More on political change and what it requires
Remember the film “Annie Hall”? You may not be fond of Woody Allen—I’m not fond of Woody Allen—but that’s still a great film and a very entertaining one. I loved it at the time.
Remember the spider-killing scene? Funny, funny, funny. But I bet you don’t remember a certain aspect of it that came to my mind when I was writing this post on liberals and political change.
First, a quote from that post of mine:
Some liberals are not the least bit interested in getting more information, especially from sources on the right. In fact, this is a large group, I believe. One big reason for this is that, by a certain age, people’s views generally are rather set and become so entrenched that they see no particular need to revisit them, and they have other more pleasant things to do with their time.
Also, one of the ways the left trades on and relies on that is the practice of continually discrediting sources on the right, even relatively mainstream ones like Fox News (excuse me: Faux News), as being a bunch of lying, racist, hatemongerers. So why waste one’s time listening to such pig swill?
So there is little interest in hearing or reading anything that isn’t the usual MSM or even further left fodder. And a corollary of that is that a source such as CNN, for example, which the right finds to be unreliable at best and purposely deceiving at worst, the usual liberal finds relatively trustworthy. These are very hard beliefs to break, particularly if they are so strong the person will not even give another news source a try.
But what on earth does all of this have to do with the spider scene from “Annie Hall”? Watch (and for those who absolutely don’t want to watch this short scene, go to around 1:08 and you’ll see the exact part I’m referring to):
Cute.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/07/its-official-democrats-dislike-our-country.php
My worry is about the independents in these charts.
Great director. Witty. Talented. I personally wouldn’t want him to give a seminar on ethics and morals.
I think people will FIND a way to justify their positions in life. I talked to a liberal here in California and she brought up the decision by the legislature about grocery store bags – how that is forward-thinking.
So she found a way to support a state that is highest in poverty, highest in homelessness, near the bottom in education, a virtual mess in many respects.
Pretty funny.
At some point in early adulthood someone gave me a copy of a collection of Bill Buckley essays/columns, a sort of retrospective, called “Happy Days Were Here Again”: https://www.amazon.com/Happy-Days-Were-Here-Again-ebook/dp/B0087GJTVK
I liked it. When Buckley himself was on television I was too young to care about such things. But recently I’ve gone back and watched some Firing Line episodes on YouTube, and found them fascinating. How different political discourse was, then!
There was a particularly fun interview/quizzing of Ronald Reagan, then a candidate for President against incumbent Jimmy Carter, asking him, “presuming you win, if such-and-such a scenario arises, what would you do?” The scenarios included riots in Detroit (yeesh, was that city ever not a basket case?), OPEC jacking up the price of oil, and a post-Tito Soviet invasion of Yugoslavia.
The “Annie Hall” scene, to me, suffers from the same malady as all the other Woody Allen films; namely, the presence of Woody Allen in them. I’ve never been able to identify with, root for, or care overmuch about any character Allen played. The scripts are always spottily clever, but hopeless and bored: The director seems to invite us to sit down and kill an hour-and-change with his aimless plot, because why? No reason.
I suppose that constitutes an artistic choice that some folk regard “deep” but it strikes me as shallow and lazy, and somehow makes me impatient both with Allen’s character and with Allen as a director.
Not to say the following case warrants close analysis, but just to note the funny coincidence: I just saw a bit at Instapundit (Ed Driscoll contributor) that was proclaiming Joe Scarborough wants forgiveness for ever having been a Republican.
Change? Uh . . . uh . . . buttered bread?
}}} One big reason for this is that, by a certain age, people’s views generally are rather set and become so entrenched that they see no particular need to revisit them, and they have other more pleasant things to do with their time.
This is entirely the wrong attitude to take. Whether it’s generally set, you need to have perspective on how things work.
I’m not arguing with it being common. Just wrongheaded.
As to Woody:
1) He’s always played neurotic nebbishes. I, too, never really liked his films in them for much that reason. Then I saw an Albert Brooks film. Jesus, he makes Woody look like Sean Connery.
https://vimeo.com/309174961
2) I’m going to put in a point about the whole child-abuse allegation. I believe Woody. I think Mia hates his guts so much she managed to convince her own daughter she was abused when she wasn’t, by hammering it into her for decades, starting from a very impressionable age.
In high school I was reading “National Review” (along with “Soviet Life”) because some liberal — Bertrand Russell or Aldous Huxley — said it was good “to get all points of view.”
Good thing I didn’t have Woody Allen around to straighten me out.
Deplatforming is an admission that the target has a persuasive message..
If the target had a weak message the opponents would want it to be widely publicized.
This seems so obvious but apparently is invisible to almost everyone in blue enclaves.
So many great lines in Annie Hall. Here’s another one from Allen’s character, Alvy Singer:
“Don’t you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we’re left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes, and I live here!”
Dick Illyes on July 25, 2019 at 4:55 am said:
Deplatforming is an admission that the target has a persuasive message..
If the target had a weak message the opponents would want it to be widely publicized.
This seems so obvious but apparently is invisible to almost everyone in blue enclaves.
* * *
I agree, but they deplatform and suppress ALL non-leftist messages on general principles, because what looks weak still has to be addressed somehow (and perceptions of weak and strong arguments differ from person to person), so better not to let any sunshine into the captive minds.
Gosh, that sounds so “1984” !!
We are only 30 years late getting there.