Jane Fonda. A turtle. A white goose. Marilyn Monroe.

Posted on June 6, 2020 by sheila

This scene from China Syndrome lasts 20 seconds – if that – and is the only scene that takes place in her house. She moves through the space, turns on her answering machine, and then flops down in bed. That’s it. But look at the DETAIL in the bit of her house that we see! We don’t know anything about this woman outside of her job and her ambitions for herself. This isn’t meant to be a full-blown three-dimensional character study, that’s not how the role is designed. We get glimpses of other things, but what’s important is her putting together this story as a journalist.

But here … in the 15 seconds we get a glimpse of this room … we get so much information and yet … what information do we exactly get? Production designer George Jenkins has done superb and subtle work putting that room together, with maybe some input from Fonda herself. It’s so personal, it’s no NON-generic.

Here’s what I see:

1. Jane Fonda
2. A turtle
3. A white goose
4. Three Marilyns

It’s such a great shot! How do we put these things together to have meaning? But maybe the meaning is: these are things she loves. She loves her goose lamp. She loves her Marilyn on the wall (reflected in the grandfather clock). And so she has them in her house. Just like if you walked into my kitchen you’d see, as you panned along the walls – a Dogfight poster, a framed Irish declaration of independence, my Elvis doll on a shelf, and a framed photograph of Diocletian’s palace in Split, Croatia, taken by yours truly. How would you even make sense of all these completely-unrelated objects occupying the same space? Well, you couldn’t, except to say: “Sheila clearly loves these things.”

And that’s what production designer George Jenkins pulls off in this brief scene.

We started discussing this on Facebook and we went and looked him up on IMDB and what a career! He started in Art Direction on The Best Years of Our Lives – !! – and then became a production designer: he designed some of the great Paranoid movies of the 70s, including China Syndrome.

God, I love competence. It’s such a huge turn-on.

Posted in Movies | Tagged | 2 Comments

“a crowd, a throng, a mob …” — Ryszard Kapuściński

Posted on June 6, 2020 by sheila

“It is an interesting subject: superfluous people in the service of brute power … these people to whom no one pays attention, whom no one needs, can form into a crowd, a throng, a mob, which has an opinion about everything, has time for everything and would like to participate in something, mean something. All dictatorships take advantage of this idle magma. …It suffices to reach out to these people searching for some singificance in life. Give them the sense that they can be of use, that someone is counting on them for something, that they have been noticed, that they have a purpose. .. The ditatorial powers, meantime, have in him an inexpensive–free, actually–yet zealous and omnipresent agent-tentacle. Sometimes it is difficult even to call this man an agent; he is merely someone who wants to be recognized, who strives to be visible, seeking to remind the authorities of his existence, who remains always eager to render a service.”

This is from Ryszard Kapuściński’s final book, Travels with Herodotus, which I am re-reading right now.

Kapuściński was one of the best and most insightful writers out there about power, and how it operates. I’ve been reading him obsessively for 20, 25 years now, and he didn’t even publish all that many books. But I go back to them again and again, especially when I need clarity, strength, and a Big Picture – same way I go back to Orwell again and again, and Robert Conquest again and again, and Hannah Arendt again and again. Kapuściński is in my Eternal Pantheon. Here’s the post I wrote about him for his birthday, where I get into it in a little bit more detail. I mourned his death in 2007 like I had actually known him.

When he died in 2007, I went to the memorial service for him held for him at the New York Public Library, hosted by Philip Gourevitch and Salman Rushdie (Kapuściński’s lifelong friend). It was a day I will never forget!

Kapuściński’s first memory was watching Russian tanks roll into his small Polish town. His birth of consciousness was simultaneous with tyranny and totalitarian oppression. He eventually devoted his whole life as a journalist traveling from revolution to revolution around the world (this was the 1960s), at one point he was the only foreign correspondent in cold-war Poland, and he always reported back on the side of “the people.” He traveled to Central America, to all of the countries in Africa, all of which were exploding into revolution, tossing off the shackles of colonialism. His first book was about the civil war in Angola. He wrote about Iran. He wrote about the fall of Haile Selassie. The only thing he DIDN’T write about was what was going on in Poland. He couldn’t. And so he – by subterfuge and subtlety – criticized the Communist regime in Poland by criticizing other police states. He never made the connection – in his writing, I mean, but he certainly made the connection in his head. Like Czeslaw Milosz, like Mihail Bulgakov, like Vaclav Havel – he was tormented by tyranny in his own land, not allowed to discuss it, and so had to find wily ways to get around the censorship. His whole career was an act of subterfuge.

His final book was Travels with Herodotus, which is more autobiographical than his other books (although his books always feature an “I” perspective). But he tells of being a young journalist and being obsessed with borders. He had never been outside of Poland. Poland was in lock-down. He dreamed of crossing the border. He finally got his chance, when his news organization sent him to India. And so began his peripatetic life. Then he was sent to China, and it was Mao’s China. He recognized the signs of State-sponsored brainwashing. But he got what he wanted: he crossed the border. Along the way, he reads Herodotus’ Histories, which had electrified him as a boy when he found a copy. I think it was not published in Poland – not allowed – which tells you something: a book from antiquity is considered dangerous to the State? That’s a powerful book.

The section of the book I quote here: He describes walking around in Nasser’s Egypt, what was essentially a police state, the streets filled with unpaid yet vigilant informers. Everywhere he went he knew he was being watched. Notice he speaks in generalities – i.e. “dictatorship”. He has plausible deniability in it and yet he makes his point.

He spent his life pondering how “brute power” does what it does. And this passage clarified a lot of things for me, things which Elias Canetti covered exhaustively in his brilliant once-in-a-century kind of book, about the nature of crowds (Crowds and Power: I have written about it extensively). If you can harness that “magma” of a crowd … and get them to do your dirty work for you … well then you’re almost there, dictator.

And so, on this anniversary of D-Day, I also pay tribute to a man who spent his entire life fighting fascism with one of the most powerful weapons of all: words.

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Interview with Cousin Mike on KTLA

Posted on June 6, 2020 by sheila

It’s a really good interview, which turns into a mini career-retrospective. So proud of him! A week ago or so we did an O’Malley Family Zoom and there are so many people in our family the Zoom screen looked like we were an entire company gathering together for a once-a-year board meeting. It was chaos. Plus I love Mike’s shoutout at the end of the interview to everyone in the press, doing their jobs to report the stories out there, and in many cases getting attacked – literally – for doing so.

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Review: Shirley (2020)

Posted on June 4, 2020 by sheila

Josephine Decker is one of my favorite new-ish filmmakers. I have been watching her very closely. Her latest is her most ambitious: a semi-fictionalized (based on a semi-fictionalized novel) film about Shirley Jackson, who is played by Elizabeth Moss. I love Shirley Jackson so much I was intrigued to see what Decker and Moss et al would do with it. And see Josephine Decker’s other work. I reviewed Shirley for Ebert.

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On This Day, 1989

Posted on June 4, 2020 by sheila

Once we stood in solidarity with that man and all others like him. I still stand in solidarity with him and all others like him, including my fellow citizens.

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If you are looking for ways to help:

Posted on June 3, 2020 by sheila

This Google doc is a great place to start. I’ve chosen a couple of things to donate to. Not everyone can protest. My nephew Cashel was tear-gassed. In Santa Monica. Hippie-dippie New Age Santa Monica. A peaceful protest. People marching in the street. One of our fundamental rights. Rights people fought and died for. I’m not down-the-line Blue, anyone who’s stuck around here knows that, and Lefties get all mad, but I follow my conscience. I am old-school. I believe it’s your right to make up your own mind, even if I disagree with you. (Now, if you want to be a Nazi, then I draw the line. And my lines are getting more and more distinct.) But I make up my own mind too. And we work it out. We compromise, even if we don’t like it, because that’s how the social fabric and democracy works. But this is supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people … ALL the people and that’s what we’re fighting for. Not just SOME people but ALL the people, At least I’m consistent, unlike the small-government people nit-picking the whys/wherefores and whether or not this is the right way to protest when 1. they don’t say a WORD about George Floyd (and the names go on from there) and 2. they can’t see this is NOT a small government, this is the OPPOSITE of small government. Sending troops to suppress protests. Like China. Like Iran in 2009. All these Republicans talking a big game for decades about fighting tyranny, about standing up for democracy. And I was – and am – WITH them on that. But now I can see: Empty words. I mean … Putin? REALLY? Fucking PUTIN? They’re all Zero-Sum-Game. Which means suppressing dissent. They are silent about their own government deciding to send troops to suppress protests. The government declaring war on us, the actual people. And so, at this time, when their country needs them the most, at this time when they could really show the courage of their long-held convictions … crickets from the fight-tyranny-love-liberty-and-democracy people (oh yeah and the Russia-is-not-our-friend people). This article by the great Anne Applebaum – not a liberal by any stretch of the imagination – is superb. It’s all about those who are complicit with this treasonous oligarch/kakistocracy. Who are basically collaborating with what is, in essence, an alien force. She breaks it DOWN, man. She actually walks the walk. She has convictions and therefore she comes to conclusions based on years of research and real-life experience. She understands tyranny. She’s written about Stalin and the Eastern Bloc and totalitarian oppression for decades. She can see what’s going on. She calls it out. She is my role model. I understand what really matters, who we are supposed to be, what our ideals really are. My outrage comes from my deepest patriotic self. Fuck this shit. That doc is well-organized with all kinds of suggestions.

Posted in Miscellania | 10 Comments

June 3rd: Cousin Mike Knows

Posted on June 3, 2020 by sheila

6 months after Dad died, I went to Los Angeles for the very first reading of my play (which at that point was just a single scene). The reading hosted by cousin Mike, with a group of phenomenal actors/writers who also came with their own scripts. We passed out scripts, assigned roles for all of them, read the scripts – and then there was feedback. Nervewracking. These people worked in television, as writers, and this was my first script.

I stayed at Mike’s. I was still in a daze of grief but I was also embroiled in this weird epistolary romance with someone who turned out to be a sociopath – he wrote me 323 emails in three months – I’m not making that number up or exaggerating. I tallied it up after it was all over, because I needed perspective. 323 emails in three months. Picture the level of involvement. Picture how often you would have to email someone to make it to that number in three months. Basically my phone buzzed with texts throughout the day. And it was wild because I had had a crush on him when I was 13, because he was in a TV movie I LOVED back then. Old-timers will know exactly who I am talking about, and it won’t be hard to figure out, but I never named him here, at least not what was going on personally between us. I now know that I had attracted him to me, drawn him to me, was susceptible to him because I was so vulnerable and cracked and grief-struck. He sensed it out. He was also a cheerleader in me writing the script. He bought me the scriptwriting software Final Draft – by surprise. I could not BELIEVE it. And then he GHOSTED ME. I STILL have the Final Draft he bought me – from years ago – every time I use it I send a thanks to that sociopath.

We met for the first time during this trip to Los Angeles. And it was … weird. I eventually realized that my cousin Mike – so successful in the entertainment industry – might have been why the sociopath pursued me so hard. He wanted to get close to someone who could potentially give him a boost. And I was the “way in.” Like … I’m that cynical. But at the time, I didn’t know he was about to ghost me, but I was a mess during that trip for so many reasons (and probably in what I now know is a hypo-manic state, or maybe even the dreaded mixed state. Wild swerves from exhilaration to despair.)

So I was a mess. Missing Dad. My script-reading went so well that at one point one of the other writers – with lengthy writing credits in the professional world – demanded of me, in a tone of awe, “Wait. Who are you? I’ve never heard of you. You’re just VISITING?” HUGE confidence booster. Throughout the reading, sociopath was texting me, so excited to hear how it was going. Two days later, he vanished and I never heard from him again. I kind of wrote about all this here. It was right after I came back.

Anyway. It had only been 6 months since Dad died. The first birthday. Anniversaries are hard. I came into the kitchen on June 3rd and cousin Mike and his wife Lisa and the three kids were all gathered there with looks of expectation on their faces. The kids were so excited because they wanted to see my surprise. A box was on the counter. Mike said, “Just want to give you something …” and he opened the box and there was …

I hadn’t said to Mike, “It’s Dad’s birthday”. Mike just remembered and knew – it being the first anniversary – I would be thinking of Dad.

Mike remembered. And Lisa didn’t make it. They had to order it. It took planning. To say I was “touched” doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt.

So we cut the cake and ate it together and celebrated Dad’s birthday and it was overwhelming and I am overwhelmed just now writing this.

Cousins. They’re the best. They remember. I need to remember when others are in the same situation. And I felt comforted and supported, the floor underneath my feet.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 6 Comments

Do the Right Thing

Posted on June 2, 2020 by sheila

If you care more about the destruction of a pizza parlor than the white cop’s cold-blooded murder of Radio Raheem in the middle of the street in broad daylight, you’re so far beyond empathy – and fellow human feeling – you scare me. What’s it like to value a thing over a human being’s life?

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May 2020 Viewing Diary

Posted on June 1, 2020 by sheila

Homeland, Season 1-6
I finally caught up with Homeland, binge-watching it as I endured my lonely quarantine. Binge-watching has been a comfort. I’m having a hard time absorbing new things. I’ve been re-reading books. Re-watching things. Or, succumbing to the almost numbing drone of a binge-watch. I got so into Homeland, even at its most outrageous, and very much appreciate Claire Danes’ spookily accurate depiction of the mental illness from which I suffer too. Like, wow, it’s a mirror. I wrote about that aspect of it. Unfortunately, without me even realizing it, I became over-invested in the Carrie-Quinn thing, and my hopes/dreams/fantasies about it. I didn’t mean to let this happen! It just happened! I blame quarantine. So when Quinn bit it, I instantly lost interest. I hate it when other people do that – care about their ship more than the actual show – and look at me I just did it too. I’ll get back to Homeland and finish it off!


Help I love him so much I’m a teenage fangirl help

I Know This Much is True (2020; d. Derek Cianfrance)
The HBO adaptation of the Wally Lamb bestseller. Yes, it is a grueling watch, with a lot of misery, but the acting it top-notch. I reviewed for Ebert.

The Big Knife (1955; d. Robert Aldrich)
This was a fun re-watch. I co-hosted one of Criterion Channel’s Movie Clubs – which they do every Sunday on Twitter – and the movie everyone was watching was The Big Knife, one of the most bitter blistering cynical movies about Hollywood ever made. Script by Odets who, yeah, really let his hatred hang out in this one.

Within Our Gates (1920; d. Oscar Micheaux)
I wrote about Within Our Gates, the second film by this pioneering African-American director (if you hear anyone saying Tyler Perry is the first African-American to own/run a studio … just know that they are ERASING Oscar Micheaux. I am only mentioning it because I see it a lot. This is not to diminish Tyler Perry’s accomplishments. But in the rush to say “so and so is the first” or “this is the first time this has happened” – you are erasing the people who were the pioneers in the past.) I wrote about it for this new site NY1920.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2006; d. Marc Rothemund)
Inspired by writing a post about this HERO, I watched the film based on her “final days”, with much of the script coming directly from the transcripts of her interrogation, and her final moments. Julia Jentsch is incredible in the title role. Scholl was a hero who went to her death fighting for other people. She was not under threat. She was a German. She had been in the Hitler Aryan Youth groups. She was not going to be sent to camps. But what was happening was wrong, and she was brave enough to call it out. Because of her example, it is impossible for Germans to say “But we didn’t know what was happening.” Oh stuff it. If a 21-year-old girl knew, then you have no excuse.

The Vast of Night (2020; d. Andrew Patterson)
I cannot say enough good things about this movie. It’s streaming Amazon Prime. Do NOT miss it. Here’s my rave review at Ebert.

Manhunt: The Unabomber (2017; d. Greg Yaitanes)
I remember all of this going down. It was wild. This series was interesting showing the investigation, and the “linguistic” aspect of it, how the warrant was issued mainly because of the linguistic similarities between letters/manifestos/whatever – because there was so little actual proof. Wild. Paul Bellany as Ted Kaczynski.

The Valhalla Murders (2020; d. Thordur Palsson, and others)
Palsson created this series from Iceland about a serial killer on the loose, and a detective who becomes obsessed with solving the case. But there’s corruption everywhere. It’s really good, the acting is excellent, and the SCENERY is MAGNIFICENT. Why have I not gone to Iceland? And now … I’m trapped in my apartment. But it was nice to visit Iceland through this series.

AKA Jane Roe (2020; d. Nick Sweeney)
I reviewed the new documentary about Norma McCorvey, the real Roe of Roe v. Wade, for Ebert.

Twin Peaks, Season 1, 2 (1990-1991; d. David Lynch and others)
I decided to commit to a full re-watch. It’s been such a vile and upsetting couple of weeks – well, in general, the last couple of years have been vile and upsetting – that watching something I know so well, whose rhythms I find soothing and familiar – has been comforting. Brief comfort. But not meaningless. Everything triggers in me a response: the music, the opening credits, the green-color of the credits text … and all the characters. The humor. The fear. The kindness with which people treat each other – right next to the monstrous cruelty they inflict on each other. The relationship between Harry and Dale Cooper is one of the most soothing beautiful portrayals of the possibility of male friendship/male collaboration in existence. Both come to the table with things of value. Neither of them discount the other. There’s no EGO in their shared dynamic. They are OPEN to each other. I find that soothing too. I love this series, even when it goes off the rails in Season 2. I watched this show in its first release. It was appointment television. My boyfriend and I were living in Philadelphia and we cleared our calendars for each new episode. To this day, there’s been nothing like it. I couldn’t believe it was happening AS it was happening. And so there was a weird deja vu in 2017 when Twin Peaks was suddenly BACK, and I felt exactly the same way: I cannot believe this is happening. Is this … real? Season 2 is really strange. James in the Sunset Boulevard–Postman Always Rings Twice situation is unbearable. Nadine going back to high school. Audrey suddenly being like a totally different person than she was in Season 1. Audrey opens up the underbelly of our world, the human trafficking, the pedophilia, the whole sorry sordid context of powerful men like Epstein/Trump/Weinstein … with their rapacious desire for young flesh. Audrey has absorbed that world. She is so isolated, so … strange. Her high school co-horts feel her strangeness. Season 2, once Lynch left, “cleaned” Audrey up, made her socially acceptable, because what she revealed in Season 1 was far too dangerous to let stand. Anyway, I watched the whole thing and I might just start another re-watch. It’s such a deep and textured and layered world, and it gets deeper every time I watch it.

Lance, Part 1 and 2 (2020; d. Marina Zenovich)
The latest in ESPN’s 30 for 30 series … I’m fascinated by Armstrong mainly for his sociopathy. It was so CLEAR in his interview with Oprah. It’s even clearer here. He is clearly still defiant, and the main takeaway I get from his behavior in these interviews is: “Wow. This is an angry angry man.” I don’t think this discounts his work for cancer research. For a long time, I thought it was a “front”. I think it eventually BECAME that (his speech after “coming back” to “win” the Tour de France: “To all the haters out there, sorry you don’t believe in miracles.” You know. He WIELDED his cancer activism as a smoke-screen. But I don’t think it started out that way.) I think, too, it’s very revealing of how he was basically a Big Target for a systemic problem. Everyone was doping. You either doped or you didn’t compete. You couldn’t compete. So … where does cycling stand now? I would have liked to see a little follow-up about what’s being done, what even CAN be done. The doping in cycling makes baseball doping look like kids smoking weed in the school parking lot.

Shirley (2020; d. Josephine Decker)
It’s coming out at the end of this week and I reviewed for Ebert. All I will say is: Elizabeth Moss plays Shirley Jackson, and it’s directed by one of my favorite new young directors. So. Happy to have gotten the assignment.

Fire Walk With Me (1992; d. David Lynch)
By the time Fire Walk With Me came out, my boyfriend and I had broken up (such a gentle term for the wrenchingly insane experience of walking away, which involved me literally – literally – fleeing Los Angeles for Chicago, with just a suitcase of stuff. I left all possessions behind.) Anyway, watching the original series was so much a part of our lives together and so when this came out, I had been living in Chicago for five months – and was already in a show and dating (ahem “dating”) about 3 people. One of whom was Window-Boy, whom old-timers here will recognize. I met him practically as I disembarked from the plane. Not even really an exaggeration. So I was in a totally different place – geographically and emotionally, it felt like Twin Peaks had aired 15 years before, my life was so totally different. I went to see Fire Walk With Me by myself, at the movie theatre on … Diversey, I think? Or right around the corner from where Clark and Diversey and … Broadway? another one of those crooked streets (as my friend Ann Marie called them) converged. There was a big multi-story mall there and there was a movie theatre on a top floor. I saw Titanic there. I saw a lot there. Critics were very negative about Fire Walk With Me. Honestly, I think it’s scary-brilliant and I did then too. Sheryl Lee gives one of THE great film performances, in my opinion. Important film. Very glad Criterion put it out. It deserves to be recognized as a major work, disturbing in its implications, and one of the few films – ever – to deal with incest.

Twin Peaks: The Return (2017; d. David Lynch)
I am not exaggerating when I say that Twin Peaks helped me endure the terrible year of 2017. When it ended I felt helpless. What was I going to DO now? It’s funny: re-watching it makes me realize just how well it’s constructed, how it really does make sense (or at least “sense”), how it’s not really just oblique, or symbolic, or whatever. It’s a mythology and a world and the Black Lodge has its point of view, and so do the doppelgangers, and somehow Philip Jeffries (aka David Bowie) has been turned into a steampunk chimney with a Southern accent and … I accept all of it? It’s bleak but it’s also HILARIOUS. I think Kyle MacLachlan gives one of the best performances I’ve ever seen – playing three roles – but then really FOUR roles, because Dale Cooper is so altered when he returns. There’s way more to say about all of this but it just filled my soul and heart with happiness that this thing EXISTS now. We HAVE it. It was made on Lynch’s terms and we HAVE it now. Plus: this moment? The first time I saw it I literally gasped. The most purely romantic scene in Lynch’s entire filmography.

On the Record (2020; d. Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick)
A documentary about the allegations against Russell Simmons, and the difficult decision to go “on the record” against a powerful man. I reviewed for Ebert.

Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (2020; d. Lisa Bryant)
Based on James Patterson’s book Filthy Rich. Patterson was his neighbor in Palm Beach so he had a front-row seat. I’ve never read a book by James Patterson but I might read this one. This 4-part Netflix documentary doesn’t exactly break new ground and much of the mystery is still intact – who out there is following the money? I don’t believe for a second he was a “financier” and I wish the press would stop calling him that. I think he got his money through blackmail and sex trafficking. There WAS no “financing”. He blackmailed the Victoria’s Secret guy after worming his way in, and just held people’s “bad behavior” over their heads until they paid up. So there’s not much that is new here except there is footage of his deposition which I’ve never seen. Only a small fragment of it is on Youtube and it has always struck me as curious and/or not-surprising that there is so little actual footage of Epstein out and about in the world. He didn’t go to parties, he didn’t make speeches, he didn’t go out in public. So the footage of the deposition was fascinating because you could actually see him in operation. The man was a cobra. I thought the doc was very well done. Brad Edwards is a hero.

Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 26 Comments

Thoughtcrime and 2+2=5: This is how it’s done

Posted on June 1, 2020 by sheila

Symes’ monologue to Winston Smith, in George Orwell’s 1984:

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Orwell’s “2+2=5” these last couple of years – or, I always think about it – but it’s been on my mind pretty much constantly since the Presidential campaign and watching his raving delusional deplorable supporters. Deplorables WAS the right word. It’s been on my mind a lot during the COVID shutdown watching people with AR-15s storm Capitol buildings, demanding their rights not to wear masks. Funny how these are the same people cheering on the demonization of the Black Lives Matter protests, and criticizing the looting and rioting. Can you imagine what would happen if a black man walked up the steps of a Capitol building holding an automatic weapon? Of course you can imagine it. But those big white dudes holding ASSAULT WEAPONS storm the gates and nothing happens to them. People who can’t see this as a disconnect are at this point REFUSING to see it. And so the delusional among us, and their numbers are legion, are now rock-hard in their delusions: Don’t believe in objective reality, like “2+2=4.” Can anyone PROVE “2+2=4”? Person steps forward: “I can.” Delusionals: “Oh you’re just elitist SHEEP from the East Coast who’s telling me 2+2=4. That’s not a person I need to listen to. I’m not a SHEEP.” But, of course … they are. Their brains have been softened by propaganda, for years and years. Orwell showed us, he saw it: This is how it works. Propaganda WORKS. Winston caves in the end. The final line of the book: “He loved Big Brother.”

From 1984:

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?

Limit people’s ability to think by limiting the possibilities of language.

Drum impossible things into their heads over and over and over, over the course of years, things like Pizzagate, things like QAnon, things like missing birth certificates, things like climate change is a hoax, things like “all lives matter,” things like 2+2=5 … and people crack. By the time the State needs to mobilize them, they’re soft and pliable and ready to believe anything. They will go to their deaths declaring that 2+2=5.

The one-two punch of fascism.

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