You can’t handle the truth!
Marine Col. Jessup from A Few Good Men
You often hear it said that “The movie is not as good as the book.” While that may sometimes be true, I believe it’s more often an unfair comparison. Books have the space (and time) to elaborately develop characters and paint pictures in the imagination with prose. In cinema, dialogue is there to tell the story, but movies also use visual imagery colored by music and background sound effects to augment the storytelling.
Have you ever read a play and compared it to the stage production where the actors make the prose come alive? An even more dramatic example is opera, where storytelling is set to beautiful music and voice, by actors in costume with elaborate staging. The modern proverb advises, “be careful comparing apples and oranges.”
One of the great Shakespearean soliloquies is from Hamlet, where the Prince of Denmark begins with, “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” Actually, I’m not a fan of Shakespeare’s plays because Elizabethan English is tough to translate into “Southern.” However, I highly recommend the movie adaptation with Mel Gibson as Hamlet. It is sublime.
A more contemporary movie adaptation of a play is “A Few Good Men.” If you have never seen the movie starring Jack Nicholson as Marine Col. Jessup, you should. Jessup’s courtroom soliloquy challenging JAG prosecutor Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) is Shakespearean and defines the notion of presupposition.
Presupposition is an assumption or a belief. Jack Nicholson’s character made the arrogant assumption that he was right and unassailable. His bias so colored his worldview that he could not accept factual reality, and he was destroyed in cross examination. It is powerful, cinematic drama where special effects are unnecessary.
Similarly, the presuppositions of the legacy media with TDS makes them incapable of seeing or reporting the facts that personal income has increased steadily since January and inflation has declined. GDP has risen, crude oil prices are down and egg prices have declined 62% since inauguration day. The trade deficit has shrunk, tariff revenue has tripled and investments in American industries continue to pour in.
It’s hard to get Americans to agree about anything, but 53% approve of how President Trump is handling things. We now have a functioning president. The open border has been closed, yet the Washington Post, representative of the useless media, reports that it is mysterious that fentanyl seizures are down 30%. I would be insulted if you called me a journalist, but I’ll report the obvious: the cartels are having a tougher time smuggling drugs because the border is no longer wide open.
The people who were wrong about inflation, Hunter’s laptop, Covid vaccines, Russian and Ukraine collusion, law and order, Biden’s senility and corruption now ask us to trust them that President Trump is a monster and wrong about everything including deporting criminal illegals. The Democrats just spent $20 million trying to find out why people don’t trust them. It’s not rocket science. The majority of Americans are not stupid. They can compare a demented president to an active, purposeful one with a plan to Make America Great Again. What stands in the way are activist judges, Democrats with no message or plans and a cadre of sycophantic journalists lost to reason and facts.
I follow the science blog of Robert Malone MD, MS and researcher. I’m a science trained guy and I am sometimes challenged by the perspectives of those who have a non science educational background.
Recently, Dr. Malone wrote an article entitled “Confirmational Bias,” using as an example the Harvard behavioral researcher who was fired from her tenured, million dollar a year position for “academic fraud.” Basically, the disgraced researcher manipulated her studies to arrive at conclusions which conformed to commonly held beliefs, in other words, the woke groupthink. This is not the way science is done.
When done honestly and carefully science can be helpful and render explanations by testing a hypothesis (a thought). But some things can’t be measured or tested. An example might be the intelligent designer of the Universe. Similarly, humans perceive we have an essence which science might identify as our integrated nervous system. My non science persona conceptualizes my essence as the non anatomic soul. But can this essence be objectively measured? In the Middle Ages crude testing attempted to measure the departure of a soul by weighing someone before and after they were executed. Sounds more like an old SNL skit.
Suffice it to say, some things cannot currently be measured, but that does not mean they don’t exist. You can see, touch and weigh a human brain, but not its mindful thoughts. Furthermore, science may be able to tell you what can be done, but whether something should be done is within the realm of ethicists and theologians.
In a more practical sense, what if the arbiters of the law are themselves lawless? Like most, I am frustrated with activist judges as well as the dysfunction and complexity of our government exemplified by the “big beautiful bill” and the reconciliation process. It is obvious that We The People are no longer in control of our government. Lord Acton famously said, “Power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Elon Musk seems disgusted with the government. Mr. Musk went to Washington and learned how bad the situation has become. You might imagine the government as some autonomously functioning AI apparatus analogous to The Terminator.
Like Elon I get tired of fighting evil and would like to just wash my hands of the entire mess. I’m sure President Trump also gets tired. People have been trying to escape to monasteries, communes and even the New World throughout history. But I can’t run away because Jesus said, “To whom much is given much is required (Luke).”
Jesus also said of his followers that they were in the world but not of the world (John). Recently, I wrote that I exist in both a physical and spiritual world. I can deny neither reality. Admittedly, the struggle against evil weighs me down, but I take comfort in the old hymn, “This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’re forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.”
Yes, in God I trust. In my wife, Becky, I trust. And in our warrior, President Trump, I trust.
