We watched Don’t Look Up last night. Obviously satire, obviously really about our inability to act against climate change, but also about the comical inabilty of the United States to play the role it has arrogated to itself. Faced with a threat to the planet, the scientific Cassandras are blown off by a President focused on the short-term political narrative and, when they try to tell the media, relegated behind pop-trivia, goaded by lightweight news anchors, and ridiculed on twitter. When the adminstration does finally wake up to the threat from the meteor, it sabotages its own efforts in order to appease a tech-solutionist multimillionaire donor, who spies a chance to profit, with disastrous results.
As a film, it owes a lot to Dr Strangelove, with Mark Rylance, playing a kind of composite Jobs/Bezos/Musk/Thiel reprising Peter Sellers’s Werner von Braunish character and Ron Perlman taking on the Slim Pickens role. But it is the politics that interest me here, because the film accurately and savagely destroys the claim made by and for the United States of America to be a kind of universal state, able and entitled to act on behalf of humanity as a whole. A claim that has made at least since the Second World War and which continues to be implicit in the discourse of every centrist columnist at the New York Times, whose “we” is ambiguous between the US national interest and the world in general. It is, for example, in the name of this ambiguous “we” that pro-war shills are currently claiming that the US has the right, and possibly the duty, to attack Iran, whereas the US reserves the right to deny legitimacy to Russian or Chinese attacks on other countries. Team America World Police, as it were.
Morally, the Team American claim was alway a sham and a disaster, but ideologically it limped on, despite Vietnam and Iraq, even as far as the Obama era. Even now it persists in zombie assertions by polticians and columnists. But Meryl Streep’s President Orlean would be ill-equipped to exercise moral leadership of any kind, anywhere. She is a huckster polician, playing to the MAGA (DLU) gallery and in hock to people like Rylance’s Peter Isherwell, whose money and solutions she needs because she has none of her own, nor the perspicuity to detect the bullshit. Nobody is holding her to account, certainly not a media for whom journalism is just an extension of light entertainment. And the truth tellers? Well, they are easy to dismiss as too shouty or having the wrong hair (Jennifer Lawrence) or open to the temptations of co-option. Besides, they are not from a top-ranked university: only the Ivies and Stanford really count in a world where credibilty comes from money.
One of familiar tropes of those centrist columnists is that we may hate Team America but we’ll miss it when it’s gone. That thought is usually voiced as part of some Atlanticist argument. But we need to face up to the fact that is has gone, already. There is a mess of incompetence, indecision and venality, accompanied by guns and tech solutionism, that has rendered the US barely capable of governing itself, let along leading humanity. After 2024, further collapse back into Trumpism beckons. We’d better get used the fact that Team American is no more, and that what is left of its financial and military power will only serve to harm the rest of us and get in the way of the problems humanity faces.
{ 44 comments }
Neville Morley 12.30.21 at 10:12 am
The first two-thirds of Mars Attacks offers a similar diagnosis.
James 12.30.21 at 10:40 am
It makes the ongoing, since the Iraq war, Authorization for Use of Military Force that much more scary. You also don’t see Biden trying to walk back any executive power and is actually shielding some documents related to the January 6th insurrection now.
Mandy 12.30.21 at 11:31 am
The really interesting thing about this film is how the public reception (pretty positive) is at odds with the majority of the media film reviews (mixed to negative).
The real target of the satire is the media who are very far from the courageous truth tellers holding power to account of legend. In this, Cate Blanchett’s character is very interesting; she is educated, intelligent, nuanced and worldy yet her role as an anchor requires her to drop all of these qualities. The media are often keen to claim that they are free from “bias”, yet Blanchett’s character shows how the system functions to preserve the status quo without anyone needing to support Trumpian politicians directly.
eg 12.30.21 at 3:02 pm
While the Rylance character is obviously representative of the tech-bro billionaire class, aspects of his appearance, speech and mannerisms (right down to the hair-sniffing) struck me as Biden’s. I have no idea what this might mean, but I couldn’t watch him without seeing the parallels.
Anon 12.30.21 at 3:12 pm
Did we watch the same movie? Stopping the comet requires no coordination at all – anyone could do it. The US launches successfully one attempt to turn back the comet, then launches another set of robots to try to break up the comet, then builds the rocket that literally keeps humanity in existence. The China/India/Russia attempt never leaves the ground, Europe does absolutely nothing, and the EU/UN character just talks about “plans” with no accomplishment.
This is, I think, both a more accurate summary of current world affairs and the movie than the original post. To anyone worried about the US on the international stage, if China attacks Taiwan or Russia invades Ukraine, does anyone believe any non US actor can or will do anything?
BenK 12.30.21 at 3:18 pm
Somehow it seems that the ‘trump/maga’ part of the critique is bolted on. Actually, Trumpism is a step away from the false identity of national and global interests and a response, however inadequate, to the failures recognized. The question, frankly, is whether any body or movement can adequately represent all humanity (universally and equitably). Trumpism would suggest that the best such system is local, representative, and to some extent competitive – balanced by tension – as opposed to globally collaborative, which allows the elites to form a global clique that in fact ignores the interests of citizens in each nation in favor of a global classist structure.
Regardless, we can all agree the current structure has failed and continues to fail.
Chris Bertram 12.30.21 at 3:24 pm
@Anon, well I think it is at least hinted that the US sabotaged the Russian effort to leave the way clear for Isherwell, and humanity only got saved if the brontomaches stopped at eating the President, but apart from that ….
MPAVictoria 12.30.21 at 3:36 pm
“The China/India/Russia attempt never leaves the ground”
I read this scene as saying the US sabotaged their effort to protect the profits of the Tech Bro guy?
Jon W 12.30.21 at 4:20 pm
Agreed that the movie leaves the clear implication that the US sabotaged the effort that would have saved humanity. And in the final scene, quite aside from the brontorocs eating people, you may have noticed that almost nobody exiting that spacecraft looked under 60 — not a prime crowd for fertility, that lot.
nastywoman 12.30.21 at 5:08 pm
really…
‘strange’?
A film about:
‘Y’all better believe Science and the Scientists’ –
(as we just – kind of – survived the HUUUGEST Science Denier of them all)
and instead of focusing on telling the people that from
NOW ON! –
PLEASE!
Y’all better –
AGAIN!!!
believe it – if a Virus-Comet-Climate-Crisis already have hit US!!
(instead of coming up with THE strangest ‘Morals – der Geschichte’ –
like: ‘The really interesting thing about this film is how the public reception (pretty positive) is at odds with the majority of the media film reviews (mixed to negative)’???
OR
even ‘stranger’:
‘Not believing in Science’ -(aka: ‘Trumpism’) – ‘is a step away from the false identity of national and global interests and a response, however inadequate, to the failures recognized’????!
nastywoman 12.30.21 at 5:20 pm
and do you guys know why ‘The People’ and especially ‘The American People’ have stopped believing in Science and Scientists – and now live in the Craziest of all ‘trump’
(the worlds new word for: ‘Utmost Science Denying Right-Wing Racist Stupid’)
BE-cause
RIGHT-NOW
‘nobody believes anything anymore’ -(and especially nothing ‘scientific’) – as ‘Science’ is some kind of ‘Global Conspiracy of the Elites’ and REAL Americans don’t believe in any ‘Global Conspiracy of the Elites’ –
(and it’s slavish media)
as very much silly and contradictionally -(and is there even a word like that?)
this might sound?!
Cranky Observer 12.30.21 at 5:32 pm
Could be, as one of the writers at least has no love for Biden, but my thought was those were characteristics of Tim Cook: his slow, businessman speaking style combined with his sweeping statements about “courage” and the like when introducing useful but mundane new technical features of consumer products.
J, not that one 12.30.21 at 5:52 pm
It’s interesting how the movie bookends scenes of midwestern community (the lab and the family dinner), but isn’t able to imagine NASA as anything but one guy whose only job, apparently, is to take meetings, and the control room from Apollo 13. Its view of the rest of the world is just individualists trying to get and hold each others’ attention and avoiding having to pay attention to others. I enjoyed it, but it’s so messy and one-sided that it’s hardly a coherent political argument.
Like Mandy, I was struck by some of the negative reviews, especially how appalled they were that the stars weren’t given characters deserving of the deference they themselves deserve (have they even seen some of the roles Streep has taken lately? Probably not, if they don’t have kids and don’t watch kids’ movies).
Omega Centauri 12.30.21 at 6:06 pm
I saw Orlean as a hybrid of Sarah Palen and Trump. I told my sister’s that Meryl Streep has set back the date of the first female elected president by at least a century and a half. But you might as well watch it and enjoy the laughs.
Realistically, given an object of that size, and six months warning, we wouldn’t be able to deflect it. And breaking pieces off doesn’t diminish the total impact energy, so is no solution -but it is the go to hollywood method, -as it looks and feels cool.
LFC 12.30.21 at 6:22 pm
Have not seen the movie, and must confess I wasn’t aware of it before reading this post.
It may be worth noting that Dr. Strangelove was a Hollywood movie (dir. by Stanley Kubrick), and I presume Don’t Look Up is also. This underscores that the U.S. movie industry has played a variety of roles, sometimes producing blockbusters that cheerlead for the USA (either explicitly or implicitly), at other times releasing movies that either satirize or criticize (or both) the capabilities and/or pretensions of the government or its foreign policy misadventures, and even occasionally making movies that throw light on social problems/issues or criticize big corporations (including news/media corporations).
There are at least two ways to look at this. One could take the view that this is an example of something like what Marcuse called “repressive tolerance,” i.e., that the fact that Hollywood has long been — and has been allowed to be, at least after the Red Scare and blacklists were things of the past — not only celebratory but also critical of the U.S. has actually acted as a kind of soporific, dampening rather than stimulating political dissent and activity. (Though if it has been a soporific, it’s been dubiously effective.) Or one could take the view that this is evidence that satire of “the establishment” and its pretensions, and more generally of the dysfunctional or broken aspects of the U.S. political system, shows that the First Amendment is more than just window dressing, and that the “culture industry” (or in the case the movie branch of it) sometimes plays an oppositional role, one that, e.g., the Chinese movie industry can’t play w.r.t. the CCP and its policies.
dilbert dogbert 12.30.21 at 6:29 pm
Happened by accident to read some Ukraine history. The Stalinist famine of the early 30’s and the WW2 years. Don’t know why, but, got to thinking that maybe 2024 will be a rerun of that history in the US. Stalin purged the party. The Previous Guy has purged or is in the process of purging the rethuglican party. History ryhmes?
RichardM 12.30.21 at 6:49 pm
I am kind of curious as to use of the word ‘ tech-solutionist’ here. What non-technological solutions do you suppose exist to the problem of a large interplanetary rock having the wrong orbit?
No amount of individual and/or collective lifestyle changes are going to stop the rock’s orbit intersecting with that of Earth. Developing and deploying a technological solution to that problem will either succeed or fail; people who are not rocket scientists have more or less zero influence on that outcome. All they need do is pay for it.
Preventing the impact like that is about about a million times more scientifically plausible than developing an escape rocket. Problem is, you can sell tickets on such a rocket; you can’t monetize asteroid defense. So left unsupervised, the people in charge of the rocket scientists are going to have a strong tendency to pick the solution that makes them richer.
The interesting thing is that there are actually two real world analogies for that technological solution. One is COVID vaccines. The other is nuclear power generation as a solution for global warming. By the definition of the word solution, these have the distinguishing feature of requiring the spending of money in a way that does not naturally lead to a compensating revenue stream.
It is remarkable how far to the left of the political spectrum the idea that that makes them impractical has spread.
Chetan Murthy 12.30.21 at 7:14 pm
Anon @ 5: “does anyone believe any non US actor can or will do anything?”
Isn’t this by design? The US set up the Western Alliance post-WWII specifically so that no ally could mount expeditionary warfare without US involvement, didn’t it? Took a while to iron out the kinks (Suez) but at this point, it’s worked. And the US did it for good reasons (besides “we wanna run the world”): to prevent our allies from getting into wars with each other. I’m completely setting aside whether this is good or bad, right or wrong: this was by design.
What troubles me the most about covid is how it exposes the US’ lack of what Bret Deveraux (and probably, I’d guess, most historians) calls “state capacity”[1]. The US is the world’s richest country, with unimaginable resources, and yet cannot perform even the most basic of public health tasks. I don’t think this bodes well for the future.
[1] sure, the US has that capacity when it comes to wielding military power. Defense is a public good. But for all other public goods, it seems like the US is slipping or has fallen completely. And this is (somewhat less) true for many Western Allies. Really troubling.
Chris Bertram 12.30.21 at 7:18 pm
@RichardM, Isherwell is introduced when he presents a solution to the problem of human happiness via phone apps that sense your mood and stimulate you accordingly. His general approach to life is that we can solve problems via technology rather than politics and that tech firms like his are the vehicle for this. He sells the idea that his corporation and its proprietary technology can solve the comet problem instead of an approach based on peer reviewed science. It isn’t that you don’t need technology to solve some problems but rather the general assumption that everything can be solved by tech that defines tech solutionism. So he’d be predisposed to favour geoengineering over getting humans to modify their behaviour and emit less greenhouse gas.
PatinIowa 12.30.21 at 8:30 pm
“Dr. Strangelove” was written and directed by Stanley Kubrick, a New Yorker who had moved to the UK in 1961 partly because he disliked working in Hollywood. Hawk Films, an entity created by Kubrick to produce his films, was British. (I didn’t dig deeply enough to suss out where the money came from.) Columbia, a US company, distributed the film.
Some of Strangelove’s cachet–if memory serves–derived from the audience’s seeing it as outside the Hollywood machine, as an anti-Hollywood film, and seeing the satire as directed against specifically US pathologies.
Sixty years on, I don’t quite know how to think about Kubrick’s career with respect to the US film industry. I do know that one of the lessons of the sixties that people were taking in the early seventies was, “Turns out you can’t escape US capitalism and reach a mass audience after all. Too bad.” But that’s primarily an impression, and perhaps not representative of what was said, or what happened.
As for “Don’t Look Up,” I haven’t seen it. Yet.
LFC 12.30.21 at 8:56 pm
C. Murthy @16
The US set up the Western Alliance post-WWII specifically so that no ally could mount expeditionary warfare without US involvement, didn’t it?
Not really. There were doubtless various motives, but the most obvious one behind NATO (est. 1949) was to counter the USSR. (You can call it collective security or part of the militarization of containment or both…) As for ‘expeditionary warfare’, that could mean different things, but NATO had no particular relevance to France’s wars in Indochina (1946-54), which the U.S. supported financially, or Algeria (1954-62).
steven t johnson 12.30.21 at 9:59 pm
Omega Centaur@12 is correct that breaking up a large object into smaller ones will not change the total impact energy. The error is assuming that the damage wrought is a simple function of impact energy. An object large enough to generate enough heat from impact to vaporize/melt massive amounts of crust, hurling them into the stratosphere, perhaps with mile-high tsunamis is an extinction level event.* But a number of objects imparting the same total energy may well not have the same catastrophic effects for the whole biosphere, “merely” locally.
Another way of putting it, would you dismiss the choice between having a ten pound bowling ball dropped from five feet above your head, or having ten pounds of ping pong balls dropped on your head as a meaningless one, simply a Hobson’s choice?
*ELEs heretofore have not meant the extinction of all species. It’s very likely even this extreme an event would still leave some life on Earth. The phrase “planet-killer” assumes that the extinction of humanity is the same as literally destroying the planet! I think the Earth would keep on orbiting.
RichardM 12.30.21 at 10:19 pm
@17 My point was that is a strange word to use, given that apps are neither new technology, nor particularly likely to solve the problem of unhappiness. Worse, if somehow they did, producing such apps would not be a profitable business model.
Generally, political problems need political solutions, technological ones need technological solutions, personal problems need personal solutions. Taking a problem and treating it as an opportunity to make money has nothing to do with whether technology is involved.
It certainly gets very confusing when you try to use that word in a context where the phrase ‘technological solution’ is meaningful in its own right.
Alan White 12.30.21 at 11:33 pm
I enjoyed it, though I agree with some of the critics (like CNN’s) that if this is offered up in any way to convince deniers of their sins, it certainly fails. But probably it was meant only to collect a lot of our collective sins on both sides of the political divide into a symbolic tornado right in our path. One indication of this the obvious casting of outspoken libs as either their Bizzaro-world counterparts (Streep) or ones so tempted by the irresistible seduction of fame and fortune to go over to the other side (DiCaprio and Perry in different ways–Leonardo especially poignantly depicts the weaknesses of the flesh in his characterization of Mindy). Rylance continues to amaze me with his versatility as an actor and especially how he physically presents his character (compare this performance to Waiting for the Barbarians: those are the same guy??).
Anyway, a wish that, beyond my good sense, 2022 has some hopefulness for all of us.
Raven Onthill 12.31.21 at 12:43 am
Considering China has made itself into one of the worst human rights violators in history, that Russia wishes it could be but lacks the resources, and India is working on it, I am already missing Team America. It’s nice to think that some emergent power in Africa or the Americas might step up to the plate, but I do not see how that is possible.
marcel proust 12.31.21 at 12:44 am
re: “MAGA (DLU) gallery”
What is DLU? Google supplies answers like Digital Line Unit.
John Quiggin 12.31.21 at 10:32 am
MP @24 Don’t Look Up
To show how screwed we are, although it was obviously about climate change, I was viewing the whole movie in terms of our government’s sudden switch to a Let Er Rip strategy on Covid.
John Quiggin 12.31.21 at 10:35 am
Raven @23 China and Russia were far worse in the heyday of Team America than they are now.
MisterMr 12.31.21 at 11:03 am
@RichardM 15
“It is remarkable how far to the left of the political spectrum the idea that that makes them impractical has spread.”
Nuclear is something that often people on the left dislike, but covid vaccine is something that mostly people on the right dislike, so either the two are different or there has been a switch of places between left and right, IMHO.
PeteW 12.31.21 at 3:24 pm
As a movie DLU is a total mess and at least 30 minutes too long, though there are some good performances, particularly Cate Blanchett as referenced in the OP. By the final scenes poor Jennifer Lawrence looks bewildered, as if not sure what the hell she has wandered into. DiCaprio ditto.
Where it most misfires, however, is as a satire. It goes for the easiest of targets – the lazy cliche of the dim or amoral TV presenter, the president concerned only about the mid-terms, the sociopathic tech guru – rather than life’s true power players. Where is the Roger Ailes character? The Rupert Murdoch? The Dick Cheney? Everyone is stupid, lazy and silly. But real evil takes hard work.
alfredlordbleep 12.31.21 at 4:01 pm
Bulworth should be mentioned (“Bulworth is a 1998 American political satire black comedy film co-written, co-produced, directed by, and starring Warren Beatty. It co-stars Halle Berry. . .”—wiki)
Following the history of the court jester who is accorded the role of truth teller, especially to power, Bulworth (Beatty) is contrived to be out of his mind (planning suicide in a short time) and so wild doings ensue. Such as saying amazing things to American audiences about their politicians, their business-backed corruption, and television news (its business-backed corruption).
Flick doesn’t seem to have reached mass circulation: budget $30 million, box office $29.2 million (wiki again). Somebody here might like it.
Omega Centauri 12.31.21 at 10:31 pm
Steven @20.
Of course twenty smaller pieces (each a few KM in diameter) would reduce tsunami damage, but total airburst energy would be greater. But anything over a few Gigitons TNT equivalent encounters little resistance from the atmosphere in throwing formerly solid material above the atmosphere, so the total amount of sunlight blocking stuff is probably not very much changed.
Recent theory is that an object of that size (same as the Dino killer estimates), isn’t enough to cause a major extinction event. The Dino killer had extra good aim, and vaporized thick gypsum deposits which greatly increased its sunlight blocking effectiveness.
alfredlordbleep 12.31.21 at 11:37 pm
P. S.
Not now or ever have been an Amazon Prime member, but, for what it’s worth Bulworth
“Leaves Prime in 5 h 27 m”
Alex SL 01.01.22 at 12:53 am
I have not yet watched the movie except for the ending scene, where all the gerontocrats wake up on the new planet. The main criticism on social media seems to be that the message is too on-the-nose. Or in translation, “I am too clever to need to be shown explicitly how bad things are, I would like it to be only hinted at, or at best not even mentioned, because I already know”. That reaction certainly isn’t a great argument not to watch the movie.
Regarding the twilight of US influence, it may be a bit premature to write it off. Its enormous military isn’t going anywhere any time soon, and it will remain one of the wealthiest countries on the planet for quite some time yet even if we assume poor leadership chipping away at that.
But I am always astonished by panicky editorials to the effect of “soon 50% of all economic activity will take place in Asia”, with the implication that this is somehow bad and should be stopped from happening. 50% of humanity are in Asia, so this is to be expected, unless one assumes the impoverishment of all non-Europeans is the natural state of things. Maybe the writers do assume that.
BenK,
I find it absolutely fascinating how people can look at Trump and interpret his -ism like a historian interprets the Monroe Doctrine, i.e. as something more sophisticated than an emotional spasm. Trump does not understand that there are win-wins and “the sum is greater than its parts” in collaboration; he understands only interactions in which one person dominates and exploits the other, so if he does not perceive the USA as dominating an institution, he concludes that the USA must therefore be dominated and exploited by others. (Interesting parallel here to Brexiters thinking that Germany must dominate the EU because the UK wasn’t dominating it.) That is really all there is to it as far as Trumpism’s foreign and trade policy goes, and he certainly hasn’t thought through whether the best system to deal with global challenges is “local, representative, and competitive”.
You are also mistaken. Murdoch, for example, has been reported to have said, “When I go into Downing Street, they do what I say; when I go to Brussels, they take no notice.” He disputes having said this, of course, and the reporter stands by his story. But even if you dismiss this as apocryphal, the logic behind it is inescapable: the larger the institution, the more difficult it is for a private interest to capture it to the detriment of everybody else. In my teens I lived in a town of 20,000 people that utterly depended on two large employers. The town council basically did whatever those two companies wanted, and I can’t blame them, because if even one of them relocated, the town would be toast. The German government, however, does not do whatever those two companies want, because at that level they are two little fish in a very large sea. This makes the national government less easy to blackmail, so at that level you can implement regulations that better reflect the common good and public interest.
By extension the same applies to the EU regarding Murdoch or some large digital service provider, for example. You get more accountability and less elite influence if you increase the size and scope of your government.
(Elite here used in the traditional sense of meaning wealthy and powerful people, not in the populist sense of meaning a teaching assistant on a term contract, who is absurdly taken to be more elite than a wealthy business owner because she has a university degree and he hasn’t.)
Raven Onthill,
There are two aspects to the question whether a hegemonial China or India would be “better” than a hegemonial USA. First, do you want to live under their system of governance? Second, will they wage war across the globe, stir up civil war in other countries, or violently overthrow governments? I think the two are often conflated, but, more importantly, I don’t see that the USA come out ahead under either.
Let’s be honest, under the hegemony of the democratic USA many countries were not democratised, rather the opposite, as in many cases right-wing dictatorships replaced democratically elected governments that were considered too left-wing by the US government of the day (Iran and Chile being merely the most widely known examples of many). Conversely, there is no reason to assume that a hegemonial China couldn’t deal with democracies in other countries. Governance is somewhat orthogonal to spreading one’s influence, because one can also do that through investments and treaties, and at least right now I don’t see China or India having a missionary zeal to export their systems of government.
As for wars, it was great to live in Germany under US hegemony. Not so much, I suspect, in Angola, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, etc. Again not immediately clear to me that Chinese hegemony would be worse on that count even if China were to copy the US approach, and so far they mostly seem to use soft power e.g. in Africa.
I am making no argument here about China’s stance towards neighbouring areas its government considers to legitimately belong to China itself, nor about the current Russian government, but only about the potential consequences of swapping the world hegemon.
nastywoman 01.01.22 at 6:52 am
and may I repeat the following – like – if I (ME – MOI) would have written it:
‘I find it absolutely fascinating how people can look at Trump and interpret his -ism like a historian interprets the Monroe Doctrine, i.e. as something more sophisticated than an emotional spasm. Trump does not understand that there are win-wins and “the sum is greater than its parts†in collaboration; he understands only interactions in which one person dominates and exploits the other, so if he does not perceive the USA as dominating an institution, he concludes that the USA must therefore be dominated and exploited by others. (Interesting parallel here to Brexiters thinking that Germany must dominate the EU because the UK wasn’t dominating it.) That is really all there is to it as far as Trumpism’s foreign and trade policy goes, and he certainly hasn’t thought through whether the best system to deal with global challenges is “local, representative, and competitiveâ€.
You are also mistaken. Murdoch, for example, has been reported to have said, “When I go into Downing Street, they do what I say; when I go to Brussels, they take no notice.†He disputes having said this, of course, and the reporter stands by his story. But even if you dismiss this as apocryphal, the logic behind it is inescapable: the larger the institution, the more difficult it is for a private interest to capture it to the detriment of everybody else. In my teens I lived in a town of 20,000 people that utterly depended on two large employers. The town council basically did whatever those two companies wanted, and I can’t blame them, because if even one of them relocated, the town would be toast. The German government, however, does not do whatever those two companies want, because at that level they are two little fish in a very large sea. This makes the national government less easy to blackmail, so at that level you can implement regulations that better reflect the common good and public interest.
By extension the same applies to the EU regarding Murdoch or some large digital service provider, for example. You get more accountability and less elite influence if you increase the size and scope of your government.
(Elite here used in the traditional sense of meaning wealthy and powerful people, not in the populist sense of meaning a teaching assistant on a term contract, who is absurdly taken to be more elite than a wealthy business owner because she has a university degree and he hasn’t.)’
Mike Furlan 01.01.22 at 5:56 pm
alfredlordbleep
“P. S.
Not now or ever have been an Amazon Prime member, but, for what it’s worth Bulworth
“Leaves Prime in 5 h 27 mâ€â€
P.P.S
A dvd of “Bulworth†is at my local library and is not due to leave anytime soon. Check your local branch.
Chetan Murthy 01.01.22 at 6:27 pm
I watched the movie last night. Two things about it really resonated:
1. the dinner scene, where they’re awaiting the end together. It’s all we’ll have in the end, perhaps.
2. the scene where Mindy accuses Isherwell of being a businessman
Chris mentions “tech solutionism”, and I thought this scene (and its connection to “going to the restroom”) was trying to explain to the audience the difference between actual science and the “here’s a shiny toy we can make $$ from” offered by “tech”. It was trying, but didn’t get there, b/c you can’t explain things like that in a movie, sadly.
Even though the best fit for the movie (as allegory) is climate change, I was thinking of covid all thru it.
Our society isn’t capable (anymore) of addressing climate change. We’ve surrendered control to Mancur Olson’s roving bandits.
Guano 01.02.22 at 3:39 pm
“The inabilty of the United States to play the role it has arrogated to itself.”
If the film raises questions about this it has achieved something.
The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were monstrous failures, yet there has been little debate as yet about how the USA might exercise its hegemonic military power in a different way to manage conflicts and keep the peace.
steven t johnson 01.02.22 at 4:18 pm
Omega Centauri@32 A little hesitant to counter, because nuking a falling object cannot possibly mitigate the effects enough to count as any sort of rational solution. A desperate ploy to survive that might not even work. It’s just the notion that it’s the impact alone, not the subsequent effects in disrupting gloabal ecosystems, that causes the mass extinctions. The comment about the particular effects now attributed to the kind of material ejected from Chicxulub highlights the role of chance. Something as simple as season in the hemisphere impacted could make a difference.
Being more specific, a number of smaller impacts would I think produce more air burst. All small-er objects are more likely to be broken up by friction, because smaller masses heat more quickly than large-r ones. The thing there is, tsunamis do more long-term destruction of habitat and therefore more long-term disruption of ecosystems, causing more extinctions subsequently. An air burst may knock down a forest, but a mile high tsunami will bury one so that it can’t recover as easily, if at all.
The point about how the height of the ejected matter would be the same is correct, though. But it is not at all clear to me that the quantity of matter ejected from small-er impacts must necessarily equal the matter ejected from a single. The vaporized rock inside a deeper hole it seems to me behaves something like the gases in a cannon, where the surrounding structure channels the force upward.
And another factor is the greater likelihood that the low-er quantity of heat in small-er impacts would set less of the atmosphere on fired. The oxides of nitrogen produces have their own role to play in a mass extinction.
If the point is that a Hail Mary pass with nukes is not, not, not a solution that leaves humanity more or less untouched is silly—-Absolutely correct.
Chetan Murthy 01.02.22 at 6:32 pm
This morning MTG got banned from Twitter. In the middle of reading the LG&M thread about it, I realized, Don’t Look Up could be interpreted as an allegory about resurgent fascism:
The comet is the Fascist Restoration
the first mission is a concerted worldwide effort by governments to outlaw anti-democratic and anti-science content, on a par with what Germany does
And Isherwell Zuck gets it stopped b/c it would cut into his business model
We all know how their substitute attempt goes — we’re seeing it every day.
roger gathmann 01.02.22 at 6:38 pm
I loved Don’t look up, but I don’t take it to be a statement of something. Perhaps its making and distribution is more a statement of something – that we are going through a period, in the U.S., when it is becoming apparent to a lot of people that the U.S. government is no more moral or immoral than any other government. It is a sort of falling out of love with the “country”, in as much as the country is identified with a ruling clique of government and corporate highfliers. We can trash the claims that U.S. is an indespensible country, or a light on a hill, or all that silliness, at least as it applies to this class. Unfortunately, that class has the power, money, and military might to treat the earth much as Major T. J. “King” Kong treate3d the bomb in Doctor Strangelove -m as something to ride down on until the explosion comes. It is coming, I guess.
Sebastian H 01.02.22 at 7:47 pm
“whereas the US reserves the right to deny legitimacy to Russian or Chinese attacks on other countries.”
I’ve always found these kind of analyses interesting because it used to be voicing the assumption that it would be a better world if the US would also restrain itself, but at least it kind of restrains Russia and China. But now the exact same thing is just saying “there are going to be a lot invasions and there probably isn’t anything anyone is going to do about it”.
I mean the EU response to the first Ukraine invasion was to denuclearize and become even more dependent on Russia for gas.
We can’t agree on direct security, so of course we aren’t going to be able to coordinate global warming responses. I agree that it is bad to have to rely on techno solutions, but at this point (especially with much of Europe prematurely denuclearizing with literally no serious plan) we are going to have to be relying on techno solutions.
nastywoman 01.03.22 at 10:26 pm
and the last word from the (Italian) Internet:
‘Donald Trump and the Don’t Look Up story come true – because it is enough to ignore things to make them disappear, and we know that repeating a lie many times guarantees that sooner or later it becomes a real thing’
nastywoman 01.04.22 at 5:57 am
AND
‘the funniest thing’ –
that such a lot of people think – that ‘Don’t Look Up’ is… ‘funny’?
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