Category Archives: Nihilism

British philosopher

Simon Critchley

Main interests

Simon Critchley (born 27 February 1960) is an English philosopher and the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, USA.[2]

Challenging the ancient tradition that philosophy begins in wonder, Critchley argues that philosophy begins in disappointment.[3] Two particular forms of disappointment inform Critchley's work: religious and political disappointment. While religious disappointment arises from a lack of faith and generates the problem of what is the meaning of life in the face of nihilism, political disappointment comes from the violent world we live in and raises the question of justice in a violently unjust world.[4][5] In addition, to these two regions of research, Critchley's recent works have engaged in more experimental forms of writing on Shakespeare, David Bowie, suicide, Greek tragedy and association football.

Simon Critchley was born on 27 February 1960, in Letchworth Garden City, England, to a working-class family originally from Liverpool.[6] He is a fan of Liverpool Football Club and has said that, it may be the governing passion of my life. My only religious commitment is to Liverpool Football Club.[7][8] In grammar school, he studied history, sciences, languages (French and Russian) and English literature.[9] During this time, he developed a lifelong interest in ancient history.[10] After intentionally failing his school exams, Critchley worked a number of odd jobs, including in a pharmaceutical factory in which he sustained a severe injury to his left hand.[11] During this time, he was a participant in the emerging Punk scene in England, playing in numerous bands that all failed. While the music failed, there was a silver lining to the experience: a newfound love for Chinese food, inspired by Warren Zevon. [12][13]

After studying for remedial 'O' and 'A' level exams at a community college while doing other odd jobs, Critchley went to university aged 22. He went to the University of Essex to study literature, but switched to philosophy.[14] Amongst his teachers were Jay Bernstein, Robert Bernasconi, Ludmilla Jordanova, Onora ONeill, Frank Cioffi, Mike Weston, Roger Moss, and Gabriel Pearson.[15] He also briefly participated in the Communist Students' Society (where he first read Althusser, Foucault, and Derrida) as well as the Poetry Society.[16] After graduating with First Class Honours and winning the Kanani Prize in Philosophy in 1985, Critchley went to the University of Nice, where he wrote his M.Phil. on overcoming metaphysics in Heidegger and Carnap with Dominique Janicaud. His other teachers were Clement Rosset and Andr Tosel.[17] In 1987, Critchley returned to the University of Essex to write his PhD, completed in 1988, which was to become the basis for The Ethics of Deconstruction.[18]

Critchley became a university fellow at University College Cardiff in 1988.[19] In 1989, he returned to the University of Essex as lecturer and where he would become reader in 1995 and full professor in 1999. During this time he serviced first as deputy director (199096) and then as director (19972003) of the Centre for Theoretical Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences. From 1998 to 2004, he was Directeur de Programme, College International de Philosophie. He has held visiting appointments at Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitt (199798, 2001), University of Nijmegen (1997), University of Sydney (2000), University of Notre Dame (2002), Cardozo Law School (2005), University of Oslo (2006) and University of Texas (2010). From 2009 to 2015, he ran a summer school at University of Tilburg. He is also a professor of philosophy at the European Graduate School. Since 2004, Critchley has been professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, at which he became the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy in 2011.[20] Since 2015, he has served on the board of the Onassis Foundation.[21] In 2021, Critchley was named by Academic Influence as one of the top 25 most influential philosophers of today.[22] He discusses his biography in a recent episode of Time Sensitive.[23]

The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (1st ed., Blackwell, 1992; 2nd ed., Edinburgh University Press 1999; 3rd ed., EUP 2014)

Since its original publication in 1992, The Ethics of Deconstruction has been an acclaimed work. Against the received understanding of Derrida as either a metaphysician with his own infrastructure or as a value-free nihilist, Critchley argues that central to Derrida's thinking is a conception of ethical experience. Specifically, this conception of ethical experience must be understood in Levinasian terms in which the other calls into question one's ego, self-consciousness, and ordinary comprehension. Critchley argues that this Levinasian conception of ethical experience informs Derrida's deconstruction and develops the idea of cltural reading.[24]

Very Little ... Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature (Routledge, 1997/2nd expanded ed., Routledge 2004)

Critchley's second monograph begins from the problem of religious disappointment, which generates the question of the meaning of life. Through a long preamble on nihilism, Critchley rejects the view that an affirmation of finitude can redeem the meaning of life. Instead, he argues that the ultimate mark of human finitude is that we cannot find meaning for the finite. Rather, for Critchley, an adequate response to nihilism consists in seeing meaninglessness as a task or achievement. Critchley then develops this thesis through discussions of Blanchot, Levinas, Cavell, German Romanticism, Adorno, Derrida, Beckett, and Wallace Stevens.[25]

Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity: Essays on Derrida, Levinas, & Contemporary French Thought (Verso, 1999)

This collection brings together a number of previously published essays. Amongst these essays, Critchley discusses a variety of historical and contemporary figures (e.g., Hegel, Heidegger, Jean Genet, Derrida, Levinas, Richard Rorty, Laclau, Lacan, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Blanchot) as well as topics (e.g., politics, subjectivity, race (human categorization) in the Western philosophical canon, psychoanalysis, comedy, friendship, and others).[26]

Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2001)

Critchley's Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction sets out to establish three claims: (1) to demonstrate why Continental philosophy is a contested concept by looking at the history and meaning of the term as well as its relationship to analytic or Anglo-American philosophy; (2) to show how it can be understood as a distinct set of philosophical traditions that cover a range of problems; and (3) to argue that a more promising future for philosophy is to talk about philosophy as such without such professional squabbles between Continental and Anglo-American philosophy.[27] Critchley defends these claims through discussions of such figures as Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Carnap, and others as well as such topics as the relationship between knowledge and wisdom, literature, science, politics, and nihilism.

On Humour (Routledge, 2002)

In On Humour, Critchley explores the central yet peculiar role that humour, jokes, laughter, and smiling play in human life. Specifically, he defends the two-fold claim that humour both (1) engages our shared practices and mutual attunement with one another, while also (2) challenging those very social practices and sensibilities, showing how they might be transformed and become otherwise than they presently are.[28]

Things Merely Are: Philosophy in the poetry of Wallace Stevens (Routledge, 2005)

In Things Merely Are, Critchley argues for two claims: (1) that Wallace Stevens's poetry affords significant and illuminating philosophical insights and (2) that the best way to express such insights is poetically. Specifically, Critchley argues that Stevens's poetry offers readers a novel take on the relationship between mind, language and material things, which overcomes modern epistemology.[29] The book also offers an extended engagement with the cinema of Terrence Malick.[30]

Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance (Verso, 2007)

Addressing the topic of political disappointment, Critchley argues for a conception of ethical experience and subjectivity. Challenging the modern Kantian association of ethics and autonomy, Critchley argues for a hetero-affective conception of ethical experience in which the subject is split between herself and a moral demand, which she experiences and yet cannot entirely fulfill.[31] From this picture, Critchley develops an account of the experience of conscience before reflecting on the relationship between one's conscience and political action.[32] The book argues for an ethical informed neo-anarchism.[33]

The Book of Dead Philosophers (Granta Books, 2008 and Vintage, 2009)

The Book of Dead Philosophers begins from the assumption that contemporary human life is not defined by a fear of death, but a terror of annihilation and what awaits us after death. Rejecting any escape from our death in either mindless accumulation of wealth or a metaphysical sanctuary, Critchley follows Cicero in exploring the view that to philosophize is to learn how to die.[34] To that end, Critchley discusses the deaths (and lives) of philosophers ranging from Thales and Plato to Confucius and Avicenna (Ibn Sina), from Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and Hegel to Heidegger and Frantz Fanon.

On Heidegger's Being and Time (Routledge, 2008)

On Heidegger's Being and Time presents two ways of approaching Heidegger's text. Reiner Schrmanns contribution reads Heidegger backward from the later work to the earlier Being and Time. Alternatively, Critchley reads Heidegger forward through Heidegger's inheritance of phenomenology.[35] In his contribution, Critchley goes on to question the Heidegger's conception of inauthentic/authentic.[36]

How to Stop Living and Start Worrying: Conversations with Carl Cederstrm (Polity, 2010)

How to Stop Living and Start Worrying consists of a series of interviews between Critchley and Carl Cederstrm based on a Swedish TV series. Here Critchley discusses his life and work through the themes of life, philosophy, death, love, humour, and authenticity.

Impossible Objects (Polity, 2012)

Impossible Objects is a series of interviews between Critchley conducted between 2000 and 2011. Critchley discusses his own work and development through a variety of topics (e.g., deconstruction, nihilism, politics, the literary, punk, tragedy, and more).

The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology (Verso, 2012)

In The Faith of the Faithless, Critchley rethinks faith as a political concept without succumbing to the temptations of the atheistic dismissal of faith or the theistic embrace of faith.[37] To that end, Critchley discusses Rousseau, Badiou, St. Paul, Heidegger, and others. He also defends his view of nonviolence from Zizeks criticism.[38]

Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (Pantheon, 2013)

Co-authored with Jamieson Webster, Stay, Illusion! draws on various readings of Hamlet (e.g., Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Hegel, Freud, Lacan, and Nietzsche) with the aim of using this collection of interpretations to offer a close and compelling reading of Hamlet.[39]

The Problem with Levinas (Oxford University Press, 2015)

Through four lectures, Critchley reflects on five questions concerning Levinas: (1) what method might we follow in reading Levinas?; (2) what is Levinas fundamental problem?; (3) what is the shape of that problem in his early writings?; (4) what is Levinas answer to that problem?; and (5) is Levinas answer the best available answer? The book attempts to give a heterodox reading of Levinas's work and a new understanding of its importance.[40]

ABC Of Impossibility (Univocal, 2015)

ABC of Impossibility consists of fragments from an allegedly abandoned work, which largely date from 2004 to 2006. The initial project was to develop a theory of impossible objects that would take the form of alphabetized entries. These entries would deal with various phenomena, concepts, qualities, places, sensations, persons and moods.[41]

Bowie (OR Books, 2014; Expanded Edition Serpents Tail, 2016)

In Bowie, Critchley discusses the influence David Bowies music has had on him throughout his life as well as reflects on the philosophical depth of Bowie's work. It is very much a fan's book that attempts to confer the appropriate aesthetic dignity on Bowie's work through a careful analysis of his lyrics and the exploration of themes of inauthenticity, isolation, truth and the longing for love.

Memory Theatre (Fitzcarraldo, 2014)

Memory Theatre is a semi-fictional autobiographical story about the art of memory inspired by the work of Frances Yates and Adolfo Bioy Casares, but at its core is a concern with memory in relation to Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit. It is concerned with the building of a memory theatre, the delusive attempt to control one's relation to mortality and the progressive dismantling of the standard image of the philosopher.

Notes on Suicide (Fitzcarraldo, 2015)

Against the prevailing tendency to either moralize against suicide or glorified self-murder, Critchley defends suicide as a phenomenon that should be thought about seriously and soberly. To that end, Critchley examines numerous suicides and reflects on the increase of suicide in our society.

What We Think When We Think About Football (Profile Books/Penguin, 2017)

Critchley argues that football occupies a particular place in society in that it at once originates from sociality and solidarity (e.g., that many teams formed from local churches or various community groups; the relation between a team and fans), while also being completely consumed by money, capital, and the dissolution and alienation of social life. It is an attempt to write a poetics of football.[42]

Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us (Pantheon/Profile Books, 2019)

In Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us, Critchley argues that tragedy articulates a philosophical orientation that challenges the traditional authority of philosophy by giving voice to what is contradictory, constricting, and limiting about human beings. In developing tragedy's philosophy, he turns to the ancient sophist Gorgias and the sophistical practice of antilogia, which examines both sides of an issue so as to make the weaker argument appear stronger. In addition to Gorgias, Critchley discusses Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, and others.[43]

Apply-degger (Onasis Foundation, 2020)

Apply-degger is a long-form, deep dive into the most important philosophical book of the last 100 years. Each episode of this podcast series will present one of the key concepts in Heidegger's philosophy. Taken together, the episodes will lay out the entirety of Heidegger project for people who are curious, serious and interested, but who simply don't have the time to sit down and read the 437 densely-written pages of the book. It is our hope that this series will show how Heidegger's thinking might be applied to one's life in ways which are illuminating, elevating and beneficial. Apply-degger is available for free as an audiobook on the Onasis Youtube channel as well as iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify.

Bald: 35 Philosophical Short Cuts (Yale University Press, 2021)

This volume brings together thirty-five essays, originally published in The New York Times, on a wide range of topics, from the dimensions of Plato's academy and the mysteries of Eleusis to Philip K. Dick, Mormonism, money, and the joy and pain of Liverpool Football Club fans.[44]

The Stone: Since 2010, Critchley has moderated The Stone in The New York Times, writing many essays himself. Contributions have included such thinkers as Linda Martn Alcoff, Seyla Benhabib, Gary Gutting, Philip Kitcher, Chris Lebron, Todd May, Jason Stanley, Peter Singer, and many others. The forum has been extremely popular and generated two collections of essays, co-edited by Critchley and Peter Catapano: The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015), The Stone Reader: Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments (W.W. Norton & Co., 2017), and Question Everything: A Stone Reader (W.W. Norton & Co., 2022).

International Necronautical Society (INS): Together with writer Tom McCarthy, Critchley is a founding member of the INS and serves as Head Philosopher. In its founding manifesto (1999), the First Committee of the INS declared (1) that death is a space, which INS intends to explore and inhabit; (2) that there is no beauty without death; (3) that the task of INS is to bring death out into the world; and (4) that the chief aim is to construct a means of conveying us into death. The founding manifesto as well as a number of other documents can be found in The Mattering of Matter: Documents from the Archive of the International Necronautical Society (2013).[45]

Critchley and Simmons: Critchley is a part of the band Critchley and Simmons with John Simmons. They have released four albums: Humiliation (2004); The Majesty of the Absurd (2014); Ponders End (2017); and Moderate or Good, Occasionally Poor (2017). Their music is available on Spotify, iTunes, and SoundCloud.[46]

Guardian Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time: In 2009, Critchley wrote a series of articles for The Guardian.

Debate with Slavoj Zizek: Critchley engaged in a public debate with Zizek. In response to Infinitely Demanding (2007), Zizek's review (London Review of Books, 2007) challenged Critchley's argument that a politics of resistance should not reproduce the violent sovereignty such a politics opposes. Critchley responded to Zizek's objection in Naked Punch and his own The Faith of the Faithless (2012).

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Simon Critchley - Wikipedia

'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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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