisis. Everyone will eventually die, but if the world we were to die in is forever different from the one we were born into, what does that make us?

Its time to at least admit we have given up on saving our beloved planet for the sake of our own destructive habits.

Read the rest here:

Editorial: In the Face of Climate Nihilism, What Can One Do to Not Lose All Hope? | Opinions - The Link

The former Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mller, gave an interview to InfoVaticana in which he spoke freely about the recent consistory of cardinals held this past August. He also shared insights on other matters, such as the German Synodal Path and the Churchs attention to matters of ecology. As we reported in the past, Mller is an outspoken opponent of the LGBT-agenda, and has most recently criticized the Vatican for abandoning Cardinal Zen, who is currently on trial in China for alleged collusion with foreign forces.

In his latest interview, Mller praised the consistory for clarifying true Church teaching from general opinion on the role of the papacy. Contrary to popular assumption, the pope does not possess an unlimited power of divine right over the entire church, as if the pope were a Deus in terris. The cardinal stressed that such theories contradict the entire Catholic tradition, and especially Vatican II, adding that the theory of the pope as an autocrat, borrowed from 19th century Jesuit theology, not only contradicts the Second Vatican Council but undermines the credibility of the Church with this caricature of the Petrine ministry.

While the consistory may have clarified in this one area of the Roman pontificate, it failed to address the burning issues, for example, the frontal attack on the Christian image of man by the ideologies of posthumanism and gender madness, or about the crisis of the Church in Europe.

The Church, instead, chooses to talk more about topics such as ecology, rather than about Christ and his teachings. Mller offered an explanation for why mans role in ecological survival has become so prominent: In a world in which the meaning and goal of the human being are materially limited to temporary and transitory contents, it is easier to become interested as an agent of this program of a New World Order without God (according to capitalist or communist readings). The cardinal would rather see the Church teach that there is no strict opposition between the eternal and spiritual goods, and the temporal and perishable necessities of life, quoting Luke: Seek rather his kingdom, and the rest will be given to you (Lk 12:31).

On the topic of the German Synodal Path, Mller had little good to say: One would not know exactly whether to speak of tragedy or comedy with respect to this event. The texts that are being generated out of this branch of a wayward German Church have spread ideas very abundant but not very deep but which do not deal with the renewal of Catholics in Christ, but with a surrender to a world without God, said Mller. The core problem, Mller indicated, was relegating the gift of sexuality out of the realm of creative grace:

The only theme among all the themes is sexuality. However, it is not understood as the gift of God granted to human beings as created persons (in our masculine and feminine nature), from which the responsibility to participate as father and mother in the work of Gods Creation and the universal will of salvation for ones own offspring derives, but as a kind of drug to numb the basic nihilistic feeling with the maximum satisfaction of pleasure.

He accused those cardinals who asked the pope to change Church teaching on sexual morality and homosexuality of theological ignorance, since the pope has no authority to change the teaching of the Church, which is based on Gods revelation.

Mller further explained that bishops are called to the teaching of the apostles in Sacred Scripture, thus excluding any new public revelation as belonging to the divine deposit of Faith. Mller was quoting from the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.

When asked what motivates the forces behind the Synodal Path, Mller said that many well-paid officials in the German church suffer from the fact that the teachings of the Catholic Church contradict mainstream belief. Their response to this pressure has been to project themselves as modern and follow the forefront of the science of psychology and sociology.

These German bishops are so thoroughly committed to this cause that they are not satisfied with mere schism. In their blind arrogance, they do not think of division, but of taking over the universal church, according to Mller. They claim a leading role in the universal church. [Their] goal is the transformation of the Church of the Triune God into a worldly welfare organization (NGO). Then we would have finally arrived at the religion of universal brotherhood, that is, at religion without the God of revelation in Christ, without a Truth that reaches beyond finite reason, without Dogmas and Sacraments as necessary means of Grace for salvation, as described by the great Russian philosopher of religion Vladimir Soloviev in his writing A Brief History of the Antichrist (1899).

To conclude the interview, Mller was asked what his expectations for the future of the Catholic Church were:

When one sees the megalomania of our politicians and ideologues from Beijing to Moscow and from Brussels to Washington, one cannot expect much good for the future of humanity. We can only expect a true future for every human being in life and in death from God, who out of love gave his Son for the salvation of the world.

Mller also pointed critically to transhumanist tendencies when noting that

in a world in which men presume to be God, to create and redeem themselves (cf. the main counselor of the New World Order: Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus), Christians only have the testimony of the Word and, if necessary, of the blood, that only the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is our Saviour, because he has defeated the world, its arrogance and its sin, and death as the price for sin.

Only when we do not worship the beast from the bottomless pit (ungodliness), his statue, and his false prophet, do we attain life and dominion with Christ, which encompasses our temporal and eternal future. Because temporal and eternal death no longer has power over us (cf. Ap 20,6). We have peace of heart in the Son of God, who says to his disciples: In the world you will have struggles; but have courage: I have overcome the world (Jn 16:33).

A few days after this interview, Mller repeated his warning in a presentation at the World Congress of Families in Mexico, September 30th through October 2nd. In his discourse, Man made in the image and likeness of God: a manifesto against anthropological nihilism, the cardinal warned of anthropological nihilism, which would have to end in the collective suicide of humanity. He specifically named Yuval Noah Harari, who as a historian, according to Mller, should know how quickly the vision of a divine superman can become diabolically inhuman.

Read more from the original source:

Cardinal Mller Reasserts the Dangers of Nihilism The European Conservative - The European Conservative

Mike Flanagan has, of late, distinguished himself as one of Netflixs signature creators and as a generational figure in the horror genre; though his past series for the streamer, including Midnight Mass and The Haunting of Hill House, have been of various quality overall and from episode to episode, theyre consistently interesting. His willingness to engage ideas with his scares sets him apart, perhaps more than it should.

So it is with The Midnight Club, which Flanagan and Leah Fong co-created based on the work of YA novelist Christopher Pike. Here, Iman Benson plays Ilonka, a college-bound high school salutatorian who receives a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Ilonka is both a star student and an idealist; she researches Brightcliffe, a facility to which her foster father can take her to be placed into hospice, and holds in reserve a secret hope that there will, there, be a miracle cure for her. What she finds, first, is a circle of ill teens who gather when the clock strikes twelve to share scary stories; its a mordant nihilism they share, and a sense of indulgent pleasure in the knowledge that things could be worse: They could be fighting against cosmic forces of evil.

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That lines begin to blur, with jump-scares making the hospice seem like a portal to more than just teen imagination, should come as no surprise. But say this much: The stories are well-told, conjuring a real sense of dread that both exists external to these young peoples plights and, inevitably, nestled up alongside them. Ilonkas mixture of willfully blind hope and genuine fear is a tough thing to capture, but Benson excels; other standouts in the cast include Ruth Codd as an Irish immigrant with a prickly exterior covering over vulnerabilities and Chris Sumpter as an HIV-positive teen forced to confront his parents.

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The mix of personal stories among the teens has the power to resonate with anyone, but one suspects this show will find its most attentive audience among high-schoolers with stiff constitutions and strong nerves. Even more than Stranger Things, it operates with a sort of teenage emotional logic, with characters and the show itself thrumming with the passion to speak out and be understood on their own terms. (And, more so than on Stranger Things, adults are a glancing and occasional presence, with Heather Langenkamp and Zach Gilford playing, respectively, the founding doctor and the nurse practitioner of the hospice.)

But even this adult admired The Midnight Club as a relatively complete example of the best of Flanagans approach throughout his Netflix work using horror as a way to probe the worst things that might happen to somebody, arriving at a place of curiosity and compassion about grief and loss. That, here, the grief and loss is for the characters own futures demands a delicacy that Flanagan and Fong possess; it also demands to be matched by a horror appropriately outsized and scary, and they deliver that, too.

The Midnight Club premieres on Netflix on Friday, October 7.

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The Midnight Club Is a Teen Horror Show Thats Actually Scary: TV Review - Yahoo Entertainment

In a world where Republicans set political standards, one could expect that migrants would be abandoned in remote places without hope of succor and that funding for infrastructure construction and disaster relief would be provided only to GOP-led communities.

We dont live in that world because political and humanitarian counterbalances exist to GOP policies.

Republicans count on their enemies not to reciprocate their callous nihilism, observes political scientist Scott Lemieux of the University of Washington and the Lawyers, Guns & Money group blog.

Washington at its worst.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis disdains Bidens COVID relief aid, before bragging about spending it

The phenomenon has been vividly visible in recent days and weeks. Florida Republican politicians including Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio have pleaded for federal disaster assistance in the wake of Hurricane Ian, while evading questions about why they voted against similar aid for northeastern states hammered by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. (DeSantis voted against Sandy aid as a freshman congressman in 2013.)

DeSantis and his fellow Republican governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona undoubtedly know that the pain theyre inflicting on defenseless migrants by flying and busing them to other states will be limited because humanitarian agencies will be mustered to care for the migrants never mind that their jobs are complicated by the lack of notice from the DeSantis/Abbott/Ducey travel agencies.

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Politicians in red states that have enacted draconian antiabortion laws can persuade themselves that the burden on their female constituents is limited because patients seeking outlawed reproductive health services can find them in other states, such as California.

Floridas desperate need for federal assistance in Ians wake has put that states congressional representatives on the spot, given their record of opposing federal disaster spending in the past, when it was needed by other regions.

Rubio, who was among the 36 Republicans who voted against a $49-billion disaster relief package after Hurricane Sandy struck the Northeast in 2012 but appealed for Hurricane Ian aid, tried to sidestep accusations of hypocrisy by claiming that the Sandy package was loaded up with pork.

Appearing on CNN, Rubio cited a roof for a museum in Washington, D.C., and fisheries in Alaska that had nothing to do with disaster relief.

To her credit, interviewer Dana Bash pointed out that the Washington roof had been damaged in the storm.

She could have gone further: The appropriation was for the roofs of several Smithsonian Institution museums that were so damaged that the Smithsonians priceless collections were threatened.

The Alaska fisheries he mentioned, specifically for Chinook salmon, were among six coastal fisheries for which failures were declared in 2012 because of natural disasters, according to the Congressional Research Service.

In other words, Rubio was just blowing smoke.

Rubio and other Florida Republicans, including Scott and Rep. Matt Gaetz, paid lip service to the need for federal disaster aid for their state but failed to lift a finger to pass a short-term funding bill that would provide $15 million in short-term financing for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Scott and Gaetz both voted against the measure when it came before their chambers on Sept. 29 and 30; Rubio didnt bother showing up for the roll call.

The lawmakers were explicit about their opposition: To them, it was all about partisan politics.

In a Sept. 19 letter, Gaetz and his House GOP colleagues pledged to vote against the stopgap spending bill because it would serve the Biden administrations agenda of empowering authoritarian bureaucrats at agencies like the IRS and FBI ... imposing COVID-19 mandates that shut down schools and are forcing our military service members out of their jobs, and advancing self-destructive energy policies.

The letter continued, Any legislation that sets the stage for a lame duck fight on government funding gives Democrats one final opportunity to pass that agenda.

On the Senate side, Scott joined his GOP colleagues in pledging to vote against the stopgap spending plan so that we do not enable the Biden administrations reckless progressive agenda.

Republicans undoubtedly know that if they had the power to make these voting positions stick, it could have been disastrous for them. A government shutdown might have resulted, inflicting pain and suffering on households coast to coast.

But there was no real risk of that because sufficient majorities existed in both houses to ensure that the measures would pass the House passed the 2013 Sandy aid package by a 241-180 vote and the Senate by a 62-32 vote. The House voted 220 to 201 to pass the stopgap funding measure last month, with 10 Republicans in the majority, and the Senate voted 72 to 25, with 16 Republican senators in the majority and three Republicans, including Rubio, not voting.

For the dissenting Republicans, these were free votes. They could swank about as warriors for fiscal responsibility, without the prospect that their posing would cause any adverse consequences they could be blamed for.

Its proper to observe that the lawmakers who vote against funding bills like these arent above taking credit for the money when it arrives in their states. DeSantis, for example, called the $1.9-trillion American Rescue Plan, a Biden administration pandemic relief package, Washington at its worst and blamed it for higher inflation.

Out in the hustings, however, DeSantis bragged about a $400-million rural broadband project that he said would be funded from the state budget. The money, in fact, came from the American Rescue Plan. (Some people have no shame, Biden riposted, without mentioning DeSantis.)

As it happens, according to the Orlando Sentinel, federal funding has been crucial for the Florida state budget, helping to pay for such programs as climate resiliency against rising waters, road projects, broadband expansion, college training programs and tax cuts.

DeSantis, who finds himself in the unfamiliar position of a supplicant for federal funding that he has disdained in the past, was remarkably ungracious about the federal response to Hurricane Ian.

Appearing on Tucker Carlsons Fox News program on Thursday, DeSantis said he was cautiously optimistic that the Biden administration would come through with emergency aid. In fact, Biden had approved an emergency declaration for the state four days earlier.

One could almost imagine DeSantis clenching his teeth at the necessity of being nice to Biden; he must have mistaken the current president for the former president, who was known to demand expressions of personal fealty from state and local officials in return for federal assistance.

The truth is that the chance that Biden would withhold aid to the people of Florida because their governor chooses to portray the president as some sort of a socialist tyrant was zero. Thats not Bidens style, nor is it the style of a functioning federal government.

Its a fair bet, however, that DeSantis and his fellow Republicans will go right back to loudly disparaging Democrats as heedless spendthrifts as soon as their aid money is disbursed, counting on their constituents short memories and gullibility.

The victims of disasters, natural and political alike, are just lucky that responsible and humane officials and agencies will continue to clean up the mess left by the performative cruelty of political opportunists.

Theyll get disaster aid to where its needed and humanitarian assistance to those cast adrift because thats how humanitarianism is defined.

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Hiltzik: GOP cruelty counts on the humanity of others - Los Angeles Times

Hollywood was largely built on the sturdy saddleback of the Western, a uniquely American idiom that had broad appeal, was inexpensive to produce, did not necessary require marquee stars, and whose sets were largely the desert terrain available not terribly far from the studios Los Angeles HQs. But by the mid-60s, the seemingly fail-proof genre was wobbling. Big-screenWesterns grew increasingly epic (and costly) in offer to offer something different from the B-movie reruns and popular series (likeBonanza) that were depleting their audience by being on TV for free every night. When those films flopped, they lost millions.

The youth demographics Hollywood began hand-wringing over saw Westerns and their stars (notably the openly pro-Vietnam War John Wayne) as old-fashioned, reactionary, corny, and dull. But the industry was reluctant to give up its longtime cash cow without a fight. One path was to imitate the violent nihilism of Italian and Spanish spaghetti Westerns, which had made a movie star of TV western star Clint Eastwoodeven if he had more in common politically with Wayne than, say, Dennis Hopper.

Another was a series of revisionist Westerns that tore down the old myths (particularly the cowboys vs. injuns ones in which Natives were viewed as bloodthirsty savages) while offering distinctively New Hollywood style and attitude.

Almost none of the so-called revisionist Westerns were popular, aside from a few major exceptions likeButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,Soldier BlueandLittle Big Man. But they left an eccentric, interesting, sometimes inspired group of films behind. Among the very best of them was 1971sMcCabe & Mrs. Miller, which the Roxie is reviving this Sun/9.

Based on an obscure 1959 novel, this project had all the earmarks of success: It starred New Hollywood royalty Warren Beatty and Julie Christie (then also an off-screencouple); the director was Robert Altman, still red-hot off the prior years smashM*A*S*H, which had repurposed the war movie for a new generation as this one presumably would the Western. Further signaling that this would be no standard shoot-em-up was a soundtrack laden with troubadour Leonard Cohens literary ballads, while the story revolved a frontier bordello, something that mightve only been hinted at (if that) beforebut now fallen censorship walls could allow those professional ladies to frolic full-frontal-starkers in a cheerfully gratuitous bathhouse scene.

McCabe and Mrs. Milleris set in 1902 central Washington state, though it feels earliercivilization has as yet barely laid its fingers on the zinc mining encampment that will become a town known (somewhat inaptly) as Presbyterian Church. That changes when one John McCabe (Beatty) blows in to weigh the local prospects. Hes been a gunfightera past hed like to leave behindbut is now a gambler hoping to become a respectable entrepreneur. Well, respectable as the founder-proprietor of a cathouse, which one might recall was a pursuit quite good enough to make the original Trump family fortune. (For Donalds German-emigre grandfather Friedrich, in British Columbia, where this movie was actually shot.)

An unexpected partner in his plan is Christies Mrs. Miller, who offers her services as madam and is too pushily enterprising to be denied. She ships in supposedly classier damsels from Seattle than hes managed to obtain from nearby Bearpaw, and oversees the completion of a first-class establishment, by local standards at least. Despite her very flinty, argumentative Cockney personality, she also develops an alliance with McCabe that is more than strictly-business.

All goes well, the town grows and prospers (duly acquiring that church in time), until inevitably it gets too big for small-time operators like our protagonistsor rather, it attracts the kinds of major-league players who will stamp out all competition. Like Walmart coming to small-town Main St., a deep-pocketed corporation enters the scene, intending a complete takeover. They offer McCabe (among others) a buyout. But when he balks, they dont bother with further negotiationthey simply send bounty hunters to kill him, and anyone else resisting their high-end capitalist progress.

McCabe & Mrs. Milleris now regarded as a somewhat left-of-center classic, but it was not a hit at the time, even in a year marked by such vaguely like-minded successes asBilly JackandThe Last Picture Show. Part of the problem was apparently that the first NYC critics were shown a faulty lab print that marred Vilmos Zsigmonds exquisite soft-edged color photography, resulting in bad initial reviews (though other critics like Pauline Kael championed the film). Also, it was not quite the billed star vehiclewhile she got a Best Actress Oscar nomination, Christie is onscreen only about one-fifth of the two-hour running time)and those expecting traditional action were no doubt disappointed that no gun gets fired until the final 30 minutes.

Then there was Altmans penchant for over-lapping, semi-improvised dialogue, in full flower here amongst a large ensemble also including Rene Auberjonois, John Schuck, Shelley Duvall, and Keith Carradine. With its zoom-lensing onto random details, casual pace, and loose narrative focus, the movie can feel meanderingeven if its still one of this directors most purposeful efforts in his most characteristic style. All its atmosphere-building more than pays off, however, in a long, quiet, poetical finale, in which death comes to this fledgling community amid a muffling blanket of heavy snowfall.

M*A*S*Hbegan looking more and more like a fluke as Altman continued racking up a full half-dozen commercial failures between it and 1975sNashvillewhich itself was only a moderate box-office success, despite enormous critical hype. Some of his best work was still to come, from the Bergmanesque3 WomentoThe PlayerandGosford Park. But an auteurist halo lingered over his early 70s work, when he benefitted the most among major American directors from the studios willingness to go out on a limb. While not all those films have aged well,McCabe & Mrs. Millerstill has the golden glow of Zsigmonds interior shotsand Mrs. Ms opium dreams.

Other film activity this week likewise looks backward in one way or another, from the Roxies kickoff of seriesThe Ultimate Outsider: A Tribute to Jean-Luc Godard(more info here) with his 1960 breakthroughBreathless(more info here) to David O. Russells starry newAmsterdam. The latter attempts to combine the screwball eccentricity of hisSilver Linings Playbookand the splashy, faintly fact-derived period intrigue ofAmerican Hustle, with Christopher Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington fighting fascistic conspirators in 1930s NYC. It is the kind of ambitious, expensive, stubbornly oddball endeavor Hollywood rarely attempts these days. So in the hopes that it wont be the last such, Ill hew to the If you cant say something nice principle and say no more.

Other new openings:

Project Wolf HuntingWhen a first exchange of captured criminal fugitives between South Korea and the Philippines results in suicide-bomber disaster at a Seoul airport, authorities decide it will be safer next time to travel by sea. Ergo military police safeguard a second human cargo of murderers and other miscreants on an ocean freighter. But the bad guys succeed in a mutinous takeover of the vesselonly to confront an entirely different menace, a Frankensteinian unstoppable-killing-machine monster hatched by long-ago secret government experiments. Its presence onboard doesnt stay secret for long, as upon waking it commences a second bloodbath wave.

With its starry cast of K-pop stars and other familiar faces, incessant action tinged with sci-fi horror, and eager gory tastelessness, Kim Hong-suns film taps a vein familiar from a lot of other recent SE Asian popcorn spectaculars. Its high-energy, all right, but the difference between something like this and, say,Train to Busanor recentThe Roundupis that those movies had a certain ingeniousness to their excesses, as well as a little heart. Here, the large character rollcall is pretty much cannon fodder, and so many gushing blood fountains grow monotonous.

If you always kinda wantedThe Poseidon AdventureandEvil Dead IIto be one movie (or Con Airby way of a Capcom survival-horror video game, as the press release puts it), this may be right up your alley. It certainly isnt dull. But its also so consistently over-the-top, it isnt as exciting as it means to be, or as much fun as those comparisons might suggest.Project Wolf Huntingopens Fri/7 at CGV Cinemas SF on Van Ness.

PiggyLikewise offering diminishing returns for a whole lotta nastiness is this feature from Spanish writer-director Carlota Pereda, which takes the psychological cruelty of Catherine BreillatsFat Girlinto the realm ofTexas Chainsaw Massacre. Mostly stuck behind the counter of her parents butcher shop, heavyset teen Sara (Laura Galan) is regularly tormented by a clique of same-aged, middle-class mean girls. After a particularly brutal humiliation at their hands, she is the only person to realize theyve been kidnapped by a creepy guy who appoints himself her protector, a la Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek inBadlands. The grievous harm he wreaks on her bullies is rather more revenge than Sara wants, however.

Piggyis impressive in a blunt, shocking, pitiless way until it finally succumbs to routine horror sadism, with little left in the way of character insight. (Notably, the homicidal maniac has no discernible motivations or backstoryhes just a Generic Nut Case, targeting nubile young women because thats what we expect from such figures.) The film already has its adherents among those who overpraise ultraviolent extreme cinema when it has any whiff of arthouse cred. And Pereda does have a bold, assertive directorial imprint. But this treads close enough to traditional exploitation terrain that I hope next time shell write material with more originality and depth.Piggyopens Fri/7 at the Alamo Drafthouse.

Riotsville, U.S.A.Subjugation takes a more institutionalized form in this documentary flashback to the late 1960s, when rising popular opposition to the war in Vietnam and socioeconomic injustice at home made some (other) Americans feel such unrest must be dealt with forcefully and swiftly, as President Johnson put it. The title of Sierra Pettengills film refers to the model town that was built as a result in 1967, using Virginias Fort Belvoir to train military and police forces respond to domestic civic disorder.

Archival footage shows these grunts in street clothes pretending to loot and vandalize the Main Street set, their riots looking like Fraternity Rush week run amuck, then getting dragged off to the paddy wagonall watched by crowds of dignitaries in the stands. That skill set was applied full-force to the protestors outside the 1968 Democratic Convention, which became a televised feast of brutality. Worried about incipient American fascism, Sinclair Lewis decades ago mocked the complacent view that It Cant Happen Here. As this film shows, it already hasand youd have to have your head in the sand to be unaware that major forces are working to make it happen again.Riotsville U.S.A. opens Fri/7 at Opera Plaza Cinemas.

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Screen Grabs: A revisionist Western that still shines bright - 48 hills - 48 Hills

The war in Ukraine is one of the most profound tragedies of the 21st century. But not only is it the largest continental war since World War II, it is also a crisis that could have far-reaching implications for the key players. For Ukraine, the outcome could define its fate for generations to come.

With Russian President Vladimir Putins recent partial mobilization and intensified nuclear threats, the Kremlin leader could be running out of chances for the survival his own regime. He has revealed himself as panicked and desperate. But it isnt only Putin running out of lives:

In other words, the world table has been perfectly set for a revisionist war and, sadly, given the totality of conditions, it is unlikely this war could have been averted. Prior to the fall of 2021, the only remaining question was who would pull the trigger?

As Russian armed forces gathered ominously around the borders of Ukraine, the world had its answer. But at whom is the gun really pointed?

The bullet

While economists might go on deluding themselves, lets not be nave; the single bullet in the revolver is not Russian gas, but the Russian bomb.

Blinding neon signs advertising the Kremlins main message to the world are there for all to see. These include continuous use of nuclear threats in Russian propaganda and state TV, recent deployment of hyper-sonic nuclear missiles on its ships, tactical nukes stationed in Crimea, the nuclear blackmail surrounding the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and the recent deployments of nuclear convoys near Ukrainian borders.

In the absence of any real economic and scientific development, Russias nuclear arsenal is the only bullet the terrorist state can fire in its rapidly collapsing Potemkin state. To the prosperous West, this apocalyptic threat is more disturbing than for a starving and suicidal Russian population.

Having failed to gain a decisive advantage on the battlefield, Russia is now resorting to terrorism, torture and assassinations. It is also threatening Moldova, Poland, and the Baltic states. With Finland and Sweden joining NATO, and Ukraine and Moldova getting candidate status in the EU, Russia is successfully maneuvering towards self-destructive global isolation. That being the case, all Russia can do is clutch its nuclear card in its sweaty grasp, waving it at the world.

But Russia offers the ultimate nihilists bargain; if it goes bad for us, it will go just as bad for you.

The prize

He who controls the present controls the past and the future so the saying goes.

Most nations, even those regarded as wealthy and democratic, are pestered by nationalistic and authoritarian movements. Real economic development and freedom of expression are becoming prohibitively expensive in a world reckoning with the indiscriminate growth of previous generations. The Age of Abundance is surrendering to the Age of Scarcity.

However, in this new and gathering world of surveillance capitalism, the outlines of a new coalition are beginning to form.

This new coalition, whatever its composition, will control the agenda, assign the speed and direction of the worlds economic, social, and political development, and will create the framework for surviving the most ominous threat to human existence so far the exhaustion of the planets human-sustaining resources.

If Russia had not attacked Ukraine, membership in this burgeoning world order might have been determined differently. However, the behavior of the Ukrainian people and the strategic and tactical performance of its army, unexpected around the world, have made Ukraine a key participant in the Russian Roulette initiated by the Moscow regime.

The players

Player #1: Russian elites

In the presence of crippling sanctions and in the absence of economic growth, combined with a deteriorating quality of life for the average Russian citizen, it is only a matter of time before domestic opposition becomes impossible to eliminate. As a result, the time for a new nation-unifying external enemy has arrived in Russia yet again. In addition, military mobilization in Russia is creating new and unpredictable stresses on an already-precarious domestic peace.

As threats to Russia, Chechnya, and Georgia have been liquidated. Kazakhstan has been set up as the next enemy. However, successful intervention by China, having accumulated substantial interests in the region, has granted Kazakhstan a reprieve from outright Russian aggression.

Russians, having been nurtured on an endless diet of nationalist lies and propaganda, believe that Ukrainians are venomously anti-Russian. Never mind that nearly the entire history of Ukrainian/Russian relations is a dark tale of Russia working to exterminate Ukrainian identity. To the Russians, Ukrainians are offensive merely because they refuse to be Russian.

Even if the occupation of destroyed territories looks like a Pyrrhic victory, it can still be of use to the elites, fueling Russian pride and unifying the masses around their conquering leader. Equally, the restoration of these lands, coupled with the promise of fresh, warm territories for living, will provide a justification for new and exorbitant taxes (or, more accurately, an even higher level of government corruption).

Looking at this from the point of view of the Russian people well, they have never had a say to begin with. Their point of view is irrelevant now.

But for how long?

Sham referendums and illegal annexations notwithstanding, with every acre of its own land that Ukraine reclaims from the occupiers, the fragile scaffold of Russian social obedience becomes shakier and shakier. Forceful mobilization aiming to recruit at least 300,000 conscripts but in fact targeting at least 2 million completely unequipped and unprepared civilians does not help the regime.

Player #2: The West

Despite systemic flaws, the liberal democracies of the West have been doing well for themselves.

Nevertheless, the West is not invincible. Plagued by populism and other problems, including slowing economic growth, inflation, rising debt and inequality, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed many of the dependencies and weaknesses of unregulated globalization.

Unrestrained money printing is tempting many world economies towards the biggest recession since 2008. Most importantly, the supremacy of the liberal and democratic order may face an existential threat if China wins the artificial intelligence (AI) and biotech race.

To be clear, geopolitical stability, the rule of law, and the respect of sovereign borders is a much better way forward than the path preferred by feckless dictatorships such as Russia.

If Russia brings only tragedy, misery, and death, then the West must bring the defeat of nihilism, and the creation of freedom freedom from oppression, freedom from corruption, and the freedom to thrive.

As it stands today, the West has bet on Ukraine, in large measure due to Ukrainians unwavering support and embrace of Western liberal values an embrace that Russia fears the most.

It may seem presumptuous, but through its sacrifice and its determination, Ukraine has not only led the West into the role of unconditional ideological and economic supporter, but has given it the chance for the reset it urgently needs.

In failure, Ukraine will represent a major blow to the unchallenged leadership of the Western liberal model. In victory however, Ukraine presents the West with what it needs most the moral leverage with which to beat back an authoritarianism resurgent around the world.

To be continued.

Kate Levchuk was born and raised in Odesa. A Futurist with a background in International Relations, Geopolitics and Venture Capital, she is a frequent guest lecturer advocating for science and progress. Kate lives in London.

David Dodson is an American film director and editor. He has edited ten Volodymyr Zelensky movies and directed Zelensky in three, including his last film, the most successful movie in the history of cinema in independent Ukraine. He lives in Los Angeles

The views expressed are the authors and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.

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Russian Roulette: How Ukraine Can Win the Game (Part 1) - Kyiv Post