Welcome to the TSA (Theocratic States of America)

As everyone knows by now, Roe v. Wade was struck down by our ultra-conservative Supreme Court on Friday, defying the will of--if the polls I have seen are accurate--approximately 67 percent of Americans.

We are officially living in a minority-rule, ultra-conservative, theocratic, authoritarian hellscape. Democracy in the United States is on life support. This nation is a joke and should deservedly be a laughingstock to the rest of the world.

The only way we even begin to get out of this is if the American electorate hits the polls en masse in November and votes the corrupt GOP out. But it's not enough to simply vote, folks on the left have to let the right know that we will no longer tolerate their brazen thuggishness. 

If we can't force these authoritarian theocrats out of office and send them scurrying into the rat holes where they belong, they will not stop trying to mold the United States into their own "ideal' society. One in which straight cisgendered white men are dominant and everyone else subservient. Goodbye gay marriage, and even more shockingly and absurdly, goodbye birth control. This is the truth and no amount of gaslighting from the right will make me believe otherwise. Gaslighting has been one of the right's primary tools in achieving their goals thus far.

For anyone unaware of this blog who thinks I'm some kind of hot-headed naive kid, let me set you straight--I've already taken 54 trips around the sun. I'm old as dirt. I lived through the Reagan years and the Bush years (both Senior and Junior). Those eras were no picnic but are child's play compared to the right wing's current reign of (t)error. (Hey, I managed to fit two cliches in one sentence--not bad!).

It's funny to think back on the civics and American government classes I took back in high school and how my teachers stressed that both our Constitution and checks and balances of Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches ensured that nobody had too much power. (Somehow the teachers also tried to convince us that the electoral college was beneficial too, but I was never convinced of that). Perhaps this is all true in theory, but we have seen the cracks and fissures in our federal government when unscrupulous people are allowed to take power and exploit the system for their own selfish gains.

Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Creation of the Twentieth Century (by Dana Stevens)

So it only took me almost four months to get through this book, not because it was bad or difficult to read, but because I was juggling two books at one time (something that never works out well since one almost always supersedes the other one in the "reading hierarchy"). Then, when I was finally able to devote my full "reading attention" to it, I would often put off reading until 10:30 or 11:00 at night and promptly fall asleep after reading about five pages. In the last week, I finally decided to read the book in the afternoon or early evening before I became irretrievably exhausted.

So here is a brief blurb I wrote about the book for the library. I thought I'd share it here, too (apologies if the font size does not match the blog--I am copying and pasting it):

This is a must-read for anyone interested in the life of Buster Keaton, silent movies, comedy, or the early days of cinema. Film critic Dana Stevens—who is also one of the hosts of the Slate Culture Gabfest podcast—presents in the life of Buster Keaton within the context of his times. This is less a biography than a cultural history. For example, a chapter about Keaton’s rough-and-tumble childhood in Vaudeville leads to a look at the history of child labor in the United States; the production and plot of Buster’s 1920 short film One Week (about newlyweds’ home construction that goes comically awry) spins off into a short history of the “kit house” craze of that period.

Stevens’ research is impressive and her respect for Buster Keaton and a man and an artist is palpable throughout the book.