Approaching resignation

Approaching resignation – beginning to accept that the reality of home includes all the semi-literate haters, the obstructionists spawned by God knows how many repeats of the Andrew Jackson election back in 1828 (I still can’t move on from that book). That demographic is supposed to be dying out, but in the meantime it is still around and still really really loud.

And in the meantime they have created a world wherein in makes sense to blast Obama for not being angry enough about the oil spill. Worse, wherein in makes sense to acknowledge fully that there was nothing on earth that he could do about it (unless as Bob Scheer points out he had spoken out belligerently against drilling in the first place and routed Interior for not enforcing regulations, BEFORE the disaster – and yet of course he couldn’t because he was and is still trying to keep Republicans in the game), all the while excoriating him for not manifesting sufficient rhetorical upset. It is simply grotesque. I cannot be part of a society that has so easily given up on reality.

This does not mean that I like the benighted country in which I am exiled, only that I am beginning to accept that I truly am exiled. This is not a temporary state. I have no home. I mean, what I am supposed to do with Maureen Dowd, Emily Bazelon? People who encourage all the blither and emotion, encourage us to give vent to the worst aspects of ourselves because the atmosphere now gives us license to do that? Nothing. I have nothing to do with them. They should be speaking out against the idiocy instead of stoking it.

Another related reason to deplore my former homeland is the appalling quality of movie reviews in its major publications. I cannot live in a land where David Denby can be taken seriously as a movie critic. I have long been dismayed by what passes for reviews at home – long plot summaries with discussions of whether the characters are “realistic” or compelling. Our reviewers, never maturing beyond a third grade conception of film as an exposition of a literal reality, are blind to anything but the stupidest most fundamental meaning. Denby’s latest ridiculous review of a gorgeous Argentinian film, “El Secreto de sus ojos,” completely misses its point, the problem and importance of memory to Argentianians trying to deal with the past. Not that an analysis would have to spend much time on the political implications of memory – individual memory in that context would do the trick. But my God – the character of Morales does after all stick his wife’s murder in a little cachot in his own house for thirty years, and Denby acts as if the literal level is adequate to explain the significance. And that was in the New Yorker! What’s wrong with us?

How is our literal mindedness in the world of thought related to our privileging of emotion over fact? Manifestations of the same distaste for thinking. Who wouldn’t rather just get furious and bellow than actually think through a problem? And who wouldn’t rather just melt into a thoughtless two hours than actually grapple with a problem? But surely we could manage our natural desire not to think a little better – and at least admit that it is better to think than not to think.