Catch 22, the Movie

I just watched Catch 22 again. I had read the book in med school, I think, primed by my roommate, Ollie Korshin, who loved it. Ollie had a weird sense of humor, but interesting. He was also a prime devoté of all the Donald Duck comics, especially those featuring Scrooge McDuck. I think the common thread must be over the top characters. I don't know what the genre is, but there are movies and books where the characters are caricatures, “a picture, description, or imitation of a person in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect.”

I had seen the movie before, of course, and hadn't really liked it, although I was sharp enough to realize that the repetitive flashbacks to Yossarian in the plane where Snowden is dying in his arms, feeling cold as shock sets in, and Yossarian is reduced to reassuring him that everything will be OK, is the underlying motif. But now it has just rocketed up to my number one anti-war movie – that question of what is the #1 anti-war movie recurs frequently. I think Dr. Strangelove, which shares a genre with Catch 22, whatever that genre is named, is #2, or maybe you could switch them around. Since movies stay as they are and since movies are a conversation between the print and the viewer, it must be me who has changed.

Pretty much everyone in Catch 22 is a caricature except Yossarian, the only sane and normal person, except maybe Luciana, the whore he wants to marry but who dies when the supercilious pipe-smoking Aarfy throws her out the window after he fucks her because it would tarnish his preppy image if the truth got out. In Dr. Strangelove, Mandrake is a normal human being, and maybe the President, but that might be it. The normal vs. the crazy others in the world, I guess that's the description.

Catch 22 has PTSD before PTSD had a name, or at least an acronym. That's the point of Yossarian and Snowden, how it recurs – that's PTSD. And then there is moral injury, in spades, shown but not named, because the name came in the 1990's, invented by my high school and undergrad classmate, Jonathan Shay, in his book Achilles in Vietnam. You can see the impulse to throw faux medals over the White House fence, because here in World War II the officers are doing the same obscene shit as we heard about with Vietnam, when soldiers are ordered to do unholy acts that are perversions of war, which upsets them deeply, and then they are given medals with the hope that the medals will obscure the sins.

What a strange term, perversions of war. It's OK to kill soldiers but not civilians. Why is it OK to kill soldiers? Because they will kill you if they can, or they will take important things from you. OK, OK, what's the alternative? I can't think of any. But still, perversions of war. Wow.

The irony that pervades it heightens the sadness rather than undercutting it, I think. It's the irony that lifts it above the other anti-war movies, I think. More than Paths of Glory, for instance. Such an anti-official movie, completely appropriate for the 60's. The insistence on true human relationships in one man, and the bureaucracy and of course, capitalism, and common social conventions and the ignorance of most people. All the perversions of society visited upon war.

Catch 22 has unspeakable tragedy, dressed up with irony, which is hilarious, but can you really laugh? Can you really laugh at Strangelove? The sadness, craziness. Irrational idiocy of bureaucracy. The good war, they say, WW II. Of which there is not one true example in history. Justified war, that there is. But not good. And crazy personal lives that keep going on. Crazy. Irony, irony. You have to hold the concepts in your mind at the same time. The absurdity that is both hilarious and tragic. Maybe Kafka, maybe that's the antecedent. Maybe Vonnegut, with all that craziness from PTSD, living on Titan and being watched by aliens as you procreate – Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were friends, which is so appropriate.

How can you laugh at tragedy and malignant craziness? It's more like gaping at it, maybe. I wonder if it's in Cervantes. We invent new names for things, which is good, but it was always there, lurking somewhere.

Budd Shenkin

Protesting in Walnut Creek

I took to the streets yesterday, at Walnut Creek, putting my body on the line. I was ready to be arrested, I guess – better have a lawyer lined up to call. Well, that's pretty dramatic. In fact, I grabbed a pre-made sign and joined other middle aged or older protestors, some with kids, and lined the streets of the Broadway Plaza shopping center with some occasional mild chants, no opposition, occasional car honks of support, a closed Tesla show room, and gave witness of opposition to the coup. I missed Ann, with whom I also gave witness, once in front of the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, another time in Maui. When we were younger, we protested separately, with other partners, she in Berkeley, me in Washington, DC. Giving public witness of opposition might have some effect – it certainly did with Vietnam – and it feels good to be at least doing something. I'm preparing to do it again, this time with a sign that I will prepare at home.

There were maybe 2,000 people there – not just a handful, not just 100 – yet there was no press or TV coverage at all that I could see. (Later, I saw that the San Jose Mercury News and East Bay News covered it.) Rachel Maddow tries to highlight nationwide protests at the beginning of her shows, but it's really a minimal number of people. What'll it take? Missing a social security check would do it, maybe – it's actually amazing how important those checks are, even to people I know personally, in my social class. There have been so many outrages so far, and so little resistence. It's lamentable. But I'm out there.

I was told about this Saturday protest by my Saturday walking partner, Mary Lou. She's from a conservative family in Missouri, is surrounded by conservative friends at work, but she knows her own mind, and is given to public and private events. So we met there at noon, walked around together, I took some pictures, and I was glad my gluteous medius was recovered enough for me to endure our 2.75 mile traditional walk around the Lafayette Reseervoir, and our traditional wonderful breakfast at Millie's American Kitchen with our friends the owners, Aimee and Victor, and then to stand around and walk the protest. Then as the manifestation was coming to an end, I said to Mary Lou, want an ice cream? I thought I remembered an ice cream store near the pretzel wagon just outside Macy's and Starbuck's. Sure enough, there is was, Haagen-Daz, so I had coffee ice cream and she had chocolate. We sat outside and ate it at a table that I used to sit at on Saturday mornings while Ann got her hair cut nearby, and I would work on this or that on my computer. It was familiar.

Today I remembered “stopping for ice cream” when I was a kid, maybe early or mid teens, and for some reason I was in the car with my father driving and my mother riding shotgun and one or two of the other kids in the back seat with me. It was somewhere near Upper Darby, I think. My father said, “What about a softserve ice cream?” My mother said OK. Then my Dad said, I think there's a Dairy Queen just over this rise here. My mother looked askance at him. He was having some trouble with his weight. “You're really disgusting,” she said. Clearly, he had not been adhering strictly to a diet. He just took it and we stopped.

So, clearly, it imbedded itself indelibly in my mind. I sure didn't want a marriage where my wife would say that to me. No way.

Explains a lot.

Organizing The Democrats

I continue to think that the biggest problem the Democrats have is organizing themselves. Polls reveal that most people back the Democrats on issues. The problem remains of selling the people on the brand of the Democrats - oh so tarnished! - and finding the right messengers.

It's important to remember that the claim of a Trump mandate is false. It was not a landslide.  Given the low rating of Biden and the last minute substitution of Kamala, it's pretty remarkable.

Popular vote:

Trump -- 31.78%

Harris - 30.84 %

Third party - 1.06%

Didn't vote - 36.33%

It was a very close election.

How to organize the Democrats? Clarify roles.

There are some who are excellent at hosting local events - best are Bernie and AOC, but others do well, too, like my friend Eric Swalwell.

Others do well on talk shows -- Jamie Raskin is excellent, Swalwell, lots of others.

Others could do well making statements in congress.  Upstage Schumer and Jeffries with those who can really sell. They are there! Find them the proper stage around the halls of Congress and watch them make the case.

There are others who excel in the written word. Let them write.

Then, who can conduct this orchestra? Get a council, as I've suggested before, to get the strategy together, define the main themes, who presents them where - organize! Pete Buttigieg would be great at this, especially with his McKinsey consulting background, Pete could probably recommend a fine new organizational structure for the Democratic Party.

I continue to think of this all as an organizational problem.  Get rid of the senior dominance, remember that there is no "i" in "team," find some ways to pull together the disparate threads of the Democratic message and make it stick, find a couple of charismatic leaders, and then play the game. You can't tell who wins until you play the game.

Budd Shenkin