From the elite heights of the Hollywood Hills, the Hollywood elite look down on the hoi polloi and see only the worst of humanity … and time and again they’re proven wrong, and the coronavirus pandemic has proven this to be especially true.
This is a point I’ve made frequently about 2004’s dreadful Best Picture winner Crash. At the time of its release, I actually lived in Los Angeles, the city where writer-director Paul Haggis’s mosaic of systematic, conscious, and subconscious racism is set. So I can tell you from my own experience it was all a lie, a smear, not to mention insipid, overwrought, and pretentious.
Los Angeles is all kinds of flawed but it is also populated with millions of people from all different races and backgrounds who get along just fine. Which brings me to my main point…
How many times have we seen this movie…
FADE IN:
WHITE LETTERING OVER BLACK
2020.
A worldwide pandemic has already killed 45,000 Americans and infected nearly a million more….
Except for non-essential workers, millions of Americans are unemployed and locked down in their homes…
Essential supplies are running out…
People are running out of money…
The stock market takes a record plunge…
There is no cure.
CUT TO:
Montage of…
— Riots in the streets.
— Fights break out in food store aisles filled with empty shelves
— Looting in major cities
— National Guard violently keeps desperate people at bay
— Riots in food banks
— Marauders take advantage of the chaos
— Armed vigilantes prowl the streets, whooping it up
— Racists menace Chinese Americans as scapegoats.
America is falling apart.
Come on, how many times have we seen this movie, or some variation of this movie? And it’s a pretty good movie, but now would be a good time to look around at the Real America… Because that’s not happening, and it is not even close to happening.
Oh, sure there’s the video or two of a scuffle over toilet tissue. But even with cameras everywhere today, we’re not seeing anything that even comes close to the consumerist mayhem we see on Black Friday.
Sure, there’s a couple of over-hyped news articles about a few nitwits saying anti-Chinese stuff on some website somewhere. But that’s how little racism and scapegoating there is in America… The media have been forced to over-hype what a couple of nitwits wrote on some website.
We’ve seen no rioting.
We’ve seen no looting.
All we’ve seen are Americans out peacefully protesting and petitioning their government for an end to lockdown rules they interpret as unreasonable and punitive.
In other words, what we’re seeing, after some six weeks of this, is the best of America and Americans.
Yeah, we’re scared and frustrated, but because we’re Americans, we’re not expressing that frustration with violence and hate. Instead, we’re catching up with family we haven’t seen in forever on Zoom, we’re making masks for each other, we’re over-tipping our local restaurants, we’re patiently waiting in our cars for hours in line at food banks, and when we do feel rebellious, we go to Walmart just because — naughty, naughty…
We’re checking in on our elderly neighbors, waving to each other from our porches, and learning a whole new appreciation for the people who actually matter, those who keep our world turning: truck drivers, grocery store clerks, delivery men, cashiers, farmers, health care workers, and the like… The truly indispensable.
And some of us are passing the time by drinking too much during a Tiger King binge, but you know what? That sounds pretty American to me.
Yeah, there are some terrible people out there, but almost all of them are our self-appointed elites… The liars and fear-porn producers in the corporate media, dictatorial politicians like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) and Mayor “Snitch” de Blasio, and of course there’s no shortage of rich, Hollywood assholes in their million-dollar mansions shaming those of us eager to get back to work as Trumptard serial killers.
But they’re not America.
Provincial, out-of-touch snobs and liars and celebrities aren’t America.
They’re provincial, out-of-touch snobs and liars and celebrities.
We’re America.
We the people are America.
And we the people, imperfect as so many of us are, are once again proving the provincial, out-of-touch snobs and liars and celebrities wrong about everything as we go about the business of being uncommonly decent to one another.
Sure, I’ll probably enjoy the next disaster movie as much as anyone else, but during the montage about the breakdown of society, part of me will be screaming bullshit!
Americans… We’re a remarkably good bunch of people. Don’t forget that.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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