Len Zwelling

Autocracy is basically a system of government under the control of a single person. China, Russia and Iran are all autocracies despite having the trappings of representative leadership, like meaningless parliaments. There is no shared governance in these places and the boss doesn’t consult with anyone when he wants to do something—like invade the Ukraine, or Taiwan, or Israel.

This poses a real problem for the United States which is anything but an autocracy. It’s supposed to be a republic (not a democracy) with representative government, an elected President, elected congresspeople and federal justices appointed by the executive and approved by the legislature. In essence running an autocracy is far more efficient than running a representative government and decisions can be made faster in the former, but it’s no way to run a government if the people’s will is to be considered in important decisions. This puts our current national leadership in a bit of a bind.

“Fighting Cancer. Now that’s a job!”

“Making Cancer History”

“Whatever it takes”

“One MD Anderson”

These are just some of the catch phrases used by the world’s number one place for clinical cancer care, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center over the last forty or so years.

And they have been effective.

As I understand the scenario, the world’s number one men’s tennis player had contracted Covid in December and recovered despite having met unmasked with young tennis players and the press when he was probably infectious. Then he traveled to Australia to play in the Open there, but was stopped at the border because he was not vaccinated. He was thrown into quarantine and his lawyers appealed in court. The initial hearing granted him entry, but then the key Australian government minister denied him access to the country again and now he is deported without being allowed to play in the tournament. If he won this tournament, he would have accrued the most Grand Slam titles of any man in history, so this is not a small matter in tennis.

In her op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on January 15, Peggy Noonan soundly criticizes the recent Georgia voting rights speech given by President Biden as divisive. It was followed the next day by a speech from Mitch McConnell basically agreeing with Noonan.

It has been very frustrating for me as a blogger to be accused of having progressive-liberal tendencies, when I am trying to make a case for the middle-of-the-road. Biden has just made my job easier.

Based on the rhetoric emanating from the mouth of the President of the United States, one might conclude that the number of voters last election day was at an all-time low due to state regulations obstructing voters’ access to the ballot. In fact, turnout was at a record high in 2020 and Mr. Biden was the beneficiary thereof. He is claiming that new state laws will prevent that from happening again. But, is there really an emergency in the country with regard to voting rights because state legislatures are passing bills restricting mail-in ballots and Sunday voting? And by the way, is picture ID verification of identity to vote all that bad an idea anyway? And why should the doling out of food and water even be a voting issue?

Many in the mainstream media and our own Vice President are equating what happened on Capitol Hill last year to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. That is frankly ridiculous.

Both Pearl Harbor and the attacks of 9/11 came from outside the United States and were surprises, although maybe they shouldn’t have been. 1/6/21 was totally predictable, caused by domestic forces and may or may not have been a true insurrection. The truth about what happened a year ago, who is responsible, and whether there was inside help from Congress remains unknown. I also doubt the current Democrat-led House Select Committee will make a whole lot of headway unless they move with far more alacrity and finish before the mid-terms.

By now, everyone knows that the former wunderkind of Silicon Valley and media darling Elizabeth Holmes has been found guilty of four of the eleven counts against her in a California federal court. Sentencing is pending, but jail time is likely. If Martha Stewart got 6 months for lying to the feds, Elizabeth ought to be put away for a lot longer for defrauding investors.

Ms. Holmes was the CEO of the now defunct company that had promised to reinvent blood testing using microscopic amounts of blood to do over 100 separate tests. The Theranos technology never worked and Elizabeth’s main defense was that she didn’t know enough about the science to know she was over-promising and if she did, her abusive live-in relationship with Sunny Balwani, her second in command, made her do it. Mr. Bulwani will have his own trial later this year.

In The New York Times Business section on January 2, Sarah Lyell writes a cogent piece about customer fury and meanness. Apparently, the country is at a boiling point and the place where the heat can be best measured is the intersection of service providers and the public.

In the many instances Lyell relates of rage in the supermarket, in the pharmacy or on an airplane, most of the recipients of the ire have become aware that what this is about is not what this is about. People are Covid exhausted, supply chain weary and masked out.

In the recent HBO series Landscapers, one of the two protagonists accused of killing her parents is repeatedly described as “fragile.” And, she, played by Olivia Coleman, is. You’ll have to watch the four-episode mini-series if you wish to find out how she is fragile and why that matters.

Today, the United States is fragile—in a position to be broken. Why?

According to Peggy Noonan in the above op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on December 18, the new Steven Spielberg film version of West Side Story cleared $10.5 million at the box office during its opening weekend. This must be a grave disappointment to Spielberg’s studio and to those who invested in his new vision of an American classic especially as it received uniformly great reviews.

Spider-Man: No Way Home cleared $253 million on its opening weekend. This is a record for pandemic movie theater openings.

What do these two facts say about the future of American cinema? In my opinion, everything.