0918

September 18, 2022

In bed around 10, up distressed with GERD at midnight, not choking, gasping, run-through-a-box-of-Kleenex, trying to sleep on the recliner but enough to keep me awake for some time.  Put another 2 pillows on the bed to build a wedge, which worked pretty well.  Up at 7:45.  Tired, pack pain.b. . . . . . . .

Sunday morning talk shows focussing on the latest high visibility skirmish in our never-ended Civil War: Texas' Dr. Strangelove a/k/a Greg Abbot and Florida's Benito De Santis sending loads of refugees to NYC, Martha's Vineyard, and D.C.'s Naval Observatory home of VP Kamela Harris.  One of the persons sent to Harris' home is one month old.  All of the refugees were apparently misled in boarding the buses and aircraft that took them away from El Paso and San Antonio, TX.  Reminds me of the condemned practice within the military of transferring problem troops or officers, undesirable for one reason or another, to other units; 'let someone else handle it.'  The problem of our tsunami of immigrants from Central and South America wasn't created by NYC or Martha's Vineyard or the city of Washington, D.C. Europe is moving hard right in large measure because of immigration by Blacks and Browns, so is the United States.  

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“America controls the world and will continue to do so until Russia is prosperous and Europe united. The future of mankind depends upon the action of America during the next half-century. If America advances smoothly upon the path of capitalistic imperialism which is indicated by present tendencies and opportunities, there will be a gradually increasing oppression of the rest of the world, a widening gulf between the wealth of the New World and the poverty of the Old, a growing hatred of America among the exploited nations, and at last, under socialist guidance, a world-wide revolt involving repudiation of all debts to America. 

Whether, in such a struggle, England would be on the side of America or on that of Europe and Asia, it is impossible to guess; it would depend upon whether the Americans had thought our friendship or our trade the better worth securing. In either event, the war would probably be so long and so destructive that nothing would be left of European civilization at the end, while America itself would be reduced to poverty and might experience at home the socialism which had been crushed elsewhere. 

Thus a not improbable outcome would be a class war in America, leading to the destruction of industrialism, the death by starvation and disease of about half the population of the globe, and ultimately the return to a simpler manner of life. After reverting for centuries to the life of Red Indians, the Americans might be re-discovered by a second Columbus, hunting wild beasts with bows and arrows on Manhattan Island. Then the process would no doubt begin anew, reaching a similar futile culmination and a similar tragic collapse.”

— Bertrand Russell, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1923), Part I, Ch. VII: Socialism in Advanced Countries, p. 219 

Wow - Russell was even more pessimistic than I am!  Not sure exactly what he meant by 'industrialism' but it seems clear it's directly related to capitalism, imperialism, and globalization.  I'm thinking we would probably go through some kind of color war (brown and black v. white) before we would get to a class war.  Who knows?

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I glazed my egg painting and added text a la Rene Magritte and current Catholic and right-wing abortion doctrine.

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I watched Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 film starring Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo.  It is commonly rated as a great film in cinema history and this was the second time I have watched it.  I didn't get it the first time, and I didn't get it the second.  Belmondo's character could hardly be less relatable unless it is by Seberg's.  Each appears to be sociopathic or near it.  He kills and steals without a second thought.  She turns him in to the police with no regret, no compunction.  Visually, Belmondo is rarely seen without a cigarette, looking like a 'blunt,' hanging out of his mouth.  A viewer wonders how he can breathe with all the smoke engulfing his face.  The dialogue, at least the English subtitles used on the Criterion Edition, seems at times ludicrous.  Maybe it was intended to be this way to show Belmondo's character's 'make believe' persona as a Humphrey Bogart gangster-type tough guy, but the effect is to make it hard for this viewer to get much out of the movie.  Jean-Luc Godard went on to be hailed as an auteur and founder of the French New Wave.  He died this month by assisted suicide at age 91. Jean-Paul Belmondo became an international star after Breathless, spent most of the rest of his life acting in films, and died last year at age 88.   Jean Seberg, a supporter of liberal 'left wing' causes,  was surveilled, hounded, and maligned by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover and committed suicide in 1979, at age 40.

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