Office of U.S. House Speaker, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In memory of Mike Wilmington: 1946-2022
Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Mark M., Dave S., Mark O., Dennis C., Paul C., and Geoff Carter
I have a couple of questions that I feel the Brain Trust of Bots may be well-equipped to answer:
1. What are the benefits, perceived or otherwise, of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan? What gives here? I can’t figure it out. It freaks-out China, Biden and Co. weren’t crazy about the idea, and it seems like the Taiwanese government and its people weren’t either. Kinda reminds me of when I was a kid and my mom’s weird, wealthy Aunt Betty would make her dreaded, uninvited visits to our house and cluelessly park her giant Cadillac in front of the neighbor’s driveway.
2. Ok. Just throwing this one out there. Has anyone seen the new Jordan Peele film “Nope”? If so, what’s up with the chimp storyline? Is it gratuitous? Random? Do you think it speaks to the main plot and/or the larger theme of the film? (No, that’s not a spoiler if you haven’t seen it.)
Thank you for your consideration.
–Dennis
The benefit of the Pelosi visit is that it bucks up the Taiwanese, who are feeling stressed over all the years long accumulation of bellicose bellowings from China. Even though we have had to accept China’s “one China” policy, Taiwan remains an important economic engine for the West. The world’s most advanced chip fabrication plants are virtually all in Taiwan. You think we’ve got supply chain issues now? If Taiwan were to turn off the chip spigot, for whatever reason, the economic pain would be felt immediately in the US and Europe. This visit shows Taiwan that Congress, at least, is in their corner, even if the President is currently constrained from being very assertive.
Pelosi has always been a China hawk. Her district includes San Fran’s Chinatown, and while she’s as secure as an elected can be now, playing up to the Taiwanese/Chinese immigrant community is an instinctual political move for her.
Pelosi also made very clear to the world that the US Congress is its own entity, independent from the Executive Branch. Congress can and does have its own foreign policy, by virtue of its control over the country’s finances. With one quick 19-hour visit, Pelosi brought this message home. I really like this effect of the visit. Over the decades, Congress has abrogated its responsibilities in a most cowardly & spineless manner. We go to war repeatedly without a Congressional declaration. And when the President of either party goes to Congress for a vote of approval to go to war, Congress always gives it. This is not how it’s supposed to work. But the concept of a “muscular” foreign policy has become so ingrained, and so automatically associated with “patriotism”, that Congress is more than happy to send all the responsibility upstream to the President. (It’s gotten to the point that the various political, military, and industrial actors who always push for a strong and decisive military response” has been labelled the foreign policy “blob”. And it’s tough to go up against the blob!) I really think Pelosi is making a late career stab at reasserting Congress’ will in foreign affairs. When Biden publicly objected (in a milquetoast manner), that only stiffened her spine.
Finally, I’m not sure what harm is done by China raging impotently. Though they are stronger militarily than in the past, they are still in no position to invade Taiwan now, and everybody knows it. So the “downside” is that they fly a bunch of planes around and fire a bunch of live ammo. Knock yerself out, President Xi! Sure, there’s always a chance that an “incident” could come out of one of these exercises. But those chances are remote.
That’s the view from the OC. Haven’t seen “Nope”, so can’t comment on that.
-Mark
Call me cynical, but Pelosi has been collecting boatloads of campaign contributions from Taiwanese American PACs for many years. I think it just became time for her to pony up in terms of delivering what those PACs lobby for, support for Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Granted I’m not a Pelosi fan, but her trip seemed to be all about optics as opposed to a principled assertion of Congress’ equal standing as a branch of government. I feel that Congress doesn’t need to assert themselves any more than they already do as a fully equal and complicit component of the foreign policy blob. They routinely vote for MORE money than the Executive and Pentagon requests when it comes to defense appropriations. There’s only a handful of legislators who even grumble about expenditures or express reservations about obviously sham intelligence briefings, etc… Foreign policy and security spending is a bipartisan and almost universally supported project in Washington.
There’s probably no real danger in Nancy’s visit. It will probably blow over in a few days/weeks. The “probably” condition is the worry. When you stack up enough “probablies” on top of each other, you end up with an “improbability” inevitably happening. Ukraine is suffering from this dynamic right now. When NATO began expanding eastward in the 90’s (despite promises that they wouldn’t), the calculation was that Russia “probably” wouldn’t do anything serious about it. This calculation proved correct after adding Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, the Baltic States, etc… Up until Ukraine. Sucks to be the last player entering a bubble, Ukraine.
Nope, haven’t seen Nope either.
MarkO
Why does it always fall on my shoulders to cover the serious shit?
Nope: Saw the trailer….looked like a Peele movie (which means a Wes Anderson/M. Night Shyamalan movie but with more self-control). I prefer Peele to other two—“breaking all the rules” directors. Thought his Get Out (2017) was pretty good campy—horror genre–fun. TSA pre-check! I was intrigued by the trailer to Nope, my wife immediately said ‘never’—she has no patience for these experimental directors. I tend to agree, tried more than one Anderson film and finished zero.
I did hear a Bob Mondello Nope review and I almost bot-posted at that time. NPR, sounds like Dennis; at a minimum should you hunt it down. Posting motivation was twofold:
- Well, Mondello—and many other film reviewers just do an amazing job. I’m going to hold forth a little here. I’ll credit Mark M. for first alerting me what a great job some/most film critics do—Mike Wilmington of the Isthmus, back in the day. “Mike Filmington”. For some reason these guys/gals use the coolest words, the greatest metaphors…it’s like they have all of film history as their canvas so they can cast out “just like…”…or “something-esque” at whatever part of a movie trips their imagination/stream of consciousness. The good ones, of course are disciplined and provide a solid review while getting both self and readers off w/ their tricky tropes.
- One of the components of Modello’s Nope review was putting Daniel Kaluuya on a pedestal. And I tend to agree….has this Brando-esque presence. (How’d I do?) He was in Get Out (protag) and played a real bad dude (antag) in Widows—a campy heist plot twist film—and whenever he came on screen you were afraid, very much afraid. (Question: Name one heist film that doesn’t have multiple plot twists” A: Can’t)
Pelosi: I read she’s been on this policing China for human rights transgressions/atrocities for years…went to Tiananmen Square anniversary—got chased off…I forget—but maybe it was for PAC money not conviction… (I’m better on films). I guess I give her credit, especially if she flew coach.
Not to dismiss Dennis’s original question: I think Mondello explained it a bit…ya know the horse thing…the very first moving picture…it has connection to this ranch. Horses appear early and later in the plot and the aliens and the horses and animals sensing this…going crazy, like the chimps for seemingly no reason…like before a storm…something like that as I recall.
Dave.
Wow. Great work on answering my queries! Seriously, much more cogent than the answers that came up in my Google search. Pundits from the NY Times, Washington Post, Reuters, and the New Yorker all totally missed the part about Chinatown and the Taiwanese immigrant constituents/donors in Pelosi’s district. They also failed to mention much about her significant history as an outspoken critic of China’s human rights violations. Based on my little search it seemed that their take was pretty much: “How to Salvage Pelosi Crisis”, “China Rages”, “Pelosi’s Reckless Visit” and some super scary shit about “China’s Nuclear Options” and—(omg-nooo) “China May Delay Shipment of New Iphones”. So, thanks for clearing that up.
As for “Nope”, yeah Dave—Daniel Kaluuya had an amazing presence as the stoic horse ranch owner. And the cinematography was awesome. “Nope” goes down a lot easier than a Wes Anderson film, but there are aspects of it that struck me as maybe a bit pretentious. I mean, ambiguous symbology is cool and all, but at times I think Peele goes down the road of needlessly confusing the audience because, hey, that’s what auteurs are supposed to do…. But “Nope” is definitely worth seeing if you liked “Get Out”—and I’m not just saying that so you guys can tell me what that crazy chimp is all about.
–Dennis
I haven’t seen Nope yet either, but I did see both Get Out and Us, which I liked a lot. I love the way he intertwines race issues into the horror genre. Get Out is a little overboiled for sure, but Us is a great movie. I love the way it uses the tethering metaphor for power links between the races. On a sidenote, one of my housemates when I lived on Gilman Street in Madison introduced me to Mike Wilmington at Rick’s Havana Club. He had just done a great piece on Sergeant York for the Isthmus. He wasn’t really an outgoing guy—a little snooty, actually, but he was brilliant. He was writing for the Chicago Tribune for years and recently retired. I heard he just recently passed away.
Mark M. makes good points about Pelosi strengthening Congress’ position. The Executive Branch has been slowly growing ever since FDR, and her bold trip to Taiwan—I think—strikes the right balance between assertiveness and boldness. And we do need those goddamned chips.
–G
BTW, the chimp in Nope is a reminder that there is a dark side to anthropomorphizing creatures for our amusement. They can turn on their minders with little notice. The crippled woman was a survivor of the chimp attack on the set of some 70’s TV show. The alien creature has its own internal calculus, which is unknowable to us, just like the chimp.
Mark O.