I haven’t seen that one. It’s just that I’ve come increasingly to find it harder to suspend disbelief with any space setting. Indeed, I’ve come to see all SF – and even mainstream – references to outer space as a kind of “offshoring” con trick. When all the various crises, contradictions and conflicts of our present day system prove too glaring, just drag in the entire universe up there for a kind of expanded theatre with no limit.
One of the most insane variations comes from a writer seemingly now forgotten: James Blish with his “Cities in Flight” series. This starts in 2013 where the Cold War is still going and “(a)s a result, Western civil liberties have been eroded more and more, until society eventually resembles the Soviet model”. (Wiki)
Bloody communists!
So eventually the East and West merge into a planet wide Evil Soviet Regime. But escape is possible via two magical plot devices: One permits defiance of gravity and enables whole cities to blast off into space. The other permits an indefinite prolongation of human life. And through those convenient deus ex machinas, interstellar travel becomes possible and bold rebel colonies can form for Freedom .... somewhere out there in that infinite blackness!
One irony of all this is that the first book was described as expressing an opposition to McCarthyism ... and yet the ultimate result is yet another sermon against communism!
And the series was explicitly based on Oswald Spengler’s theory of human societies. Yes indeed – Spengler the proto-fascist!
But see how troublesome matters on Earth can be banished by a couple of frankly magical plot devices and a lift off into that limitless cosmos!
Aghogho mentioned the rift between various discourses and the reality that is plainly to be seen. And that reminded me of an old claim regurgitated by Douglas Murray – that Israel could not possibly be carrying out genocide since apparently “statistics show” the population of Gaza is increasing! I’ve heard this astonishing claim repeated often and I fail to see how it can square with the devastation so obviously being visited on Gaza.
There may be a parallel here with the increasing saturation of the public mind with the virtual reality generated by computer games and movies.
And talking about Israel, I see a lot of this meme about how Israel dragged the US into this “conflict”. Indeed, this is always accompanied by the remarkable news that America doesn’t have an empire and isn’t interested in founding one etc. And this line is hardly new. It seems that foreign interference is always unpopular with the US public and so the US government has to manufacture support for these ventures via frauds like the Nayirah Testimony. And when the fallout of that scam becomes apparent, there seems to be this big drive to convince the public that it was a matter of some rogue faction dragging the “good name” of America into the dirt etc.
It’s as if America always hovers invisibly as the “presupposed goodness” that is always being warped. I think there is a parallel here with Brecht’s observation that “capitalism is a gentleman who doesn’t like to hear his name mentioned”. Thus capitalism is always quietly presupposed as the ideal system hovering in the background – as natural as the weather.
But if “the tail wags the dog” then surely the dog must WANT to get wagged?
Also, on the topic of the Middle East, Jonathan Cook has this:
And this is a lovely bit about the elasticated ever re-definable label “terrorist”:
“HTS is proscribed as a terrorist group by both the US and Britain. The CIA has placed a $10m bounty on Jolani’s head. Strangely, amid the excitement, the BBC and the rest of the western media forgot to mention HTS’s status as a proscribed organisation – as they do in kneejerk fashion every time the Palestinian resistance group Hamas is referred to. Notably, the very western politicians and media now celebrating the “liberation” of Syria by HTS are the same ones insisting that the eradication of the “terrorists” of Hamas in Gaza is so important it justifies the bombing and starvation of the enclave’s two million-plus Palestinian population.”
The cow fart matter links in with a general feeling I’m now getting: that so much of all this, for whatever other purpose it may serve, is pure distraction. Why e.g. is X taken up so much with arguing about whether men are women?
As for the UFO meme, and in the spirit of John’s explication a few podcasts back about the psychological significance of post-apocalyptic zombie movies, I’ve been reflecting on the theme of outer space as it functions in sci-fi. I note that the first two Star Trek franchises (the original series and the next generation) seem to hint at some wonderful society of the future (and, to pay it its due, it at least dares to be optimistic) but we get very little info on how this society works – though we are told at one point the fascinating detail that they have no money! It’s surely significant that whenever these programmes go to this earth of the future, they actually dodge the whole issue by going through a time loop into the past. Or, in the case of one next generation episode, Captain Picard goes back to meet his brother who – conveniently – turns out to be an old reactionary who lives on a vineyard in a feudal landscape. Thus the only insight we get into how this future society works is what we see on the starships in outer space. And what we see is clearly a military formation. That this world of the future which has solved all problems is run like an army unit might indicate the inescapable destination of fascism for any project that will have nothing to do with communism.
And on a totally irrelevant topic, I’ve started to watch the new Day of the Jackal. I note the impressive visuals which for me recalled those self-consciously “hip” 60s movies that usually featured Steve McQueen or Michael Cain. I don’t recall the Edward Fox/ Jackal film but the new series seems thoroughly conventionalised with The Jackal clearly being presented as a figure that the viewer is supposed to empathise with. I’m half way through and it appears to be veering towards the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I think that even the shark has jumped the shark!
And I can’t resist a final curiosity. In the UK there is an attempt at whipping up anxiety about wood burners because – wait for it! – they’re bad for you and – wait for it again! – they’re bad for the planet! This little titbit rang a bell in my mind. Didn’t Karl Marx start on his way to radicalism due to an old wood burning law whereby peasants who had collected wood for centuries were suddenly banned from doing so by landowners who insisted that the wood belonged to them even though they had no use for it? So it now seems we have gone in a huge circle back to the beginning though the “reasoning” behind it is now of a form that Marx would never have anticipated.
That’s funny you say that about Star Trek. I’ve been watching the next generation recently and thinking some very similar things to the thoughts you stated here! Also I’ve been pondering the underlying theme of colonialism that lurks beneath the first two Star Trek franchises. Besides, notice how the United Federation of Planets is not only Earth centric, but Anglo centric. English is the dominant language, etc. It’s always fun to deconstruct television, especially shows that on the surface seem “progressive”. Often times beneath the veneer of optimism is something deeply reactionary and, as you noted, fascistic.
I note with embarrassment that I went on a bit about Star Trek without saying what I thought outer space represents. And I think what it represents is a totally blank canvas where the producers of the story can do what they want. Westerners tend to see outer space as some kind of endless pioneer territory for conquest which would fit into the colonial idea. Though it's interesting that David Bowie's Space Oddity was pretty much about withdrawal into inner space – an angle he explicitly brought out when he remade the song accompanied by a video of him in a padded cell.
This would fit in with my cherished childhood memories of my favourite programme Lost in Space (the original series obviously!) with the Robinson family in a cosy retreat into various fantasy lands.
The most significant brainwashing effort in the western world is the effort that convinced so many that America, the US of A, is the greatest country in the world because its people are "free" and it only acts against others in defense of freedom, and that others around the worldhate the USA for its freedom. That so many people believe this in the face of reality is a testament to the brainwashing that has taken place over a few centuries. So is it a stretch that these same people are now convinced that a woman is defined as whomever says they are a woman, in the face of actual biology? Or that the daily slaughter of Palestinians by Israel, supported by the USA, is a defensive response and not genocide, even though every Israeli prime minister has publically stated that the goal is to dispose of all Palestinians? And it is not a stretch to see how the world was scammed by a global pandemic narrative after a century of medicine being captured by corporate interests.I thought this rap song from a couple of years ago was pretty good, It's been cancelled everywhere. https://odysee.com/@MattiasRahm:c/It-began--Between-the-bands:5?fbclid=IwY2xjawHddepleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbiTGoYr2knxebZ8Nz-5VX1c7r9j0FrQIScjFxIw7Xo4wxAGJAIlI3mbIw_aem_VPVwqzYqMyzbgpIOz3lFFQ
I appreciate these discussions! I always want to make ten comments but I will keep it to two-ish points here. The first is: Yes, what bizarreness everywhere, thank you! Drones, climate, the sudden fall of Syria - and makeover of Al-Jolani (some comedian must be spoofing this!) There is the ongoing strangeness of post-covid reality also, where it is not wholly clear what facts are anymore, etc. Another current oddity is the inordinately long time period of the US government's transition - 2 1/2 months may have made sense 50 years ago, but with the pace of current politics, how is it that the supposed superpower can survive the vulnerability of this lame duck status?
The corollary to all this is another strangeness, that most of it eventually winds back to the CIA, does it not? And this gang and its affiliated, equally illegitimate cronies (DHS, DARPA, FBI, etc.) rarely gets mentioned in any meaningful political analysis, despite its obvious hand in all of these matters, including running the government - it sure is not Joe Biden at the helm!
The other point to mention is appreciation for Lex's comment about the massive shame we must all feel about the ongoing genocide. Gabor Mate had some thoughts I found extremely helpful recently on this collective moral injury (https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/enduring-the-trauma-of-genocide-w). But the political dimension of the question Lex asked about what happens next deserves unpacking. What does it say about our ability to do ANYTHING if we can't affect this horror, and what happens when collective morality falls this far? As a second-generation German-American, I can tell you this much - it's not good.
good points and I do often think of the CIA black budget.....amount unknown (classified technically) but which is probably close to as much as they want. So to answer your rhetorical question; yes it can all (99%) be traced back to the CIA conglomerate.
outer space....made me think of danny boyle's Sushine https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/
where outer space resembles a screening room for dailies at a studio. The absolute exhaustion of western imagination.
I haven’t seen that one. It’s just that I’ve come increasingly to find it harder to suspend disbelief with any space setting. Indeed, I’ve come to see all SF – and even mainstream – references to outer space as a kind of “offshoring” con trick. When all the various crises, contradictions and conflicts of our present day system prove too glaring, just drag in the entire universe up there for a kind of expanded theatre with no limit.
One of the most insane variations comes from a writer seemingly now forgotten: James Blish with his “Cities in Flight” series. This starts in 2013 where the Cold War is still going and “(a)s a result, Western civil liberties have been eroded more and more, until society eventually resembles the Soviet model”. (Wiki)
Bloody communists!
So eventually the East and West merge into a planet wide Evil Soviet Regime. But escape is possible via two magical plot devices: One permits defiance of gravity and enables whole cities to blast off into space. The other permits an indefinite prolongation of human life. And through those convenient deus ex machinas, interstellar travel becomes possible and bold rebel colonies can form for Freedom .... somewhere out there in that infinite blackness!
One irony of all this is that the first book was described as expressing an opposition to McCarthyism ... and yet the ultimate result is yet another sermon against communism!
And the series was explicitly based on Oswald Spengler’s theory of human societies. Yes indeed – Spengler the proto-fascist!
But see how troublesome matters on Earth can be banished by a couple of frankly magical plot devices and a lift off into that limitless cosmos!
I always feel gaslit when I watch his shit films
Aghogho mentioned the rift between various discourses and the reality that is plainly to be seen. And that reminded me of an old claim regurgitated by Douglas Murray – that Israel could not possibly be carrying out genocide since apparently “statistics show” the population of Gaza is increasing! I’ve heard this astonishing claim repeated often and I fail to see how it can square with the devastation so obviously being visited on Gaza.
There may be a parallel here with the increasing saturation of the public mind with the virtual reality generated by computer games and movies.
And talking about Israel, I see a lot of this meme about how Israel dragged the US into this “conflict”. Indeed, this is always accompanied by the remarkable news that America doesn’t have an empire and isn’t interested in founding one etc. And this line is hardly new. It seems that foreign interference is always unpopular with the US public and so the US government has to manufacture support for these ventures via frauds like the Nayirah Testimony. And when the fallout of that scam becomes apparent, there seems to be this big drive to convince the public that it was a matter of some rogue faction dragging the “good name” of America into the dirt etc.
It’s as if America always hovers invisibly as the “presupposed goodness” that is always being warped. I think there is a parallel here with Brecht’s observation that “capitalism is a gentleman who doesn’t like to hear his name mentioned”. Thus capitalism is always quietly presupposed as the ideal system hovering in the background – as natural as the weather.
But if “the tail wags the dog” then surely the dog must WANT to get wagged?
Also, on the topic of the Middle East, Jonathan Cook has this:
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2024-12-11/syria-assad-pentagon-plan/
And this is a lovely bit about the elasticated ever re-definable label “terrorist”:
“HTS is proscribed as a terrorist group by both the US and Britain. The CIA has placed a $10m bounty on Jolani’s head. Strangely, amid the excitement, the BBC and the rest of the western media forgot to mention HTS’s status as a proscribed organisation – as they do in kneejerk fashion every time the Palestinian resistance group Hamas is referred to. Notably, the very western politicians and media now celebrating the “liberation” of Syria by HTS are the same ones insisting that the eradication of the “terrorists” of Hamas in Gaza is so important it justifies the bombing and starvation of the enclave’s two million-plus Palestinian population.”
The cow fart matter links in with a general feeling I’m now getting: that so much of all this, for whatever other purpose it may serve, is pure distraction. Why e.g. is X taken up so much with arguing about whether men are women?
As for the UFO meme, and in the spirit of John’s explication a few podcasts back about the psychological significance of post-apocalyptic zombie movies, I’ve been reflecting on the theme of outer space as it functions in sci-fi. I note that the first two Star Trek franchises (the original series and the next generation) seem to hint at some wonderful society of the future (and, to pay it its due, it at least dares to be optimistic) but we get very little info on how this society works – though we are told at one point the fascinating detail that they have no money! It’s surely significant that whenever these programmes go to this earth of the future, they actually dodge the whole issue by going through a time loop into the past. Or, in the case of one next generation episode, Captain Picard goes back to meet his brother who – conveniently – turns out to be an old reactionary who lives on a vineyard in a feudal landscape. Thus the only insight we get into how this future society works is what we see on the starships in outer space. And what we see is clearly a military formation. That this world of the future which has solved all problems is run like an army unit might indicate the inescapable destination of fascism for any project that will have nothing to do with communism.
And on a totally irrelevant topic, I’ve started to watch the new Day of the Jackal. I note the impressive visuals which for me recalled those self-consciously “hip” 60s movies that usually featured Steve McQueen or Michael Cain. I don’t recall the Edward Fox/ Jackal film but the new series seems thoroughly conventionalised with The Jackal clearly being presented as a figure that the viewer is supposed to empathise with. I’m half way through and it appears to be veering towards the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I think that even the shark has jumped the shark!
And I can’t resist a final curiosity. In the UK there is an attempt at whipping up anxiety about wood burners because – wait for it! – they’re bad for you and – wait for it again! – they’re bad for the planet! This little titbit rang a bell in my mind. Didn’t Karl Marx start on his way to radicalism due to an old wood burning law whereby peasants who had collected wood for centuries were suddenly banned from doing so by landowners who insisted that the wood belonged to them even though they had no use for it? So it now seems we have gone in a huge circle back to the beginning though the “reasoning” behind it is now of a form that Marx would never have anticipated.
That’s funny you say that about Star Trek. I’ve been watching the next generation recently and thinking some very similar things to the thoughts you stated here! Also I’ve been pondering the underlying theme of colonialism that lurks beneath the first two Star Trek franchises. Besides, notice how the United Federation of Planets is not only Earth centric, but Anglo centric. English is the dominant language, etc. It’s always fun to deconstruct television, especially shows that on the surface seem “progressive”. Often times beneath the veneer of optimism is something deeply reactionary and, as you noted, fascistic.
I note with embarrassment that I went on a bit about Star Trek without saying what I thought outer space represents. And I think what it represents is a totally blank canvas where the producers of the story can do what they want. Westerners tend to see outer space as some kind of endless pioneer territory for conquest which would fit into the colonial idea. Though it's interesting that David Bowie's Space Oddity was pretty much about withdrawal into inner space – an angle he explicitly brought out when he remade the song accompanied by a video of him in a padded cell.
This would fit in with my cherished childhood memories of my favourite programme Lost in Space (the original series obviously!) with the Robinson family in a cosy retreat into various fantasy lands.
The most significant brainwashing effort in the western world is the effort that convinced so many that America, the US of A, is the greatest country in the world because its people are "free" and it only acts against others in defense of freedom, and that others around the worldhate the USA for its freedom. That so many people believe this in the face of reality is a testament to the brainwashing that has taken place over a few centuries. So is it a stretch that these same people are now convinced that a woman is defined as whomever says they are a woman, in the face of actual biology? Or that the daily slaughter of Palestinians by Israel, supported by the USA, is a defensive response and not genocide, even though every Israeli prime minister has publically stated that the goal is to dispose of all Palestinians? And it is not a stretch to see how the world was scammed by a global pandemic narrative after a century of medicine being captured by corporate interests.I thought this rap song from a couple of years ago was pretty good, It's been cancelled everywhere. https://odysee.com/@MattiasRahm:c/It-began--Between-the-bands:5?fbclid=IwY2xjawHddepleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbiTGoYr2knxebZ8Nz-5VX1c7r9j0FrQIScjFxIw7Xo4wxAGJAIlI3mbIw_aem_VPVwqzYqMyzbgpIOz3lFFQ
I appreciate these discussions! I always want to make ten comments but I will keep it to two-ish points here. The first is: Yes, what bizarreness everywhere, thank you! Drones, climate, the sudden fall of Syria - and makeover of Al-Jolani (some comedian must be spoofing this!) There is the ongoing strangeness of post-covid reality also, where it is not wholly clear what facts are anymore, etc. Another current oddity is the inordinately long time period of the US government's transition - 2 1/2 months may have made sense 50 years ago, but with the pace of current politics, how is it that the supposed superpower can survive the vulnerability of this lame duck status?
The corollary to all this is another strangeness, that most of it eventually winds back to the CIA, does it not? And this gang and its affiliated, equally illegitimate cronies (DHS, DARPA, FBI, etc.) rarely gets mentioned in any meaningful political analysis, despite its obvious hand in all of these matters, including running the government - it sure is not Joe Biden at the helm!
The other point to mention is appreciation for Lex's comment about the massive shame we must all feel about the ongoing genocide. Gabor Mate had some thoughts I found extremely helpful recently on this collective moral injury (https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/enduring-the-trauma-of-genocide-w). But the political dimension of the question Lex asked about what happens next deserves unpacking. What does it say about our ability to do ANYTHING if we can't affect this horror, and what happens when collective morality falls this far? As a second-generation German-American, I can tell you this much - it's not good.
good points and I do often think of the CIA black budget.....amount unknown (classified technically) but which is probably close to as much as they want. So to answer your rhetorical question; yes it can all (99%) be traced back to the CIA conglomerate.