In the book Red Storm Rising – Tom Clancy’s second novel, released around 1985, at the height of the Cold War, and tho only Clancy novel that didn’t focus on Jack Ryan, his family and his professional and social circle – the protagonist, obscure intelligence analyst John Toland, connects the dots among several events – a Chechen terrorist attack on an oil refinery, its attendant economic turmoil – and becomes concerned about a possible Soviet invasion.
The line that connects all the dots? The Soviet government releases an updated version of the 1938 film Aleksander Nevsky, Sergei Eisenstein’s historical drama about the eponymous Nevsky, getting the quarreling Russian nobility to shelve their differences and set about repelling a Teutonic invasion in the Middle Ages.
Am I butchering the plot worse than Nevsky butchering the hapless Germans? Perhaps. Here – watch for yourself:
Finer plot points notwithstanding, the movie is intensely nationalistic – which got the film shelved, and then un-shelved after Barbarossa and the invasion of the USSR.
The point – as John Toland put it in Red Storm Rising – was that whenever the Communists wanted to whip up a nationalistic frenzy against the West, they’d trot out Nevsky. Which was, indeed, the case in the book, as the USSR let slip the dogs and tanks and artillery of war, in what became one of the better, and final, fictional novels of World War 3.
So, Hollywood is doing a fictional “civil war” movie, featuring an A-list….
…well, B+-list cast, a big-name sci-fi director, an apparently significant budget…:
…and a fairly bizarre premise: that DC, New York and the Midatlantic states, Texas and Califonria will be allied against, I suspect, a bunch of of blockheaded rednecks and roobz from Florida and most of “flyover land”.
The movie is billed as science-fiction, but the sides drawn appear to be more fiction than science;
Little has been released about the plot, although speculation is running hot:
The reasoning behind the seemingly bizarre alliance of Texas and California in the film points to the notion that the war isn’t over Democrat and Republican politics but more about Offerman’s corrupt three-term Presidency. The United States federal government has apparently disavowed its allegiance to the United States Constitution and is now held under the budding dictatorship of Offerman’s tyrannical President.
The reasoning behind the seemingly bizarre alliance of Texas and California in the film points to the notion that the war isn’t over Democrat and Republican politics but more about Offerman’s corrupt three-term Presidency.ent.
So, maybe it’s not a Blue-Vs.-Red thing, as such.
But coming in the immediate aftermath of a state supreme court ruling that has just served as a Reichstag fire for those on both sides insisting that they are fighting intractable anti-democratic forces on both sides – a decision that has raised the temperature and lowered the signal-to noise ratio and increased the likelihood of a, let’s just call it “less than reasoned” response to any election result next year, is this really the media cue we want to be sending out?
“Depends on which “we” you’re talking about, doesn’t it, Mitch?”
Why, yes – it does.
The United States federal government has apparently disavowed its allegiance to the United States Constitution
I saw what you did there. If politics is downstream of culture, 2024 should be very “interesting times”.
The left usually telegraphs what shenanigans they are planning, before they do them.
I’m convinced that this is the reason that Pedo Pete opened the borders. Obama gave him the orders and he’s carrying out building an army of insurgents that don’t care about American citizens
They are also warning of a potential cyber attack. I’m suspecting that there will be a two pronged distraction attack about the time of the election, using those “events” as a reason to either cancel or postpone the election
Neal Stephenson, who writes rambling but often fascinating historical fiction – of the past and present – imagines a deeply separated America in his near-future book, “Fall: Dodge in Hell”. In it the NE, Minnesota, and coastal states stay in the union while most of the Midwest, Western, and Southern states secede into a country referred to as “Ameristan” where the religious, gun-loving lunatics hold sway, devolving into Middle Ages fiefdoms and strongmen with bizarre religious permutations. It’s a pretty crude caricature that can be dismantled in a lot of areas, but just go with it for the story.
The “union” (picture the NY-DC Acela Corridor, writ large), though, has a more gently savage portrayal: elite, supposedly over-educated groups of right-thinkers who are so concerned about heterodoxy that they hire AI censors or counselors to groom the media their children consume from the “Miasma” (the name for the Internet, and perhaps a nod to “Barbarella” futurism), lest they see any news or opinions different from the established “truth”.
One arc of the story (and a Stephenson book typically has more arcs than McDonald’s has arches) follows a group of the privileged young protagonists as they venture across the Ameristan wilds in their electric van. It’s hardly the main part of the story, but following a Stephenson extended plot can be like following Google Maps, if Google Maps was on crack. It’s always interesting, though.
Say, boss, Did Sen. Chris Coons Let the Cat Out of the Bag? ‘Any Action’ to Stop Trump Should Be ‘Encouraged’?
jdm,
Either that or trust fund New York moron Dan Goldman saying the “Trump needed to be eliminated” on a national news show a couple of weeks ago. Goldman can be compared to George Soros; a Jew that turned in his neighbors in exchange for that person’s assets and property.
Agreed, boss. Say, didn’t someone mention with regards to that Goldman comment that it could include assassination. I mean, now that we have “any action” to eliminate Trump is encouraged… nah, it’s probably nothing.
I was just thinking about that.
Has a Republican candidate for President ever been assassinated? Huey Long and Bobby Kennedy were Democrats, of course, while McKinley and Lincoln were already President. Bumping off Trump to prevent his election might allow for Another Historic First for the Lesko Brandon administration.
And given the attitude of the media/youth/Democrats/RINOs toward The Bad Orange Man, it wouldn’t surprise me to see them shrug and hear them say, “He had it coming.”
First, we need a patsy, an Oswald, some a young white man with a history of mental illness who will die in a hail of Secret Service bullets to avoid any unhelpful denials at trial. Then, we need corroborating evidence. The FBI can immediately release his “manifesto,” having written it themselves weeks in advance, while the FBI lab (paragons of unquestioned virtue) can state without equivocation that the bullets fired from the “unregistered assault rifle” found at the scene are an identical match to those found in a partial box in his apartment, right down to the chemical composition of the gunpowder. Third is support for remedial legislation. Local police chiefs can be counted upon to aver that “ghost guns” kill dozens of Black children every day. Moms Demand Action will join David Hogg in demanding every firearm be seized and melted down, to prevent another vicious assault on Our Cherished Institutions.
“President” Biden will briefly appear on camera looking bewildered as a voice-over actor reads the teleprompter. The “President” message of condolence coupled with his stern promise to do justice at any cost will give wavering legislators the cover they need to vote to make Kamela into Gun Czar with authority to suspend the Constitution, confiscate all firearms, arrest anybody who resists and hold them without trial until The Present Emergency expires.
The only question is where to hold all of us?
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According to my retired FBI agent friend, there have been at least 53 thwarted attempts on Trump so far and a combined 10 on his family members.
I read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash long ago. It was a tough slog for me.