Hello Portugal

     I went to see Captain America: Civil War.  I found it to be plodding until the second half.  Even so, there's an interesting theme reflecting the time we live in.  Zeitgeist, meaning "spirit of the times," is a German word I like a lot.  I apply it to culture's fabrications (movies, books, paintings, philosophies, religious trends) and often find correspondences between a place/time and the qualities revealed in culture's prodigious output.  Humans are and have been making creative products since before time being recorded.  It's necessary for creative people to express themselves in the various mediums available, and new media come about over time.  The first time I heard of Rap, or heard it performed, was in the Blondie song, "Rapture."  Deborah Harry didn't come up with Rap, but a blonde white woman singing a song featuring Rap penetrated the general culture at a time when no small city white boy like me had ever heard such a thing.
     The new Captain America movie is typically action-oriented, but there's also pondering on collateral damage and its consequences.  The villain has lost his family in a heavily destructive attack occurring in his country.  The Avengers, including Captain America, fight this alien menace in the second Avengers film.  The villain concocts a plan leading to the pitting of the Avengers against each other, hence the Civil War of the title.  It's not a brilliant rendering of the idea, but it's interesting that this expression of what happens when innocents are killed in "good causes" is the underlying philosophical theme of a movie with the word America in the title.
     The gray area of the film's theme picks up on aspects of the Zeitgeist of this second decade of the twenty-first century.  Fourteen years since 9/11, and I look at an America brutalized and brutalizing.  The callousness of so many of my fellow ordinary citizens towards those involved overseas in war, diaspora, famine, disease, and persecution, has gone past the point of sickening me.  I noticed during the Bush administration that the general American moral tone, post-9/11 and directly 9/11-related, was that of anger, desire for vengeance, a willingness to believe deceitful leaders, and an uncaring attitude towards civil rights, especially those of Arab-Americans and Arabs abroad.  Sending soldiers and marines into Afghanistan and Iraq looked like a sensible and just solution to a great majority of Americans.  That these actions, ordered by Bush and supported by Congress and the American people generally, have been utter failures and have resulted in the mass killings and displacements of millions of people has very little effect, to this day, on the minds of American citizens, even though a majority now believe the Iraq War was a "mistake."
     From the standpoint of arms dealers, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars were and are not mistakes.
     Meanwhile, Donald Trump (or "John Miller"), reacted to the new Mayor of London when the latter said Trump's ideas about Muslims are "stupid."  Tweeting, Trump suggested they both take I.Q. tests.  Had the Mayor suggested Trump has a two and a half inch penis when fully erect, would Trump have dropped his pants and sent the Mayor a dick pic?
     I'm old enough to remember Richard Nixon's galloping set of problems that led to his resignation in 1974.  Mostly, I remember my father cursing every time he saw Nixon's face on the TV screen.  My father died of metastasized esophageal cancer in November 2004, shortly after Bush and Cheney were reelected by millions of people who believed those two were actually good for the world.  Like Nixon, Bush was reelected, an almost incredible thought.  People thought that vacuous, arrogant ball sack of a human being was the man for the job, as millions now believe Trump isn't the choice of irrational white people wanting to make America great again, as in the good old days when brown and black people had less rights.  My father, on finding out about Bush's win in 2004, cried.  He knew he was about to die; he knew his country was continuing along a very dangerous road, guided by a total fucking tool incapable of understanding the needs of the country.  Had he lived to the present, my father would not be a Trump supporter.  As I now do, he would curse at the television set every time the orange-skinned presumptive Republican nominee appears.
     As an American, I'm proud of certain aspects of my country--its plurality, its Constitution, its culture (even the tawdry aspects of it), but I'm ashamed of the extremely low quality of politicians we have, and 2016 is the worst year, since I started voting in 1982, for presidential candidates.  I know, rest of the world, that I'm not responsible for Trump, but I'm sorry.  Still, he's part of the Zeitgeist, isn't he?  Authoritarian-minded shits are making noises in Europe, too.  Racism, religious hatred, are on the rise, and this century is looking like it might top the twentieth as the most violent ever--until the twenty-second century.
     It would be hard to live with all this demoralizing knowledge if I didn't enjoy, as I did today, the sight of a pretty girl walking her dog along Main Street.  Blonde hair in a ponytail, straight posture, twenty-three or so, looking straight ahead, not talking on an iPhone or texting.  An image so simple, and it's life; fortunately, also part of the Zeitgeist.

                                                                              Vic Neptune