May 18, 2024

Last night I watched another Montgomery Clift classic, "Red River"(1948), one of the greatest Westerns ever made. John Wayne stars as "Thomas Dunson", a veteran cowhand who, as the movie opens, quits a cattle drive to work for himself, seeing a need for beef in the open land of Texas. Sidekick Walter Brennan goes with him as his cook. Wayne leaves behind a beautiful woman, Colleen Gray, feeling she can't withstand the conditions of frontier life, including Indians, bandits, and general hardship, but no sooner does he leave the drive than the wagon train is attacked by Comanches. Wayne sees the smoke in the distance and immediately regrets his decision, knowing that by refusing Grey's request to accompany him, he has condemned her to death. This is confirmed when he kills an Indian wearing her bracelet. He moves on regardless, determined to start his cattle ranch, which he vows will be the biggest in Texas. After the Comanche battle, he and Brennan are approached by a boy named Matthew, the lone survivor of the wagon train massacre. He has nowhere to go, so Wayne takes him on and over time he becomes Wayne's surrogate son. 

Cut to fourteen years later (about 30 minutes in). Wayne now has the largest cattle ranch in Texas, yet his dream is not realized because his steers are undernourished. The crushing defeat suffered by the South in the Civil War has left Texas low on water and cow feed, and no one can afford beef anyway, so he decides to move the whole operation to Missouri. His son, now grown up, is played by Monty Clift. Monty has been away during the war and has returned as a deadly fast gun. Wayne signs up the men who are willing to see the move to its end. If they agree, he tells them they can't quit along the way. This will prove problematic as the drive to Mizzou turns out to be even more difficult than Wayne predicted. Before they leave, they meet and take on the gunslinger "Cherry Valance" (John Ireland), who develops a rivalry with Monty that turns into mutual respect. John Ireland was a great actor who held his own with the best, and there are scenes in the first hour with the foursome of Wayne, Clift, Brennan and Ireland where you realize: this is as good as it gets. If anyone thinks John Wayne was not a great actor (in the context of his range) they are wrong. He could emote in subtle ways and was the biggest Movie Star of all time. Name a bigger one.

The huge herd of cattle should've had their own billing. A massive stampede is a turning point, and you wonder how they filmed some of these scenes without anyone getting hurt or  killed. "Red River" is sometimes a river of cows, and much of the middle of the movie depicts the marathon effort it takes to get them from Texas to Missouri. A written history (shown as book pages) provides narration. The threat of Indians is always in the background, but up front is the threat from Wayne, who is slowly losing his cool as the going gets rough. Men try to desert, forgoing their sworn signed agreements to see the drive through to its end. Wayne has Cherry chase them down, then he summarily executes them. He becomes a Captain Bligh until Monty, seeing the state the men are in, and seeing that Wayne, sleepless and drinking, is incapable of leading, takes the drive away from him. Monty takes control and the men agree to follow him to Abilene, Kansas, where there's supposed to be a railroad. John Wayne is left behind and swears to kill Monty if it takes him the rest of his life.

In the last hour, sidekick Noah Beery Jr. discovers another wagon train with food, facilities and best of all, girls. Monty agrees to let the men have R & R for a few days, and he meets and falls in love with Joanne Dru, after an Indian shootout. The rest of the movie is romance and revenge. Dru wants Monty to marry her and can't understand his need to face down John Wayne, his father.

It doesn't get any more epic than this. "Red River" was Montgomery Clift's first screen role, and it actually looks like he's having fun at times, playing a laconic badass. I mention that because you rarely see Monty let down his Method guard and smile a carefree smile. An interesting detail is that the men get sick of eating beef, and when their other supplies run out, that's all they have, and a fennel substitute for coffee. Wayne tells them to like it or lump it. This is not a movie for vegans, but the truth is that beef fed a growing nation of pioneers in an unfamiliar and gigantic land. It's a subtle movie, with landscape, paucity of nature, and the cattle herd teaming up against man. Indians aren't prominent, except against defenseless wagon trains. They apparently didn't mess much with cattle ranchers. This one of my favorite Monty roles because he's new and at ease playing off Wayne in the lead, and Walter Brennan provides wizened comic relief throughout. It's a must see if you've never seen it. 

Question: have you heard of Victor Davis Hanson? He's a classical scholar and historian, and also a professor of American history with many books to his credit. I became acquainted with him through a free publication from Hillsdale College called Imprimus, which I've mentioned once or twice. My Dad subscribed to Imprimus when we lived at Burton Street in the mid-90s. Dad's grandfather attended Hillsdale. Imprimus arrived monthly, and Dave Small and I would peruse it when Dad was done. We too liked its intellectual content and thoughtful approach to political issues. When I moved in with my Mom in 1997, I got my own subscription to Imprimus (you should, too; it's free) and I've been receiving it ever since. That is how I first read Victor Davis Hanson, whom I used to abhor, because I thought his op-eds were right wing. This was before I became The Rightest-Wing Man in America (a title I still retain), and lately I've been watching him on Youtube (he has his own channel), because I'm concerned about the future of our country, and I think you should watch him, too. Everything he says is well-thought out. My Dad once wrote a letter to Vice President Al Gore, comparing America in the 1990s to the fall of Roman civilization. He received a reply (ostensibly from Gore), and he was proud to have made his point as a concerned American. That was in the '90s. Things have sunk considerably since then.

The video I want you to watch is called "Final Warning: America's Last Chance Before Collapse". When you watch, don't immediately react according to the team you are loyal to. Listen to what Hanson says, which is fact based, and let it digest. Then subscribe to Imprimus, read it monthly, and start learning about what is happening in your country. You sure won't learn anything from the liberal corporate commentators. It may have once been possible to learn something from the Left, but I long ago gave up. It began with the decline of The Nation, which was my most admired political magazine in the '80s. One thing that turned me away from them was when I found out that one of my hero writers, Alexander Cockburn, was full of baloney. He was what I would call a Dilettante Commie who liked to provoke, but he believed the official 9/11 story and that Oswald killed JFK, both of which you either have to be a numbskull or a toady to accept. And when the Left started promoting guys like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, I strayed even further, feeling an anti-religious bias (and especially anti-Christian) creeping into the left wing which has now become full blown. Hitchens used to pick on Mother Theresa (of all people) and Dawkins has spent his career trying to disprove the existence of God. While I agree that violence in the name of religion is an ongoing  problem, it isn't fair to denounce, for instance, the whole Catholic Church as extremist, just because you disagree with some (or all) of their policies. But this is what the Left has become, anti-God, and I am completely turned off. But it began for me years ago, around the time Peter Jennings, a guy we all trusted, ran that notorious JFK special in the late 1990s in which he "debunked" skepticism of the lone gunman theory in order to reinforce the government position, i.e: the magic bullet theory. That was the beginning of the end for me. Soon, I was done. 

Now, believe me, I used to revile Victor Davis Hanson. But he hung in there, and became more and more reasonable, made more sense, and now, he's right on the money. Why? Because, like my Dad, he knows his classical history, and he delineates for you how America parallels Rome in very specific ways. Therefore, subscribe to Imprimus, watch the Victor Davis Hanson channel, and see if you don't agree with his viewpoints. I'm not saying you should vote for Trump, but it's clear that four more years of Joe Biden will sink us.

Or don't you think so? 

One thing Hanson says that I find especially pertinent, is the rapidity with which things decline. He talks about the fragility of what we take for granted as "civilization". But when cracks appear, and the floodgates then open, as has happened in the leaderless Biden administration, we are overrun, which is happening at our borders. Ask yourself this: would you open the doors of your house (or apartment) to all comers, or is it your private "border"? If the world should be borderless, as per the far left, shouldn't their houses and apartments be borderless, too? Listen to what Hanson has to say about caring for the homeless, then tell me who gives a hoot about the problem, him or Gavin Newsom? I must make an aside to say I do like Mayor Karen Bass, who seems to be doing a lot more about Tent City Los Angeles than "Mayor" Garcetti ever did. He created the problem and was the worst mayor we ever had, which is saying something because he followed Antonio Villaraigosa. But hooray for Mayor Bass (at least for now). 

I'm watching Mike Oldfield videos in honor of his recent birthday, and it must be noted that in addition to being a genius composer, he is also a tremendous guitarist with a distinctive sound. Oldfield is another one of those players where you can tell it's him within a few seconds. He came right out of the box, at age twenty, with an incredible three album run, starting with "Tubular Bells" (composed when he was 17), the album that made Richard Branson rich enough to turn Virgin Records into a corporate behemoth. Oldfield then followed it with two pastoral beauties: "Hergest Ridge"(1974) and "Ommadawn"('75). In the '80s, he streamlined his style, and wrote two of the best British pop singles of the era: the heartfelt but haunting "Moonlight Shadow", sung by Maggie Reilly, and "Man in the Rain" with singer Pepsi DeMarque. There's a live clip featuring her that you have to see. Just Youtube "Mike Oldfield + Man in the Rain + Pepsi". You can't take your eyes off her. I have many of Mike Oldfield's albums, he's one of my very favorite artists, and my favorite is "Songs of Distant Earth", which he says was inspired by Apollo 11. I was fortunate to see Mike live in concert at the John Anson Ford Theater on October 8, 1993. About two weeks later, my memory came back. My life can be measured as Before and After that time.

It says on Wiki that Oldfield is a supporter of Trump and Brexit, and I think it is important to take a closer look at what he means by that support. Do you think Oldfield worships Donald Trump, like a hardcore, ballcap-wearing MAGA supporter? I doubt it. More likely, he resents what has happened to the world we lived in not so long ago, before it was hijacked by bad people promoting negative agendas. Trump is not the right man to fix the situation, but I can see why many intelligent folks (and not just MAGA cult followers) are frustrated enough by this thing called The Left (which is by far, in it's current version, the biggest threat America has faced since the Civil War), to turn toward a gasbag like Trump because of his fearlessness in confronting the BS. Now, I suspect he is only a stage performer. Witness his quick agreement to debate Crooked Joe Biden, and besides that, do you really think The Men Behind The American Curtain would allow anyone to challenge their rule? Not hardly. Hence, Donald Trump is just part of The Ongoing Show, playing the villain or the hero depending on your perspective. Read the works of author Kent Bain for a more detailed look at how the powers-that-be operate. Because if you think Trump is one of the powers that be, boy do you need some schoolin'.

But anyhow, America has turned into a shell of it's former self, and anyone, left or right, who disputes that isn't worth including in the discussion. So the question must be asked, why is it now a shell? Here's where I turn you over to Victor Davis Hanson. I'd like to note that this evening I tried to Youtube "9/11 Truth Movement" because I wondered what ever happened to it, and to Pilots for 9/11 Truth, and there's nothing available, only videos of "debunkers" "debunking" the truth, which is that the government story is a lie. Boy, did they do an awesome job on that one. 9/11 and JFK, two lies so obvious, and with so much evidence against the official story in each case, that you have to be an American Stooge to believe either one of them.

Heck, I didn't believe 9/11 on the day it was happening, or maybe the weekend after, when Dick Cheney "divulged" that it was Al Qaeda, some group no one had ever heard of, headed by yet another "lone gunman" named Osama Bin Laden, a boogeyman if ever there was one. His team had not one but four pilots, all hopeless fliers according to their Florida-based trainers (and all trained on Cessnas), who were somehow suddenly capable of flying 747s, though never having been behind the wheel of one before, and three out of four hit their targets, including one at ground level. Yeah right.

So that is what has happened to America, but there's gotta be some light at the end of the tunnel and it starts with paying attention.