A24's Civil War - What Ever Could it Be About?

The trailer for the new film by Alex Garland dropped. Immediately, there was speculation online as to the plot. Who are the good guys, and who are the bad guys? California and Texas form an alliance? What?

Most people on the Left, especially journalists, continue to fret about the possibility of a Civil War because they have cocooned themselves off from half the country. But they have all the power, all the culture, all the money, and the military. The Right knows there could never be a Civil War because of it.

The closest thing we’ve seen to anything like what this movie depicts happened in the Summer of 2020. Most of those inside the cocoon didn’t see what was really going on, and no one in Hollywood has the balls to make that movie. They cannot see who they are and what they’ve become, so they dump it all on the Right.

The first thing people noticed about the trailer was that California and Texas team up to go to war with the government. That doesn’t seem right, they correctly assume.

But digging a little deeper online, I found this from Screen Rant:

And also this:

While it’s true that if you look at the setup from the lens of our politics today, the cold Civil War we’re already fighting (online), it’s hard to parse why Texas and California would ally. Maybe you have to come from the Left to understand it.

We hear this in the trailer: “The White House issued warnings to the Western forces as well as the Florida alliance. The President assured the uprising would be dealt with swiftly.”

I don’t know why the title is "Civil War” when it looks more like a revolution. Perhaps it starts as a war, and then, when the “bad side” overtakes the White House, the other side rises up to go to war for the country.

The heroes in this story? Get ready to laugh, journalists. There is even the line, “They shoot journalists on sight in the Capitol.” The most terrifying and chilling line in the film? “God Bless America.”

The trailer suggests that the film will play right into the irrational hysteria and delusions of those at the top or in the bubble who have zero connection to people outside of it. Future generations might look back at this time as similar to the paranoia that ran through 1950s sci-fi that Martians or monsters were coming to invade their utopia.

There are easy parallels to draw, even with limited information, this being an election year, with Trump polling higher than Biden. To the Left, Trump embodies all of their collective fears in one person (think the Devil in Salem in 1692). They see him as a white man, a misogynist and racist. For him to lead this country threatens their entire belief system and everything that they now control.

To most people on the Left, their shared reality includes their conclusion that Trump would hold onto the presidency by any means necessary, even employing the military. In this Lincoln Project fever dream, Texas would be comprised of real patriots who would want to fight FOR America.

California would do the same because they’re already doing that in their own quiet way. Keep the bad people out of our culture, institutions, government, and America.

I could be speaking totally out of turn, as I do not know what this movie is about. To make real money, though, it will have not to be a “leftist screed.” It would be dumb to put out that kind of movie right now because it will bomb. So maybe it isn’t that at all. Maybe it’s something else entirely.

The truth is that the side trying to preserve their utopia is the side that eventually devolves into authoritarianism, as we saw in the post-war 1950s. And what we’re seeing now as the Biden administration violates the First Amendment both in how they are attempting to take control of speech online, with AI and pressuring social media companies, and in how they have gone to war on their own citizens after January 6th.

But that doesn’t confirm the worldview of most on the Left. They still see themselves as the oppressed side, even when the side attempting to defeat them is mostly small money donors and members of the working class. But class has gone out the window because all that matters is how people are categorized by race and gender.

Most people on the Left live in constant fear. Their problems tend to be existential, not practical. They don’t worry about putting food on the table or making their car payments so much as they worry about racism, and all the “phobes.” They worry about climate change, and stopping Trump.

One might assume a movie called “Civil War” would be made by the Right, not the Left. The pervasive fear on the Left is that the preppers and the racists will attempt (and have attempted) to overthrow the government. Their fear also works the other way because Trump embodies it. So, they believe, he can’t leave the presidency and will do everything he can to stay in it. Bill Maher certainly believes this. What the human imagination can do is amazing, isn’t it?

Hollywood feeds into this fear by constantly affirming and re-affirming their enforced ideology, their worldview of “diversity, equity and inclusion.” It’s become a parasite that is killing its host, but they can’t let go of it because they are all paralyzed by fear.

It’s been said that Civil War is a companion piece to Garland’s last film, Men, which I never watched, though now I suppose I will.

I avoided it because I’ve become allergic to movies that are rooted in “woke” identity politics. Here, there is the assumption - widely shared by most on the Left, especially young women - that MEN are the problem. But I should not assume. I will watch the film and report back.

Pro-feminist messaging is the point of Alex Garland’s most excellent film, Ex Machina:

I loved Ex Machina back in the day, not quite realizing where all of this was going. I was as “woke” as they came back then, writing mostly from the perspective of race and gender, too. To me, it felt like the truth was finally coming out. But now, it looks like a manufactured reality, dogma that has destroyed Hollywood.

Art can’t survive without access to the truth. It’s impossible to make a movie about people you do not know or understand. However, I imagine Civil War will be a great time capsule for future generations to look back at the mass hysteria that overtook so much of America twenty years after the turn of the millennium.