Nomadland--A Review

 

Director Cloe Zhao shows us our beautiful country through a traveler’s lens and asks us to see life a little differently. Some critics think Nomadland is a mild rebuke to materialism. Others, a tribute of sorts to nomads that live off the grid and travel across the country taking odd jobs and sleeping in their cars. Everyone seems to like it though and I have to agree. Francis McDormand (Fern) plays a widow looking to belong and connect without the stability of a house and career.

The film begins with Fern packing her van for a stint at Amazon as a seasonal worker. Her belongings are in a storage unit. Her company town in Nevada shut down after the gypsum plant closed. Her husband died as well leaving her without either a home or companionship. She finds both as she travels across the country taking odd jobs with fellow travelers and other people cast adrift.

There is a cyclical aspect to this story. From the temporary jobs to the familiar faces and locations they drift in and out like the tide. We see the pull between the stable life of Fern’s sister and the fluid life of campgrounds and parking lots. Dave (David Strathairn) is a fellow traveler who clearly likes her and wants her to settle down with him. But she isn’t sure how she feels about him.

If there is any criticism it has to be that Nomadland romanticizes just a bit, the idea of pitching it all for an 80’s Econoline panel van and making it into a camper. It doesn’t make the life look easy but it doesn’t express the dangers of being alone and vulnerable. For most people sleeping in your car is a last resort even if some make a life out of it. But the movie is too subtle to encourage such a dramatic change in behavior. It doesn't really take a side. It just shows you the characters as they are.  

Fern runs out of money for van repairs and sheepishly tells the mechanic that it is her home when he suggests she junk it and get a car. Her sister lends her money to replace the engine. She visits for a short time and we find out that Fern left home long before she married.

Maybe this transient spirit is in her blood after all?  

 It’s beautifully shot too, lots of sunsets and landscapes that show the grandeur of America’s West. I could tell right away that most of the cast are real life nomads or just non-professional actors. They’re just too perfect in their natural habitat and the movie doesn’t attempt to clean them up either. The Bob Wells character is a real life promoter of camper life. He has YouTube videos on cheap RV living. Linda May is another friend that Fern meets at Camperforce, which is a program by Amazon to employ strictly van and camper dwellers during the holidays.   

The message that comes for me in the film is how people adapt to grief. The loss of a loved one is (I’m told) almost too painful to bear and it makes life’s other problems, mortgage/bills seem unimportant. So much so, that life away from it all can sound appealing-if not literally than at least emotionally. Grief isn’t always about losing a loved one, it can be about sadness over a disease or the end of a promising future due to bankruptcy. Anything that disrupts can be grief inducing. Nomadland shows the loneliness of grief through McDormand’s superb acting, but manages to be hopeful about friendship and support.  

I didn’t feel like this movie was heavy handed in any way. It didn’t force blame on any one system that created an impossible situation for broke and homeless retirees. It deals gently with its characters, they are neither sages nor dopes.    

Everyone has a different takeaway about what the movie is trying to say.

 If you hate banks and capitalism you’ll find the exchange where Fern criticizes a banker forcing people into mortgages they can’t pay just perfect. But her views reflect her lived experience more than anything. She just came from a town that literally closed. It’s clear about one thing, people have a myriad of reasons for living this way. Some are dying and hope to see the great big country before they go. Some, like Fern and Bob, deal with grief by being alone and making friends along the way.

Others like the Camperforce employees too old to buy a home, make the best of it without pensions or 401Ks or savings accounts. This is the forgotten man aspect of the movie, the ones who lost jobs and homes during the great recession. Whatever the takeaway, it’s a story about nomad living without a lot of explanation. 

Chloe Zhao presents a straightforward picture of the life in all its colors.   

 

Psalm 135: The 3 Times Principle

 

Psalm 135

I tried something with this chapter that I haven’t done in a while, I read it out loud. Reading anything out loud forces you to focus on what you’re reading better. I guess it’s because you are reading it and hearing yourself say it. The speech somehow reinforces the truth and it becomes more real. It also makes the reader feel confident in the power of the words.

Ever heard those annoying TV and radio ads where they say the name of product 3 times consecutive?

Actor: “So where can I get this incredibly effective hemorrhoid crème?”                                   Pitchman: “Oh that’s easy just go to sitcrème.com and make the pain go away; that’s sitcreme.com…sitcreme.com to start feeling relief again.”

Maybe it’s not the best example but you get the point. Humans don’t retain information that well unless we’re overwhelmed with it. Three must be the magic number.

In a sense I think this Psalm was written for the idea of restating certain truths. It begins with a call to worship for the One Who is worthy. “Praise Him, O you servants of the Lord! You who stand in the house of the Lord, In the courts of the house of our God, Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good” (verse 1-2)

 It spends the next third talking about the works of the Lord and the victories over Israel’s enemies, and their heritage in the land.

“He destroyed the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast. He sent signs and wonders into the midst of you, O Egypt, Upon Pharaoh and all his servants. He defeated many nations and slew mighty kings—Sihon king of the Amorites, Og king of Bahan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan—and gave their land as a heritage, a heritage to Israel His people.”(verse 8-12)

Why is this important? It’s on the writer’s heart (likely a respectable leader) and needs to be shared because we forget. The children of Israel were just like us, in need of reminders of Yahweh’s deeds. When left alone we drift from important truths and God’s central role in our lives gets replaced in small moves. We let work or family or hobbies take the place of our meditation time with the Father. Our peace starts to drain out like a leak in an oil pan just dripping slowly on the concrete. When we do recognize it our car needs repair to prevent further problems. Sometimes we don’t catch our mistake until the car seizes up, destroying the whole engine. This is a life in freefall, one that’s ignored the warning lights for some time and is comfortable heading into the abyss.  

After reading it out loud I’m convinced that this is like a pep talk before a big game. It’s not written to the Lord, as some are, it’s written to the people to get them to appreciate again the significance of their Redemption. We can only speculate about the real world implications. Maybe a sense of apathy is infecting leaders or a feeling of hopelessness in an upcoming battle. Possibly this is a warning about the proverbial oil leak. Some Psalms are contemplative and some, designed to offer thanks to God. This one is thankful with the intention of motivating a group to action. Of course this is just my opinion but it sounds a lot to me like a coach reminding his team of their greatness in Christ. It’s a bold letter.

The Chapter finishes with a demand and an example of the 3 times principle. “Bless the Lord, O house of Israel! Bless the Lord, O house of Aaron! Bless the Lord, O house of Levi! You who fear the Lord, bless the Lord!” (verse 19-20).

Just to broaden it out, all the scripture works like this. It’s critical for Christians to understand how to remind themselves and each other in good times. Most would say it’s critical is tough times, but the trick is to maintain a close relationship when everything around you is prosperous, healthy and peaceful. When we’ve seized up the engine it’s easy to turn to God for direction. What else can we do? We messed up and we know it. But remembering His goodness in the good times is where the challenge lies-when the car is humming along and the weather is clear.

Fortunately we have hope. It’s a book, a promise, a record. Read it out loud. Read it three times and remember it.

 

The Great Rush Limbaugh

 

I think the best remark about Rush Limbaugh today was this headline “The talent is returned”. 

Rush’s famous quip about himself was that he had “talent on loan from God”. And so he did, and we’ll never get to hear him shouting last minute instructions to Snerdly or the staff at EIB just as the show began. We’ll never hear another golf weekend anecdote or a complaint about the ‘drive by media’. We’ll never get another cigar recommendation or a ‘Renaldas Magnus’ reference.

I heard his wife Catherine start the show today and my heart sunk. I knew. We all knew.

 I clicked it off after they started doing ‘best of’ stuff. I just couldn’t bear it. It’s impossible to sum up the man’s influence on conservatism in America, the Republican Party and especially Trump. I think the best I can do is share my personal experience of his show and philosophy. I came to the show late. I don’t think I ever really listened to him in high school or even after. I remember segments of his TV show but I didn’t know anyone that listened to his radio show. It’s an age thing I guess. I can’t pinpoint the transition from general knowledge of the man to regular listener but it had to be shortly after my time in the Army. Let’s say 2001 to have a time frame.

I was splitting wood for a guy I knew from church. We did some landscaping as well and some odd deliveries, but I had more time in the car than ever before. His certainty in conservative values and American exceptionalism convinced me to come along for the ride. Day after day I started to pick up new information and a certain way of thinking critically about politics and information. He was articulate in the way he talked about media bias and the liberal slant it carried. This is a two way street of course. Conservative news also has heroes and villains but before Limbaugh the only source on the right was National Review. After him came other talk shows like Sean Hannity and TV networks like Fox News.

I might have come to conservatism at some point, via another source, but Rush was my gateway drug to politics.

 More than having my eyes opened to some new truth, he articulated what I instinctively thought about life. Here is a just a sample: hard work is key to success, let your passion drive you, personal liberty is the most important right. I picked these up from countless shows. The partisan politics he is known for is tied to his view of America’s founding and principles. He fought with the Democrat party and liberalism (later progressivism) because he believed it antithetical to the founding. He showed his audience how the Left worked to undermine personal liberties and traditional values. I always took his negative comments about Obama, Clinton, Pelosi and any other fill-in Democrats to be strictly in service of the cause.

I don’t believe he was a nasty person. Others will probably disagree but I can’t imagine him going after someone for a personal failing. Less than a year ago he mentioned Hunter Biden as someone who needed help, not someone who need be ridiculed for his drug problem. Rush also struggled with a prescription drug problem which caused him a lot of embarrassment in 2004. 

At the height of the election season (2020) he was averaging 45 to 50 million listeners a day. Those are incredible numbers and ones that probably won’t be duplicated for a long time. After listening for a while a certain comfortability set it with the format and his particular way of talking about current events, not just politics. Listening to Rush was never about waiting to form an opinion that aligned with the great man, it was more about hearing it through his particular world view. That kind of trust from the audience takes years to build up. I always felt like he gave an honest view of life—or at least the best vision of events he could offer.   

He was entertaining right up to the end and I’m sad that it’s over. There will never be another Rush Limbaugh and I’m grateful for the time I listened. I’m encouraged that so many millions of us learned about this great country from him.

America's Cold

 

I went to work for a few hours today. It’s Monday and we’ve just passed at least one milestone from my point of view, the temperature dropped below zero. I’ve been here for 13 years and it’s never been that cold. Some years it doesn’t even get below 30. Today and tomorrow, both below zero in the morning. I remember seeing it hit the single digits in 2011 when Tulsa experienced what people here refer to as ‘snowpacalypse’. My employer lost a week or more of deliveries and retail baseball sales which we never recovered that year. Back then the youth baseball teams were pouring into the store and loading up on bats, bags, cleats and every other kind of equipment we sold.

We didn’t move nearly as much that year. Amazing the effect of a really cold winter, the ripples are felt all over the state and the nation. Not to mention the already devastating Covid 19 year (the lost year) that is still keeping schools closed and a lot of states shut down. At this point it should be obvious that the lost businesses and lockdowns decreased individual freedom and transferred that liberty to the state. Individual states put serious restrictions in place that were unlawful. California and New York, the worst offenders, even had restrictions in place to keep families from gathering. But even here in Oklahoma the mask mandates put in place in cities did nothing to slow the spread of the virus.

What did finally slow it down? 

Apparently getting Trump out of office was the key. Almost immediately after the WHO (World Health Organization) changed the way cases were reported, on January 21 no less. What else happened that day? Joe Biden was sworn in as president, coincidence? Maybe not. The old method was causing a lot of false positives to make the spread of the disease seem much worse. WHO decided to lower the threshold for testing and viola! Cases started coming down almost immediately. I’m including the link to the news story because for more detail because it’s not really my expertise. But that’s just a recommendation you say. I found at least one state (Kansas) that changed their policy as well, even though it was almost 2 weeks before WHO’s press release. 

That tells me that a lot of these states and private labs knew how unreliable the above 35 measure was and went ahead anyway, making the case numbers spike. When the numbers spike local officials (technocrats) become little emperors, holding mid-day pressers and suggesting new mandates. They grind us down with statistics and numbers and expert recommendations that don’t make a lot of difference. They add their hot breath to the fear narrative that keeps pumping along like steam engine. Every time some new official or administrator or statistician speaks the machine gets more fuel. I got to the point where I despised the timid voice of our ‘nannie state’ mayor on radio and TV. I had to start clicking it off whenever they spoke.

Top politicians and health “experts” want to be seen doing something so they have meetings, essentially.

A lot of you probably have someone at work who loves meetings, adores them. They love presentations and information that could easily be put into an email. They love to take questions. That’s all that happened in 2020. The world caught a bad case of the flu and we had meetings about it.

I’m concerned about those careers that are lost for good. We can’t go on like this pretending that this Chinese virus is like Ebola. It’s not just the masks and the distancing that needs to end, it’s a general sense that all people are disease carriers. The forced isolation is bad news for people who need help; it’s causing depression and increasing suicide. We have new flu strains that pop up every few years and flu shot doesn’t kill them all. Why all the fuss about travel and distance and vaccines now? I don’t care how conspiratorial it sounds this has never felt right to me.

The question now is how does all shake out in the upcoming year? Do we all need to carry vaccine cards to travel and test every week? Do mayors and city councilors keep telling us to wear masks in public?

I believe Americans will get back to normal at some point and regain a sense of their personal autonomy and liberty. But it won’t happen without a strong rejection of technocrat politics. Weather can only set back business so much, but surrendering control to public officials is the end.   

Elite Opening: China's American Defenders

 

To sum up this article from Lee Smith, the historic opening to China created a class of elites that prioritize their wealth and privilege over everything else.

 I saw a clip from Tucker Carlson where he interviewed Smith about the saturation of Chinese influence among  the elite. I’m getting tired of using the word elite. It’s assumed everyone has the same understanding about who this special group is but is that true? I’m not sure. The “elite” members of society run the gamut from business to government and entertainment to sports. Being rich is part of the deal but it’s more than just money. It’s access for yourself and your kids to the best life has to offer. Naturally it isn’t just here in America. Elites come from all over the world and really have more in common with each other than with their fellow countrymen. 

I'm not one for envy. I love the freedom we have to make a lot of money in this country and spend it how we like. It's always set America apart from the rest of the world. I don't begrudge people riches but I do have a problem with ingratitude. 

Lee Smith sounds almost jealous of elite success, but he makes a solid case that certain members of elite castes, in America, have thrown in their lot with the CCP at the expense of their countrymen. Did you notice Mark Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks stopped playing the national anthem for home games? That’s a good picture of elite arrogance, making money in this free country but disrespecting its traditions and culture. This kind of anti-Americanism used to be more hidden. No longer.

Trump was hated by the establishment and China. There is solid evidence that Beijing has a hand in stealing the election for Joe Biden as well. Did you see the Mike Lindell’s video? Ok so he’s not a polished operator. He lined up some expert analysis on the elections. CCP penetration of America is much farther along than I imagined but the self-censorship of the press is common in China, not so here.

For the new Top Gun movie with Tom Cruise, China sensors managed to blur a patch of Taiwan on Cruise’s jacket. But of course they did it. The Chinese market is a key mover of big budget films. What’s scary is to think how many similar moves have happened like this that we don’t even know about? Some producer notices a reference to the Tiananmen Square Massacre in a dialogue scene and decides to cut it before anyone sees it. That’s self-censorship and it’s how news runs in Xi Jinping’s country. Reporters just stay away from certain topics after a while, the party need not bother with a crack down.

Smith’s seminal moment for the US’s abandonment of principle was the famous détente arrangement by Henry Kissinger in the early seventies. The purpose was to have an ally opposite the Soviet Union. The access to China, which hadn’t existed before, made it possible for diplomats and business leaders to get rich. No one got rich in the seventies of course, China was still a very poor country. The promise of cheap labor and a vast market became too much to resist. One would have to ignore the treatment of communist leaders toward their people however. Maybe this was never a big deal. In the nineties the view from the State Department was that with economic growth comes liberty and prosperity and voting rights.

I remember buying pretty hard into this view as well. It worked in South Korea and Taiwan, why not China? Wasn't it worth a try?

 Lee Smith doesn’t believe this was ever the elite’s view. There was money to be made so they told themselves whatever they needed to. Senators like Diane Feinstein pushed for Most Favored Nation status at the WTO leading to full trade. Mitch McConnell’s connections to Chinese industry also run deep through his wife’s father. I’m not fully on board with the idea that elite’s sent our industry to China (purely) to enrich themselves. From a practical standpoint the costs to build and manufacture are significantly cheaper in countries with low wages. It might be cruel to send work to a place with slave worker conditions, but do the high taxes and regulations in the United States get any of the blame? 

If making t-shirts and socks in the United States becomes too expensive, it makes sense to find alternative sourcing. It’s too simplistic to say those SOB's took our jobs and gave them to the Chinese. There were very real wage and material cost concerns to keep producing them here. But greed was undoubtedly a motivator.

I think the article is a perfect summary of what’s wrong now. It doesn’t offer solutions and even suggests the reign of elite hegemony won’t last long. But with a pro-China White House it might be a while before the US de-couples like it should. The elites have thrown in with the Chinese leadership at the expense of American citizens. This won’t end well for them in the end.

The Shadow Knows

 

Time magazine (yes they’re still around) released a long form piece on the secret cabal in charge of keeping the election ‘honest’. That they needed to put millions (likely billions) of dollars into keeping the democratic process on track, shows me their true intentions. It was never to keep democracy alive. The effort to rig the election started with the mail in votes and they pretty much say so. No of course they don’t use the phrase “rig the election”. They’re much too clever for that. The term is “fortify” now.

The narrative goes like this. Trump represents a unique threat to democracy and as such needs to be blocked from running a campaign his own way. He’s such a devious fellow that orange man, he needed a full scale shadow campaign to oppose his treachery. The article isn’t clear on how Trump would cheat, I guess they still think the Russians maybe? It’s dotted with indications that Trump doesn’t like minorities or that he colluded in the first election. Most of these cheap shots are taken on faith.

The assumed treachery of the president portends the need for the coalition in the first place. These brave individuals sought to save truth, justice and democracy, as they understand it. How fortuitous that Time magazine was there for the story.

Here is a nice summary of the dirty deed.

Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. 

They “got states to change voting systems and laws”. This was illegal according to state constitutions. Only the legislatures can change the laws and the systems; they do it the same way that pass other laws, by voting on it. But the effort this time relied on judges in most cases or sympathetic governors like in Pennsylvania. When one decides to change an item they just do it. Damn the laws. This was the very thing that Texas tried to challenge at the Supreme Court. You can’t have states issuing decrees and wholesale changing how votes are counted.

When it says “They fended off voter suppression lawsuits” it doesn’t mean those lawsuits were bogus. It means they successfully stopped them from having an effect. But what of cases where Republicans were denied entry to view the ballot counting? We saw videos of this in Pennsylvania. nothing? Maybe that explains the next line about “recruiting armies of poll workers”. You know, kinda like the Union does when it wants to suppress a vote, it recruits armies of ‘persuasion artists’. Of course we know about the mail in votes and the numbers of dead casting ballots, also the unlikely percentage of eligible voters (85-90%) casting a vote. I’m looking at you Wisconsin.

“They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation”. Yeah I think I remember that. Actually it’s gotten worse on Twitter and Facebook for a lot of big names. Disinformation of course means anything that didn’t fit their pro-Biden shade. Who can forget watching the New York Post article about Hunter Biden get blocked right before a critical election? After the election they went ahead and let it go, the challenge to losing now just a memory.

“They executed national public awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days of weeks”. This was always bullshit. Third world countries manage to get their votes in the same day. Myanmar just arrested a group of officials for trying to steal the last election. How many European countries drag out vote counting over the course of a week? These irregularities and middle of the night shutdowns all signal fraud to me. Will it ever be believed?

The moral of the story is the deep state fought back with a massive coordinated effort to undermine a fair election. They couldn’t go another year with this ‘troublemaker’ at the helm. They found a willing army from both parties, mostly the left, that would do anything to get rid of him. This article is the proof that despite the soaring language about saving democracy the participants actually killed it. Just the thought of voting on anything again makes me queasy.  

The deep state sat down with Time and, Keyser Soze like, admitted to their crime in code. Because it’s so brilliant it demands to be shared.