by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog
Turns out the Mueller Report isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
It is certainly a sad day for America. Get wasted on tabloid, sore-loser, unproven accusations and the hangover will be costly. But the damage to the credibility of the Democratic Party and the Mainstream Media? Incalculable.
Generation X-ers are role models now, but the past two years sure wasn’t “leadership”. Millennials trusted them on this one – you were so very certain, somehow – and… now what do you do?
Achhh….
This is not my problem, thankfully. I wrote against Russia(non)gate as early as February 2017, treating it for what it was worth – fodder for jokes. What’s amazing is how people took it so very seriously, and for so very long.
Wild claims of treason cannot replace a political platform… but I think it all clicks when we remember that taking total sociopolitical nonsense extremely seriously is a hallmark of the West’s Generation X.
I find it so interesting that Western media now talks almost solely of Baby Boomers and Millennials – it is as if Generation X has been written out of history! I guess Boomers, who are now the richest generation (as they inherit the wealth of the dying Greatest Generation), only want to focus on their grandkids and not their own loser children?
There are plenty of gleeful post-mortems being given in the left following the Mueller Report, but not many are asking: how did this come about? Two-plus years of mass delusion, mass paranoia, mass Russophobia, mass lynch-mob mentality – what are the moral issues which drove allegedly progressive people to these totally-unfounded political stances?
These moral issues simply must come from Generation X, because they are the still-vibrant, mature-adulthood foot soldiers of the ruling Baby Boomers, who – if not already retired – are taking Fridays off to visit their worshiped grandkids who they are spoiling with praise.
In newsrooms across the US the generation really in charge of day-to-day operations now is Generation X – they are the editors and top journalists. The Greatest Generation has passed on ownership of the media to Baby Boomers, while Boomer journalist-proletarians are on their last legs: journalism is a stressful job – there are no 65-year old daily reporters in newsrooms, and no one would hire even the most robust one (too expensive, too opinionated, etc.). Millennials aren’t in charge, to their shock and awe, because any craft relies on experience and Millennials don’t have any yet.
So the biggest blow to US media credibility since the failure to question “Weapons of Mass Destruction” in Iraq is truly a Gen X affair. It’s Pulp Fiction in political form.
“Ooh, this doesn’t sound like the usual mindless, boring, ‘getting to know you’ chit-chat. This sounds like you actually have something to say.”- Mia Wallace
However, as many may remember from the movie, John Travolta doesn’t really have anything to say: he is about to salaciously ask if a man was crippled over giving Uma Thurman a foot massage.
Elitist publications like Esquire routinely declare Dazed and Confused to be the “definitive film of Generation X”, but that’s false: that movie is childish, because it is about children – high schoolers. Those who say Dazed and Confused is the definitive Generation X movie are likely Baby Boomers, who subconsciously want to see their adult children as actual children, and thus remain forever young themselves, in that very typically American fashion (and which is because elders are not honoured there). Pulp Fiction is what the Dazed and Confused characters turned out to be in their adult prime, and it is not impressive: they are drug addicts, cheating boxers, wannabe actresses, raging bullies, the visually bizarre, the sexually bizarre and losers without children.
Pulp Fiction was such an enormously positive artistic shock when it came out in 1994 – it seemed that Generation X had found its cinematic auteur. Unlike most actor-driven pap, which is super-quick closeups instead of dialogue and plot, this was clearly the work of a great director. Want proof? Tarantino famously exhumed John Travolta to play a leading part – even your next-door neighbor would have been a huge hit in that role.
Our downfall was that we all foolishly assumed that Tarantino had something to say simply because he told Pulp Fiction so spectacularly well. It’s been written that Pulp Fiction is one cliffhanger after another, and it is… because there is actually no content. Content is slow-building and wonky.
Pulp Fiction is a supercool movie which is about nothing: it is 3 tabloid vignettes woven together in a most riveting fashion, and with no heartfelt moral in any of them. This is in stark contrast to Tarantino’s only other truly great movie, Reservoir Dogs, which is ultimately about the power of male camaraderie.
Ignore whatever fawning cinema critics say: Tarantino has not come close to approaching greatness with any movie since Pulp Fiction – he essentially has made living cartoons (Kill Bill 1 and 2), bad action TV from the 1970s (Jackie Brown, The Hateful 8) and childish revenge fantasies for minority groups (Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained, Death Proof – Jews, Blacks and women, respectively). The reason for this artistic collapse is simple: he truly has nothing to say on any topic of any importance, whether social, political, economic or religious. This disinterest in things of social substance is the essence of Generation X.
With the same “all hype, no substance” of a Gen X rapper, the Mueller Report has proven to be nothing but empty calories. America is now disgusted with itself for gorging on something so unhealthy, again.
“The days of me forgetting are over, and the days of me remembering have just begun.” – Pulp Fiction, opening scene
That, of course, is what an immature slacker loser says after their latest failure, which was so very similar to their last failure.
It was all a big empty diversion, of course, both Pulp Fiction and the Mueller Report. The latter was to deflect attention from the total failure of the hollow, out-of-touch, self-glorifying, 99%-hating, fake-leftist Democratic Party in the 2016 presidential election. The idea that Trump would somehow require Putin’s assistance to defeat decades of emperor-egoed Democrats, and even amidst the Great Recession and its failed QE solutions, is as believable as were the emperor’s new clothes. I can go on and on about this, but I just said the crux of the biscuit.
The Mueller Report, despite repeated assurances that it would contain everything short of the meaning of life, turned out to be superficial nonsense. Obstructing justice is what Liberal Democratic politicians do; the fraud convictions for Paul Manafort is what Liberal Democratic politicians do – an investigation of any top US politician would produce the same crimes. What was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? Just two lights and a battery, per Samuel Jackson.
While Political Correctness is an often unfairly-maligned lens, Generation X is known for taking this to the absurd extreme: a belief that moral relativity can be a guiding ethical philosophy.
Moral relativity also means never having to say you were wrong – there are no “truths”. This helps explain why so many Gen X journalists, like Rachel Maddow, are now trying to move the goalposts on their Trump-Russia accusations.
For those of us who do not make moral relativity our crowning ethos, such people will always look like lying, amoral, untrustworthy, egotistical people until they admit wrongdoing and apologize for the consequences. It is not “all relative”….
However, it’s not just anti-Trumpers who are typically-Generation X, but pro-Trumpers too. I get it as a protest vote, but the only way a person could possibly justify a sincere vote for The Donald would be through moral relativistic machinations worthy of anyone on MSNBC defending Barry “Bailout” Dronebama. Many Gen Xers made such votes. Generation X is full of people who think anyone on TV is automatically worthy of respect, and who are also unable to parse political meaning intelligently following a lifetime of disinterest and disdain.
I think that pro-Trumpers won’t need any such moral twists and turns in 2020 – who could vote for a Democratic Party which went all in on Trump the Treasoner and was wrong?
It’s really too bad, because a 2nd term of Trump will be very tough on three countries which are very dear to me: Iran, Cuba and Palestine.
But Pulp Fiction is the greatest Generation X movie because of its politics, NOT just its style.
Yes, Pulp Fiction actually had serious political messages, but they are rarely examined – a legacy of Generation X is the preference to focus on style, remember?
Sociopolitcally, Pulp Fiction is best remembered for initiating the current age of comfort in, trivalization of, and expectation of massive explicit violence. However, it is wrong to pin this on Gen Xers and Tarantino – here, they are the victims of larger American imperialist culture and history.
Gen Xers grew up or lived during the violent 1970s and then the crack epidemic – this is when bloody gun violence, road rage, gang warfare and tabloid TV journalism became a part of everyday life. Had Gen Xers not numbed and habituated themselves to this violence… how could they function in US society? However, from the first hatchet to an Indian’s skull American culture has been imbued with violence – duh.
These immediate and unfair criticisms blinded many to what is so impressive about the sociopolitical commentary in Pulp Fiction, which 25 years later has proved to be stunningly politically prescient; it gave seemingly scant attention to politics and economics, yet it completely it captured the essence of Western Gen X thinking on such subjects.
“It’s the little differences. I mean they got the same s*** over there they got here, but just there it’s a little different.” “Example?” – Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield
It’s a repeatedly cosmopolitan movie, mirroring the coming advent of the Euro and the confirmation of pan-Europeanism. Samuel Jackson is so entranced by Travolta’s rendering of Amsterdam that, “Aw man, I’m going, that’s all there is to it, I’m f***ing going!” to move to Europe. European Gen Xers were similarly “jump in the deep end and damn the consequences” pan-Europeanists – look at how that has turned out. (And whatever happened in real-life to that Columbian, taxi-driving fox (excuse me, wolf), Esmerelda Villa Lobos? I always preferred her to Bruce Willis’ self-absorbed French girlfriend… yet I moved to France?)
Pulp Fiction presaged Brexit, denying England’s connection to the Continent. Referring to Harvey Keitel’s tuxedoed, American, smooth, “Mr. Wolf” character, Travolta says, “I don’t know why I just thought he’d be European or something?” Jackson responds, “Yeah man, he was about as European as f***ing English Bob.” The English will no longer be European (Union) as of April 12, one hopes.
Pulp Fiction also anticipated the rise of violent Christian evangelism, where Christianity is deployed to justify atrocious violence. This is not something which can be done on a public level, due to official Western secularity, but the “Christian Warrior” concept is certainly alive and well among the army’s rank and file as well as the Pentagon. The raging bullying of Samuel Jackson, self-righteously screaming Scripture at an apartment full of terrified and baby-faced novices he is slowly murdering in cold blood, certainly reminds one of a confident, well-trained US mercenary in Afghanistan, Iraq or any of the other foreign wars which were massively supported by Gen Xers. I always thought this scene could have never have been played by a White actor – hits too close to home.
“Did you just order a $5 shake? That’s a shake – that’s milk and ice cream – that’s $5?” What’s amazing today is the idea that anyone would balk at paying $5 for a milkshake in a fancy place like the fictitious Jack Rabbit Slim’s! Balking wouldn’t start until more like $11. Reduced purchasing power is indeed the primary economic consideration since the mid-1970s, and you have to give Tarantino credit for recognising that and memorably hitting the nail on the head.
The movie was the first rationalization of lifestyles which used to be thought of as deviant in the West; it also illustrates the idea in the West (which is governed by “identity politics” instead of socialist solidarity) that deviants are not minority outcasts but, somehow, the true elite. The most amusing example is Rosanna Arquette, with her 13 piercings all over her body: rejecting any sort of “normal” philosophy, she pontificates about how not using a needle for piercing “goes against the whole idea of piercing” as if piercing was a complex moral philosophy! Obviously, that makes her one of the apostles, and apostles don’t have to admit they were wrong on Trump’s Russia collusion. Such boring, self-absorbed conversations – whether on piercing, tattoos, craft brewing or vinyl records – replaced sociopolitical discussion for Gen X.
Hard drug use used to be thought of as deviant, but much like violence I think that Pulp Fiction is simply reflecting American reality – Gen X was the victim, not the originator of this trend.
The famous anal rape scene was perpetrated by – of course – rural Americans: it’s the Gen X version of Deliverance. Elitists who demean “White Trash” is something I have written about often, but we can’t deny that Tarantino was politically attuned to American fake-leftism when he decided to portray rural people as truly horrific “deplorables”. If the movie was written today all that would be needed is to add a “MAGA” hat to “the Gimp”, the disturbing, bondage leather-clad human kept in a dungeon by the film’s hillbillies.
The famous Christopher Walken scene – a family heirloom watch is hidden inside rectums for 7 years in a POW camp – is essentially a way to mock the sacrifices of armed forces, which is very Generation X. They could not have cared less about fighting Vietnamese socialism (which was real), yet they fell as hard as stones for WMD nonsense when Islam was declared the enemy (which is false) after 9/11.
Most interestingly, in film’s moral and philosophical climax, Pulp Fiction illustrates why Generation X has certainly proven to be the strongest adherents of ice-cold neoliberalism. We must recall Gen X was the first US generation in several generations to not have any socialists at all; they are a resolutely capitalist-imperialist generation which grew up hating socialism, hating Russia and not caring that this hate was misguided and morally wrong. Gen X is hardcore capitalist-imperialist, but they merely do it in a passive-aggressive way, not unlike their Canadian neighbors. Gen X also doesn’t talk about politics or economics – their unity on heartless neoliberal capitalism-imperialism is as assumed as the sun coming up in the morning. This explains why Tarantino doesn’t talk about economics much, but when he does it is 100% neoliberal capitalism.
When Samuel Jackson explains to John Travolta that he has had a religious epiphany and is going to quit gangsterism in order to “walk the earth” and “get in adventures”, he is immediately smacked down by Travolta. We can interpret this as a typical Gen X lack of “pioneer spirit”, yet Travolta’s rationale is totally neoliberal: “No Jules, you decided to be a bum. Just like all those pieces of s*** who beg for change, who sleep in garbage bins, who eat what I throw away. They got a name for that Jules – it’s called a bum. And without a job, a residence or legal tender, that’s what you’re gonna be man, a f***ing bum”. This speech is the essence of the hyper-capitalist and fundamentally neoliberal economic view which Generation X obviously totally embraced: without money, a job and the trappings of middle-class respectability Jackson is just walking human excrement. Shortly thereafter, when Jackson is going to give $1,500 to diplomatically and peacefully resolve restaurant gunfight standoff, Travolta warns, even at the risk of murder and his own death, “Jules, you give that f***ing nimrod $1,500 and I’ll shoot him on general principle.” Travolta’s “principle” is quite in line with neoliberal American capitalism – no economic “giving” or redistribution under any circumstances, no to Jules’ revolution, no to socialism.
Add up all these different and often bizarre sociopolitical proclivities and beliefs, and we can understand why – incredibly – so many Gen Xers genuinely believed that treasonous Russian collusion was a certainty because there existed a scandalous videotape of Trump getting urinated on by Russian prostitutes despite his well-known phobia of germs. It sounds like an axed fourth storyline in Pulp Fiction….
Forget about the Gen X things most people focus on with Pulp Fiction – the nostalgia, the retro style, the super-cool music (RIP this week to Lebanese-American Dick Dale, who introduced Arabic scales to US pop music; the movie also introduced a new generation to Link Wray’s Rumble, which marked the birth of the power chord AND reverb, and what’s cooler than those?) – Pulp Fiction gave an accurate presentations of Generation X’s socioeconomic value system.
“Pride only hurts, it never helps.” – Marsellus Wallace
Yet another motto of Generation X.
Well, it all depends on context: “Non serviam” (I will not serve) was the sin that cast Satan from heaven, sure, but not serving the gangster Wallace is a good form of pride.
A total lack of pride is what led to Russiagate debacle.
Gen Xers are the media and political staffers who were all-too willing to serve gangsters, banksters, political shysters and journalism magnate hucksters. They composed the editors, the talking heads, the chiefs of staff, the rank and file, and the movers and shakers who only shook America into the nothingness that is the Mueller Report.
They had no pride, because pride is not found in the success of your individual self but in shared concepts, shared responsibilities and shared achievements. Gen Xers in these jobs of social responsibility – tens or hundreds of thousands of them – repeatedly failed to stand up to what was obviously a totally pathetic ruse because they cared only about their own success.
Much like Bruce Willis, who served Wallace in order to retire early to a Tahitian beach, Gen Xers pushing Russia(non)gate were only it for themselves. (Willis’ character had obviously served Wallace before, which is why he was insulted with “palooka” by Travolta’s character.) That’s the Gen X way, and America needs to realize this. They say that Millennial Americans are more collective-minded, and I certainly hope so – but maybe it only appears that way because they are standing next to Gen Xers?
What has Russiagate ultimately given us? It has given us “fake news” – the idea that propaganda actually can exist in the United States, and not only outside it. It has also given Americans the idea that they may actually have their own “Deep State”, a concept which every other nation has already identified in their own country. These are indeed momentous and necessary realizations which America needed to examine deeply, but they are so pitifully far behind in political thought that I could only satirise them before moving on to examine actually-important issues.
So what happens when Gen Xers fight other Gen Xers? You get a nothing Mueller Report.
Did the pro-Trump Gen Xers “win”, really?
No. Donald Trump was an unwanted prize to begin with. His victory, and now his exoneration, and soon his re-election, are a typically-Gen X affirmation of their political and moral abyss.
But that’s how Gen X likes it. They don’t like to join and they don’t like to lead. They like to laugh all alone, mockingly, and not with the group. Certainly unelectable, yet America must elect them. As Pulp Fiction relates, they are a strange, unrelatable lot. Interesting to watch, as long as you are far away.
I’d like to end with: regardless, let’s not write Generation X out of Western society – these problems aren’t going away. Similarly, don’t encourage Tarantino by paying to see his next movie – make him get back to making art and not pulp, although apparently his next movie is going to be his last one.
A couple weeks ago Nancy Pelosi, knowing the Mueller Report was about to be a dud, dropped Democrats’ hysterical and undemocratic demands for Trump’s impeachment with a decidedly parental (and fundamentally smug), “And he’s just not worth it”. Mommy and Daddy know exactly how to defuse their kids, after all.
It’s a very Generation X-type of idea: The fight is not worth fighting.
Russiagate wasn’t, that’s for sure.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.
Well, russiagate was not a total loss to the dimocrats (sarc);
mueller knew as of March 2018 that there was no collusion but continued with the fraud. The campaigning and electioneering up to the nov 2018 elections were conducted with the allegation of collusion still out there. thus, it is not beyond one’s imagination that the house of reps was handed to the dimocrats in the nov 2018 election.
Of course, the massive voter fraud in ca, tx, ga, az helped a great deal.
I wonder who will be the first to criticize the impending fraud in the Ukraine election tomorrow?
The Democratic Party made a firm and very noticeable turn away from this before the election. The Democrats decided before the Election Day that they were much better off running on health care as an issue. The Mueller Report and Russiagate were not being mentioned much at all by a lot of the Democrat candidates. They found better ground in pointing out that the Republicans wanted voters dead, and strangely enough telling voters to drop dead did not turn out to be a winning campaign issue.
Still though, Taras makes a good point – Russiagate was hanging over the elections, no doubt, even if Democratic candidates weren’t harping about it.
i am not surprised that democrats would push back on that allegation but to say that medicare for all, as offered by the likes of AOC, berney, strikes me as missing the point entirely.
The period in 2018 leading up to election was dominated by news about mueller’s investigation, the leaks coming out of congress, the russiagate hysteria as offered byMSNBC (maddow et al), cnn, created such a distorted atmosphere that the anti-trump candidates would win in a walk.
Indeed, the schiffs, nadlers, swalwell were getting extensive tv time to pound on collusion issue-to this day, they have not given up.
I think it is a waste to time to continue this with a dimo vs goper or trump or anti-trump debate. The bottom line for me is that mueller and rosenstein were totally dishonest in the collusion “investigations,” combined with the the slow walks of fbi/doj corruption investigations had a major influence on the 2018 elections.
How could it have been otherwise. Russiagate hysteria, collusion, were the major issues of the day.
“The period in 2018 leading up to election was dominated by news about mueller’s investigation, t”
Yah but:
There were also reports that a lot of voters weren’t paying any attention to this choice of the MSM to hammer on the Mueller investigation. That is, they didn’t really give an eff about it.
This kind of accords with the theory that a certain class was pushign the Russiagate thing, and a lot of voters just yawned.
I distinctly recall seeing stories of this nature, but not in the MSM news, of coursse (because I don’t watch MSM news) but there were some polls etc that were reported on in alt new sites.
Katherine
Taras, you have to always keep in mind, I believe, that Western ‘elites’, in politics and in the brainwashing apparatus so essential to elite rule, and in the USA in particular, are both morally and psychologically insane and intellectually inadequate. This is the result of centuries of careful selection for the traits of obsequious service to economic power, the one and only true power in capitalist pathocracies, and decades of the unmentionable-the total subservience to Zionazi power.
Today, anywhere in the West, to in any way annoy or confront or even hinder, Zionazi power and presumption, is career-ending. Here, in Austfailia, the political scuttlers never cease to broadcast their admiration for ‘the one ‘democracy’ in the Middle East’. Monetary favours flow in return like milk and honey, but, if you dare mention the Palestinians, save to spit on them as ‘terrorists’, or to decry Hamas as ‘militants’, not the elected Palestinian Government in the last election permitted the ‘two-legged animals’, twelve long years ago, you’re an ‘antisemite’, old boy, and you’re history.
As is de rigeur with this institutionalised witch-hunt, the mere accusation is also the trial, judgment and sentence, always life in solitary without parole. To defend an ‘antisemite’ in any way, brings immediate declaration that you, too, are one of the damned, and similar sentence, or at least, the suspicion of such, to be dragged up later at any further sign of Thought Crime or Badthink. This prohibition is so ubiquitous that, surely so as not to come under suspicion, the fakestream presstitutes almost never mention the Palestinians, save to slander them, of course.
In contrast, all discussion of Israel is ameliorative at least, or frankly sycophantic. ‘Holocaust’ memoirs are a constant obsession of the bien pensants in public radio, the ABC, but the recollections of the other victims of the Nazis, the Roma, Sinti, southern Slavs, Soviet citizens etc, are nowhere at all to be heard, ever. And the current upsurge of fraudulent accusations of ‘antisemitism’, at a time when real Judeophobic acts are at historic lows throughout the West, and when vicious Islamophobia is running rampant, has been joined in, with gusto, by the public broadcaster as well. For those with a strong stomach, just check out the ABC National Radio’s ‘The Minefield’ program of last week, with the execrable goy-hater, Deborah Lipstadt, such a darling of the brainwashing machine, who, in my opinion, simply projects her own goy-hatred onto the goyim to produce her lurid fantasies of endemic and fulminating Jew-hatred in the West, and in UK Labour in particular. The mere intro reproduced at the start of the program will give you a taste of the deranged hatred that lies therein, a hate caused, not by Judeophobia, certainly not from Corbyn, one of the most noted anti-racists in the UK Parliament, but by his belief that Palestinians are human beings, and his ‘Leftwing policies’. After all, one minor Blairite Quisling in the UK Parliament declared recently that ‘anti-capitalism’ is ‘antisemitism’. Out of the mouths of babes and idiots, indeed.
“but the recollections of the other victims of the Nazis, the Roma, Sinti, southern Slavs, Soviet citizens etc, are nowhere at all to be heard, ever.”
In fact the sacrifice of the Russians in “taking the bullet” for Americans and others not only is not recognized as being part of any ‘Holocaust” but Westerns governments practically spit on the memory of those deaths, pointedly paying zero attention, certainly not a shred of respect, when Russians commemorate their losses in the Great Patriotic War. It was not only patriotic but a war to save the West, also.
It is disgraceful.
Katherine
@Katherine,
And the nicest thing is Baby Yar – the killing of over 30’000 Jews after Kiev (beside the fact that the Einsatzgruppen where manned heavily by Bandera’s guys, adding another 300’000 at the least) had been taken by the Germans in Sept. 41, was perpetrated by the Bandera Gang- official Heros of Ukraine – isn’t that charming ?
So WE know who Merkel and her deranged EU-Buddies together with the orchestrators in Washington Noodland and Pyatt are, dont’ we ??
Everything in the official narrative is fake, even those parts which are true have been falsified by the sheer all encompassing weight of it, EVERYTHING is desecrated, destroyed even the holies of the holy – the Holohaux.
What is left are only two things, pure fanatical believe in the face of reality and on the other side the revelation having been part of a monstrous, murderous lie so big it dwarfs everything else, and in FACT being THE CRIME of the world, a crime which cannot be compared with any other one (that which they fradulently attributed to the holocaust).
That is where we are now positioned !
Re Baby Yar was perpetrated by the Bandera gang,
I don’t think I have read about this.
Do you have any sources?
Katherine
i agree with all you said and it cannot be any different
because in the Western society
every word is fake,
every action is fake,
every feeling is fake,
every emotion is fake.
Everything is used to further ones interests,
nothing is holy, nothing is real. It’s all marketing.
The West cannot comprehend that someone
is hurt, someone is suffering, someone has love.
That someone has a soul.
The West has no soul. It is just numbers of $ and €.
And those are fake too.
I watched part of a documentary about James Baldwin, the author, last night. As a black man in the USA, he understood that society well, I would say. And it’s not, and was never, very pretty. The USA is the triumph of life-long, intensive, brainwashing, by an apparatus that includes the fakestream media sewer, the advertising cancer, the PR incubus and the ‘entertainment’ swamp, where Americans are indoctrinated into a worldview based on the worship of insatiable greed, a group xenophobia and enmity, often culminating in genocide, towards all other states that are not complete stooges, delusions of ‘Exceptionalism’ and ‘Indispensability’ and a lingering group hallucination of a ‘Middle America’ that was euthanised long ago. A nation of obese and hyper-obese, metabolically deranged, brainwashed, aggressive, ignoramuses, now divided against one another by a blood-sucking elite whose depravity and wickedness is probably unsurpassed in human history. And this Moloch is still so deranged as to imagine itself the summit of human achievement and the envy of the world.
in my experience most Americans are stuck in high school mentality. Apart from one (girl) I have never met any American who had anything nice to say about their high school They were all heavily bullied there (like a bunch of stupid slaves – turned against each other)
Where I come from (Serbia) anyone I know had a great time in high school (full of jokes, laughter, coming together to do fun things) – we used to make fun of teachers (you need balls for that) unlike American slavish teenagers who make fun of fat kids (any idiot could do that).
When I lived in LA (and used to hang out with very senior people from HBO) – I noticed how immature they were and how obsessed with what’s ‘popular’ especially ‘good looking’ people no matter how psychopathic and dishonest etc…
Due to all the bullying, being turned against each other, excluded from ‘popular’ groups etc – they further withdraw from any meaningful aggregation and seem to remain obsessed with childish immature things most people around the world grow out of in their early childhood
The real reasons for the Democrat defeat were, firstly, the sheer vicious, obscene, nastiness of the blood-soaked, psychopathic, hag presented as nominee. The only candidate that Trump could defeat (to his amazement, I am certain). Second, there was the criminal conspiracy to defraud Sanders’ voters (Sanders himself, I am sure, was in on the scam, as his instant capitulation at the Convention showed), which was revealed in the leaked, not hacked, Wikileaks documents, whose content ‘The Resistance’ refuse to discuss. Third, was the consequent mass abstention, 100 million not voting, many Democratic voters incensed by the Sanders fraud. Fourth, was the massive Republican efforts at voter suppression, electoral roll purging, election day delays and hindrance in Democrat districts etc. And, somewhere between fifty-ninth and umpteenth, comes ‘Russian meddling’, an effort so minuscule in comparison to Zionazi, or Saudi, meddling, or to US interference, sabotage and subversion of other countries (an ongoing campaign that costs tens of billions every year)as to require an electron microscope to discern it. The Russian meddling tripe, which, as expected, has now transmuted into the lunatic proposition that it ‘threw’ the election to Trump, is surely the very summit, the Everest of fake news, so far, by the princelings and prinesslings of the Western fakestream fake news sausage-making machine.
I think it was all the deplorables who didnt vote for killery.
Dreadful, wasn’t it? Didn’t they know what was good for them, or that it was ‘Our turn’? Had not the feminazi hags who Clinton so perfectly represented, the Madeleine Albrights, the Rices, the Samantha Powers, the Slaughters, the Haspels and the others, proved that the ‘female’ of the species was as murderous as the male, and therefore fit to steer the USS Sabbat Goy into a glorious future, sailing serenely across oceans of blood?
About all those labels, … just to identify the program used to manipulate specific brain.
They are programmed, no other country do that.
I never watched Pulp after the first minute of the trailer because it was so obviously vicious, and I never followed TrumPutin after the first cartoon depicting Putin with a Trump toupee because it was so obviously inane, but I have spent a lot more time reading Ramin’s article on the subject because I think he is on to something. Generation X, the 3D generation: Dumbed-down, Drugged and Depraved.
I avoid Tarantino’s stuff for that reason, but when dragged out to see Jackie Brown, thoroughly enjoyed it. I particularly like how Samuel Jackson gets to use the ‘n-word’ with such poetic exuberance. His line that Jackie would need ‘n-repellent’ if visiting one seedy dive on a Saturday night, was truly rib-tickling. Speaking of which, I just visited a market where, horror of horrors, gollywogs were on sale. I reported the offence to the Thought Police immediately, of course, and the woman who sold me a ‘kaffir lime’ instead of the politically correct ‘makrut’ lime, and the dastard selling ‘Wandering Jew’, instead of the now preferable ‘Wandering trad’ (from Tradescantia), as well. The usage, ‘Wandering Semite’ that I heard from an American once, seems not to have caught on.
In Godzone , Tradescantia is an invasive noxious species. We are thinking biological control.
Dear Mulga
I always enjoy-and wholeheartedly endorse-your political commentary but here the theme is “movie” and like you
I loved “Jackie Brown”.After reading Ramin’s essay this movie seems to be a deliberate homage to generation babyboomer : the fabulous soundtrack, and the careful selection of actors like Pam Grier( first Playboy centrefold back woman) and Robert Forster( his b-grade TV actor persona so disarmingly apropos).But this was Tarantino doing Romance,more piquant than pulp. I’m a babyboomer and it worked for me.
The entire cast were excellent, but Grier and Forster were fantabulous.
it could be great mistake ,
for the rest of the world to laugh at what happened with this muller thing for almost two years.,it was almost a coup but now the republicans a.k.a neocons are in full control ,for the foreseeable future,time to panic ,cause if the less dangerous two party system can give us ”freedom & democracy” as it did in many splendid way and got away with it in, vietnam,yugoslavia,iraq,ukrine,afghanistan,yemen,& syria…….
we can expect hell and high water from the zio infected bible thrumbers with wet dream of end time fantasy. Power corrupts ,absolute power corrupts absolutely…that is backed by a 900 billion war making budget…who dare better them…god help us ,but maybe god does not care …cause they have bought him off by honouring him in their dough,”IN GOD WE TRUST”…have a nice day…
Of course all that gets thrown out the window if it actually is a woman god who has every intention of creating a world of peace rather than a world of war. One had better get on board before they become a casulity of their own war making.
Russiagate was invented for two reasons. First of all as psychological conditioning of the population, to maintain the Russian “threat”. The second reason is to remind politicians in the US that no friendship moves towards Russia will be permitted. Russia has to stay the enemy. This type of attitude will, I am afraid, move the world closer to Russia. Washington still needs to learn this.
Taking my daily bath in the Guardian sewer, today I was much entertained by the dyslectic Carol Cadwalladr auditioning for Rachel Madcow’s sinecure, once Madcow’s Bovine Encephalopathy reaches its end stage and she is humanely put out of her suffering. Judging by Madcow’s behaviour since the Mueller nada tortilla was released, alternating the usual hysteria with lachrymose incontinence, facial twitching and inappropriate cackling, I detect the terminal stage of a prion disease not unlike the dreaded kuru of New Guinea, the ‘laughing sickness’ that ends, inevitably in death and, no doubt, in Madcow’s case, transfiguration into a Saint of ‘The Resistance’ (All Praise to The Resistance!). So Codswalloper’s little exercise in humbug, bull-dust and denial of reality may just be an audition, the thirty silver shekels on offer in the USA fakestream media cess-pool being far more alluring than the mouldy loaves and foetid fishies one gets serving in the Guardian fake news machine.
Cadwalladr (sic), does the Full Monty Madcow, ‘Resistance’ inversion of reality. The Mueller Report is being withheld in a sinister attempt to hide the Truth, and it only confirms the nefarious Russian attack on the USA. A ‘massive’ attack plainly only marginally less dastardly than Pearl Harbor. The hyperbole, is, of course, deranged in its extremity and war-mongering, hate-mongering and fear-mongering obscenity, let alone its malicious mendacity, but that is what the wretched creature is paid to produce, and to Hell with ‘journalistic ethics’. And who can forget that this Codswalloper won the ‘Orwell Prize’ for services to presstitutism last year-surely the ‘Big Brother-Ministry of Truth Memorial Prize’ would be more appropriate.
Always amazing insight and wit. A symphony of clever prose and free verse. We bow to the mumblebrain.
Superb article Ramin.Genxers to a T,may they slide quickly into the swamp and dissolve.
I must say I can’t really follow this contribution of Ramin’s.
As a member of the baby boom cohort (not by choice of course!!!) I don’t really think he is adding much value here to a discussion of intergenerational politics.
Perhaps he means the baby boomers in France or Iran. Or the generation Xers of those countries? Maybe they all, and Ramin, spent far too long watching reruns of Pulp Fiction and memorizing the dialogue.
Katherine
Katherine; My sense of Ramin’s article was that it was a long and culturally focused condemnation of the severe alienation that afflicts contemporary generations in the West. That alienation is massive and readily understood considering the last forty years of neoliberalism. The contemporary younger generation is very poorly equipped to deal with their massive alienation and their being a victim of it is so easily seen. By contrast Ramin is so clearly not culturally alienated himself (given his background). Consequently he finds the contrast between himself and the Western younger generation to be both intense and deeply disturbing. Being a highly cultured reporter he couches his complaint in very creative cultural language. My thoughts for what they are worth.
I think it’s a pretty good description and explanation of the US in general (I spent around 13-14 years in LA, SF, DC etc). I find the UK similar (I spent 13 years there )
I have noticed all this passivity but it took me years to connect the dots and understand their fakeness , mania (caricature of happiness) , psychopath-worshiping, and all the other pathologies (Stockholm Syndrome etc)
Ramin’s analysis is spot on
One of the big surprises for me was to see how cowardly Americans are and how fearful of so many things – truly slavish population
Always seeking a new ideology/cult to give them a quick fix of their numerous problems
baby boomers of Iran. Do they have anything in common with western: american or french baby boomers ?
if we go by definition baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) would have been 33 and 15 in 1979. in other words the peak of their youth.
When Khomeini was exiled in 1964, the last words he said to the head of the SAVAK(which the pahlavi official revealed before his execution ) when he was asked where are your followers now? everyone will forget about you now. he answered my followers are in the cradle, they arent born yet.
Turns out he was right.Since in their prime, the baby boomers were busy overthrowing the shah, fighting west-soviet armed sadam and the mek, helping start the first serious movements of resistance in lebannon and elsewhere.
So yeah, I dont think baby boomers of Iran have anything in common with western baby boomers.
You are correct, one lives by the mantra of save the queen, and one lives to kill the queen b/c of their Grade A ness. Can you guess which is which?
I got rid of the TV a number of years ago and haven’t been to see a motion picture in years. So, other than snippets of what I hear, I’ve no idea what it is all about. I think he is showing that Gen X has no values.
However, I did read the Emperor’s New Clothes! That story at least taught some lessons. Gen X probably missed that too.:)
most of the ‘brightest’ millenials I met while living in San Francisco (5 yrs) have never heard of that story (even the ones from best American universities)
Many did not even know you have to water plants (or they will die) etc…
Politics is a useless, w/o morals and questionable profession, I would avoid it at all costs before you lose your mind like a……….wait for it………………………………..politician.
Ramin, interesting article. Pulp fiction is one of the movies that you never want to watch again. I noticed that while I remember punch line from many, otherwise interesting movies, I shoved Pulp fiction out of my mind and today I do not even remember what was it about (except for head chopping and blood squirting all over the place).
Having said that, I must agree that my son liked this movie and this is why I wasted my money on it’s DVDs, when they came out. Also, I could never stomach Tarantino’s movies regardless of his fame.
Rachel Maddow’s ratings suffer after Mueller report determined no collusion
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/rachel-maddows-suffer-after-mueller-report-determined-no-collusion
……………………………………..
“It’s really too bad, because a 2nd term of Trump will be very tough on three countries which are very
dear to me: Iran, Cuba and Palestine.”
I belive that since the founding of the Federal Reserve and the ADL
in 1913, it does not matter which party the president represents. The American domestic and foreign
policy is not determined by the POTUS.
Two men talk about the news
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn16ThKUdIU
A fine article…for those who relish in obsessing over divisive labels, and glorying in their own moral superiority.
Ramin, I generally enjoy your articles; this one strikes me as an inconsistent, just a different polarity. To quote a favorite line from the original Star Trek series, “If we adopt the way of the nazis, then we’re no better than them.”
(Full disclosure: I was born in 1967, and voted Green in the last US general election)
Peace.
Ilhan Omar for President!
Ever since seeing “Bashu, The Little Stranger” two decades ago I have been a huge fan of Iranian movies and now only go to the cinema if the movie is Iranian.They can nuance a narrative like no one else and I believe that the Israelis’ anathema to all things Iranian is all to do with narrative.
But I have seen “Pulp Fiction”.I am an aging baby boomer and seeing that was something like a rite of passage (and how thankful one must be that Iranians eschew cinematic violence).
And so to Ramin kudos for a superb film review. This essay connects the Tarantino “narrative” and images to the politics of the west,intergenerational profiling and contemporary media hyperbole in a most entertaining and intellectual way.The west needs more media reviewers like your good self, Ramin.
Bloody good comments too.Wish I could bump into Mr Mumblebrain in this political wasteland that is Australia..
Sorry for a second post; a portion of my original comment was apparently lost in the aether. The original comment was meant to read, ” …this one strikes me as an inconsistent, chauvinistic indictment that too much resembles the anti Russian bigotry produced from the Russiagate scam itself, just a different polarity.”
Thanks for the indulgence, and looking forward to the next in the series on the Cultural Revolution.
“..The reason for this artistic collapse is simple: he truly has nothing to say on any topic of any importance, whether social, political, economic or religious. This disinterest in things of social substance is the essence of Generation X…”
I noticed this with most Americans while I lived there – and I think the reason is that for variety of reasons they have lost their soul (connection to our biology, evolution etc – which mostly relies on meaningful social connectedness). Once you lose it – it’s impossible to recreate I think.
Their shallow mentality teaches them to just buy another ‘thing’/object etc they think they need
but not everything can be bought…
truly lost in space and time – that’s why I find Americans so hopeless – and that’s why it’s so much more enjoyable to go to any other country (with still existent social contract).
Monica Lewinsky ‘wins the internet’ with fierce 3-word take on Mueller’s report
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/monica-lewinsky-wins-the-internet-with-fierce-3-word-take-on-muellers-report-2019-03-27?siteid=rss&rss=1&mod=mixi
Russiagate Poster Boy Adam Schiff May Lose Intel Clearance Over Constant Leaking
https://sputniknews.com/us/201904011073734991-adam-schiff-intel-clearance/