It’s to save the planet, you know
Climate Change Fiction Is Rethinking The Ecoterrorist
Toward the end of Paul Schrader’s most recent film, First Reformed, the main character straps on an explosive vest with the intention of blowing himself up — along with a church full of other people — driven by an inarticulate but intense desire to strike a blow on behalf of the environment.
The character’s name is Ernst Toller, he’s played by a dyspeptic Ethan Hawke, and he isn’t an ecological radical when the film starts. He’s a minister at a small church in upstate New York that’s more of a historical tourist attraction than a functional place of worship, and when we first meet him, he seems to think about climate change the way a lot of us do, or used to — as inexorably dire but also still distant enough a concept to not cast a shadow over our day-to-day lives.
That changes after he pays a visit to a troubled parishioner named Michael (Philip Ettinger), an activist for whom the effects of global warming are not abstract at all, and who’s in the grip of an existential crisis prompted by his wife Mary’s (Amanda Seyfried) pregnancy. How can it be justifiable, he demands of Ernst, to bring a child into a world you believe is going to crumble within their lifetime? He’s not being dramatic or alarmist. It’s a real question, one he shores up with all the data he’s accrued about sea levels rising and land mass shrinking, which he follows to logical conclusions about catastrophic change and civilization being shaken at its foundations. “The bad times will begin,” as he puts it. “This isn’t some distant future. You will live to see this.” (snip)
While Ernst goes into the meeting intending to talk Michael down from his hopelessness, he emerges, instead, infected with dread himself. And that dread begins blossoming, compounded by guilt, when he discovers Michael dead in the woods from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. By the time Ernst puts on that explosive vest, which he took from a box hidden in Michael’s garage, we understand his intentions as both extremist and an attempt at a logical response to an impossible problem: How are we supposed to behave in the face of the possibility that there is no future for us, because of our own choices as a species?
See? We can excuse the behavior because of the Dooming of our species. You really should read the whole story in full, which ends with
It’s interesting too to think of the young fandom that the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, has accrued, as profiled in New York magazine back in December. They’re kids who found themselves nodding along to his manifesto about how we need “a revolution against the industrial system,” creating “anti-civ” reading lists, and participating in open-air survivalist workshops in preparation for the end of civilization. The subjects of the article prefer the term “ecoextremism” and act cagey about their commitment to violence, but they do feel like real-world relations to all these fictional characters. The same feelings of quiet, constant panic in the face of an inevitable future that come through in this fiction are also bubbling up in our lives, and in these subcultures whose affiliations and actions may be beyond the pale, but whose desperation feels very familiar
Yes, kids are now extolling the virtues of the Unabomber.
These kids are being propagandized into a life of fear, dread and despair by their teachers, the constant din of Democrat toadies and the media/entertainment industry. They have taken a country of people full of hope and promise and turned them into sniveling idiots. This is not a generation of Americans but rather a gaggle of future government slaves.
Hey Elwood, you’ll be unhappy to hear I won the $50 but bought a round of drinks with it. Steve and Star (yes, that’s this idiots real name) showed up a tad late and to their chagrin there was I in my MAGA hat. Well, they said their “hellos” then Star wan’t feeling well so Steve suggested they leave. My boy Roy chimed up and convinced them since they drove so far (From downtown Philly to Elkins Park, a whopping 12 miles) they should at lest have dinner.
They sat down and everyone was chatting and after about ten minutes Star barks out “Are you going to wear that damn hat all through dinner?”. To wit I replied I hadn’t intended to and asked if she had a problem with it. For the next thirty seconds it was like an Elwood post at The Pirates Cove. All she did was call me and Trump and racist, white supremacists, and bigots. Then she made the ultimate error, she said ANYONE who supports the President was a racist. At that point everyone there said “I support Trump”. So I looked at Star and asked “Are we all racists? Are you at brunch with the Klan?”
Up she got and out they went to the applause of our table and a coup other tables close enough to have heard the discourse.
Roy thinks we won’t see them again in our group. I couldn’t care less myself. We conservatives have become the New Liberals. The old tolerant liberals have become Leftists, intolerant leftists at that. There is no room in their tiny world for any dissent.
Maybe she just didn’t want to spend time with a bunch of assholes! LOL.
Not to question your tale, but earlier it was to be brunch – now dinner with drinks. Why the changing story?
Of course not all tRump supporters are racists, rev. Some are sycophants (Leslie Graham), some are rich Republics, some are never-Dems, so only most are racists.
We heard tRump’s new slogan is MADE America Great Again. He’s already getting the hats made in Tianjin at 19 cents a unit and will sell to his tRumpsters for $25 (+S&H). MAGA is in a totally different font! Line up suckers!
Maybe she just didn’t want to spend time with a bunch of assholes
So she must have gone home because, otherwise, she’d have ended up with you Lefties.
It’s Tientsin and most of the racists are still Demos.
They’ll tell you you’re helpless without them and their wonderful programs that do nothing but keep you in slavery and they’ll call Uncle tom if you dare think for yourself.
We heard tRump’s new slogan is MADE America Great Again.</i.
Last I heard it was going to be Keep america Great. Even saw a bumper sticker to that effect. Can’t wait to get one
PragerU Monday Video – Who Are the Racists?
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2019/04/prageru-monday-video-who-are-racists.html
I typed dinner because it was my dinner Roy is the guy who told me brunch and we have drinks regardless of what he or I call the meal. I suppose since we mostly ate from the dinner menu it would be more accurate but the type of meal is not important.
Let me get this straight. Star sat there and made a stink (as I predicted), called me, my wife and everybody else names yet you say we’re assholes? I think you need to look in the mirror. Besides, you don’t think that’s funny that this crazy lady can’t have a meal with friends of twenty plus years because she’s so wrapped up in the propaganda there is no room left for friendship and association? Well, maybe pathetic is more the word than funny. Let’s go with pathetic.
Uh huh, brunch, dinner, morning, evening… doesn’t matter, LOL. Anyway, we only have your ‘side’ of the tale.
Sounds as if you got what you wanted – victimization and a public scene. What would you call a group of so-called friends who craft a plan to provoke, mock and ridicule another (with props no less), but assholes? Typical right-wing humor. Always at someone’s expense. Asshole.
She’s better off without you.
Hell, you give us your ‘side’ of the tale all the time and it always turns out to be lies.
victimization and a public scene
Sounds like the Lefties made the public scene and tried to victimize everyone else. If they’d kept their stupid, judgmental mouths shut and allowed other people the same freedom expression they demand from everyone else, there would have been no problem.
What would you call a group of so-called friends who craft a plan to provoke, mock and ridicule another (with props no less), but assholes?
How about followers of Saul Alinsky? For once, Uncle Saul’s kids got a taste of their own medicine.
Remember Sarah Sanders? That’s the kind of treatment she got, but, like all bullies, you can dish it out, but you can’t take.
Hypocrite.
I wouldn’t leave just because someone wore a silly MAGA hat. But I’d feel obligated to point out that trump is a crook and a scoundrel, and an amoral sociopath. “I’d ask the women at the table what they thought of trump saying he “Would grab women by the pussy”? I assume if you wear a silly MAGA hat you’re open to discussing the good and the bad of trump.
Would they be all right if trump just started kissing them, sticking his nasty tongue in their mouths? Stuff like that. What she thought of him since he fukked a porn actress while his wife was home taking care of an infant. And then paid her to be quiet so it wouldn’t hurt his electoral chances.
Well, Elwood if she were wearing a “Bring Back Obama” hat I would have laughed and made fun. Sometimes Elwood a hat is just a fukin’ hat. What Trump said or did in his sex life has nothing to do with you, me, Star, or the electorate unless he did something illegal. And even then it does not mean he can’t lead America to the highest employment rate in recent history, same with the stock market and black & Hispanic unemployment at the lowest rate EVER. Not to mention the 3.2% growth in the economy, getting us out of the Paris crap and many more things I need not mention.
We understand you hate Trump more than you love America. We accept that. You wuld rather see America collapse so you could blame it on Trump than have us succeed an let Trump get he credit. We understand America haters, we really do.
Oh, and “would they be all right if Joe Biden came up behind them and started sniffing their hair and kissing them. Same thing Elwood. Men are not perfect. Except you if course.
I used to be from Bryn Mawr. Birds of a feather.
Bryn Mawr? My, my how upper class. A Main Line Guy. Dating all those Swathmore and Bryn Mawr College chicks.
Elwood, who said I wanted “victimization in a public scene”, you? I know I didn’t. You project so often sometimes you forget we conservatives aren’t “victims”. To you we are the perps.
Also our “so-called” friends (I assume you use that term because you haven’t any) didn’t have to try too hard to provoke, mock and ridicule her since she supplied all of that herself by being an ass-wipe leftist. If a person is provoked, mocked and ridiculed by a friend wearing a hat supporting the President of the United States then they need a good ass-whippin’. She places her radical leftist politics above her family and friends like any good commie or Nazi.
Just to illustrate how unhinged this leftist clown is I was emailed this morning by my friend Roy that Star has “unfriended” four of the couples on Facebook. Want to bet her hubby has no clue about that? He’s on the edge of tossing her out on her ass anyway she really should be careful who she alienates.
Ya know Elwood, if you leftists loved America as much as you hate Donald Trump there is nothing our nation couldn’t accomplish.
Dating all those Swathmore and Bryn Mawr College chicks.
A lot of Bryn Mawr is blue collar and those Swathmore and Bryn Mawr College chicks are worse Lefties than Jeffery.
Dutcher/Kye,
When you two clowns having finished your circle jerk, you should note that it’s Swarthmore, not Swathmore.
Her husband is going to toss her ass out because she alienated his boorish friends? She’d be better off without him. You were never her friend.
Yes, you wanted a “scene” so you could be the “victim” of a mean leftist woman.
Have you seen these cool t-shirts:
00: Number of Days Without a Stupid Tweet from Trump
TRE45ON
IMPEACH 45
You really have a cognition problem, Elwood. Where exactly did I say Steve is dumping Star because “she alienated his boorish friends”? Making shit up again Elwood. That’s not good. That’s pretty evil. You’re right, I was never her friend I am Steve’s friend but I always treated her with respect and kindness. Until she went bat shit left and lost her mind.
Steve is leaving her from what I hear because they no longer have anything in common. She hates everything and is a miserable bitch and he’s a happy guy. Or can’t you see that?
I am so sorry I misspelled Swarthmore. A typo proves I’m a racist I’m sure.