Ken Burns' American Revolution

We finished the last episode this evening.  It is an astonishing, mostly makes you proud to be an American piece of work.  There are parts that are ugly and many Americans probably know little or nothing about:

1. The barbarous treatment of Indians allied with the British including intentional extermination of women and children.

2. The pretty ferocious mistreatment of Loyalists by Patriots and vice during the war and afterwards.

 

3. The substantial part that both free blacks, slaves, and Indians played in the American military. 

Many of you know that Lord Dunmore offered freedom to slaves who ran away and fought for the British.   I was surprised to find out how many of these runaways were returned to slavery by their owners at the end of the war.

To Burns' credit it closes by emphasizing how the Founding principles of representative government and liberty became organizing principles of revolution around the world since.

Also surprising was his postscript about the Bill of Rights mentions "the right to keep and bear arms." Not in a militia, not as allowed by public safety, and not even ignored.  I guess this constitutes progress. 

UPDATE: They dropped a "Framers were Deists" claim in the middle of one episode that had no connection to the larger themes.  As I have blogged here, Jefferson and Paine were arguably Deists (although Paine finally went full atheist later in life, leading to a rather strong letter from Franklin admonishing him for this).  As regular readers of my blog know, state constitutions often limited the franchise or elective office to Christians, sometimes specifically Protestants, and continued state establishments of religion well past the Revolution.  I assume this was done to make modern evangelical Christians look ignorant.

James Caan Obituary

Instapundit.com mentions his recent death but neglects to include with what many of the comments agree with me: Rollerball and Thief were great films.  He was understated in both and Rollerball is one of the great hopeful, dystopia films.  Thief is a story of a bad guy trying to rehabilitate that but finds out too late that his employer has other plans.  The closing sequence is gritty, bloody realistic using a .45.  A friend who saw it has absolutely no memory of the closing.  It ranks up there with Looking for Mr. Goodbar for most overwhelming endings.

Interesting TV

 My wife and I were watching a history series: The Story of Europe.  The narrator reached France just before things became ugly.  A small number of people at the top living ostentatiously luxurious lives, looting the starving peasants, while convinced of their right to do so.  Both of us immediately recognized the parallels.  A small number of billionaires and decamillionaires and hectamillionaires living large, while the Deplorables often are just getting by, many of whom in their despair are destroying themselves with meth and alcohol.  This increasingly blatant election theft may be setting us up for something as bloody and ugly as the French Revolution, especially if Biden and Beto try to attempt a gun grab as a step to greater tyranny.

Then we watched a marvelously done BBC production of Les Miserables (there is no singing, except the Marseilles).  It captures the desperation of post-Napoleonic French peasantry.  The 1830 Revolutionaries are portrayed as a mix of idealistic college boys, oppressed peasants and workers, and common criminals.

 You are doubtless aware of the famous Delacroix painting commemorating it:

 

 

Watching their street battles with the French Army at the barricades brought to mind several points that may be relevant if things get ugly.

 

1. The larger your group, the more chance that a Javert (the evil policeman chasing the reformed, even virtuous ex-con Jean Valjean) will infiltrate.  Lone wolves are by far the most secure method of operations.

2. Not every ally will be people you would want over for dinner.

3. People you would not expect (even wealthy people who you might expect to be on the other side) may surprise you, in a good way.  I suspect that I am at the low end of the demographic of the average Biden contributor.  People with aspirations for a private jet (or at least a timeshared private jet) but unlikely to get there.

4. Direct confrontation with regular Army is not likely to be successful.  The 1830 Revolutionaries are expecting much of the French Army to change sides.  In America, I would expect National Guard troops to do so; they have been held in contempt by regulars in the Middle Eastern wars, and many are more civilian Deplorables than regulars.  I do think in a real, civil war, many regulars may suddenly lose their accuracy of fire and some may retreat from the field having conveniently left rifles, magazines, grenades behind.

5. Much of armed resistance are likely to be older people with only a few years left, for whom death in battle for a great cause may seem pretty good compared to the evils that old age (70s, 80s, and 90s) visit upon us.  An interesting quirk of the Constitutional definition of treason:

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

As I understand that, even if you are convicted of treason, or declared a traitor posthumously, your estate can still be inherited.

Vincent Price

 A few of you are old enough to remember Vincent Price.  He starred in some of campiest films of the 1950s and 1960s, often Edgar Allan Poe stories done by Roger Corman before the remake of Little Shop of Horrors made Corman respectable among the filmerati.  I always enjoyed how well Price did these absurd parts with the right mix of serious acting and just the faintest hint of "I'm not taking this too seriously, neither should you."  The decision to have his distinctive narration at the start of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video was an inspired opening to an inspired video by an inspired creep.

SteynOnline tells a heartwarming tale of Vincent Price's very classy behavior at the low point of his career:

New makeup, new costume, same perfect delivery, hour after hour.

Finally, it was time for a break. The weary yet exhilarated crew turned off the cameras and lights.

Then they looked around and realized that Vincent Price had disappeared.

Oh well, they said to each other, what do you expect? He's a big star and all. Plus he's, like, 60 years old, so he probably went for a nap...

The studio door opened a few minutes later.

It was Vincent Price and a cab driver, hauling "two-fours" of beer from the nearby Brewer's Retail.

He handed cold stubbies out to the cast and crew and regaled them with tales of old Hollywood, his days working with Karloff and Peter Lorre and Gene Tierney and Cecil B. DeMille and all the other greats he'd known.

Then he posed for photos with everybody individually.

On an overnight rush, these were blown up into 8 x 10s, which Price personally autographed for everyone at the station.

Over the course of four days, taping over 400 of these interstitials, Price never complained, blew a line or missed a mark.

In an era when standards of conduct were collapsing, Vincent Price insisted on behaving like the well-bred gentleman he so often portrayed on screen.

It was a role that came easily to him. After all, he'd been born into considerable wealth, graduated from Yale, and owned a multimillion-dollar art collection.

Yet unlike many people who come from privileged backgrounds, Price didn't treat the guys at the local station like disposable underlings and hired help.

Over those four days in Hicksville, Vincent Price earned every cent of that $12,000 — a measly sum for him, even with his career on the wane, but he knew it was a fortune for CHCH.

In those days, that was probably the annual salary of some of the fellows behind the cameras. Maybe.

Price had probably pictured himself, early in his career, performing Shakespeare and other classics, maybe winning Tonys and Oscars — not flying up to God-knows-where at sixty years of age, wearing stupid hats and taping silly poems for a show everyone figured only a bunch of little kids would ever see, that would soon be forgotten.

Very Awesome Film: St. Helens (1981)

Just enjoyed a film on YouTube https://youtu.be/y3SdIC-Fu3Q.  It is drama, so subplots are added to a very factual story of the efforts of USGS geologist David Johnston to get the area around the volcano evacuated,  saving thousands of lives.  One part that seems fiction, but is not, was Johnston flying into the crater to collect gases that showed the volcano was fast approaching a major eruption.  If you ever get to Southwest Washington,  make sure get to the Visitor's Center for the Park.  It is a beautiful area, especially now that everything is growing back. 

The film portrays Harry Truman, owner of Spirit Lodge, as a cranky, patriotic idiosyncratic old coot, the sort who made possible the American Century. 

Bad Movies Are Not New

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)