2020 - It's a Wrap

 

2020 was such an unusual year, unlike any other in most of our lives.  So unusual that it was hard to tell fact from fiction, reality from illusion.   It was a year in which the tinfoil hat conspiracy theory guys like Alex Jones often turned out to be more credible than CBS.  We were locked down, our cities were ravaged by riots, and our civil liberties kicked to the curb.  Our children were locked out of school.  Our friendships and relationships got reshuffled.  We were barred from movie theaters, sporting events and live music.   Many of us have developed serious questions about the sustainability of our Republic and Western Civilization generally.

Nonetheless, I’m putting together my annual “Best Of” lists, which will have a particular flavor and perspective because of the time that we find ourselves in.  Here are my recommendations and my favorites from 2020- A Year Gone Mad.

Film
Despite the lockdown and paucity of mainstream films, some outlets like siskelfilmcenter.org were able to pivot quickly to streaming and fill the gap.  It is certainly not the same as the theater (just as Zoom is not the same as an in person meeting), but there were still some high quality films that were (and are available).   Here are the top three that I liked:

Mr. Jones
If you see only one film this year, this should be it.  Thirty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.   Many of the people that escaped Stalin’s terrors have passed on, too.   An entire generation is removed from the gulags, the killings, and the starvation.  As time has passed, the stories of the horrors have faded.  In this time of worries over a tyrannical government and an obsequious press,  this film by Polish director Agnieszka Holland brings it all back.   It is the story of Garth Jones, a Welsh journalist, that sneaks out to the countryside and uncovers the truth about the intentional starvation of the Ukrainians, while other colleagues are plied with alcohol and prostitutes to keep them from reporting on this man-made humanitarian disaster.   Not only does this film resonate because of current events, it struck a chord with me personally as some of the parents of friends of mine actually lived through this.   Do not miss this film.  It will make you see things differently as current events unfold and remind you that the corruption of the media is not new.

The Cuban
The Cuban is heartwarming story of a dementia afflicted musician whose humanity is brought back to him by a daring young caretaker that discards the institutional food and brings him authentic Cuban cuisine and brings him Afro-Cuban music.  The soundtrack is wonderful as is the story of rebellion against the nursing home.   The film was criticized for being a bit maudlin.  Fair enough.  But if ever there was a time that we needed a film about restoring a person’s life and humanity, it’s now. 

Sweat
Sweat is a Polish film that won best film at the Chicago International Film Festival.  It is a Polish-Swedish film about a social media fitness star that picks up a stalker.  Like The Cuban, it explores the humanity of Sylvia (Magdalena Kolesnik) and the depth of the loneliness under her celebrity status—a kind of up to date, healthy drug-free Janis Joplin.   I loved the depiction of her extended Polish family, which I thought to be authentic.   Kolesnik has a great screen presence and is one of two young Polish actresses (Zofia Wichlacz- World on Fire below) that had outstanding performances.

Books

Nonfiction

My favorite book of the year was Erik Larsen’s The Splendid and the Vile, a detailed and well-written account of Winston Churchill’s first year in office.   The book provided lots of interesting nuggets about the Churchill family, Churchill himself and his numerous quirks and what day to day life was like during the Blitz.   Reading this book during lockdown was most meaningful because, like the Battle of Britain, you know that some people are going to die, the resolution is uncertain and you don’t know how long it will last. 

Given the political turbulence, riots, lockdown and a stolen election, along with the press of Wokeism, I turned to other writers to make sense of it all.  My favorite in this regard was Live Not By Lies: A Manuel for Christian Dissidents by Rod Dreher, but I also liked The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity,  by Douglas Murray and Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender and Identity and How this Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.  These books offer strong defenses of Western Civilization and Enlightenment thought generally and critique globalism, Critical Theory and the poison of Postmodernism. 

One of my favorite quotes is from Rod Dreher, who sums up postmodernism quite well:

Christians today must understand that, fundamentally,  they are not resisting a different politics, but rather what is effectively a rival religion.

Fiction

In fiction, I try to tackle a “project” every year.  Last year, I successfully did Moby-Dick for the Newberry Library 26 hour Moby-Dick read-a-thon.  Brimming with confidence over that achievement, I tried Middlemarch and got bogged down like Napoleon in the Russian winter about 2/3 of the way through.

Nonetheless, there were some winning novels this year.  The translation of Abigail by Hungarian writer Magda Szabo came out this year and this coming of age story of an adolescent girl during WWII was outstanding.   I liked it even better than her other acclaimed novel, The Door.   Lionel Shriver’s The Motion of the Body Through Space came in at number 2.  This novel about the complexities of a long term marriage, and the fight against aging was yet another excellent work by Shriver.  Finally, My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell was an uncomfortable, yet interesting novel about an affair between a boarding school teacher and a 15 year old student.  I reviewed this novel last spring (https://commonsense-mark.blogspot.com/2020/04/my-dark-vanessa.html)  and I think Russell is an interesting young writer and I expect good things from her in the future.   It's probably no accident that two of my three top novels involve adolescent girls struggling through very trying and confusing circumstances.  I think they resonated with me because I am deeply concerned about the effect that lockdown and pandemic and resulting isolation and interruption in their educational and social development that is being inflicted upon them.   These two novels remind us that adolescents are complex people too, and whatever insecurities we, as adults, are feeling about all this is magnified in them.

Television

World on Fire

I confess that I do not have much to evaluate on television.  I did not see the acclaimed miniseries Queen’s Gambit (which I plan to binge watch soon).  Like the book, The Splendid and the Vile, I ended up being riveted to stories about WWII, another time that lives were upended in a chaotic, unpredictable way.   World on Fire by PBS captivated me.   I thought Helen Hunt’s performance was spectacular and I was taken by the performance of young actress Zofia Wichlacz.   More generally, Season 1 focused a lot on the invasion of Poland and Polish resistance.  I liked the fact that Masterpiece used Polish actors and it added to its authenticity.  I highly recommend World on Fire if you haven’t yet caught up.

In a most unusual year, there were some sparkling gems in film, books and TV.   While we were locked out of theaters and music venues, there were still some artistic productions that salvaged a pretty awful year and made some of lockdown a bit more tolerable.

No Consequences/No Accountability

 

I wish I had tidings of great joy this holiday season.   I really do.  Instead, I have a warning.   Hold close to the people around you.  Prepare, mostly by preparing yourself for the dark and treacherous days that lie ahead.  We have entered a period no less turbulent than WWII.   I mentioned to someone the other day that reading Eric Larsen’s book on Churchill’s first year in office and the Battle of Britain gave me a sense of what it was like during those dark, uncertain years.  We are going through something quite analogous.  It will be as difficult a challenge as the Blitz.  Like Great Britain, we will stand mostly alone (perhaps the Visegrad nations will be with us).   Great Britain was bombed from above.  Our foes have already penetrated the interior.  

I have argued that 9/11 exposed the weakness in our defense structure.  A handful of barbarians with limited technology was able to inflict a devastating blow to our nation, and hit us in the heart of our financial center and defense center.  Without the heroic acts of the passengers on Flight 93, our capitol would have like been destroyed.    The real estate crisis of ’07 and ’08 exposed the fragility of our financial system.  The real estate frenzy and the push to make loans to noncreditworthy borrowers resulted in a panic and deep and long recession.  2020 with COVID19 and the riots exposed our social and moral decrepitude.  

No consequences/No accountability

I wrote earlier this year that we have undergone what I called a “criminal inversion,’ as we lionized criminals George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks, honored Floyd with multiple funerals and yet when a true American hero, Neil Armstrong passed, there was little fanfare.

Rioters and Looters.

Very few of the rioters and looter  were even arrested.  Of the ones that were, most were sprung from jail almost immediately, and activist funds posted the bail for many others.  Unbeknownst to most people, the bail posted by activist funds revert to the perpetrator.  The rioters and looters actually kept the money.  So, not only were there no consequences for the rioters and looters, many were actually subsidized.

Worse, the attacks of many rioters and looters justified the use of deadly force against them.  Rioters in Portland, Chicago, and other locales threw bricks, frozen water bottles, threw incendiary devices and pointed blinding lasers in the eyes of law enforcement officers.  Very few of these perpetrators were even arrested.  Closer to home, a “defund the police” protest escalated at Northwestern University, students broke windows and vandalized stores in Evanston and threw bricks at police – an act that justifies deadly force.  President Morton Shapiro’s response?   Writing a public letter of rebuke expressing “disappointment” in the students.   Again, no real consequences for potentially deadly assaults.

Most astonishingly, there have been no consequences for the political class whatsoever.

New York mayor Bill DeBlasio’s wife Chirlane McCray was entrusted with overseeing ThriveNYC, an initiative that was to funded to fight drug abuse, homelessness and depression.  Last I  noticed, there was plenty of that going around in New York.  But $850 million is missing and unaccounted for.   There have been no consequences and no accountability for her.  The MSM has lost interest in the scandal.

The wife of Bernie Sanders, Jane, was being investigated for bank fraud.  As president of Burlington College, she fraudulently misrepresented pledges the college was to receive in order to receive a loan.  The college ultimately went bankrupt. Defrauding a bank by misrepresenting collateral is a serious offense, yet the matter was quietly dropped.

In an earlier era, Eric Swalwell would have been summarily hanged for treason.  His tryst with Chinese fundraiser and spy revealed, Swalwell has since gone on the offense, demanding to know who leaked this information and incredulously asserting that he can’t comment on any of this because it is “classified.”  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vigorously defends Swalwell and refuses to take him off the House Intelligence Committee.

Another august member of the Intelligence Committee is Ilhan Omar.   The Marxist Somali routinely makes anti-Semitic remarks and bellows for the defunding of police.  Yet, she has funded herself pretty well, egregiously violating conflict of interest rules by steering campaign funds to her former lover and now husband.   After calls for censure for her anti-Semitic remarks, Pelosi introduced a watered down version that essentially said that any bigotry should be frowned upon.  Omar still sits on the committee and has been re-elected.  Her purported immigration fraud likewise has been kicked to the curb.

And then there is Hunter Biden.  Hunter belongs in his own special category.   I won’t repeat all that has been written about Hunter (and then covered up and censored by the media—Russian disinformation, you know), but here’s a guy so brazen that he fought paying child support to the pole dancer that he impregnated.  There has been no explanation as to why

Andrew Cuomo.  After dispatching 6,300 COVID19 infected people into nursing homes that resulting in thousands of deaths, Cuomo received an Emmy and then had the chutzpah to write a book on his own leadership capabilities.  In any other venue, deaths resulting from a mistake in judgment of this magnitude would result in disgrace, removal and exile, if not worse.  But undeterred, Cuomo continues on to his next project.  Having presided over the deaths of thousands of individuals, he is shutting down the restaurant business in New York and presiding over the deaths of thousands of businesses.

9/11 exposed our defense shortfalls.  The Great Recession showed our financial fragility.  COVID and the riots exposed our social and moral decline.  We have entire criminal and political classes that now have a veritable force field around them and are impervious to the consequences of their horrendous acts.  In each of these cases, the members are of a protected class that suffer no ill effects whatsoever for the damage they have wrought.

The Future is Female (but maybe not how you think)

 

The Future is Female is another progressive slogan that has been around for a bit.  But like “The Great Reset,” that I wrote about last week, I believe that it is partially true, but not quite as the progressive movement had in mind.

While it appears that conservatives, libertarians and Constitutionalists seem to be outnumbered and surrounded by the media (both mainstream and social), academia and the Democratic party, I’m finding that the staunchest defenders of liberalism (of the traditional type) and sanity are women.  In fact, while much of the establishment GOP has wilted in the face of the onslaught, the unflinching and fiercest defenders of Western liberalism are female.   So this week, I am putting forward some of the “momma bears” or, as I call them, the Ladies of Liberty or the Fraus and Frauleins of Freedom.   This list is not meant to be all inclusive (oh, how I have come to hate that word), but a sampling of women that you should consider following.  

Politics:

Step aside,  Nikki Haley.  Your several stumbles that belied your pandering instincts, including your rush to judgment on the “noose” that turned out to be a garage pull in Bubba Wallace’s garage.  But here are 3 women in political life worth following:

Kristi Noem
Yes, Kristi is carefully cultivating an image of herself on social media, showing photos of herself hunting, hiking and horseback riding, but Noem has shown herself to be a steady hand and a solid leader during the COVID crisis.  Unlike blue states like Illinois, she has put South Dakota on a sound  financial footing and, in fact, is adding to its financial reserves.  She has managed the response to COVID in a sane and sober way.  She has shown herself to be devoted to the Constitution and to the concept of  limited government. Look for Noem to become a higher profile player in the future.

Kim Klasic
OK, I admit, Klasic’s beauty knocks me over.   Her fearless ad campaign in her congressional bid took the world by storm, calling out the failed Democratic leadership for the mess they created in Baltimore.  She understands that the old, progressive approach will never work to revitalize a city like Baltimore.  Klasic has real charisma and courage, and I see her as a real rising conservative star.

Tulsi Gabbard
Yes, Tulsi’s economic policies are not to my liking.  But she single handed disassembled Kamala Harris during the primaries, and voted “present” on impeachment.  And now has sponsored a bill to protect women’s sports by limiting participation in girl’s and women’s sports to biological women, defying the radical elements of the LGBTQ community and the official position of her own party.  Gabbard, I believe, can be a key ally in the defense of Western ideals, and often shows signs of sensibility, a trait mostly absent in today’s Corbynized Democratic party.

Of course, many other women only have a presence on social media—they have or would be marginalized in mainstream media or academia, but here are the women I follow:

Heather Heying (@HeatherEHeying)
A self described left of center scientist, Heying and her husband run a weekly podcast called Dark Horse, much of which is aimed at the highly unscientific, disingenuous and illiberal scientific and academic world that has bathed itself in critical theory. Heying is simply a brilliant woman and an unwavering defender of the principles of the Enlightenment, free inquiry and the scientific method.

Peachy Keenan (@KeenanPeachy)
This is her nom de plume, and a recent follow of mine.  She is a contributing editor at The American Mind, a Catholic and self described survivor of an Ivy League education.  She is a very talented writer and some of her material rivals that of Lionel Shriver.  She is a no nonsense woman with an added plus of a great wit and a great sense of humor.  Her essays are a joy to read.

Tara Ross (@TaraRoss)
Ms. Ross is a student of American history, and puts out a daily “This Day in American History” blast.  She is loath to jump into politics but she has seen the power grab by mayors and governors that abuse our civil rights and Constitutional rights and norms.  She is one of the fiercest defenders of individual liberty and the Electoral College in public life.   Our education system needs a lot more Tara Ross and a lot less Nikole Hanna-Jones (author of the 1619 Project).

Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO)
Like Kim Klacik, Owns is another young, fearless conservative black voice.  She is poised and well schooled, presents well and is willing to push back against Black Lives Matter and the Democratic party.   She rejects victimhood status and recently published Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democratic Plantation.  She has had a few stumbles (her comment on Hitler was misplaced) but I see Owens as a bright advocate for conservatism.

Claire Lehmann (@clairlemom)
Claire is the founding managing editor of Quilette, a platform for free thought and free expression.  It is a direct challenge to the cancel culture, and a place to obtain a variety of divergent views.  The Quilette podcasts are very good and range from Abigail Shrier on the epidemic of teen girls seeking gender reassignment, to author Lionel Shriver on the illogic of lockdowns to Jodi Shaw on the unfounded charges of racism at Smith College.

Tina Forte (@RealTina40)
Tough, foul mouthed, no holds barred, Tina is a real Bronx girl, hammering DeBlasio and Coumo mercilessly for the needless destruction of businesses, lives and the great city of New York.   One poster commented to her, ”Every time you post, I duck.” In blunt language, she holds these politicians accountable for the havoc they have caused in a once great city.

(https://twitter.com/RealTina40/status/1338865324645441543?s=20)

I also like Samantha Marika (@samanthamarika1), a young, black female conservative that does wonderful, thought provoking video pieces and author Ava Armstrong (@MsAvaArmstrong), who also consistently puts out accurate and searing tweets.

In addition to the above, there are several women overseas that I really like:  Miss Brittania (@sanefeminist), an author from Scotland,  Catholic an unapologetic advocate of nationalism, opponent of critical theory, and defender of Western Civilization; Stare Decisis (@MsResJudicata), an attorney with a strong background in economics, and Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick), an Israeli author and speaker.

These women often have divergent views, with some even tilting left, like Gabbard and Heying.  But that is the point.  Diversity of views is something the new radical left cannot tolerate.  What these women have in common is the courage of their convictions, their authenticity, and their willingness to stand against Wokeism.  I encourage you to follow all of them, and enjoy them, because Big Tech will certainly deplatform some of them.

Shifting Alliances

 

If it seems that the ground is shifting underneath you, it’s because it is.  We are going through multiple paradigm shifts simultaneously and it’s happening so fast that we can hardly catch our breath.  Alliances also are being torn apart and reformed at mind numbing speed, both here and abroad.

Alliance of Democratic Party with Islamism. 
Something like 80-85% of American Jews reliably vote Democratic year in and year out.  But astonishingly, Jews are being abandoned and scorned by Democrats.  The elevation of the stature of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib on a national level is simply stunning.  Democrats couldn’t even bring themselves to condemn Omar’s blatant anti-semitism and Tlaib is now grotesquely on a panel on anti-semitism yet recently retweeted her “from the river to the sea” comment, implying the destruction of Israel.  Democratic New York mayor Bill DeBlasio has targeted Orthodox Jews, their families and businesses for violating COVID rules, obviously singling them out for punishment.  I often wonder how long it will take for many American Jews to realize that they are not in the club anymore?

One must wonder how deeply Islamism has seeped into the American bureaucracy.   In the Obama administration, Obama inexplicably made outreach by NASA a high priority.  And more recently, the CDC in its Thanksgiving recommendations said that we should wear a mask (face veil), and refrain from singing and alcohol use. Sounds suspiciously Taliban-y to me.

The Vatican and the Globalist Left
What more can I say about Pope Francis?  Forty years ago, we had a pope that played a leading role in the fall of the Soviet Union and the discreditation of Communism.  Francis has done an about face and has embraced globalism, and has been harshly critical of the “ideology of individualism” while standing mute against the environmental and human rights abuses of the Chinese Communist Party.  Early in his tenure, I called attention to Francis’s tendency to use the exact same language as Hugo Chavez.   He has since shifted to adopt the slogans and phrases of the globalist left and explicitly used the “build back better” slogan.  He seems less concerned with saving souls than he does parroting the messages of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg.

Catholics and Jews
Faithful Catholics and Jews, finding their rights to worship abrogated by bullying mayors are closing ranks.   I proposed a National Conference of Vigano Catholics and Religious Jews.  Both are held in contempt by New York major DeBlasio, and both united to take their case for opening houses of worship to the Supreme Court.  As progressives continue to use COVID as a pretext for stomping on religious liberty, I predict a closer bond between Catholics and Jews.

Gulf States and Israel
Just as Catholics and Jews have formed tighter bonds, Gulf States and Israel are making peace.  Contrary to the assertions of John Kerry, peace between the Arab states and Israel is being forged without a Palestinian state (see Jake Novak’s latest periscope{ (https://twitter.com/jakejakeny/status/1335619906704969729?s=20)

And at the same time, the U.S. is drawing down troops in the Middle East.  This is a wonderful development, due in no small part to the continued pressure placed on the Iranian regime by Donald Trump.

Blacks and Republicans

Yes, progressives seem to be running the table right now.  Smug and confident, and one stolen election away from controlling both houses of Congress and the presidency, they are poised to make radical changes to our society.  Yet, at some level, they must be terrified.  The Democratic party is in danger of driving Jewish voters away and now black voters are starting to leak out.  Trump did reasonably well with black voters and a new cadre of conservative black voices has started to bubble up.  Burgess Owens, Kim Klacik, Candace Owens and comedian Terrance Williams have surfaced as leading black conservative blacks.  It doesn’t yet look like a mass exodus from the Democratic party, but these fresh black voices could start to chip away at Democratic dominance among African Americans.

Much is being said about the Great Reset.  Certainly, a number of traditional alliances are shifting and the Great Reset may not turn out quite like progressives expect.