Battles
Conflict is built into the very nature of life. Most organisms fight to see if they can extract more, regardless of their age or situation. Even at the end of their timeline, all living things crave a little bit more. Since (a portion of) humanity has moved past only trying to survive, us dominate species gets to bicker and dual over concepts. Our hearts beat, neurons fire, mouths flag, sex organs become engorged as we argue or kill in the name of freedom or God. Are we truly free? Or is this living splendor we find ourselves rooted in just an illusion? Is there truth that we have been suppressed all along? Is this life we live in a galactic zoo or petri dish? Could this all be a simulation or are we smart, hairless apes with guns & bombs?
Some powers (cough, cough oligarchs & billionaires) want to control everything. Their enough is now never-enough, as the planet is carved up by the smallest pool of people for the largest amount of spoils. The many of us (the unfashionably unwashed) desire to live our lives and be left alone. But that doesn’t truck well with the self-appointed, pity-party ruling everything here, there, everywhere. The policy of we-don’t-like-them-so-they-need-to-be-more-like-us-but-poor is about as flawed as you can logic. These are not folks open to debate or reasoning. They earned their keep and now they want yours too. Greed has become a virtue. Homeless, hungry, impoverish or exploited need not apply.
Since the overarching understanding is they are the penultimate bosses to all, there are no grounds for negotiation. Rules are optional and politicians are as wearable as an assortment of hats. If the dinosaurs had gotten their act together and didn’t mess around only copulating and eating, they might have had a chance to browbeat the killing meteorite into submission or convinced it to crash on another planet. Nature is negotiable too, don’t you know. The ruling class knows better because money and if you care to debate them, they’ll tell you to shut your fucking mouth and go into how they could end you and your family with lawyer firms’ big teeth and bigger amoral contentment. And if this isn’t enough persuasion, they shoot liberals, don’t they?
What was it that Jesus H. Christ (yeah, that guy) said about rich people entering heaven. Well, He got Himself crucified so what did He know? But the state did its job after He went in and made a mess of the marketplace in the temple. I mean, how dare He? Who does He think He is? Father, Son, Holy Ghost? He doesn’t have a job and hangs out with hookers and cranks. So let me get this straight (not non-binary). If you are not affluent and/or influential, I guess shut the fuck up? That appears to be the bottom line here, located at the bottom of the rotten barrel.
Humanity holds a mixed record of inherently flawed movements in the guise of evolving the species. Much of it gets boiled down to overt racism or its kissing cousin, classism. I wish we were living in a simulated reality a.k.a. Matrix-like red pill, blue pill decisions as that would make sense as to why things are so fucking fucked up. Exasperated explanations about good vs. evil or righteous against corruption & rot is a little too on the binary nose for me. One side against the other side is as stupidly simplistic as you can get. Maybe that is why people embrace it. It’s easy. You can blame all the world’s evils on the ever present, hard to pin down THEM conspiring against the hero of the story: YOU. I could laugh myself to death thinking about the finger pointing and fear of pronouns. That’s a different, longer conversation altogether. And frankly, I’d rather just fire up the joint I’ve been fingering and watch One Battle After Another again.
Born from source material by Thomas Pynchon and cobbled into cinema by Paul Thomas Anderson, this film is about resistance of everything. The United States is under control by an authoritative regime and uses an extremely militarized police force to stomp out rights for immigrants, pro-choice and any non-Christian while spreading fear against any descension. Sound familiar? Revolution and fascism are alive and well. But this story makes an abrupt turn toward the real details of all movements: the drama of living and that is desire. Wants versus needs. The wanting of something forbidden. The struggle to hand over the world as a better place. The belief in fighting the good fight from enemies everywhere. And in this regard, OBAA isn’t a revolutionaries’ fairytale, but one of conflict within, without, basically everywhere.
Can love, family and community be a path back to our own humanity? And will power constructs like government, religion and technology be the bullets in the gun which take it all away. Learn from Minneapolis. Take lessons from this amazing film. Hug your loved ones. Fight the power. Always. Make them earn it because this is the best we can do to level a very steeply, inequitable playing field. Power to the protesters. The last line of defense is us. The people.