Pre-cancelled?

Maya Hawke, as Flannery O’Connor, in a scene from the 2023 film Wildcat.

I recently discovered Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage by Jessica Hooten Wilson.
Wilson’s work is comprised of bits and pieces of an unfinished novel by Flannery O’Connor.
It’s a special treat for O’Connor fans, and I was thrilled to discover it.
Flannery O’Connor’s proposed third novel had the working title: “Why Do the Heathen Rage?”
In a 1962 letter* to her friend Editor Robert Giroux, O’Connor said: “It’s been inevitable that I get to that title sooner or later.”

The words “Why do the heathen rage?” are taken from a psalm in the Bible, 2:1.
(In some versions of the Bible the word “heathen” is translated as “nations,” not “heathen.”)
The King James version of 2:1 reads: 

Why do the heathen rage, And the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, Against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, And cast away their cords from us.

This particular psalm was a common theme in the sermons of Protestant Southern ministers, in the 1950’s and 60’s.
Flannery O’Connor was a devout Roman Catholic.
However, as she wrote* to Sister Mariella Sable, in May of 1963: “I can write about Protestant believers better than Catholic believers . . . I can’t write about anything subtle.”

Cover of Flannery O’Connor’s 1960 novel The Violent Bear It Away, the story of a feral child, raised to be a prophet.

Essentially, Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage is made up of pieces of O’Connor’s lost beginnings of a novel presented in conjunction with explanatory essays by Wilson.
It also contains some beautiful linoleum cut illustrations by Steve Prince.
The subtitle of the book is: “A behind-the-scenes look at a work in progress.” In addition to commenting on and offering background to the fragments, Jessica Hooten Wilson placed the fragments in an order that she felt was helpful to understanding them.

Flannery O’Connor died (at age 39, in 1964) after completing two novels, and thirty-some short stories.
Scholars began to study her papers in the early 1970’s.
However, Wilson’s work was published in 2024.

First-edition cover of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.

Besides the fact that “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” was not close to being a finished work, another reason for the fragments not being published until 2024, was likely the subject matter.
O’Connor was writing about a 20-something white man (variously called Walter or Asbury) dealing with his own racism, and complicated emotions toward an idealistic Northern woman who’s trying (in today’s parlance) to become an “anti-racist.”
Even though Walter is “more or less” on the woman’s side,” she still fills him with “a particular fury.” 

The female character is variously named “Oona Gibbs,” and “Sarah.”
By the end of the fragments, the two characters are heading toward an in-person meeting, but have only communicated through letters.
(Walter had lied to Oona, and told her he was black.)

O’Connor was still developing the characters when she died.
Oona/Sara is (mostly) a 20-something woman.
The character either lives on her own in New York, or she lives with her mother.
(O’Connor hadn’t quite decided.)
In one of her letters to Walter, Oona says:

I’ve broken through the ceiling of everything that suffocated me—conventions, manners, religion—and have suddenly like breaking into outer space, understood that nothing matters but that you be open to everything and everybody.

Scene from 1979’s Wise Blood, with blind preacher Asa Hawkes (Harry Dean Stanton) and beginning preacher Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif).

In reference to the title “Why Do the Heathen Rage,” Jessica Hooten Wilson proposes that Flannery O’Connor would say that both Walter and Oona are the “heathen,” as are we all.
As Flannery O’Connor expressed in a 1963 letter* to Sister Mariella Sable (same letter as mentioned above): 

Ideal Christianity doesn’t exist, because anything that the human being touches, even Christian truth, he deforms slightly in his own image.

Flannery O’Conner with her pet peacocks.

Another problem with this beginning of a third novel is its’ use of the N-word, particularly in the conversations with Walter’s father, “old-man Tilman.”
As I read Jessica Hooten Wilson’s work, I wondered if these O’Connor fragments would have been published earlier if they hadn’t involved racism.
(I also wonder whether Wilson’s book would have been given more publicity.)
This book was published by a small Christian press: Baker Publishing Group.

Wilson was fully aware that some readers might find Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage a problematic enterprise. She writes: 

In these unfinished pages, characters speak offensively, and I hope we cringe to see the N-word on the page (even the elided version, as we have chosen to present it) and refuse to read it aloud. Yet, rather than judge these characters haughtily—“oh, that we’ve come so far!”—we should register the short distance between us and them.

Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) attempts to start the Church Without Christ in the Walter Houston-directed film Wise Blood.

One topic touched upon in Jessica Hooten Wilson’s book, is Alice Walker, and her affection for Flannery O’Connor’s work.
(Both Alice Walker, and Flannery O’Connor, had ancestral ties to Milledgeville, Georgia.)
In a biography on Walker (Alice Walker: A Life), by Evelyn Corliss White (2004), White quotes Walker saying that she would always love the “magic, the wit, and the mystery of Flannery O’Connor.”
White also quotes Walker as saying that O’Connor “destroyed the last vestiges of sentimentality in white Southern writing.”

*The two letters, mentioned in this memorandum, are found in Letters of Flannery O’Connor: The Habit of Being, selected and edited by Sally Fitzgerald (1979).

Culture Wars

Ostrich with its’ head stuck in the sand.

Some of the most fascinating passages in the book Project 2025, are the references to being “woke” and the “culture wars.”
The authors clearly find the idea of America as “a melting pot,” extremely distasteful.
To them, it’s obvious that white male Northern European Americans should be in charge of everything.

One goal of Project 2025 is to erase many aspects of the modern world—trans people, books on race and climate change, consideration of sexual orientation—from society.
It’s as if Trump, and his MAGA cohorts, believe that they can make all of these ideas go away.

The 919-page book proposes some bizarre actions.
It wants NPR be stripped of Government funding.
It wants all discussions of identities (sexual and racial) to be deleted from laws, and government web sites.*
Project 2025 wants “psychologically destructive” books—ie, books that discuss “woke” subjects—to be removed from libraries and schools.
Furthermore, Project 2025 suggests that librarians, professors, and doctors, be reclassified as registered sex offenders, for trying to help trans children. 

Less than 1% of NPR’s funding comes from the Federal Government.
While the percentage is small, $445-$500 million is directed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (another entity) to public TV and radio stations, under the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act.
Since Trump is in charge of the CPB board, he could mold the CPB into a right-wing group, just as he made himself head of the Kennedy Center. 

Page 20 of the Stop Project 2025 comic book points out that that the book is openly about white supremacy.

As I read Project 2025, I realized that its’ authors are more than just upset with Leftists and “wokeness.”
It’s as if they constantly hear The Left whispering into their ears that they are wrong and stupid, and they want this whispering to stop!
Kevin Roberts (President of the Heritage Foundation) remarks that “The Left does not believe that all men are created equal. They believe they are superior.” 

At the same time that Project 2025 wants the U.S. to discontinue DEI, it also wants the Government to load up on weapon systems, as well as build up Special Operation Forces.
Section Two of the book advocates accelerating the Sentinel system, the U.S. Space Force, and the U.S. Cyber Command.
On 3/21/25, the 47th President announced a new generation of fighter jets, the F-47.
(This one plane will cost as least $20 billion.)

Cover of Ralph Stone’s The Irreconcilables.

Nativism and fear of immigrants is nothing new in American society.
When going through a pile of inherited books, I came across a 1973 copy of Ralph Stone’s The Irreconcilables.
It’s an analysis on how16 nativist Senators defeated the Treaty of Versailles, and refused to authorize the League of Nations. 

Senator Reed (Missouri) fought the agreement because the majority of the countries making it did not “belong to the white race of men.”
Senator Borah (Idaho), feared that Great Britain would dominate the League.
Sherman (Illinois), feared that far too many League members would be Catholics.
The Irreconcilables gradually wore down 80 fellow Senators, and convinced them that a League of Nations would “do more harm than good.”

Poster for 2024’s Cabrini in which Christiana Dell’Anna played Mother Cabrini.

In 2024, a film called Cabrini was issued as a DVD, and briefly seen in theaters.
It’s about Mother Cabrini, the first U.S. citizen to be canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church.
However, it’s also about the fight between nativists (who despised Catholic immigrants as vermin), and Mother Cabrini who wanted immigrants to be given a chance at the American dream.
(Mother Cabrini became a U.S citizen in 1909.)
New York city officials tried very hard to ship her back to Italy.

At the beginning of the film (set in 1899) a dying Italian immigrant mother isn’t admitted to a New York hospital, because of her ethnicity.
Later on, one Italian immigrant child dies, and another is injured, when they work at low-paying jobs in a dangerous factory.
In another scene, Mother Cabrini is called a “guinea,” by a WASP businessman, on the streets of Manhattan.

Director Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, was set about one generation before Cabrini.
It’s also about New York nativists who despised Italian and Irish immigrants as “guineas” and “micks.”
It’s no surprise that Vice-President JD Vance completely misunderstood this film!
Vance revealed in a 2021 interview (with podcaster Jack Murphy) that he saw Gangs of New York as the story of criminal immigrant gangs.
Scorsese’s film is actually about criminal nativists persecuting immigrants.
(Read more about 2002’s Gangs of New York in my memorandum “The War on Immigrants.”)

Page 63 of the Stop Project 2025 comic book talks about proposed changes to the T-Visa, U-Visa, and H-2A Visa programs.

Although immigrants have long been our most industrious citizens, there’s also been a “glass ceiling” in terms of the U.S. Presidency.
Southern European candidates, in particular, have never been selected for any position higher than the Vice Presidency.

This glass ceiling (for male immigrants) has not existed in big business or in earning money.
The first American millionaire—a billionaire if his worth was figured in modern dollars—was French-American Stephen Girard, a shipowner and banker.
Girard lived from 1750 to 1831.
His only child died in infancy.
Therefore, he left the bulk of his wealth to the education and care of orphans.

Andrew Carnegie reading in a library (1913). Carnegie and Carnegie money built over 2,500 libraries.

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)—ranked as the second richest man in American history—was born in Scotland, and arrived in America at the age of 12.
Like Gerard, Carnegie eventually became a philanthropist.
He gave away $350 million dollars during his lifetime, and over 90% of his fortune, after his death.

Immigrants are more likely to be wealth-makers, than native born citizens, in every country in which this subject is studied.
According to an MIT study, American immigrants are 80% more likely to be successful entrepreneurs, than native-born Americans.
According to Fortune magazine, nearly 44% of the 2022 Fortune 500 list were founded by 1st or 2nd generation immigrants. 

Because the colonies were originally settled by the Virginia Company of London, and the Plymouth Company (also of London), some people believe that the U.S. was built by Northern European Christian men, and that everyone else should be second-class citizens.
Just because wealthy people in the South lived off the unrecompensed labor of black Americans for five generations, that’s hardly an argument.

*All references to Enola Gay (the bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima) were removed from U.S. government web sites (because the paragraphs and captions used the word “gay”), as part of the initiative to eliminate DEI content.

Going Backwards

In the 1940 A-movie His Girl Friday, Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) is torn between life as a star newspaper reporter, with her editor boss (Cary Grant), and marriage to a dull mama’s boy (Ralph Bellamy). 

The role of women in society has been slowly evolving.
For most of European and American history, women have been dependent on their fathers or husbands.
There were clear divides.
The wealthy women were ladies of leisure, with some not even tending to their own children.
Some middle-class women kept house, while others took in laundry, assisted in their husbands’ businesses, or did piece work in their homes.
Poor women worked in factories, or were servants.

In The Corpse Vanishes, the bride-stealing Dr Lorenz (Bela Lugosi) threatens the lives of snoopy reporter Patricia Hunter (Luana Walters) and brave medical Dr. Foster (Tristram Coffin). In this 1942 B-movie, the female protagonist gives up her job for marriage.

Movies of the 1920’s through the 1940’s illustrate that the fact of women entering the work force in greater numbers was a major problem for men.
It happened in stages.
At first, women became typists, factory workers, nurses, teachers, and reporters.
A few women ran businesses, usually after their husbands died.
Slowly, women entered more and more male professions, but they always earned less money than men.
1940’s Hollywood script writers observed this “evolution” in the roles of the sexes, and acted by attempting to persuade women that their main societal goal should be marriage and children.

In Bowery at Midnight, evil psychology professor Brenner (Bela Lugosi) threatens the lives of caring society girl Judy Malvern (Wanda McKay, seen above) and her society boyfriend Richard Dennison (John Archer). In this 1942 B-movie, the female protagonist gives up her job for marriage.

By the late 1980’s, thrillers and comedies didn’t conclude with marriage ceremonies.
Instead, in “romantic” films like 1988’s Working Girl and 2009’s The Proposal, “hard-driving” business women were the butt of jokes.
The main point of most of these “romantic comedies” was that business was a cutthroat world, for which women were emotionally “unsuited.” *

One way of thinking about today’s anti-abortion movement is that it isn’t just about preserving human life.
It’s about men being dominant over women.
The current President promises to “protect” and “take care” of American women, whether they “like it or not.”
Not being able to end a pregnancy, and not being able to obtain adequate birth control methods, makes women dependent on the men.
It’s still almost impossible for any poor or middle-class woman to raise a child on her own.

I recently discovered the book Sex and the Constitution.
Geoffrey R. Stone’s book was published in 2017.
Yet, I had not heard of this 668-page book, until I found it in a used book shop.

Cover of Sex and the Constitution, by Geoffrey R. Stone.

In Mr. Stone’s book, I learned that the Supreme Court justices who decided Roe vs Wade, in a 7-2 decision (1973), relied on far different opinions than the justices who overturned Roe vs Wade in 2022.
Indeed, one of the justices (Harry Blackmun) spent hours in the Mayo Clinic Library reviewing books and articles on the history and practice of abortion.
Justice Blackmun asked in his draft opinion:

What. . . did it mean to say that a doctor can legally perform an abortion only to save the life of a woman? Did this mean that the doctor could perform an abortion “only when, without it, the patient will surely die?. . . Must death be imminent?”

Justice Blackmun’s sensitivity to this issue is a far cry from the “precedents” that Justice Samuel Alito relied upon.
While Blackmun, and the other justices, relied on the latest research, Samuel Alito turned to the 1600’s.
In his draft opinion, he quoted from Sir Mathew Hale (1609-1676), the English witchcraft judge who burned witches, and make marital rape legal.

Was Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price), in 1968’s The Conqueror Worm, a follower of Judge Matthew Hale? The time period does match. This British film was also known as Witchfinder General.

Doctors in the 21 states that are currently banning abortions assume that the death of the woman must be imminent in order for them to provide an abortion.
As a result of Roe vs Wade being overturned, pregnant women are not being treated by medical professionals, but are instead bleeding out in hospital parking lots.

In contrast to Justice Alito who allied himself with witch-killer Justice Hale, Justice Blackmun pointed out that the “criminalization of abortion was a relatively recent phenomenon” in world history. “At the time of the adoption of our Constitution, and throughout the major portion of the 19th century . . . a woman enjoyed a substantially broader right to terminate a pregnancy that she does in most states today.” Justice Blackmun was talking about women in 1972!

In the TV show Murphy Brown, the title character became an unwed mother, and shocked America. In the scene above, Murphy (Candice Bergen) goes into labor during an episode of her newsmagazine series FYI. Murphy Brown ran from 1988-1998, and was revived in 2018.

Another fact that I learned in Sex and the Constitution (about the Roe vs Wade decision), was how Justice William J. Brennon (at that time, the only Catholic Justice on the Court) reconciled his own religious beliefs with his responsibilities as a Supreme Court judge:

I wouldn’t under any circumstances condone an abortion in my private life,” but . . . “that has nothing to do with whether or not those who have different views are entitled to have them and are entitled to be protected in their exercise of them. That’s my job in applying and interpreting the Constitution.

In the 1972 two-part episode, of the sitcom Maude (“Maude’s Dilemma”), Maude Findlay (Bea Arthur) informs her husband (Bill Macy) that she has decided to have an abortion. Some advertisers dropped the show; some affiliates didn’t air reruns of this two-parter.

Although few admit it, Roe vs Wade was a compromise on abortion.
The U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow states to deny freedoms to its’ citizens, in order to accommodate the religious beliefs of other citizens.
Yet, Roe vs Wade did limit a woman’s freedom by protecting the life of her unborn child, and placing that possible life above her own.
Essentially, Roe vs Wade eliminated a woman’s right to an abortion as soon as her potential progeny became viable.
Medical experts should help Congress work out a national abortion policy that fosters the births of viable infants, as well as the health and well-being of their mothers. 

* ”Unsuited” is an interesting word. Does a man-style suit, by design, give a woman authority?

Don’t Mix Up Your Vampire Stories

Poster from the 1922 film version of Nosferatu.

This memorandum is a collection of thoughts after ingesting five creative endeavors within the course of a short time.
The first creation that I enjoyed was the new 2024 film Nosferatu.
(My husband and I recommend it highly.)
After watching Nosferatu, we were inspired to rewatch the 1922 silent by F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (that the four other Nosferatu creations are based on); Werner Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu The Vampyre (the German version, with English subtitles!); reread the 1979 Paul Monette novel based on Herzog’s script (found in my husband’s extensive horror library); as well as rewatch the fantasy/horror film about the making of Murnau’s Nosferatu, 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire.

Around 25 years after Bram Stoker published the novel Dracula, Murnau released his silent film version of the vampire tale.

German actor Max Schreck portrayed the Count.

In Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, F.W. Murnau reinterpreted Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, which had been published in 1897.
After Murnau’s film was released, Mrs. Bram Stoker sued the German production company for infringing on her husband’s copyright.
As a result, all copies of the silent film were ordered destroyed.
(Fortunately, a few copies of the film survived, and Nosferatu has been gradually restored since 1922.)

The scene in the 1922 Nosferatu, in which the count sucks the blood of his victim, seems based on the Edvard Munch 1895 painting Love and Pain, in which a woman sucks the blood of a man.

This memorandum doesn’t deal with the many films, and books, that involve Bram Stoker’s story of Dracula.
(For example, we enjoyed the Plexus Polaire puppet theatre production Dracula: Lucy’s Dream, which was performed in Chicago in January of 2025.)

Also, there are other vampire stories, related to Murnau’s concept of Nosferatu, that we’ve not watched recently.

One central difference between Bram Stoker’s vampire tale, and F.W. Murnau’s vampire tale, is how the stories end.
In the Stoker story, heroic men usually stake a vampire, and attempt to protect their women from a vampire’s lust.
In the Murnau vision, a woman sacrifices herself sexually to a vampire to end a plague, and protect her man.
In the Bram Stoker’s Dracula stories, the women are generally helpless creatures.
In the Nosferatu stories, the female character is more powerful.

Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski) takes over the Demeter in Werner Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu.

Another big difference between the two visions of the vampire, is the involvement of disease.
In the Bram Stoker novel a plague isn’t mentioned.
Furthermore, most of the rats in the novel infest the Demeter.*

Side note: a few years after F.W. Murnau (1888-1931) made his vampire movie, he began to work in America, where he directed three films.
He was only in his early 40’s when he died (in Hollywood), in a tragic traffic accident.
According to IMDb, of the 21 films that Murnau made from 1919 to 1931, eight have been lost.
Only 11 people attended his 1931 Santa Barbara funeral, among them: famed actress Greta Garbo, and director Fritz Lang.
His body was buried in Germany.

In both the 2024 film and the 1922 silent film, the main protagonist is named “Ellen.”
Ellen is a sweet, docile woman in the 1922 silent.
However, she summons enough strength to kill the vampire, end the plague, and (by doing so) save her city.

Shadow of the Vampire is a 2000 fantasy about the making of the 1922 silent.
It stars John Malkovich as director Murnau, and Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck, the actor who played Nosferatu.
In the 2000 fantasy, Max Schreck was actually a real vampire (a dark secret that director Murnau keeps from his cast and crew).

In the late 1970’s, Werner Herzog decided to make a reinterpretation of Murnau’s film; he called it Nosferatu The Vampyre.
Herzog’s version starred Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula, Isabelle Adjani as the main female protagonist “Lucy Harker,” and Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Harker.
(Herzog gave his characters the “Bram Stoker” names, since copyright was no longer an issue.)
In both the film, and Paul Monette’s novelization of the screenplay, Lucy sacrifices herself to Dracula, ending the plague.
However, after Lucy dies, the vampire’s spirit is then transported into the body of her husband, making her actions to protect the city possibly successful, but the attempt to save her husband futile.

In 2024 film Nosferatu, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) is a haunted woman.

There are some interesting differences between the 1979 Herzog film, and the Monette novel.
(Generally, novelizations are based on the first version of a screenplay, before filming starts.)
Some of these alterations can be explained because they obviously made the budget smaller.
Others made vital changes to the story.

One of the primary differences, between the film, and the novel of the Herzog versions, is the nature of the second female lead (Mina, played by Martje Grohmann).
The Mina role is much smaller in the film, than it is in the book.
In the novel, main-character Lucy is viewed as an outsider by the other women of the town.
Her frenemy Mina comes to believe that Lucy must be communing with evil forces, and is not “a proper woman.”
Eventually, the Mina in the novel develops into a “religious fanatic.”
She communes with rats, and soon refuses to be in the same room as “unclean” Lucy.

Another significant difference is that the Lucy character is portrayed as much more sexual in the Monette novel.
When Lucy sleepwalks, she sleepwalks in the nude, not in a nightgown (as she does in the film). Furthermore, in the novel, Dr. Van Helsing places a stake in the heart of Lucy (not Count Dracula), and is then led off to be imprisoned. 

The sexual nature of the female lead (Lucy/Ellen), is portrayed differently in all five works.
In the 1922 version, Ellen seduces the vampire as an act of feminine self-sacrifice.
Up to that point, she’s a sweet creature who sews, serves breakfast to her husband, and plays gently with her kittens.

The Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) character in the 2024 film, Nosferatu, is the most sexual of all the Ellen/Lucy/Mina characters. Her version of Ellen has been haunted by the dark spirit of the vampire since childhood.
In one scene, Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz (the “Van Helsing” character, portrayed by Willem Dafoe) tells Ellen that she may be a reincarnation of Isis, the pagan goddess of the underworld.

In 1979 film Nosferatu The Vampyre, Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) is preyed on by Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski).

In the 1979 Herzog versions, brave Lucy Harker sets out to destroy the vampire by herself.
First, she attempts to convince public officials to help her, but she’s unsuccessful.
She tries to convince Van Helsing that the vampire exists, but the doctor tells her that she’s delusional.
Finally, Lucy places consecrated hosts in the vampire’s coffin, and arranges more diced-up hosts in a circle around her husband.
(When we saw the film, we thought Lucy was protecting Jonathan from the vampire, but perhaps she was protecting herself from Jonathan.)

Despite all her activities, trying to combat the vampire, Isabelle Adjani’s Lucy is not nearly as powerful as Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen.
Each has a scene in which they confront the vampire in their bedrooms.
In both films, it’s apparent that the vampire is both a seducer, and the seduced.
He’s both a victim of his vampiric condition, and in thrall to the female protagonist, who nevertheless represents “good,” opposed to his “evil.”

In the 1979 version of Nosferatu, Ellen/Lucy’s main female “friend” (Mina) is distrustful of her.
In the 2024 version of Nosferatu, the female main character is distrusted by a male character: Friedrich Harding (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the other half of the couple that Ellen/Lucy stays with while Thomas/Jonathan is in Transylvania.
Both the 1979 film and novel, and the 2024 film, make the point that for any female to have autonomy is dangerous and disturbing.

* Demeter is the ship that Dracula used to travel from Transylvania to London, in the Bram Stoker novel. Besides 2024’s Nosferatu, another good recent horror film to see is 2023’s The Last Voyage of the Demeter.

Manipulated?

In Twilight’s Last Gleaming, General Dell (Burt Lancaster) attempts to black mail the American government into revealing Vietnam War atrocities. This 1977 Robert Aldrich film is only available in a British-restored version, on YouTube.

I used to believe that I lived in a stable, democratic (small D) country.
I thought most people wanted the President to be intelligent, as well as ethical.
I also believed that most people realized that Liberals cared a little more about the working class than Republicans.
Today, I worry that most citizens don’t care about anything other than their pocket books.

I was a young person during the 60’s and 70’s.
It was an era of demonstrations in the streets, colleges closing down because four students were killed by the Ohio National Guard (Kent State), and a string of traumatic assassinations.
It was also a period of conspiracy films (1962’s The Manchurian Candidate, 1964’s Seven Days in May, 1973’s Executive Action, and 1977’s Twilight’s Last Gleaming).
Burt Lancaster starred in three of these films! 

In the 2012 documentary Aldrich Over Munich: The Making of ‘Twilight’s Last Gleaming’ (by Robert Fischer), Fischer explains how Twilight came to be produced.
The six-million-dollar film was neither a critical, or a financial, success.
However, star Burt Lancaster, director Robert Aldrich, and the rest of the all-star cast, all hoped that it would spur discussion on the dangers of nuclear war, and the fact that the American Government lied to its’ people.
(The documentary reveals that Burt Lancaster was one of the few friends that Robert Aldrich asked to see, when Aldrich was on his deathbed.)

In 1964’s Seven Days in May, U.S. generals attempt a coup against a President who has negotiated a nuclear disarmament treaty.

I just read Sex and the Constitution, by Geoffrey R. Stone.
In legal-scholar Stone’s book, I learned that it wasn’t just George Washington who feared for the future of his fledgling country.
Other Founders (like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams) also feared that future citizens would simply lack the “passion for the public good” (a quote from John Adams) that’s necessary for self-government to succeed.

In Washington’s Farewell Address (1783), Washington said that only unity could prevent the nation from splintering into many parts, and from “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” usurping “the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

I recently discovered the first volume of A Frenchman in Lincoln’s America, written on 1865 by journalist Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne (1843-1877).
Much like Alexis de Tocqueville (who visited America in 1835), this other young Frenchman visited twenty states, and discussed the American political system with many citizens.
(In short, another political young Frenchman tried to understand this “exotic” country, and reported back to France.)

One of the things that Duvergier de Hauranne noticed (fresh off the boat), was how only English visitors and immigrants were treated with any measure of civility by customs officials.
All other nationalities were treated with suspicion and hostility.

It wasn’t just a matter of American “nativism.”
In “The Invasion of Maryland” chapter, he states:

The great evil of American Democracy is . . . the apathy of the general public. . . . It is conceivable that the individual who is called upon from time to time to express an opinion on some vague, abstract question by silently casting his vote might tire of what he would come to regard as a useless formality. [Italics mine.]

At least 10 million people (who Vice President Harris, and Governor Waltz, expected to vote in the 2024 election) didn’t bother to vote, making Duvergier de Hauranne’s observations about America prescient.

A scene from The Manchurian Candidate, with the American POWs and their captors. In this 1962 film, an American Staff Sergeant, the stepson of a Senator, is kidnapped to Manchuria, and brainwashed into becoming an assassin. The film was remade in 2004.

The Founders believed that Democracy would only succeed if ordinary citizens learned to care about the well-being of their fellow citizens.
By July 4th, 1826, when Jefferson and Adams were on their deathbeds,* democracy looked like a very dicey bet.
John Quincy Adams (John Adam’s son) had been elected president in 1824, even though his rival (Andrew Jackson) had won 99 electoral votes, and Adams had won only 84.
The House of Representatives still ended up giving the presidency to Adams.

In 1920, Republican congressional leaders attempted to impeach Louis F. Post (1849-1928), the assistant Secretary of Labor, because Post only deported 460 people, out of the 1,600 people that J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) wanted him to deport.
(Read all about it in William Willrich’s book about immigrant radicals, American Anarchy.)
This book tells the story of how the U.S. government wasted millions pursuing nonviolent immigrant radicals during, and just after, WWI.

As Louis F. Post put it:

To permit aliens to violate the hospitality of this country by conspiring against it is something which no American can contemplate with patience. Equally impatient, however, must any patriotic American be with drastic proceedings on flimsy proof to deport aliens who are not conspiring against our laws and do not intend to.

Diplomat and political scientist, Madeleine Albright (1937-2022), was ambassador to the United Nations from 1993-1997, and Secretary of State from 1997-2001.
During the middle of Trump’s term, she described him as the “first anti-democratic president in modern U.S. history.”
She wrote in Fascism: A Warning (2018):

I wonder now whether we, as democratic citizens, have been remiss in forming the right questions. Maybe we have grown so accustomed to receiving immediate satisfaction from our devices that we have lost patience with democracy’s sluggish pace. Possibly, we have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by hucksters who pledge to deliver the world on a silver platter but have no clue how to make good on their promises.

Dr. Miles J. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) dodges and attempts to stop cars again in the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In both films, Dr. Bennell is unable to convince others that the earth has been taken over by aliens.

Sex and the Constitution, A Frenchman in Lincoln’s America, Fascism: A Warning, and American Anarchy, have all make me realize that the seeds of America’s destruction, as a democratic nation, have been sprouting since 1776.
On November 5th, a battle was lost.
We learned what most U.S. voters actually care about.

*One of the ironies of American history, is that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the same day, July 4, 1826, almost 200 years ago. Adams (at 90) was seven years older than Jefferson.