On Optimism & MAGA

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

The thing is…

America is already great. It really is.

Martin Luther King.

Was American.

So too Patti Smith, Jack Kerouac, bell hooks, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Toni Morrison, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez…

The list is long.

America doesn’t need to become great again.

It’s already fucking fantastic.

A dear friend of mine came to our London screening of May Day last week and asked how we can take the spirit of our film out into the wider world.

That’s a toughie.

But for me, it starts with maintaining personal optimism.

Not giving in to the darkness.

It’s true: the world is a scary place if you look at the news.

But there is no such thing as the news. It’s a selection of events designed to hijack your attention. Which means it’s essentially clickbait.

Of course there’s no escape from human suffering. Many people live with far fewer choices than you or me.

But given you’re reading this on Substack, I’m guessing most of your anxieties are existential - and in that context, optimism or pessimism is a choice.

Do we fall prey to glass-half-empty pain-body demons, or stay aligned with the genuine good that is all around us?

My response to my friend at the Q&A was simple: I love Donald Trump.

Not what he does, or who he is - I love what he reveals.

I love The Donald like I love Richard Nixon: flaccid, flabby bad oysters to our sharp-edged grit.

Nixon didn’t cause the 60s, but he sure as shit sharpened them.

Without villains, resistance remains theoretical.

It’s demons like these that make otherwise complacent, comfortable people rise up.

I’ve been deeply moved by the response to the death of Rene Good - an activist mother of three - shot dead on the streets of Minneapolis by ICE, and by the images that followed.

Mostly non-violent protesters out in the cold, the dark, the snow.

People saying to camera, with genuine, palpable emotion: I’ve never done this before in my life. I never went on a march… but this?

This has gone too far.

There’s a lot of bullshit swirling around right now - posturing, egoic, unhinged hubris, fuckery and deceit.

And just as much subservience, cowardice and false flattery, dressed up as diplomacy from our leaders.

Trump got a standing ovation when he walked on stage at Davos yesterday.

I mean… really?

I’m with Gavin Newsom when he calls on European leaders to stop sucking up to Donald Trump and say what they really feel.

The truth, as ever, isn’t in conference halls.

It’s on the streets.

Brave, passionate, honest people refusing to stay quiet in the face of fascism.

But what we’re seeing now is just a wave - nasty, polluted, full of raw sewage, plastic waste and dead fish. Like the 1930s.

A wave that ultimately broke.

It’s a projection of humanity. It lives within us all.

What do you think all those war films, horror films, first-person shooters we consume are about?

Gladiator?

I went to Rome over New Year.

The Colosseum. I mean… wow. Just wow.

And the food - incredible.

The coffee - amazing.

The people - fantastic.

And the history. There’s nowhere else quite like it.

A wonderful vibe for a civilisation built on blood and human suffering.

The older I get, the harder I find it to ignore the mechanics of empire - Roman, British, American alike.

They’re all funded by one of the oldest currencies there is: the trade in humans.

Rome is lovely, if you forget it was built on slavery - people torn from their homelands, worked to death in servitude.

Don’t forget that.

The demons only run amok when we’re asleep.

Unlike many who came before us - and many who still live today - you and I are free.

Or at least we like to think we are. Let’s not dig into that just yet.

For now, maybe it’s enough to appreciate that freedom - and use a little of our extraordinary privilege to make some trouble.

To make some noise.

To not be part of what we’re offered under the guise of solutions.

To be part of the problem.