Air: A Review - Who Knew That Shameless Corporate Ass-Kissing Could Be So Entertaining?

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!****

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A rare treat of a well-made movie for grown-ups. Not life changing but undeniably entertaining.

Air, the new movie about Nike’s push to sign Michael Jordan to an endorsement deal in 1984, is, to quote Kris Kristofferson, “partly truth, partly fiction, a walking contradiction”.

The film, which is directed by Ben Affleck and stars Affleck as well as his old buddy Matt Damon, is the rarest of rare things in our current culture in that it’s a movie featuring movie stars, made for grown-ups in which everyone involved is exceedingly competent at what they do.

Ben Affleck’s direction, the cast’s performances, first-time screenwriter Alex Convery’s script and Robert Richardson’s cinematography are all, at a bare minimum, competent and often much more than that. For this reason alone, the film is undeniably entertaining.

It’s a testament to Damon and Affleck’s star power, and the professionalism and skill of everyone involved, that even though viewers know how the story ends, Air is still a compelling and captivating story that at times is remarkably exhilarating and even moving.

Matt Damon is terrific as Sonny Vaccaro, the guy leading the charge to get Michael Jordan to sign up with the then basement-dwelling, third ranked basketball sneaker company, Nike.

Damon has always been a top-notch movie star actor, and he brings all his skill to the fore as the lovable loser Vaccaro. Damon is a pleasant and oddly charming screen presence who effortlessly carries this story from start to finish.

Viola Davis, who plays Michael Jordan’s mom Deloris, is outstanding in her supporting role. With minimal screen time Davis imbues Deloris with a silent authority that dominates the drama. Every time she is on-screen, she is subtly the center of the universe. It would be difficult to imagine a scenario where Davis doesn’t get nominated for an Oscar for this performance.

Ben Affleck is very good too as Phil Knight, the very strange founder of Nike. Affleck is fantastic at being unintentionally funny and if Phil Knight is anything it is unintentionally funny.

Affleck’s direction is solid as well. His decision to not make Michael Jordan a major character in the film, and to not show Jordan’s face, were pretty brilliant as the movie could have easily spun out of control and turned into a rather cheap, made-for-tv type of project with a Jordan imitator joining the festivities.

All that said, there are some things about Air that leave a decidedly bad taste in my mouth.

The first of which is that this movie is undeniably a piece of corporate propaganda and hagiography. This isn’t just a film about American capitalism and corporatocracy, it is a celebration of American capitalism and corporatocracy.

The movie bends the truth to some extraordinary degrees in order to pretend it isn’t celebrating the rather deplorable parts of American capitalism and corporatism symbolized by Nike, and to act like it’s actually a tale about the working man fighting against corporate power.

Jordan is made out to be a pioneer who broke the mold regarding shoe contracts by demanding profit sharing and his mother Deloris makes the case that “young black boys will pay a lot for this sneaker and that money should go to my son!” She also says that workers like Vaccaro, and black athletes endorsing sneakers, are exploited by companies like Nike, and Converse and Adidas and they deserve more of the profits.

This is all well and good and is a nice bit of drama for the film, but the fact that Nike pays slave wages to third world workers in order to make their sneakers goes unsaid and unacknowledged. Also unsaid and unacknowledged is the fact that Nike sell their status symbol shoes at exorbitant prices that are so high that in the 80’s and 90’s they often caused crime and violence by young black men against other young black men in order to get them.

In addition, it is also a bit unnerving that Sonny Vaccaro, who is widely considered by many in the know to be one of the sleaziest people from the amateur basketball scene back in the 70’s and 80’s, is made out to be the good-hearted, kind, lovable hero of the movie.

Vaccaro was a shark who was deeply involved in all sorts of shady shit back in the day, and to see him in the film and in the film’s prologue, portrayed as the champion of the good, the noble and the right is a bit much.

There’s an interesting monologue in the film about the Bruce Springsteen song “Born in the USA”, which was enormously popular in 1984. The song, which was co-opted by Reagan as a flag-waving theme song, is actually a lament about the brutal decline of America, but because its morose lyrics are accompanied by the energized music of an uber-patriotic anthem, the song’s meaning gets lost and its artistic power usurped.

It could be that Affleck uses the “Born in the USA” monologue to let astute viewers know that he is trying to hide his critique of the insidious nature of American capitalism and corporatocracy in plain sight in this hagiography. I’d like to think so…but Air feels too weak in its criticisms and too vociferous in its praise of Nike (and all that it represents) to pass that test, and thus feels like just the anthem part of “Born in the USA” without the existential lament at its core.  

The reality is that Air is really a movie about marketing that is itself a piece of marketing. The film, with its fantastic soundtrack of 80’s music, looks and feels like a two-hour commercial for Nike. In this way it is almost an extension of The Last Dance, the ten-hour Michael Jordan docu-series that was so gloriously received by everyone but me back in 2020. That docu-series was shameless legend cultivation and brand buttressing of Michael Jordan and was produced by…you guessed it…Michael Jordan. But our culture is so enamored and addicted to narcissistic self-promotion and propaganda, that no one cared they were being fed a piece of self-serving bullshit.

Speaking of shameless marketing and self-promotion, it is strange that Damon and Affleck are out pounding the pavement selling this movie and pretending this is their first reunion film since their smash hit Good Will Hunting back in 1997, for which they won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

Damon and Affleck’s last actual on-screen and writing credit reunion was Ridley Scott’s underrated 2021 film The Last Duel. The Last Duel was overlooked by audiences and snickered at by critics, but I thought it was very good, so to see Damon and Affleck pretend like it doesn’t exist is somewhat bizarre…but makes sense in terms of marketing as the Damon-Affleck reunion card is being played again. As they say, everything old is new again…apparently even on-screen reunions that already happened two-years ago.  

Also a bit odd is the fact that this movie is the first from Damon and Affleck’s production company Artists Equity, which is all about paying workers above and below the line fairly and with equity in the film.

That the narrative of Air somewhat reflects the business model of Artists Equity is clever, as is Affleck talking up how he looked out for first time screenwriter Convery and promised him he’d get full credit despite some rewrites.

But that “looking out for the working man” narrative feels like window dressing when the movie it is placed in is an embarrassing ass-kissing of sweatshop masters Nike made by the deplorable demons at Amazon. I mean…yikes…you’d be hard pressed to find two companies as destructive to working people and our culture as Nike and Amazon. This insidious approach is somewhat reminiscent of the Best Picture winner Nomadland, which told a tale of the working poor on the fringes of society yet disgustingly managed to portray Amazon - which is well-known for its abuse of workers and labor practices, as a friend to the working man and wonderful worker’s paradise.

And yet, despite the rather repulsive pro-corporation politics and economics on display in the movie, Air is an irresistibly entertaining and unrelentingly enjoyable movie, which is a testament to Affleck and Damon’s talent and star power.

In conclusion, Air is in rarified air in that it’s a movie for grown-ups that features movie stars confidently filling up the big screen. I highly recommend it and can guarantee that while it won’t change your life, it will definitely leave you satisfied.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Triangle of Sadness: A Review - Savage and Insightful Social Satire

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A fantastic, original and scathing takedown of modern society.

Triangle of Sadness, written and directed by Ruben Ostlund, is one of the best films of last year and one of the more misunderstood films in recent history.

The movie, which is a black comedy/social satire, was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards, but was tepidly received by critics and audiences alike as evidenced by its 71% critical score and 68% audience score at Rotten Tomatoes.

The film premiered in the U.S. in October and generated almost no buzz. In my circles in Hollywood, I heard no one talk about it at all, be it positively or negatively. It seemed the movie, which is in the English language but is produced by a cavalcade of foreign production companies from England, France, Germany, Sweden and Denmark among many others, would just come and go and be forgotten.

But then the film was nominated for a bunch of Oscars, which is why I figured I should watch it in order to be up to date prior to the Academy Awards. Thankfully the film is now streaming on Hulu which makes it more accessible.

I watched the film knowing nothing about it prior and came away from my screening believing it to be unquestionably one of the very best of the year, and certainly the most original.

The film is broken into three parts. The first is titled “Carl and Yaya” and it introduces us to models/social media influencers Carl and Yaya, two beautiful people navigating the business of marketing their bodies as well as their intimate relationship.

This opening section is absolutely mesmerizing and could be a stand-alone movie all its own. Carl, played by Harris Dickinson, and Yaya, played by Charlbi Dean, are so compelling and captivating that you are instantaneously drawn into their very topical, painfully politically correct, gender-sensitive, Gen Z drama.

Swedish writer/director Ostlund masterfully shoots this opening section with a stunning level of both subtlety and craftsmanship. There’s one shot of a conversation in a car that is as good as anything seen in a movie in years.

The second section of the film, titled “The Yacht”, chronicles Carl and Yaya and a bunch of other incredibly wealthy people as they vacation on a giant yacht. This section sets up the power dynamics between the unconscionably rich and the working people in the service industry at their beck and call.

This part of the movie is, to put it mildly, batshit crazy, as it devolves into one of the more absurd and extreme bits of physical comedy you’ll ever witness. That said, it is also incredibly insightful in terms of presenting and then propelling the film’s philosophical narrative.

The third section, titled “The Island”, turns the film on its head (again I’m being vague to avoid spoilers) as it lays bare the insidious hunger for power that lies at the heart of humanity.

After watching the film, I did something I rarely, if ever, do…I went and read some reviews of it. The reviews, which were all mostly dismissive, all said the same thing…that the film was nothing more than a rather trite criticism of American capitalism. The fact that politically-correct, limousine liberals writing for various high falutin, establishment, corporate media entities like the New York Times and such, would disapprove of a scathing Euro takedown of American capitalism should come as no surprise. But what did surprise me was that I didn’t see the film as a trite criticism of capitalism.

Yes, the film does criticize capitalism, but it also, and with maybe even more ferocity and fervor, criticizes the criticisms of capitalism. For example, at one point in the film there is a drunken debate between a wealthy capitalist and the socialist captain of the yacht. The two of them regurgitate famous quotes at one another to make their argument because neither is able to think for themselves or have an original thought. The wealthy capitalist is a repugnant pig and former citizen of the Soviet Union, and the socialist sea captain is a lazy drunkard who literally has been unable to leave his cabin to perform his duties due to his inebriation.

That the capitalist admits he sells “shit” and the socialist sea captain makes money being too drunk to pilot a giant yacht for the rich, sums up perfectly the scathing social satire of Triangle of Sadness. That critics are so venal, vapid and vacuous that they are unable to see past the obvious façade of “anti-capitalism” in this film in order to see the much deeper and more important point of it all is both damning and alarming. Or maybe critics actually did see the film’s deeper meaning and were angry that their woke worldview was so easily and entertainingly disemboweled. Who knows?

Regardless of misguided critic’s opinions, Triangle of Sadness is one of those glorious films that rattles around your brain for days after seeing it. The compromises the characters make in order to survive and/or thrive and to above all else deceive themselves, is an extraordinary thing to watch.

Ruben Ostlund’s direction is simply stunning. The opening section features numerous scenarios that are so exquisitely conjured and executed as to be amazing. For example, the modeling audition that Carl attends is both hysterically funny and unconscionably depressing for its accuracy and incisiveness.

In the second section, Ostlund does something so subtle and so clever that I’ve been ruminating on it for weeks now. During a chaotic sequence, which I won’t reveal to avoid spoilers, Ostlund introduces, almost out of nowhere, the sound of a baby crying. This baby and its parents are not featured characters and are little more than extras in the movie at best, but the sound of the baby crying elicits in the viewer a deep psychological and emotional reaction that is totally instinctual. This crying baby amidst the comedy chaos is like a vicious kick in the gut, and it leaves you shaken even if you aren’t sure why.

The third section is the laying bare of human nature and power dynamics and an escalation of the film’s critique of capitalism and criticisms of capitalism. That stereotypes regarding gender politics and economics are eviscerated in this section only makes it all the more delicious.

The cast of Triangle of Sadness all do exemplary work. Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean as Carl and Yaya are utterly fantastic. Dickinson in particular is able to walk a perilous tightrope to perfection. Dean, who in the most tragic of circumstances actually died last August before the film was released, is a magnetic screen presence and an absolute natural.

Other actors, like Zlatko Buric as the wealthy businessman, and Woody Harrelson as the drunken sea captain, and Dolly De Leon as the mysterious Abigail, all do solid work in their roles.

The bottom-line regarding Triangle of Sadness is that it takes no prisoners in its attack on the political, social and economic spectrum. Whether socialist or capitalist, man or woman, liberal or conservative, you’ll find yourselves in the crosshairs of this movie, and you’ll have no viable counter-argument as the film is aggressively astute and allergic to sentimentality.

If you can “stomach” it, I highly recommend Triangle of Sadness, as it is extremely well-made and extraordinarily insightful. This is the kind of movie that cinema desperately needs right now, and it was a joy to discover it.

©2023

2020 Election: The Horror Show Meets the Decadent Death Spiral

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 27 seconds

Here are some random dispatches from the shitshow that is 2020 and the turd sandwich that is the election…

SPOOKY SEASON

Halloween, my favorite holiday, has sadly come and gone with barely a whimper due to coronavirus restrictions here in the City of Angels, where Mayor Nepotism furiously banned trick or treating but shrugs when it comes to “protesting”…i.e. rioting and looting. Unfortunately, spooky season isn’t in the rear view mirror just yet though because the real horror show is on Tuesday - Election Day.

THE MONSTER MASH

This election is between two creatures. First there is Biden - Frankenstein’s monster, built in a lab in Washington over the course of a dismal forty-plus year career. Like Frankenstein’s monster, Biden hides in a basement, can’t really speak, has a malfunctioning brain and touches little girls inappropriately. Unlike Frankenstein’s monster, Biden won’t turn on his creator - Washington and Wall St., because he is as corrupt as the day is long.

I DON’T DRINK WHINE

The other creature is Trump, who is a vampire of the highest degree. Like a vampire, Trump is all about satiating his immediate desires and impulses. Like Dracula, Trump acts like low-class royalty with a crumbling real-estate empire (Carfax Abbey was a shithole - and so was Dracula’s dilapidated Castle!) and has an army of Renfieldian sycophantic minions who slavishly do his bidding. And also like Dracula, he feeds on humans…except in Trump’s case it is on human attention. Trump gorges himself on attention and has transformed the public, friend and foe alike, into slaves who react to his every act or utterance - no matter how absurd, thus injecting attention - his lifeblood, into his veins.

What is so striking to me about our current time is how thoroughly the populace has been inducted into this Vampyric Cult of Trump….and it isn’t his supporters I am talking about. The anti-Trump people…be they butt-hurt establishment Republicans or absolutely anyone on the left, are the ones who are totally under the sway of the monster they love to loathe.

It is utterly astonishing how obsessed Trump’s foes are with him. Every liberal and moderate Republican I know hates him with the fury of a thousand suns…but they never stop thinking or talking about him. Trump dominates American consciousness like no other person, president or otherwise, before him.

I know scores of liberals who are literally physically repulsed by the sight and sound of Trump but still religiously and masochistically watch every one of his speeches, debates or rallies. It is the strangest sort of masturbatorial self-harming imaginable. And accompanying this Trump addiction is TDS - Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is the most fervent pandemic ravaging the country today. Trump Derangement Syndrome has real world consequences as it turns once rational people into emotionally unstable and logic impaired lunatics. If I had a nickle for every time Trump made some statement that liberal friends of mine actually agreed with, but because Trump said it they actually change their minds to embrace the polar opposite belief, I’d be a millionaire.

UNDEAD VS RE-ANIMATED

I have stayed as far away from this election and its media coverage as I could. I have not watched a single second of any of the conventions, debates, speeches or rallies. I have not watched a second of cable news, or any other news, since coronavirus broke in the Spring. I have basically stopped reading op-eds in all of the major newspapers I peruse everyday because they are so dreadfully predictable.

The only thing I have watched is political entertainment (although all politics is entertainment, but that is a discussion for another day) like the abysmal Saturday Night Live, Bill Maher and John Oliver - and I’ve only done that because I have to for my work.

Having been in this election coverage quarantine has given me a unique perspective that is devoid of Trump triggering and fueled not by animosity but genuine curiosity. This curiosity has led me to the most basic of questions…can the nefarious Nosferatu of Trump be destroyed by the Biden Frankenstein’s monster? In other words, can the undead be defeated by the re-animated?

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE JOKER

As long time readers know, I have a wave theory…the Isaiah-McCaffrey Wave Theory (IMWT) that uses social, cultural, economic and historical data points to measure trends in order to predict public behavior.

The IMWT accurately predicted the 2016 election. In trying to use it to predict the 2020 Democratic nomination, it was wrong - or more accurately…I was wrong in interpreting the timeline. The data in 2019 and early in 2020 clearly indicated two things…that there would be tremendous civil unrest and upheaval ahead, and that an outsider candidate would be successful in 2020.

The unrest certainly happened…the outsider candidate did not…at least not in the Democratic primary.

As for the unrest….in my October 7, 2019 review of Joker, I wrote, “Joker is unnerving to mainstream media critics because it shines the spotlight on the disaffected and dissatisfied in America, who are legion, growing in numbers and getting angrier by the hour. As I have witnessed in my own life, the rage, resentment and violent mental instability among the populace in America is like a hurricane out in the Atlantic, gaining more power and force as every day passes, and inevitably heading right toward landfall and a collision with highly populated urban centers that will inevitably result in a conflagration of epic proportions.”

I ended that review by writing “Joker is a mirror, and it reflects the degeneracy, depravity and sheer madness that is engulfing America. Joker is an extremely dark film, but that is because America is an extremely dark place at the moment.”

In the light of what has happened thus far in 2020, those observations from the Fall of 2019 seem prescient.

According to the IMWT, Joker was the most important film of 2019, as it was the only film to be in the top ten in domestic box office and nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Joker was despised by establishment critics, but that was because they hated the uncomfortable truth about what was brewing just beneath the surface of America.

Now of course, being victims of their own sub-conscious and the collective unconscious, these same elites cheer the rioting, looting and violence in the streets because they think it is righteous. The angry clowns burning down Gotham in Joker, which elite critics despised, felt the same way.

The second most important film from 2019 was Parasite. Parasite won a remarkable four Oscars, Best Picture, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Parasite was the ultimate outsider. It is a Korean film, and, like Joker, directly addressed class dissatisfaction and violence as a result of that class divide.

On October 14, 2019, I wrote in my review of Parasite, “Parasite is a brilliant examination of the frustration and fury that accompanies being at the bottom of the social rung in a corrupt and rigged capitalist system. The only way to get ahead and get out of the prison of debt, and it is a prison, is to lie, scheme and cheat. If that means throwing other poor people under the bus, then so be it.”

I concluded my review by writing, “My recommendation is to go as quickly as you can to the art house and see Parasite…it is that good. And after that, head to the cineplex to see Joker…again, and then when you get home watch Shoplifters (I see it is now available on the streaming service HULU)…because they are that good too. If you want to know what is coming for America and the world, and why, go watch those three movies.”

I stand by that review…and the one of Joker. It is worth noting that the titles of those two films, Joker and Parasite, would be a perfect starter set for a collage of buzzwords to describe Trump.

THE OUTSIDER WITH THE INSIDE TRACK

As for the 2020 election, what troubles me…and has troubled me since Biden’s selection as the Democratic nominee, is that, as the success of these two films, Parasite and Joker, clearly represent, the fundamentals of the IMWT haven’t changed much, if at all. They still point, very clearly, to an outsider winning the election. But while Biden is certainly out of office, he is the consummate Washington insider, and is selling himself as such

On the other hand, Trump’s greatest political accomplishment is that he has been president for four years and has still managed to maintain his status as an outsider. The political and Washington establishment hate him. The media hate him. The elites across the board hate him. Trump, despite his residence at the White House, is the archetypal outsider…and that should be disconcerting to those who want to see him lose.

I should disclose at this point that I will not be voting for either Biden or Trump. I have never voted for any Republican or Democratic candidate, and considering the shit show on the ballot, I am not going to start this year.

With that said…the signs in the IMWT do currently point to Trump winning re-election. I know this is aggressively contrary to conventional wisdom and the polls and the media coverage. But the theory says what it says even if it isn’t saying it nearly as strongly as it did in 2016.

Maybe the theory is wrong, that is certainly a possibility as this year has been an odd one in which there is a paucity of cultural data due to the film industry essentially being shut down due to the coronavirus. It is very difficult to measure movements in public sentiment through box office receipts when people can’t go to the movies.

That said, what little data we do have for 2020 does lean towards Trump. Without getting into the weeds on all of it, just consider that the number one film at the U.S. box office this year is Bad Boys for Life. That is such a pro-Trump title it could be his campaign slogan.

I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of the IMWT just because it can be pretty tedious, but if Trump does win I will write a separate article detailing all of it. If Biden wins, I will eat my crow and go back to the drawing board.

ANECDOTAL

In early August I thought it was impossible for Trump to win. The pandemic was raging, the economy collapsing, the country awash in civil unrest. In addition, I knew absolutely no one who was voting for Trump, and like famed film critic Pauline Kael, I thought, how can Trump win if no one I know is voting for him?

Then I started making some calls and reaching out to people from across the country and most specifically in swing states. The anecdotal information I got from these discussions was eye-opening.

The word on the street…again entirely anecdotal…was that Trump had a large groundswell of support in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Surprisingly, I was also hearing a lot of anecdotes about Latinos being strong Trump supporters.

Of course, anecdotal evidence is not worth a damn, but I found it striking how vociferous the pro-Trump sentiment seemed to be. I definitely heard from people who were voting for Biden too, but none of them were voting FOR Biden, only against Trump - once again highlighting how Trump dominates the collective consciousness.

UNIMAGINABLE TRUMP

Trump currently being the center of the cultural universe has created a situation where it is impossible to imagine him winning while simultaneously impossible to imagine him off of center stage. This is Trump’s power and his greatest asset…he forces you to feel forcefully about him…be it love or hate. And by doing so, makes himself psychologically indispensable.

Everything that is said or done nowadays is said or done in response to Trump. He is the straw that stirs the drink, as well as the glass that contains it and the concoction within it.

Trump is like coronavirus…he is everywhere, so much so that it is impossible to remember a time before the disease descended upon us. Everyone yearns for the time before but few can remember it. The myopia brought about by both coronavirus and Trumpism (and TDS) brings with it a suffocating paranoia and ever increasing delirium.

This is another reason why I think Trump will win…and that is because the entirety of our media suffer from this Trump/coronavirus myopia, paranoia and delirium, and therefore have a totally distorted perspective on reality here in America.

The media hate Trump so much but they desperately need him. Trump is their lifeblood just like they are his.

NAME THAT COUP TUNE

I have noticed something very disconcerting in the months leading up to election day, and that is that the media have been amplifying voices and narratives that seem eerily familiar to me. The voices and narratives highlighted talk incessantly about Trump stealing the election, not leaving office if he loses, and doing all sorts of nefarious authoritarian things.

One of the most repeated claims I hear is that even if Trump wins on election night, he isn’t really the winner. That it will take weeks and maybe a month to figure out who won. This is accompanied by claims that Trump will declare himself the winner on election night as part of his plan to steal the election.

Why I find all this unnerving is because this is so blatantly taken from the CIA’s playbook when they run a coup in Latin America, South America or Eastern Europe. A brief perusal of the recent coup in Bolivia where Evo Morales was ousted is a prime example.

The intelligence community is gunning for Trump no less than they went after Kennedy, and I think they aim to steal the election from him. I know most readers, particularly the liberal ones, think the exact opposite, that Trump is going to steal the election, but that is also part of the CIA’s mind game.

The intelligence community’s fingerprints are all over multiple anti-Trump operations from the get-go…be it the farcical Russia-gate or Ukraine-gate or the multitude of other scandals plaguing this inept administration. This is not to say that Trump is some squeaky clean scapegoat, it is to say that the intelligence community is actively working to undermine and, in a 21st century way…politically assassinate/eliminate him.

I don’t like Trump…and in fact have despised him from way back in the 80’s when he first started selling his bullshit in public. But that doesn’t mean I will turn a blind eye when the intelligence community is running disinformation and destabilizing operations within its own country.

When stories driven by anonymous sources come to the forefront declaring that USPS mailboxes are being removed, and Russians are penetrating voter rolls and the winner on election night isn’t the winner, understand that this is CIA manipulation through and through.

Keep your eyes and ears open on election night and in the days and weeks following…the game is on and will be hiding in plain sight.

RIOT TIME

If Trump wins…this country will lose its mind and you can expect an unprecedented and massive amount of rioting, looting and violence in the streets of American cities both big and small. These riots will be epic and make the George Floyd riots seem like a church picnic.

If Biden wins, there will be only sporadic rioting…like after a team wins a championship. People will celebrate, it will get out of hand and shit will get looted. Whereas if Trump wins…expect volcanic and violent chaos for weeks and months on end. And expect the media and elites to endorse and support this violence and chaos just like they did over the summer.

As for Trump supporters rioting in the wake of an electoral defeat…I don’t think that will happen. Trump supporters are not in urban areas, for the most part, which makes it difficult to gather en masse to riot.

CONCLUSION

Biden is selling an image of America (and himself)…gentle, neighborly, soft-spoken…that is a lie. And ironically, Trump is selling the truth. Trump is the manifestation of the madness that has descended upon America. This is a narcissistic nation of bullies and blowhards, cowards and con-men. Trump is not what America hopes to be, or what it deludes itself into thinking it is…he is simply the embodiment of America’s reality. This is why he will win. And even if he loses, that won’t change the reality of America, only the power of its delusions.

And understand, Biden is not a “return to normal” as there is no “return to normal”…only getting used to the new normal. A Biden presidency will be America’s dementia made manifest. This election…even if Biden wins…will change absolutely nothing. The dye is cast…the worm has turned…the American experiment, the American Empire, and with it its house of cards economy…are disintegrating. This country is in a decadent death spiral and no election, and particularly not one between two elderly, mental defectives who even in their primes were sub-mediocrities, like Trump and Biden, will alter that trajectory.

This election - which like every election of my lifetime has been dubbed the most important election of all time, is nothing but a vacuous pissing contest between oblivious elites eager to see who gets to captain the Titanic.

©2020

American Animals, Anthony Bourdain and Late Stage American Empire

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes 59 seconds

THE FOUR HORSEMAN COMETH

A couple weeks ago on a Thursday night, I realized that I was free the following Friday morning, so I decided to schedule a movie. After scanning what was available, I settled on American Animals. I didn't know much about the film but thought I would roll the dice. It ended up being a synchronistically wise choice.  

After a fitful sleep, on Friday morning I awoke to the news that Anthony Bourdain had killed himself. As it is with news of any suicide, I was deeply unsettled upon hearing it. I was not a fan of Bourdain's, I had never seen his show and do not consider myself a "foodie" in the slightest, but still his death by his own hand was jarring. 

What added to my shock at Bourdain's death was that the night before, I had watched a 2012 documentary directed by Ross Ashcroft, titled The Four Horseman. That documentary referenced Sir John Glubb, a British historian who in 1976 wrote an essay titled "The Fate of Empires". In that work, Grubb lists the seven stages of Empire which are...1. Pioneers, 2. Conquest, 3. Commerce, 4. Affluence, 5. Intellect, 6. Decadence and 7. Decline and Collapse. 

The Four Horseman film argued that the U.S. was in stage 6 - Decadence, in 2012, the year of its release. Accoring to Sir Glubb's thesis, signs of an empire In the age of decadence include an undisciplined - overextended military, conspicuous displays of wealth, massive disparity between rich and poor, obsession with sex, exorbitantly wealthy sports stars, and synchronistically enough...celebrity chefs…like Anthony Bourdain. In fact, one of the chefs the film shows to make its point is Bourdain. If Bourdain was a symbol of American Empire's decadence in 2012, in 2018 he is now the canary in the coal mine, and his suicide is a foreboding omen. 

AMERICAN ANIMALS

Which brings us to American Animals. American Animals is a remarkable film, not because it is exquisitely made, it isn't, or masterfully acted, it isn't, but because it so accurately and unflinchingly diagnoses the disease that is killing America. While I watched American Animals I couldn't help but think of Bourdain, and to a lesser extent designer Kate Spade (only because I had never heard of her until her death - to the shock of no one, I am not much of  an accessories aficionado) because what ailed Bourdain and Spade, and what ails all of America, men in particular, is what propels the story of American Animals….namely a total lack of meaning and purpose in our lives and the suffocating depression that accompanies that void.

Of course, most people would look at Bourdain and Spade's glamorous lives and think they lived with tremendous meaning and purpose, they had it all…but something was missing. Their lives were as empty, vacant and devoid of meaning as the rest of ours despite their wealth and fame. Bourdain and Spade are symbols of the recurring theme of a fading empire where "you can never get enough of what you don't need". Their lives were representative of America's (and the West's) decadence, as they became famous for feeding our insatiable appetite for the frivolous, and in death they are symbolic of the existential angst and ennui that grows like a terminal cancer upon our collective soul. 

WARNING SIGNS FROM PROPHETS OF DOOM

According to Sir John Glubb's theory on the stages of empire, America is certainly either in the very tail end of the decadence phase or across the Rubicon into the decline/collapse phase. Glubb's theory coincides with other philosopher/historians view on the subject and they all point towards America being in the late stage of empire.

For instance, Camille Paglia has spoken of the rise of transgender mania as a sign of the decline/collapse of civilizations, citing Greece, Rome, the Mauve decade and Weimar Germany as examples. 

Paglia states that transgenderism has become a fashion used to treat the alienation from which some people suffer. Paglia warns of the two headed beast that is the current attachment to the transgender issue…namely that as the cosmopolitan acceptance of such things grow, its shadow grows as well in the form of a brutal, uber-masculine authoritarianism. Paglia cites ISIS as a current example, but one doesn't have to go far in history to see other horrifying examples, like Hitler's Germany filling the void created by the collapse of Weimar Germany. A quick glance around the world today also shows the shadow of hyper masculine authoritarianism rising from Trump's America to Russia (Putin), the Philippines (Duterte), China Xi) and Turkey (Erdogan) to name but a few.

Glubb and Paglia's theories of America being in a state of decadence or on the cusp of decline/collapse, are reinforced by other historian philosophers. WIlliam Strauss and Neil Howe wrote of their generational theory in their book "The Fourth Turning of America". Howe and Strauss believe that history is cyclical and is defined by generations falling into different 20 year archetypes that repeat over an 80 to 100 year cycle. According to Howe and Strauss in The Fourth Turning, a generational cycle is made up of four "turnings" which they define as 1. High (growth), 2. Awakening (maturation), 3. Unraveling (entropy) and 4. Crisis (destruction). In The Fourth Turning, which was published in 1997, Howe and Strauss predict America would be entering into its next "fourth turning" around the time of 2008 (which oddly enough coincided with the financial collapse of that period) which would last about twenty years. For an indication of what a Fourth Turning holds, the previous Fourth Turnings in American history brought us the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Great Depression and World War II.

Howe and Strauss's theory of generational cycles is played out on a macro scale by German historian/philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) in his magnum opus "The Decline of the West" where he wrote of the four seasons of civilizations. Spengler wrote of civilizations going through the same cycle as the seasons of a year, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, except over a thousand year period. According to Spengler, Western civilization is on the downside of its run, and is into its extended "winter". 

"NO ONE WANTS TO BE ORDINARY"

As Neizstche tells us, God is dead…and he's right. The God that was the foundation, for good or ill, of 2,000 years of Spengler's western civilization, is no more, and unlike our current stock market, the God bubble is one you cannot re-inflate. No Gods have stepped forward to adequately fill the void left by the Judeo-Christian God, and so we are left in a state of disorientation…as we stumble around seeking something with which to orient ourselves. 

As the tagline of American Animals says, "No one wants to be ordinary", which could be the tagline for the American Church of Self. In trying to replace the God of the last two centuries, Americans have hit the apex of individualism by trying to turn ourselves into gods. 

One form of our Self worship is the Religion of Celebrity. In America in the reality tv age, everyone can be a star, or dream of themselves as a potential star. We have fisherman (Deadliest Catch), truck drivers (Ice Road Truckers), chefs (a whole channel of them!), rednecks (Honey Boo Boo), hoarders (Hoarders), criminals (Lock Up) and even junkies (Intervention) having shows made about them. Anyone doing anything anywhere can have delusions of grandeur about a television show being made about their lives. The mundane is now insane as we try to evolve into gods at the center of our own universe. 

Our culture routinely trivializes the sacred and it has forced us into pernicious indivualism and away from collectivism, in order to look for meaning within ourselves. Our cultural and personal narcissism keeps us glued to the black mirror tabernacle of our various screens in a never-ending search for validation and love. This self absorption leads to a toxic myopia that has spread like a contagion throughout our entire culture, from politics, where no one sees beyond the next election, to finance where no one sees beyond the next earnings period, to our personal lives, where no one sees beyond the next hit of endorphins brought on by consuming something…anything…in order to fill the void in our souls. 

NARCISSUS AND MORPHEUS

The opioid epidemic is another sign of America's decline/collapse. Narcissus was unable to look away from his Self and so he died, just as Americans cannot turn away from their virulent individualism and its accompanying arrogant self-absorption, and so they fall into the arms of Morpheus and into an extended narcosis, which comes from the same root word "Narco"- meaning numbness, as Narcissus, and means a state of stupor or unconsciousness. We are numbed and put into a stupor by our iPhone obsessed self-absorption and opioids are just an extension of that yearning to detach and numb. Notice it is an "I" phone that we are gazing into all day long…mesmerized by our own reflection staring back.

The ritual of buying and fixing with narcotics has replaced the sacred rituals of the Judeo-Christian God. The new God is Self and with opioids, one dissolves into themselves entirely, and the pain of the outer world disappears, at least momentarily, and is replaced with the bliss of Godhood. 

"THE CAPITALIST WILL SELL YOU THE ROPE WITH WHICH YOU INTEND TO HANG YOURSELF" - ME TERRIBLY MISQUOTING VLADIMIR LENNIN

Besides the epidemic of opioid abuse, further proof of America being in decline/collapse is that it is also in the throes of a suicide epidemic, as suicide has increased 30% since 1999. Sadly, Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade were caught in this growing wave of suicide, and yet they were rich and famous but money and fame are a poor spiritual salve…as they only lead their adherents to feeling even more empty and despondent. 

American Consumerism/Capitalism is equally vacuous and noxious, as we try to purchase meaning and purpose and only end up with an even greater vacancy within ourselves. As the Adam Curtis documentary Century of the Self so insightfully reveals, Americans have been taught to want, and to instinctively try to satiate that want through consumerism. In a never ending cycle, we are conditioned to feel alienated and then to want to assuage our alienation by buying something that will take our anxiety and alienation away. In many ways, Paglia makes this same argument regarding transgenderism, which is now sold to young people as a way to cure their sense of alienation. 

What is even more remarkable, is that according to Rene Girard's Mimetic theory, it takes little effort to condition people to want something, as Girard explains that one person sees what another person wants and then decides they want the same thing BECAUSE the other wants it. This is a contagion that spreads quickly, and can be another explanation for transgenderisms rise in the West and also America's cascading decline (opioids, suicide, gun violence etc.). It also explains American Capitalisms numerous financial bubbles, where people so easily get seduced into the irrational exuberance accompanying the inflation of a bubble, and are so remarkably blind to the fundamentally unsound economics underlying a bubble, which cause it to inevitably collapse. Look no further than the housing/financial collapse of 2008 for an example of that, or take a gander at our current stock market which is overvalued by at least 50% beyond any reason, to understand how to see what the uncomfortable realities in front of one's nose is a constant struggle. 

"OUR GREAT WAR IS A SPIRITUAL WAR…OUR GREAT DEPRESSION IS OUR LIVES" - FIGHT CLUB

As I watched the young men of American Animals, victims of their own unconsciously conditioned desires, frantically flail around trying to extinguish the malaise in their souls by attempting to find meaning and purpose in their empty lives through an idiotic heist, I thought of this quote from Fight Club, 

"We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war…our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

Chuck Palahntuk wrote that in 1997 and it is as accurate a diagnosis of a time (then and now) and a place (America) as any document in the history of mankind. The sickness of which Palahntuk wrote, and which American Animals shows, is spreading and gaining in strength. The  opioid crisis, suicide epidemic, pornification of our culture, egregious financial and political  corruption and worship of celebrity and sport are all signs of our decadence morphing into our decline and collapse. 

9-11 was the beginning of the end of America's run atop the world order and the financial crisis of 2008 was the end of the beginning of the end….and Trump is the first snowfall in what will be a long, cold and dark winter. Winter isn't coming. Winter is here. And Puxtapawny Phil won't come out to see his shadow any time soon because he has hanged himself in his den. 

A palpable despair has fallen like a pall over America. The fear of the end of the decadence we have known and its replacement by an ominous unknown is deeply unnerving to many. Foundational collapse shakes things and people to their core and America is quaking with an unconscious consternation of what is around the corner.

What comes next could be as banal as America falling from atop the world order and simply being replaced by a group of super power nations or another hyper-power (China?). Or it could be the U.S. dollar losing its status as the reserve currency of the world…or a Soviet style collapse…or a major and catastrophic war…or a devastating financial meltdown…or American democracy being usurped into a dictatorship or splintered by a civil war…or any other calamity or series of calamities. I do not know exactly what will happen, all I know is that the way things have been for the last 20 years, never mind the last 70 years, won't last much longer and that even more tumult and turmoil is on the way.  

CYCLES OF HISTORY

A big part of the reason why Americans are feeling such despair is that we in the west are conditioned to see history as linear, not cyclical. This linear thinking is detrimental to our mental health because it brings with it a built in myopia that can fan the flames of despair. When people feel that history moves in a straight line, they come to believe that things will always be moving in the direction they are now, forever, which leads to irrational optimism during good times and a devastating feeling of futility and lack of resilience in bad times. 

But a cyclical view of history is an antidote to this unease, as Strauss and Howe write, the crisis brought upon by the apex of individualism in the Fourth Turning does eventually pass…and will always be replaced with something much more upbeat, optimistic and collective. The only question to ponder now is how long will our era of collapse last? Will we live long enough to see the brighter days of the First Turning of the next era? 

As America and the West spiral downward, pain, anguish, angst and despair will steadily rise. We are seeing it already en masse in our culture with opioid addiction, suicides and mass shootings. The perils of living in such a time are numerous. The advice I would give is do not fall prey to the sirens call of the flag-waving optimist who is a dictator in disguise or the fool's gold of an over-inflated stock market. It would also be wise to not fall victim to your emotions, which are constantly being nefariously manipulated and exploited, but instead rely upon your reason. As those around you lose their heads…struggle mightily to keep yours…and above all else…keep breathing.

GOING THROUGH HELL

As I have been tracking my own historical wave theory (Isaiah/McCaffrey Wave Theory®), I have mentioned many times on this website that this year (and in the previous few years) there have been numerous signs in cinema of the impending collapse of American empire, including Deadpool, Infinity War, A Quiet Place, American Animals and Hereditary.

Last year cinema was overflowing with the Churchillian archetype (and its shadow - The Authoritarian) in movies such as Dunkirk and Darkest Hour and the tv show The Crown. I wish I could've relayed a bit of Winston Churchill's advice to Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade as they suffered the torment of their dark night of the soul, from which they would not survive…but since they are not hear to read my words, I will share Churchill's sage advice with you in case in the coming turmoil you find yourself lost in the same Sea of Despair as Bourdain and Spade. 

"If you find yourself going through hell…KEEP GOING!"

In closing, sit back and enjoy some easy listening mid-90's alt-rock/pop that astutely describes the lack of meaning and purpose that is decaying America from the inside out. Mr. Jones and me...we are desperately trying to distract ourselves by any means necessary from the devastation that is hurtling towards us at an ever quickening pace…sha la, la, la yeah.

Mr. Jones

Counting Crows

Sha la, la, la, la, la, la
Oh
Uh, huh

I was down at the New Amsterdam
Starin' at this yellow-haired girl
Mr. Jones strikes up a conversation
With a black-haired flamenco dancer
You know, she dances while his father plays guitar
She's suddenly beautiful, we all want something beautiful
Man, I wish I was beautiful
So come dance this silence down through the mornin'

Sha la, la, la, la, la, la, la
Yeah
Uh, huh
Yeah

Cut up, Maria
Show me some of them Spanish dances
Pass me a bottle, Mr. Jones
Believe in me
Help me believe in anything
'Cause I, I wanna be someone who believes
Yeah

Mr. Jones and me tell each other fairy tales
And we stare at the beautiful women
She's looking at you
Ah, no, no, she is looking at me
Smilin' in the bright lights
Comin' through in stereo
When everybody loves you
You can never be lonely

Well I'm a paint my picture
Paint myself in blue, red, black and gray
All of the beautiful colors are very, very meaningful
Yeah, well you know, gray is my favorite color
I felt so symbolic yesterday
If I knew Picasso
I would buy myself a gray guitar and play

Mr. Jones and me look into the future
Yeah, we stare at the beautiful women
She's looking at you I don't think so, she's looking at me
Standin' in the spotlight
I bought myself a gray guitar
When everybody loves me
I will never be lonely
I will never be lonely
Said I'm never gonna be lonely

I wanna be a lion
Ah, everybody wanna pass as cats
We all wanna be big, big stars
Yeah, but we got different reasons for that
Believe in me 'cause I don't believe in anything
And I, I wanna be someone to believe
To believe, to believe
Yeah

Mr. Jones and me stumbling through the Barrio
Yeah, we stare at the beautiful women
She's perfect for you
Man, there's got to be somebody for me
I wanna be Bob Dylan
Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky
When everybody love you
Ah son, that's just about as funky as you can be

Mr. Jones and me starin' at the video
When I look at the television
I wanna see me starin' right back at me
We all wanna be big stars
But we don't know why and we don't know how
But when everybody loves me
I wanna be just about as happy as I can be
Mr. Jones and me, we're gonna be big stars

©2018

The Big Short : A Review, a Diagnosis and a Warning

ESTIMATED READING TIME: TEN MINUTES

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!! CONSIDER THIS YOUR OFFICIAL SPOILER ALERT!!!****

MY RATING: SEE IT IN THE THEATRE!

"IT AIN'T WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW THAT GETS YOU IN TROUBLE, IT'S WHAT YOU KNOW FOR SURE THAT JUST AIN'T SO." - MARK TWAIN

The Big Short, directed by Adam Mckay and written by McKay and Charles Randolph (based on the book The Big Short by Michael Lewis), is the story of a collection of men who foresaw the financial collapse of 2007/2008 and bet big against the housing bubble and Wall Street and won.

The Big Short is a truly remarkable film, without a doubt one of the very best of the year. It takes the difficult and complex subject of finance in general, and the collapse of 2007/2008 in particular, and not only breaks it down into understandable pieces, but does so in an extremely entertaining and insightful way.

When The Big Short ended and the credits rolled, I was curious as to who directed the film. I was stunned when I saw that Adam McKay, of all people, had directed it. Prior to The Big Short,  Adam McKay was better known as Will Ferrell's director, having been at the helm for the Ferrell films Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Stepbrothers, and Anchorman 2 : The Legend Continues. In my mind, directing a singular comedic talent like Will Ferrell amounts to turning on the cameras and getting out of the way. It was previously unthinkable that a director with Adam McKay's resume would have the skill to make a film as impeccably crafted as The Big Short. McKay's direction is nothing short of masterful. McKay is able to flawlessly weave together the multiple, complicated narratives of the film, all while never losing the mesmerizing pace of the story. He shows a tremendously deft touch even with the most minor of scenes and lets the visuals tell as much of the story as the dialogue. 

There is a subtlety and specificity to McKay's direction that speaks volumes to his talent and vision. Two sequences stand out in this respect. The first is when we see a brief daytime long shot of Las Vegas with a freeway in the foreground where a homeless man urinates in the shadows of the traffic. The man, with his shopping cart filled with his possessions by his side, is barely visible in the shot, but that is the point, because those obliviously driving by him on the freeway above are blind to his plight and the one that awaits them as well.

The second shot is of a man and his family, who we meet very briefly earlier in the film, evicted from their rental home because of a landlord who gets foreclosed upon. The family now live in their van parked at a convenience store. This scene, which is visuals accompanied by a voice-over not directly connected to the action, shows a little boy running away from the family van. The shot is maybe three seconds long, but it stops your heart it is so well done. This shot cinematically conveys to the viewer absolutely everything they need to know, and all without a word. It shows how vulnerable and dangerous life is for people on the margins in America. My reaction to that brief shot was visceral…how could it not be? The shot is so quick you can only react to it on a gut level, and at that level, you instantly fear that the little boy will run into traffic. That shot connects the bigger story of The Big Short, to the human story of those devastated by the housing collapse. That little boy is in danger and it is because of the shenanigans of the big banks. These two shots/sequences are the type of small details that make all the difference in a film, and they highlight Adam McKay's exquisite direction of The Big Short.

The acting in the film is solid across the board. Ryan Gosling easily does the best work of his career as Jared Vennett, a bond salesman at Deutsche bank. He gives a funny, dynamic and charismatic performance that is the engine driving the film forward. Steve Carrell does exhaustive work playing the unlikable but ultimately compelling Michael Baum, the manager of a hedge fund whom Vennett approaches to invest against the housing market. Christian Bale gives a layered and intricate performance as Dr. Michael Burry, the eccentrically awkward mastermind who uncovers the fraud at the heart of the housing bubble. Brad Pitt brings a surprising gravity and humanity to the film as former JP Morgan trader Ben Rickert, and acts as a counterbalance to Gosling's fast talking and ego-driven Vennet. The rest of the cast is superb as well, with Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, Max Greenfield and Billy Magnussen among others who all do standout work.

"TRUTH IS LIKE POETRY, AND MOST PEOPLE HATE POETRY" - OVERHEARD AT A WASHINGTON, D.C. BAR

I saw The Big Short in the theatre on the same day that I saw Spotlight. This was just by coincidence, but in hindsight it is easy to see that the movies are actually companion pieces. They have a lot in common as both The Big Short and Spotlight are flawlessly crafted films. Both pictures are superbly written, acted, directed, shot and edited. In addition both The Big Short and Spotlight explore similar themes, namely institutional blindness, perverted forms of religion, and the moral and ethical rot at the center of American life. 

"TO SEE WHAT IS IN FRONT OF ONE'S NOSE NEEDS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE." - GEORGE ORWELL

The institutional blindness on display in The Big Short runs not only through Wall Street, but also the media and Washington. When you hear talking heads on television say that no one saw the financial collapse of 2007-2008 coming, realize that this is just one more form of that blindness. Hindsight is usually 20/20, but not when you are unable to admit you were catastrophically wrong in the first place. As the great American Prophet (or is it Profit?) Dr. Phil is fond of saying, "you can't change what you don't acknowledge"…you're god-damned right about that, good doctor. Besides the characters at the center of The Big Short, there were other people who saw the collapse coming too, but they were the "wrong" people, so no one listened to them. Hell, even a clueless dope like me saw it coming. Ask my poor clients who had to listen to me ramble on and on about it day after day. Of course, most of those clients, and most of my friends, just nodded politely at my ramblings and ignored them…and lost a ton of money. I, and a very tight circle of friends, ended up being right not because we were geniuses, God and you dear reader know that isn't true, but rather because we weren't infected by the mania brought on by the lure of easy money that had gripped, and still grips, the nation. One of the glaring symptoms of this mania is that it brings with it a greed-induced frenzy that makes it, to paraphrase Orwell, 'hard to see what is right in front of your nose'.

The institutional blindness at the core of American capitalism comes from years of uncritical thinking from the people inside its foundational institutions. No one at any level of the American capitalism food chain, from University economics and finance departments, to the media to government to Wall street, dare question the basic premise of American capitalism because it has become a most-holy, sacred religion. This religion deems insatiable greed not only healthy for the economy, but a "good" and worthy attribute for everyone. This new church of American capitalism found a cinematic saint in Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's 1987 film Wall Street, but St. Gordon was just preaching the gospel of the semi-non-fictional Saint Ronald Reagan from the early 1980's. Both St. Gordon and St. Ronnie were followed by free market saint and snake oil salesman extraordinaire, Bill Clinton in the 90's, who cleared the way for "unfettered, free-market capitalism" to take a giant shit on all of us.

"THE CAPITALIST WILL SELL YOU THE ROPE WITH WHICH YOU INTEND TO HANG HIM" - VLADIMIR LENNIN

Ask anyone with an advanced degree in economics or finance if during their long years of schooling they ever had to take a course on an alternative economic system to capitalism. The answer will be a resounding "no". That is not to say that socialism or communism or any other "ism" is better than American capitalism. But it is to say that when people are taught, or more accurately, conditioned, to NOT think critically about their economic system (or anything else for that matter), then that system stops being an economic one and starts being a religious one. Religion is based on faith and to its faithful adherents, is beyond reproach…see Spotlight as evidence of that. When something as profane as American capitalism becomes sanctified, corruption and collapse are sure to follow, just as it did with Soviet "socialism". With religion comes magical thinking, and so it is with American capitalism, which must contort reality in order to reinforce its faith based belief system. So we get deformed and distorted economic information from the powers that be because they must keep the house of cards standing at all cost. The Big Short humorously shows how while the underlying mortgages crumbled, the mortgage backed securities made up of those same bad mortgages actually went up. That is what happens in religion when reality doesn't conform to the sacred belief system, magical thinking kicks in and…MIRACLES OCCUR…up can become down, black can become white, or as those of us living in reality say…FRAUD HAPPENS. This charade of American capitalism can only last so long, as reality has a funny way of cutting through the bullshit of magical thinking and kicking you right in the nuts…just ask Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns.

"TELL ME THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STUPID AND ILLEGAL AND I'LL HAVE MY WIFE'S BROTHER ARRESTED" - JARED VENNET, THE BIG SHORT

See, in American capitalism, fraud is not a bug, but a feature, it is baked into the cake. Fraud and magical thinking are at the very heart of American capitalism. The fraud that runs rampant is easy to see.  We have all of the big banks rigging bids on municipal bonds and bilking every city in the nation for billions of dollars. Then we have Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays, Bank of America, UBS and Citigroup and the LIBOR scandal, where they manipulated the world's interest rates and in so doing a good portion of the world's economy. Then there is the fraud on display in The Big Short where big banks defrauded their customers in order to cover their asses as the mortgage market tumbled. This doesn't even touch upon the criminality of banks laundering money for drug cartels, or rate-rigging the currency rates. 

In all of these scandals, no one was sent to prison. No one was held criminally liable. The Banks simply paid a fine, sometimes in the billions of dollars, but never had to admit to wrong doing. This is the casino-gulag business model, banks make $10 billion in fraud and only pay $1 billion in fines. That is a pretty good deal if you can get it…and the big banks know how to get it.

I had a conversation recently with an older friend, very conservative, who told me that he was "sick and tired of all the big bank bashing" because Wall Street "creates a lot jobs and a lot of wealth". I nodded politely so as to not offend his religious belief in American capitalism. The reality is that Wall Street, like Las Vegas, "creates" nothing, but they do "engineer" more gambling opportunities where the house always wins, and the concept of "the common good" never has to rear its ugly head.

"THE IGNORANT MIND, WITH ITS INFINITE AFFLICTIONS, PASSIONS AND EVILS, IS ROOTED IN THE THREE POISONS. GREED, ANGER AND DELUSION." - BODHIDHARMA

This taps into the moral and ethical rot at the center of America. Wall Street and Main Street, both infected with an insatiable greed, no longer invest, they speculate. The myopic greed and lure of easy money that has infested America makes corporations and regular people cut off their nose to spite their face, all in the name of higher short-term earnings and to the detriment of the long term, the common good and common sense. This is no way to run a company, or a country…but it's what is happening all around us. We have CEO's who mine their company for short term profits, which often times includes profit through fraud, in order to appease shareholders and get their bonuses before moving on, all the while ignoring the long term health of their business. The same is true of government, where politicians ignore the long term health of the country in favor of the short term health of their political careers and the next election. Regular Jane's and Joe's did the same thing by "flipping" houses and trying to run with the wolves on Wall Street…but found out the hard way that it is a rigged game. Now, they do the same thing in a different way by going into debt just to pay their bills month to month. This myopic approach to finance, politics and life, can only last so long before the bill comes due. Robbing Peter to pay Paul only ends up, at best, with either Peter or Paul breaking your thumbs, or at worst, with the two of them burying you in a shallow grave out in the desert.

The Church of American Capitalism and the moral and ethical rot that comes with it, has also infected American Christianity in the form of the "Prosperity Gospel". This Prosperity Gospel is the perfect symbol for the lascivious and lecherous greed, that like a cancer, has metastasized through all walks of American life and bastardized Christianity into little more than Santa Claus for adults. Turning greed into spirituality and religion is the last straw in the fall of the moral underpinnings of any nation and its people. Gordon Gekko once said, "Greed is good", but the Prosperity Gospel of the Church of American Capitalism teaches , "Greed is God".

"WHENEVER I WATCH TV AND SEE THOSE POOR STARVING KIDS ALL OVER THE WORLD, I CAN'T HELP BUT CRY. I MEAN I'D LOVE TO BE SKINNY LIKE THAT, BUT NOT WITH ALL THOSE FLIES AND DEATH AND STUFF." - MARIAH CAREY

The other religion, besides the church of American capitalism and greed, so masterfully on display in The Big Short, is the uniquely American religion of Celebrity. Director McKay wisely uses famous people to talk directly to the audience and explain complicated financial terms and processes. This has a dual effect, one, it breaks down the complex language of finance which Wall Street uses to make people think only they can do this stuff, terms like Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO), Mortgage Backed Security (MBS), and Credit Default Swap (CDS), into language the layman can understand. Two, it surreptitiously tweaks the audience for being so mindless as to only pay attention when a celebrity is talking. The celebrities involved, Margot Robbie, Selena Gomez and chef Anthony Bourdain, all get the point across both on the surface level of explaining the information, but also on the subversive level of proving the audience as suckers for the famous, a.k.a. high priests and priestesses of the Church of American Celebrity. If Collateralized Debt Obligations, Mortgage Backed Securities and Credit Default Swaps were explained by some dry academic, people would, as they've been trained to do, instantly tune out, but when it is done by Margot Robbie in a bubble bath…attention will most surely be paid. 

"WE FORGET THAT THE WATER CYCLE AND THE LIFE CYCLE ARE ONE." - JACQUE COUSTEAU

Speaking of bubble baths…at the end of the movie, there is an update on what the main characters are up to since their big short paid off. We are informed that Dr. Michael Burry, who closed his hedge fund right after the collapse of 2007/08, now focuses his investments on one commodity…water. This is pretty interesting because running throughout the film there is a very subtle subtext about water. If you watch the film again, pay attention when water is in a shot (like Ms. Robbie's bubble bath cameo), what characters drink it and when they drink it. There is one scene where Dr. Burry, while talking about shorting the housing market, chokes on a swig of water from a bottle, which, knowing the context of his later investing work, is very intriguing. Another scene involves a swimming pool with an unwanted reptilian guest lurking in it behind an abandoned Florida house. The house no doubt abandoned because of the "gully" (definition of a "gully" is "a water worn ravine") in the housing market. That scene is juxtaposed with a scene of a lavish swimming pool at Caesar's Palace, which is populated by investment bankers (from Goldman Sachs!!) and a woman from the SEC. Gators, bankers and feds…oh my!!! Water is the hidden secret within The Big Short, and the secret about water in today's world is that it will soon replace oil as the commodity over which we go to war.

"EVERYONE, DEEP IN THEIR HEARTS, IS WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD TO COME." - HARUKI MURAKAMI

In conclusion, The Big Short is a phenomenal, must-see film, that shows us what went catastrophically wrong back in 2007/2008, and what is still wrong with our system. It is up to us to break free from the magical thinking brought on by the Church of American capitalism, and the distraction from thinking brought on by the Church of American Celebrity, and to see the truth that sits right in front of our nose…the American financial system is not only fundamentally and structurally flawed, it is irreparably broken and untenable. The house of cards is coming down whether we are ready for it or not…it isn't a matter of if…it is a matter of when. You can either prepare for the coming tsunami* or not, that is up to you…but what you cannot do this time around...is say that no one told you it was coming. 

*See what I did there? Tsunami…water? C'mon..pay attention!!!

©2016