#4 Violent Movies, Woke Culture, and Facebook
Hello. I’m Jack Cameron and welcome to another newsletter by me. Thanks for sticking around. We lost one subscriber last week. That subscriber unsubscribed so quickly that I doubt they even read what I wrote. Oh well.
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Right. Now let’s get to it.
Captain Picard Tries to Murder Chekov & His Punk Band At A Nazi Compound
I only knew two things about Green Room before I started watching it: Patrick Stewart was in it and it was incredibly violent. Both things turned out to be true.
This is the third movie in writer/director Jeremy Saulnier’s ‘inept protagonist trilogy’. (I haven’t seen the other two, Murder Party or Blue Ruin.) Though the protagonists in Green Room are most definitely inept, they aren’t stupid. They’re just in a situation that they’re not equipped for and so bad things happen.
Anton Yelchin’s performance stands out as a member of a punk band that takes the worst gig in cinematic history. He’s the heart of this brutal and dark movie. It’s not an exaggeration to say that there were wounds the likes of which I have never seen in a movie before. In many ways, it plays out as a horror movie more than an action piece or a thriller.
Patrick Stewart plays the head of the Nazi compound and though he commits no act of violence himself, he manages to be menacing in a way that only a great actor can pull off. He is terrifying in his cold and practical behavior.
Green Room isn’t a great movie. It has some pacing problems and feels uneven at times, but there are moments that are unforgettable and when they get the tension right, it’s impossible to look away even when you might want to.
Two White Guys Solve Woke Culture
As long time readers of mine know, I’m a big fan of the Sam Harris podcast, Making Sense. Though I do not always agree with Harris, his conversations tend to be more thoughtful, and thought provoking than anything I find on television or online.
A recent podcast called, Among The Deplorables is an interview/debate with New Yorker writer and author of the new book Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, Andrew Marantz. During the nearly two-hour conversation they get into topics such as intention vs. outcome, dog whistling racism, troll culture, cancel culture, systemic racism, white privilege, and other things most people are afraid to talk about.
Marantz impressed me as he landed quite a few solid blows against Harris, which isn’t an easy feat. I think they both had their points and that if both of them had less binary viewpoints on certain topics they’d find a lot more common ground, but it was a fascinating conversation and one I’m continuing to think about.
Why And How I Will No Longer Support A Genocidal, Greedy Liar
It used to be that nefarious individuals committed terrible crimes and did their best to hide the fact that these crimes occurred or at the very least that they committed them. But here, in 2019, what those with power and ill intent do is simply commit the crime in the open, admit to it, and say, “I’m powerful and I can do whatever I want. What are YOU gonna do about?” And more often than not, for reasons I have yet to fully grasp our collective answer has been, “Not much.”
There was a time, and it was not all that long ago, when someone running for office bragging on tape about sexually assaulting women would have not only resulted in the loss of an election, but the end of a political career. Gary Hart’s career in politics famously ended when he was set up to appear as though he was having an affair he wasn’t having. Bill Clinton was impeached for a consensual though inappropriate affair. And now we have a President with over twenty sexual assault accusers, a man who raped his first wife, a man who brags about sexually assaulting women. And we have done nothing about this. Sure, he might be actually facing some consequences now, but not for this.
And it isn’t as if he’s alone. Many people in his administration openly commit crimes and seemingly get away with it. They ignore subpoenas. They lie to Congress. I know this word gets thrown around a lot, but they normalize criminality and act as though they can do so with impunity.
So I suppose it should not be a surprise that when Mark Zuckerberg is called out for allowing blatantly false ads on Facebook, he basically echoes other rich, powerful men before him and says, “It’s something we have to live with.” But it isn’t. The First Amendment does not apply to private companies. It never has. Zuckerberg can censor whatever he wants and does. When he’s manipulating emotions just to see if he can, then Facebook is a private company. When he’s selling ads to propagandists, he claims to be beholden to the First Amendment. He’s lying about lies on Facebook because ultimately it’s more important to him to make money. He wants to cash the check and he does not care what damage he does.
This may not be the worst part of it, but the thing that really bugs me is that the lies don’t stop there. Zuckerberg lies to the people he’s selling ads to. He inflates click rates in order to charge more money. He makes ads appear more successful than they are. This is a man and a company that will assist in genocide if it will make them money.
We can stop Trump by supporting the impeachment process, and failing that, voting him out of office next year. We can stop Zuckerberg by refusing to participate in his shit show of an ad platform.
Those of you who know me personally know exactly how often I use Facebook. It is not an overstatement to call myself a prolific user. If offered, I would not accept a position in the Trump administration because I believe him to be a fundamentally corrupt and immoral individual. I feel the same about Mark Zuckerberg.
Quitting Facebook isn’t easy. I know. I’ve tried before. But that’s where this newsletter comes in. I can express myself here without worrying whether or not an algorithm allows you to see what I post. I can say what I want and you can read it if you want without a gigantic corporation trying to sell you something. My goal is to be off of Facebook entirely by 2020.
Given the frequency of my posting on Facebook, this is going to be a gradual process.
I’m starting this week by only ever logging on when I’m on my home computer. I’ve deleted the app from my phone and will not be visiting it using my phone. Next week, I’m going to limit my posts there to one a day.
Mark Zuckerberg only has as much power as we give him. The more people who delete Facebook the less power he has. I cannot force you to delete Facebook, but if I delete mine, I’ll be one less reason you go there. I hope you’ll join me and ween yourself off of this destructive platform.
See you next week.
- Jack Cameron