{"id":801,"date":"2025-03-03T10:27:08","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T15:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/?p=801"},"modified":"2025-03-03T10:27:08","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T15:27:08","slug":"oppenheimer-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/?p=801","title":{"rendered":"Oppenheimer, again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I got to see Oppenheimer in IMAX, the way it was meant to be seen, and what a joy it was to hear and see the full movie in the form it was meant to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But this time, I was deeply annoyed. Of course we know that the country went through an anti-Communist (red scare) period. But through the entirety of the movie, most characters are on the defensive about being liberal, leftist, progressive, or communist. The only one who isn&#8217;t is Florence Pugh (Jean Matlock is her character&#8217;s name, I think.) If they&#8217;re not trying to defend having been a member of the communist party, or even being interested in their ideas, then they are almost always on the opposite side &#8212; participating in a witch hunt to root out communists and communist sympathizers. That&#8217;s why Emily Blunt, (a powerhouse, albeit an alcoholic and terrible mother), repeats &#8220;16 years ago, sorry 17, no sorry, 18. 18 years ago.&#8221; Trying, in vain really, to point out that her communist party membership was so long ago it was irrelevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it&#8217;s not irrelevant to people who have a vendetta or who are on a witch hunt or, for whatever reason, think that DEI is the root of all evil. This is what&#8217;s happening now &#8212; with the Trump government going after anyone and everyone who might have worked on DEI projects, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lost in both the communist witch hunts of the post atomic bomb era, and the current witch hunts for DEI sympathizers and policies, is the freedom to <em>think <\/em>AND, I would add, the notion that conservatism is identical to patriotism, which it is not, at all and that leftist ideas are anti-American. This has been going on for decades &#8212; even before McCarthy &#8212; and yet I doubt a single person in this government or past governments could even describe Marx&#8217;s &#8220;Capital,&#8221; or the contents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s like the word Woke, that John McWhorter recently wrote about because it is one of the words that has transformed within a matter of years from meaning: &#8220;politically aware,&#8221; to &#8220;anti-white racism,&#8221; I guess, and basically &#8220;liberalism.&#8221; When DeSantis said, about Florida, &#8220;This is where Woke comes to die,&#8221; he was basically saying, stupid and uninformed people are welcome here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s really just too sad to be going through this again. You have to wonder who&#8217;s going to be the next sacrifice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got to see Oppenheimer in IMAX, the way it was meant to be seen, and what a joy it was to hear and see the full movie in the form it was meant to be. But this time, I &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/?p=801\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":802,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions\/802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}