Here is part one, and here’s part two of my beat-downs. Done with this now. Promise!
I left a couple of things out in my criticisms of the Civil War movie. One: the timing. Two: the paucity of information given to the audience. Plus a more honest account of my amateur script-doctoring.
Let me give you a Boomer rundown of civil war (in lowercase letters) talk as I remember it.
No one talked of such a thing when I was a kid in post-war pre-Vietnam America. Not one word. On the contrary: the America that I grew up in was a solid unit (yes, I know it wasn’t, but that’s how it appeared to me).
It so happens I grew up during the centenary of the Civil War, which reached a bit of a peak in 1965. It was one of those things you just grew up with, like cartoons and athletes on Wheaties boxes. I never knew that there was an actual government campaign called The Civil War Centennial behind it until I read this insightful and funny article. It outlines what a total mess it was and how troubled by the racial tensions beginning to boil over it was. Ant then the article segues oddly into this grudging acknowledgement:
The much-derided commercialism, moreover, generated real popular interest in the Civil War. American children in particular were excited by the war’s raised media profile, the sudden appearance of war-related souvenirs, historian Bruce Catton’s highly accessible books and articles on the conflict, and family visits to the battlefields.
Many adults today recall the centennial fondly. According to William Piston, a prominent military historian, the commemoration was ‘such a wonderful experience. Every newspaper and magazine was flooded with pictures. We traded bubble-gum cards. Every restaurant’s placemat had a Civil War theme and every packet of Dixie Crystal sugar on the table told a Civil War story on the back.
“Many adults today recall the centennial fondly.” Yep—that’s me! I recall the general buzz about the Civil War and wondering what it was all about. Somewhere I read the funny word “A-POMMA-tox” (accent on the second syllable) and I asked my father about it. He laughed, corrected my pronunciation, and told me of its significance.1 That word, AppoMATTox, has never left me. (Nor has A-POMMA-tox.)
The idea that it could ever happen again, well, that didn’t even surface. It wasn’t just unthinkable. It wasn’t thought of.
Then came Vietnam, race riots, and, a lot of stuff, but still—not much Civil War II stuff. None that I’m aware of. Not even during Vietnam, which bitterly divided the country.
When did we start talking openly about a new civil war? Google Trends says that “Civil war” shot up some time in 2016 and—then went back down. Hmm….
It’s lower now than in the early aughts. In other words, “we” aren’t talking about civil war.
Liberals are.
Civil War talk is all from liberals who want us to associate it with Trump so that we vote against him. And that’s this movie’s message.
Second, I criticized the movie for not making certain things clear. That was partly my fault. I missed the first two minutes in which the fictional president informs the public about the details of the military campaign. My bad. But many other things were repeated unnecessarily - why not repeat information about who was fighting whom? And the film confused regular military units with roving insurgents without clearing up who was who and what was what.
The movie was a mess. I have little to apologize for but I’m scrupulously honest, so there it is.
About public relations and the film industry, a follower sent me this:
“I had a friend who was a stringer for genre movie magazines like Starlog…. He knew a lot of publicists & befriended a bevy of b movie actors & actresses who appreciated the articles he wrote about them. As a result, Brian got invited to practically every press screening & I often got to go as a +1. I saw on quite a few occasions famous reviewers sleep through or get up & walk out on screenings. They would then praise or trash the movie having never actually seen it but going off of the press kit & what fellow reviewers had to say. I asked him about doing an expose & he said if he did that he’d never be invited back for a free screening. He passed away over 20 years ago so I guess I can share this story.”
I think since then the schmoozing has only gotten worse.
Finally, about my little script doctoring yesterday, I had so much fun writing it that I kind of fell into a trap. Writers often do this when they’re having fun.
I didn’t have the courage of my convictions. In my effort not to bludgeon and caricature, I became evasive.
Billy Wilder had the opposite of a “yes man.” He had a “no man.” An assistant he bounced ideas off of, who had the guts to tell him, “no, that won’t work.”
I wouldn’t want that—my creative juices would be hindered by negativity, but I would appreciate a “what do you really want to say here?” person. A “be honest” person. A “stop having fun and start staying what you really mean” person.
With that in mind, I’d rewrite this section:
Lee tried to explain to the woman what had been happening but the more she said, the more she realized she sounded insane. Nevertheless, she continued.
“I realize this all sounds nuts, but here’s what’s happening. It started out as local uprisings. No one place. Lots of places. Suddenly it was everywhere. People stopped paying bills. Credit cards. Do you know what happens to a country when everyone stops paying credit card bills? No one signed up for the military—the best people up and quit. You’d be surprised how quickly things in a modern country can fall apart when the middle class stops cooperating. All right, maybe you wouldn’t, but I was.”
As this:
Lee tried to explain to the woman what had been happening. She had to fight every learned response of the class she had joined, the people who had given her comradeship and a place in the world. But something had happened in that crack in time in which this gun-wielding woman turned from threat to possible ally, and the words tumbled out, first with difficulty, then with ease.
“It started with violent pro-Palestinian demonstrations that shut down bridges and public transportation. They harassed individuals, mobbed funerals, and marched through Jewish neighborhoods chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
They demonstrated with megaphones outside synagogues. These were small groups of people, but they had a huge effect beyond their numbers. Eventually they made life in the cities impossible. The police couldn’t handle them. Governors of Republican states tried to hem them in, but in Democratic states they had free reign.
The police were helpless. They became more and more menacing.
In the middle of all this, there were massive demonstrations in Michigan with crowds chanting, “Death to America.”
These groups began coordinating highway attacks by throwing cinder blocks off highway overpasses. They planted bombs on the New York City subway, they mobbed synagogues chanting through megaphones. There were suicide bombings. They didn’t attack airports and harbors—they went after the very way people get around in cities. Finally the authorities took action and arrested them but it was too late. Other groups took their places and most people were appalled and began to organize against them.
Then there was, I don’t know how to put it: A primal scream of reaction. A guy who had been held up on a bridge for hours pulled out a gun and shot some demonstrators. Another guy coming out of a synagogue in Texas did the same. Yeah, a synagogue-goer. The dam burst. There were highway closures and shootings all over the country. Not mainly in red states. You’d be surprised. The worst battles were in blue states, between liberals and anarchists.
Then came Gettysburg. Ironic, no? Gettysburg. A group of anarchists decided to pull down the Virginia memorial in Gettysburg. They warned of it, probably to bring on a reaction, and that’s when the right-wing militias got involved. A The “Sons of Gettysburg” was there to greet them…
That’s what I really wanted to write. It’s a little awkward, but it expresses how I feel.
I would openly blame the left because they’re responsible for our societal breakdown, and they’re the ones yammering endlessly about civil war, so let’s stick it to them.
Remember that I said the white nationalist scene in CW was the only memorable scene, not because it was plausible, but because it was an imaginative construction based on a plausible character. White nationalists are are not going to invade blue states. The Pittsburgh synagogue was a disturbed individual and one mass shooting only proves that Jews are as vulnerable as anyone else, not more, not less. Charlottesville was a one-off. Mostly they stick to their own turf. However, the Virginia memorial is something they’d defend, even if they don’t care about Gettysburg itself (it’s a symbol of national unity).
The alt right is politically homeless and toothless. I’ll prove it. Everything the Global Intifada has said about Jews and Israel was said by the alt-right for years. On that subject, they’re identical in every way. Yet, oddly, the alt-right went nowhere with it. The Global Intifada is going places.
Suddenly, post-October 7, the Global Intifada is a genuine presence, and is affecting our political process. Someone (I think Richard Hanania) said that if you’re alt-right, and you’re smart, just become a leftist. You’ll find lots of comrades and you’ll be socially acceptable. And you won’t have to change a thing, except be more circumspect about race.
Nope, if anyone sinks America, it’ll be these guys.
By producing a generation of vipers like this:
Supported by our elected representatives2
Not this way:
Or this:
Charlottesville and January 6—sacred dates in the liberal liturgical calendar—came and went.
The first was a legal demonstration by a few hundred fringe cases that became a battle because it was poorly handled by law enforcement. Law enforcement was mad to give them a permit to demonstrate in town. They should have put them in a venue outside of town. If they’d done that this would have been a nothingburger. But the neo-Nazis did have a valid permit.
January 6th was an embarrassing, foolish riot by credulous believers, perhaps enabled by the Feds.
Do not expect me to believe that either has deep roots in the soul of America, or staying power.
The Global Intifada is a different case entirely. I do not believe that most students, much less most Americans, support them. But—and here I ask you to understand that I’m using the word “elite” metaphorically—they have a disproportionate weight in elite institutions and so exercise disproportionate power and influence.
They’ve terrified the entire Democratic party, with a few brave exceptions3. The Democratic Party, which replaced the actual Jewish religion for so many ethnic Jews! The Democrats are now the party of the Global Intifada.
If this country falls into civil disorder, they’ll be the ones to drag it there.
I don’t think that’ll happen.
But it would make a good movie. I would love to see this: America, brought to its knees by the Global Intifada. Battles around the Gettysburg monuments. Enraged yeshiva students shooting keffiyeh-clad mobs…. Soccer moms running down intifadettes with their Hummers…
Would you buy a ticket? Asking for a country.
How many 9th grade dropouts could tell you that nowadays? But I digress.
OK, Walsh was 15 there and Warren had no idea what Walsh was going to turn into, but given Warren’s recent remarks I think she’s got some ‘splainin’ to do. After October 7, Warren released one bland condemnatory tweet. Nothing about the recent drone/missile attack on Israel. Aren’t Senators supposed to talk about stuff like that?
Brian Mast and John Fetterman are the only ones I can think of. Charles Schumer, may his name be cursed, is a turncoat.