I’m glad this movie is on its way. Ever since Gran Torino I’ve known Clint Eastwood is the go to guy for a real movie. He makes movies that are more. They’re better. Whatever Hollywood might have been (if anything), it’s just a shell now. It can’t do anything more than excrete an endless litany of whiny propaganda and childlike rehashed superhero CGI fests. Until Hollywood grows a pair, Eastwood has to fill the void.
I’m not going to go over the Jewell story, y’all either know it or can find it online in 10 minutes. What I want to note is that it remains firmly in my memory. When I live through an event of note, I make a point of remembering it. What did it feel like? What did people act like? What was the sequence of events? What was the mood in the streets? What can I learn from this?
It’s important to remember. If you lack memory, you lack a frame of reference. Without experience and history you’re a naive dipshit. You’ll fall for the next wave of bullshit because you didn’t remember the last one. There’s a reason kids drift from kindergarten to defaulting on college loans without learning fuck-all about history. It’s because people that know history are a pain in the ass. They’re a wee bit harder to buffalo. Nobody wants that. Our society doesn’t want people who say “I’ve seen this shit before and know roughly how it’ll play out”.
I remember Richard Jewell. He’s history from my own personal timeline. He was just a regular guy and I saw as he was crushed by monsters.
I remember watching it play out in the news. I remember when the press turned on a honest if a bit dull guy. A basic mall cop that did the right thing. They turned on him like rabid dogs. They did it so fast! They did it en masse. They hammered him like a generic fellow with a bad haircut was a supervillain, literally Hitler, and Satan all rolled into one.
The poor bastard didn’t have a chance. He didn’t see it coming. He’d trusted them. He was innocent and assumed everyone was as moral as he was. The press turned from “salute the hero” to “burn the witch” in a heartbeat. I remember it as just a few days. Certainly it took less than a week before Jewell was essentially friendless.
I remember too that I couldn’t understand why people were “mobbing up”. It didn’t make sense to me even as it was happening. I remember reading the news (back when newspapers were a thing) thinking “this sounds like bullshit, why am I the only guy that thinks this is bullshit?”
The press and the FBI wrecked an innocent man right in front of our eyes. This isn’t some ancient history, colonial peoples, old timey thing. It was just a few election cycles ago. There was TV reporting, newspapers (now gone), and even internet news. This wasn’t a far removed alien society.
Keep that in mind.
Witch burners are among us. Folks lemming up and run for the cliff. The inevitable half apology, if it happens at all, never heals the damage. “Mistakes were made.” “Now is a time to move on.” Perhaps a lawsuit and some money changes hands… and the witch burners immediately forget. They empty their mind and prepare for the next round of mayhem… which they’ll perform with the righteous smile of people without doubt.
A crowd is always one step from a mob. Never trust the press or government. Being innocent is almost entirely unrelated to whether you will be treated as such. These are key concepts to keep in mind in 2019. We’re in the third year of a cognitive dissonance shitstorm and witch burners are throwing tantrums everywhere you look. It behooves us all to be mindful. Watch your six and avoid crowds. There will be plenty of innocent victims, don’t be one of them.
I’m very happy Clint Eastwood is making this movie.
Hat tip to Ace of Spades.
Ah yes, one’s frame of reference immunizes one from jumping on the blood trail unadvisably. Right now I’m engaged in a little ‘discussion’ over on Instagram about climate change. I knew better, but I’m getting old enough that DILLIGAS seems appropriate more and more often; I contemplated for a brief moment and cried BULLSHIT, and the haters (and some like-minded) piled on.
When one lives through the bullshit past, they can easily distinguish the bullshit present.
It all started with someone’s hilarious response to How Dare You Greta.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3RGPKzluel/?igshid=d8h0hryrapke
I love Eastwood. The only movie he ever did I intensely disliked was “Bridges Of Madison County”, celebrating being a cheating spouse. And even then, I knew that was more my fault since it had just happened to me and I lost my kids. So I took it too personal. Yet, the last movie with him being a drug mule, I thought was just terrible. He should not be acting anymore. To me, he was phoning it in, with a vacant look in his eyes most of the time. It was painful to watch. He has been old for some time, and has aged gracefully and been playing appropriate aged roles. But in this one I think it simply caught up with him. It was watching a train wreck. A bridge too far.
The mass media is now a shell of itself too, AC. I am watching the capers, scams, and shell games they run… and I no longer bother with them at all. They will not be telling me who to hate, or why, and they can shove their narratives up their collective arseholes.
And you’re right… people don’t want to think about stuff like this. It makes them angry. I come from a family of progressive leftists and I used to think that if I could only make a good case for what I believed in, they might at least concede that I had a valid viewpoint… but no way. On a couple of occasions I was a dick about it and I’d argue them into a corner… and the result was rage and fury.
Fuck ’em. There’s no nice way to say it.
I used to think that reason would allow me to change my mind when I was wrong and others could do the same. I’ve come to realize I’m occasionally wrong and accept that I must hold a new opinion based on new data or greater understanding, but it’s only me and a few others. Most people can’t do the same. They never ever change their mind; or at least never admit it to themselves. They just sorta’ join a team and root for their side. Often the best you can hope for is when a great mass changes their mind all at once. Then you’ll meet herd followers that are careful to say “I never used to have that opinion… I definitely always had this one”. (Stay tuned for that sort of mass amnesia in another decade when Global Warming is supplanted by the next power grab disguised as a newly hatched ecological/Malthusian scare.)
I would posit that Mel Gibson could also have done a good job directing this movie…