Unclear and Present Danger - The Fourth War

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

In the sixth episode of Unclear and Present Danger, John and Jamelle discuss “The Fourth War,” a late-period John Frankenheimer film about two crusty bastards who almost start the third world war over a personal grudge match. It looks like a TV movie and it’s not that interesting, but it was good fodder for a fruitful and fascinating conversation. Jamelle brings some 19th century American political history to the table, and John uses Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History” to get at some of the ideas in the film.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieLinks from the episode!New York Times front page for Friday, March 23, 1990Janet Maslin’s New York Times reviewRoger Ebert’s Chicago Sun-Times review“The End of History?” by Francis Fukuyama, published in the Summer 1989 edition of The National Interest.A book worth reading: The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780–1860

Somewhere in Eastern Europe, a battle is about to begin. It's not East versus West, nor us against them. It's two proud heroes, with no one left to fight, but each other. Men of war. In a time of peace, Roy Scheider, Jogan Proknau in a John Frankenheimer film, The Fourth War. Welcome to Episode 6 of Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s, and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamal Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write a column for Gawker, and I'm working.

working on a book about American politics in the early 90s. Today we are talking about the Fourth War, the 1990 film from John Frankenheimer. John Frankenheimer, if you are someone who likes movies, should be a pretty familiar name. He directed the original, the Manchurian candidate, or the first adaptation of the book. He directed the really terrific Seven Days in May, which there was a remake for HBO that will probably watch as part of this podcast starring Forest Whitaker. He directed Ronan later in the 90s, which is just an all-time great 90s thriller. Good movie. And he, I think his final film of the 90s or of this, one of his last films of his career, Drainier Games with Ben Affleck, which isn't a very good movie, but I like it a whole

lot. The screenplay was by Stephen Peters, based on a novel by Peters, and Kenneth Ross, who wrote The Day of the Jackal and the Odessifile, two terrific movies. We've talked about the Day of the Jackal before on this podcast. And cinematography was by Jerry Fisher, who shot Highlander, one of my very favorite movies, and then company business, another one of these post-Cold War movies we're going to talk about on this podcast. The Fourth War stars, Roy Snyder, Yurgen Prochnow, Tim Reed, who has a quick parenthetical. you were recognized as the dad on the Tia and Tamara Maori sitcom, which I don't remember its name.

And Lara Harris and Harry Dean Stanton as a general, which is very odd to see. You're going to say something, John. Oh, what was I going to say? Oh, is Roy Scheider a good actor? I think so. I think he's a good actor. Okay.

Because I was watching this movie and trying to figure that out, because he was a big star. in the 70s and he's kind of has a sort of talked in reverent tones but i was like maybe it has more has more to do with the movie which we'll get into uh this movie was a um it was it was critically you know people liked it um uh the reviews i've read janet madison in the times roger ebert uh both had very positive things to say both note that it's very much a throwback kind of movie and its tone and feel um although there are some things about that that are not quite the case.

But in terms of the box office, this movie, it flopped. It was a huge bomb. Budget of 14.5 million box office of, you know, 1.3 million. It did not do well. Not so good. Not so good. Before we jump to our thoughts on the movie, we got a look at what was happening on this day. A movie was released on March 23rd, 1990.

And so we're going to take a look at the New York Times front page for that day. And it is, there's only one sort of Cold War-related headline, or two, there are two. Yeah, yeah. Bush urges Gorbachev to avoid a military assault in Lithuania, U.S. waste goals of independence and stability. Then also Lithuania assails Moscow's tactics as convoy arrives, which is, obviously a related headline. I suppose this involves sort of the beginning of the dissolution of the Soviet Union here. This is the start. This is the real start. Go ahead. Lithuania was the first republic. So under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union had kind of stopped refraining

for military interventions in the Eastern Bloc, but Lithuania was actually incorporated in the Soviet Union. It was a republic. So they were the first one to declare independence. And there was a lot of tension over, you know, what the Soviet response was going to be. And they eventually, a few months after this recognized Lithuanian independence, but it was tense. And as you can see, they were kind of flexing with troops. And it was, I think actually there was some, I don't know if at this point or later or earlier, but there was some violence where people were killed. But yeah, this is really the beginning of the end. I'll jump to the other headline before coming back to this one. There's a headline about the, I guess, the Exxon Valdez shipwreck,

Valdez captain cleared a felony but is convicted on minor charge. War on inflation gives quick jolt to Brazilian economy. I guess this is Sam Nunn. Senator Sam Nunn opens a double attack in military spending debate. Sam Nunn, kind of influential Georgia Democrat. And he is, he said, this is from the story, he said the Defense Department that failed to develop a new military strategy in response to changes in the Soviet Union and Europe. None sharply criticized the Defense Department for spending plans that he said

were based on outdated to some. about the military threats facing the United States. Interesting that this, you know, this headline, I feel like, relates a lot to no way out, sort of the, the politics such that they are in that movie. But again, speaks to how the international situation is rapidly changing. And American policymakers are really trying to keep up. We got a U.S. sues, a Long Island village. charging bias in housing and urban development housing.

So some good old housing discrimination. And then the last headline here, it's trapped in the terror of New York's holding pens. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I was about to say the same thing. But who's the Secretary of Defense in this non-article? It's none other than Dick Cheney. Yeah. There you go. So just about the Lithuania headlines, so the fourth war takes place on the Czechoslovakian border. But if there is, you know, the way the Cold War is portrayed in the movies is that it's very much on the downslope and there's no real reason for any tension. But I think headlines like these kind of speak to how, even at this, this point, there was a great deal of uncertainty and real tension about what was going to happen

next. And with that said, John, what were your thoughts on this movie? What did you think we're watching it? I got to tell you, I didn't think this was a great movie. I thought that, okay, I tried to appreciate, like, as the critics said, it was a little bit of a throwback. There was something about this movie that felt like a movie from the 1960s and the type of drama that it was trying to set up with its characters. But I think that like, you know, neither the performances nor the script nor the action sequences really successfully made this movie work. And I have to tell you, until the very, this movie and then it kind of all clicked for me what the movie I think was trying to do or like some interesting things about it. But, yeah, I don't know. Like, I thought that pretty much like, I mean,

Juergen Prochnow is a really cool actor who was in the Lost Honor of Caterina Bloom, which is one of my favorite movies. And Dust Boat, which was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, because it's a submarine movie. I really like him as an actor, as I was saying, I'm not so sure about Roy Scheider sometimes, but he's like not boring to watch. Like, he's dynamic enough of a presence on the screen that you're like,

okay, this guy's a movie star. But I don't think, Jamal, I was just sort of underwhelmed by this movie. And, yeah. I think I was underwhelmed, too. And before I even continue, listeners, if you have not seen the movie, you should see it. It is available for free on 2B.tv, which is an app. You just have to sign up for it. And you have to watch some commercials.

So that's pretty much it. But I think very easy to find and watch this movie. movie. And as far as just a quick sense of what actually happens in it, more or less, Roy Scheider and Jurgen, Ergen Proknau, play sort of mid-level soldiers who are tasked with patrolling this border and get into a weird kind of like spat with each other over, over, I mean, their own pride, or less. And so the film kind of details more Roy Scheider's characters, psychological deterioration in the face of all of this. I was also underwhelmed by this movie.

It's not bad by any means. Like, it's not going to be a slog to watch for anything. And it helps that it's a little under 90 minutes. It's very clean. You know, you can knock this out pretty quickly. But it was the relatively, slow pace, sort of the kind of posity of action scenes, especially in like the first hour. And the throwbacky feel and tone of it made it just sort of, you know, it was kind of, I got a

little bored halfway through. I got bored enough to start sort of like checking my email and such. It didn't have like enough atmosphere or good enough a script to make it like a like mostly interesting psychologically, like, I don't need action every minute if it was like, okay, this is an amazing script and there's a lot of tension and, like, it's kind of an espionage more feeling, but this just was like not doing it on any level. Yeah, it also doesn't look good. No. It looks like a TV movie.

Yeah. And that's just disappointing. Yeah, I just kind of had, it was very flat. Is that like a budget? Well, it was shot. I was like when at first warning sign when I was like reading the Wikipedia page this movie they were like it's based in central Europe but it was shot in Canada and I was like that's not right man like it's not gonna look like it's snowy but I was like I could just tell I was like this is not shot on the check border which I think actually not being shot on the proper location like would have I think if this movie was shot on location it would been a lot lot more interesting because like it's kind of an interesting part of the world and like you know I just thought that that was like a huge mistake and I was like I couldn't believe it I was like these trees are wrong like it has these tall Canadian pine trees it was just like yeah this is just not credible and yeah the TV movie comment is exactly right I was just like this seems to be shot on kind of a low budget and maybe just because Hollywood was like this sort of film is not where we're putting all of our energy anymore and And, yeah, I don't know.

It was just, and it was also, like, it's weird because this came out the same year as Hunter October. I mean, I'm sure they're, and Hunter and October is like, feels not that dated. Like, it doesn't feel, and this movie just felt super dated. And, like, I think it might just have to do with the different budget, but I was, it's surprising they came out the same year because this feels much, you know, older. You know, it feels like a TV movie from like 1980. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And I think this gets, I mean, I think this gets to the throwbacky thing we both have identified in this, I mean, that the specific character beats happening here, is that Roy Scheider plays this Vietnam vet colonel who is not, I mean, I feel like the phrase Vietnam vet has, is loaded with a lot of baggage. But in this case, this isn't like a guy psychologically scarred from his time. This is a guy who thrive in Vietnam, who case. It was a war hero who likes combat, who is best suited for leadership under fire. And since the Vietnam War and since the United States not really participating in any big conflict after that, has felt adrift and alienated and unable to deal not even with civilian life, but just being in the military and not really having anything to do. yeah not really having anyone to kill uh and so uh harry dean stanton who plays his superior and his friend assigns him to the check border basically kind of to get him out the way but also kind of to give him something to do and basically to amuse himself he ends up starting this weird personal

conflict with urgen proknaus character who we don't get much on him but it's it's said that is very much the same kind of guy served in Afghanistan sort of with distinction and it's sort of like embittered and has nothing to do yeah i kept on thinking about the movie patent when i was watching this movie because i was like this is like patent in peacetime like this is a really aggressive dynamic officer who like has nothing to do and is now like going kind of nuts but i was like he just he goes so nuts like it was hard to like he goes he starts crossing the border and blowing things up in in in in Czechoslovakia and I was like and then his it's just like his superior was like oh I think you should cut that out and I was like he could have started

world war three like they would have just relieved him of his command immediately once he like did the first thing it starts with a snowball fight and he he tries to throw a snowball at the russian they have some little meeting at the border because the Russians are chasing like a dissident who's trying to escape who actually gets shot and he doesn't know it but the Russian officer like yells at his men for shooting, uh, the person trying to run away. Um, uh, Roy Scheider throws a snowball at Yergen Procknow, which misses and Yergan Procknow makes the snowball and throws it back at Roy Shider, which hits him and then it's on and like he's crossing the border to, they're doing these like cross-border raids on each other, which are like pranks,

but they're like with bombs and like, right. Right. Right. No, it's like, it's like, Roy Shider responds to being hit with the snowball, like one of those, every, every winter, there's at least one story about some cop who gets hit with a snowball and pulls out of his gun. Yeah, exactly. He goes totally wild. And, yeah, he absolutely loses his mind. I was thinking this, too, you mentioned you watched Huntford, October came out this year. Patriot Games, I think, comes up the following year after this.

And in Patriot Games, we have, you know, the satellite technology. the U.S. government can see, you know, anywhere in the world with its satellites. And so you would think that if there were an explosion on the Czech border, sort of like American military command would quickly hear about it and sort of asking some questions about what's going on. And that's, I mean, that's what makes this movie kind of an, we said it's a little boring, but it's like the premise seems sort of wrote, and it's not filmed all that, excitingly, but sort of what happens is actually kind of insane in the movie. And this story

about this officer's kind of psychological deterioration is dramatized, yeah, through these sort of pranks with bombs, that when you give it just a second of thought, you're like, yeah, this would cause World War III. Or it would have just like, they would have just completely dealt with the situation before it got out of hand. Like, I think he would have been just gotten rid of immediately once he started to like I think for the first incident like the snowball throwing incident they would have probably been like okay get this guy out of here like this is not this is not something we need right now um yeah so is yeah it's yeah the portrayal of the military technology is just like I don't know it's like it's weird because it has this it has this battle

of the bulge vibe because of the snow and everything like that but it's and that also makes me think of Patton, but it's like, it's not the, it's not the military that you're used to looking at in a lot of like Reagan era or just Bush era propaganda, which shows like a lot of incredible technology. It kind of shows the military is very, like all of their barracks, their equipment is pretty dreary and uninteresting. And I think that's kind of to show how like boring military life can be and like how this guy's just like going out of his mind without anything to do um but he's he doesn't see roy shiter's character is like pretty he doesn't seem crazy enough to me like he's not like he's he's like obviously he just the connection

between how much he snaps and like the way they develop the character he's not colonel kurtz he's not like marlin brando and apocalypse now like he's just teams way too sane like i get he's he's i get he's bored but like the the connection between what he ends up doing and how he seems just doesn't really get made but right I had one thought about this movie and I don't know what I want to get to it too early but here's my one thought and it's something we actually haven't talked about which was which is which is kind of you know interesting because it's just like hovering in the background of everything this podcast is about is you know 1989 when this movie was being shot, this is the year that Francis Fukuyama's the end of history essay came out.

And the end of history, ideas, you know, very much in the era during this era that we talk about. Basically, the idea there is that the ideological conflict between the Soviet Union, I mean, even in 89, he could see it coming. The ideological conflict between the Soviet Union and the West was over. And now history was over because of that. There was no big ideological stake. everything was just about the market, people following their own selfish goals, and there was something kind of boring, depressing, sad. He says the end of history will be a sad time.

He says there still be nationalism, but it will be, you know, just little countries trying to break away. And so I think that there is, the way you can connect this to the movie is these are two people who are kind of, these are two characters, which are. or, you know, you could say you're allegorically standing in for the civilizations or the countries or whatever that represent, you know, these old ideological positions and now those don't make sense anymore and what do they do? And in fitting with the kind of, you know, Francis Fukuyang was based on this, basing his idea on this philosopher Alexandra Koja, who had this

interpretation of Hegel that led to the idea of the end of history and Kojev said at the end of history humanity will regress and he said he had two possibilities he said either it'll become post ideological and everyone will sort of pursue snobby um hobbies like any he his idea was like Japan and like tea ceremony and interest in lots of like niche cultural things would be like the way humanity looked after the end of history. And the other idea he had was will regress, basically, back to the beginning, back to animality. So the struggle for recognition ends and then we return back with the struggle for

recognition, which created human consciousness essentially. And then once the struggle revolution recognition ends, we're back to being animals. And this guy's fight, at the end of the movie they talk about how regressive was, They end up in hand-to-hand combat with each other. These guys fight, which is not about any ideological thing, but it's about pride, which is actually a big part of Fukuyama's essay, which he talks about just individual assertiveness, kind of becoming what was important in post-historical society.

Right. So it's in a way, it's like, okay, we're at the end of the Cold War. We're at the end of history. What is going to happen? It's imagining what's going to happen is like, well, people are going to go back to, like, petty personal duels. that's what's going to replace it and they're going to regress. So I guess there's like a fear of like, okay, we had like a whole ideological system

and we had a place for everybody. And now what are they going to do when they fall out of place? They're going to start to be at each other's throats again. But for stupid reasons. So that was like the one ideological message or philosophical idea that I could kind of ring out of the movie was that. I think it fits because Tim Reed's character who is. is Roy Shander's character subordinate is very much about proper etiquette and proper ceremony and proper regulation and kind of could be understood as sort of like one response to

this is just kind of to double down into ceremony. And I'm also thinking of how with, right, of how this, you know, this, which we're identified here fits with the package as well, sort of like the response to the end, the response to the end, the fear on part of the antagonist of the package that the end of history would would bring back the animal forces so the way to prevent that is just to prevent the end of history um right right keep the cold war going and this one is like oh this is what's going to happen people are going to just start to gouge each other's eyes out because they're not like disciplined into these two ideological camps anymore i mean i would say from the vantage point of 2022 this you know history obviously did not end right sort of like one

one particular ideological conflict ended one particular way of organizing the world ended. But in the in the in the quote unquote settlement that follows sort of like you previously tamped down forces forces are unleashed and then new contradictions emerge within within the existing order producing a new set of a new set of conflicts new ideological struggles. Right. It's not like yeah. So the title is based on this out. I think apocryphal Albert Einstein quote, where it's like, if the third World War was fought with nuclear weapons, that the fourth World War will be fought with sticks and stones. So this is just like, you know, meaning, you know, in the absence of the destruction will regress back to the Stone Age. And I think this is just saying even without the prospect of nuclear war, there's going to be a kind of bronze age mentality returning.

So, yeah, I mean, it's true. It's not really, it's not, it's just, it's just very interesting to see how much fear there was at the end of the Cold War. It's not just like, just hope and, um, just be like, oh, thank God. The threat of nuclear annihilation is gone. It's just like, you know, it's, there's a lot of like, well, now chaos. And, you know, I, I agree. It's, it's sort of a strange thing to say that history ended and, and it has. But I mean some of the things that they were predicted were not so wrong. I mean like this there is a there he sort of talks about a resurgence of nationalism and in a way you could say that's aggressive. I don't know if it quite makes sense to say it's aggressive, but like there was a resurgence of nationalism after the end of the Cold War. There was a new kind of new people found new ways. I mean they had always existed but found new conflicts.

But I don't know if the problem is so much that the warrior class would be so bored that it would start to go wild, exactly. Well, I'm trying to think if you could interpret. Now, trying to interpret America's military adventures after the Cold War in that way, but not really. Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, that's what's sort of interesting about that thesis, which I think we're going to see again and again is that as things played out, it wasn't America's warrior class that was eager to jump into new conflicts.

I mean, you know, Colin Powell became, I mean, he became famous essentially for articulating a doctrine, a way of doing war that was in, that was a reaction to Vietnam, that you only commit the conflicts that you know you can win, and you only, you fight them with overwhelming force. you don't hedge your bets, but you, you, um, you, um, you exercise some restraint and judiciousness and how you, uh, how you exercise military force. And it seems to me and I, you know, we're so early on in this podcast, I'm going to, I feel like I'm going to keep saying this again and again as we get to movies later down the line. It seems to me that sort of part of the political

story of the 90s is American politicians, um, you know, you, you, you, you have, let me back up. You have the military whose leadership at this point consists of Vietnam veterans, right? Like, they are, that was the last war that shaped the officer class and the leadership class in the military. So you have a military establishment that still has Vietnam in the rear view mirror. And you have a political establishment that is sort of nostalgic, desperate for some sort of conflict to give their own, the create meaning for themselves, right? sort of, this is, the 90s are the big period of World War II memorialization with the 50 year

anniversary of D-Day in 95. And I think you have this sense that, you know, there is the greatest generation and there hasn't been one sense. And when are we going to have our, our great war, our great conflict to give, to provide ideological meaning for the society as it stands now and this sort of discontent with the, you know, the consumerism and materialism of American society in this immediate post-war era. And so it's sort of, it's not, you know, the fear of discontented warriors isn't really, it's understandable, right? I think I talked about this.

In our last episode, I think Americans have always had this sort of wariness about standing armies and what happens with the idle hands of an unused military. But in this case, it wasn't the idle hands of the military, it's the idle hands of politicians who

politicians and sort of ideological workers. Right. Kind of intellectuals, I guess you could say, who were looking for a new orientation or trying to use the categories of the

old world to create the new. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I mean, I think there are some, I think the military becomes persuaded and to see that they actually need an ethos. Or maybe they don't. I mean, they're service oriented, so they're just like, well, you tell us what to do and we'll do it.

But I think that the political classes need these sorts of focuses. And you see it happening now where there's like this desire among sort of the middle ranks of the political class and of the U.S. to like recreate, you know, besides whatever policy needs it will do. They're just like, well, we need a Cold War with China because it's like that's, you know, we'll recreate the world in which our work makes sense, essentially, you know. So, and, and, you know, we've tried to do this over and over again with, with the war on terror, which turned out to be a disappointment for everybody.

Islamofascism Islamofascism which has tried to create this and okay here's where the end of history thesis starts to make sense

is that none of these things have really worked at replacing the the Cold War I mean maybe by the end of the Cold War nobody really believed it by maybe when this movie came out but like it's true

none of these things and we keep on Islamof Fascism is a perfect simple we talked about this in the last movie is like the desire to use either our ideological opposition to fascism or communism, they're two great organizing principles for keeping America in this kind of consensus

world, nothing's really worked. And I think that that's where I kind of would say the end of history thesis insofar as he writes about it as being like a history in his understanding requires these two great ideological opponents sort of makes sense because everything we try to set up as our ideological opponent doesn't really fulfill the role. It's not satisfying. It doesn't fulfill the role. I think I can get on board with that. Because it is true, right, that for much of the Cold War, I mean, really until those last two decades or so, last three decades maybe, for a good chunk of a cold war, and kind of going back before the Cold War, so beginning

with the Bolshevik revolution and kind of continuing forward, the Soviet Union was understood as being this sort of like great experiment in a non-capitalist way of organizing a society. And it was serious enough and powerful enough to compel the United States to undergo go, you know, far-reaching reforms. Like, I don't think, I do not think that you have, you certainly do not have, say, the civil rights movement as it unfolded without the background pressure of the Cold War, right? You don't have a willingness to, you know, break Jim Crow without sort of a sense that, the maintenance of racial apartheid on that scale was just a propaganda coup for the Soviet Union

and made it far more difficult for the United States to appeal the countries in the quote-unquote third world who were deciding which model they were going to follow. It was a blow against American moral leadership. Our decision, which has gotten a lot more attention in the last few years because of President Trump, but the decision to basically end the immigration restrictions of the 1920s and really liberalized American immigration laws. Again, a response to the pressures created by having a real ideological opponent. And for as much as there are folks who want to slot China into that role, China doesn't really fit all that well. I mean, China is China is not a competitor to capitalism. No, it's another capitalist power now. And to the

extent that it is, um, it represents sort of a non, a model of capitalism outside of the, um, boundaries of liberal democracy, which is a phrase that requires a whole bunch of caveats I'm not going to get into now, but I'll just put it out there. Um, you know, insofar that that's the case. I mean, I don't know, there's, there are plenty of Americans who seem to want kind of a more authoritarian minded, you know, capitalist state. So is it really even a competitor there. You can even see this, you know, at least on Twitter. There are some right-leaning thinkers. I'll be generous and say some and not plenty. There are some right-leaning thinkers who will say, well, you know, there are things China gets right about its political organization of

society. So for as much as there are folks who are going to slot China into that role, I don't, if Islam or fascism didn't fit because it's just sort of a nonsense term, It's a nonsense concept. China doesn't fit because I think the material realities of Chinese society aren't in as much conflict with the United States in the 21st century as some people might want to imagine. Yeah, I agree with you. I think that that's true.

And there is curiosity. I've seen that too, curiosity among members of, you know, the American right about the way China sort of administration. ministers its country and, um, you know, some admiration of that, which is, you know, not, not exactly a new thing to see right wingers sort of admire these ostensibly left wing, um, more authoritarian regimes. Um, but yeah, I, I, I agree. I, I think that what, what Fukuyama sort of got wrong was that he, he thought it was a combination of the market economy and the market economy and liberal democracy and it might be the market economy but maybe

not liberal democracy which is sort of it's it doesn't seem like they you know the idea was like kind of went hand in hand and we we have plenty examples now of of capitalism without uh liberal democracy and seems to seems to do just fine i mean yeah uh it's very it's very um resilient in that way yeah i just want to read the end of the the end of history essay because i it's a pretty nice piece of writing and really connects with this movie's atmosphere in so much as it has an atmosphere. The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism will be replaced

by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period, there will be neither art nor philosophy, just a perpetual caretaking of the Museum of Human History. I can feel in myself and see in others around me a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia and fact will continue to fuel competition and conflict, even the post-historical will for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability,

I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1914. 45 with its North Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again. So I think that that was the, this movie doesn't quite say like, okay, we need a little bit of a, we need a little fire to get things going on. I think it talks, it's just pretty, thinks that these sort of self-directed conflicts about pride or whatever other egoistic issues are going to be pretty, um, pretty pathetic or not lead anywhere. But yeah, it's sort of an interesting piece of writing despite maybe not being 100% accurate. You know, what this has me thinking of to get a little meta about the podcast for a sec, is that maybe we should talk, we don't have this on the

master list, which I probably should put somewhere for people to easily find, but there's a master list at every movie we intend to do for this podcast, and I may need to add a new movie to it. We plan to talk about Star Trek 6th, the Uniscovered Country, which is a very straightforward Cold War allegory. But this thinking about the end of history has me wondering if we shouldn't also do Star Trek First Contact, which is the second of the next generation movies and probably the best one. What happens in that one? But that's, yeah. First Contact, which is the first one with the big budget.

It looks terrific. But this is the one where the Borg go back in time to try to keep Star Trek. fleet from ever happening. And so the enterprise follows them back in time to just before Vulcan first contact with humanity, which is just before humanity develops the warp drive. And so the story is the crew of the enterprise trying to encourage Zephrm Cochran, who they know as the founder of the Federation, to actually create the warp drive or to finish his work on the warp drive, to make first contact happen and keep history on his path. But part of the story, part of the ideological conflict within the movie is that, you know, the, the enterprise crew, and this is Patrick Stewart, so, you know, urban, sophisticated Patrick Stewart shows up in, I think this is probably 21st century or 22nd century, what's left of the United States.

is like, you know, in our future, we're sophisticated, we don't have money, we don't have conflict, you know, et cetera, et cetera, but shows himself to be utterly ruthless and bloodthirsty in dealing with the Borg. And so it's sort of like you say that there's this end of history in your future, but you clearly are just like us. You clearly have the same instincts and passions and desires. And in this period where history hasn't ended, you were able to play themselves out on this on this field of battle this is why i never got star trek i was like what are they doing i mean what are they like that i think there's there's like some conservative critique of of star trek universe which is like it's a horrible totalitarian liberal society

um which i think is sort of dumb but it's kind of funny like it yeah i'm just like okay well this is this is a society well they do have wars they but and i guess discovery exploration of the universe is what human is the imagination of what humanity will do once we solve our problems here but I mean there is something to me always I mean I do like the Star Trek movie we're talking about there's something to me very antiseptic and I always was more of a Star Wars guy because of the world it presented was a little I guess people would say now grittier um and more it it I always found the Star Trek universe to be a little antiseptic, and maybe that's, you know, some echo of post-historical boredom

there, which is just like, they have a fucking solution for everything. You get sick. They, like, zap you with a thing. You know, you can understand every language. It's just like there's very few problems, you know? I mean, there's other alien races who they encounter and then they make peace with them eventually. They fight for a little while and they kind of work out to deal with them. But, yeah, I mean, I suppose as a vision, of the future, it could be a lot worse, but sometimes I'm just like, what are these people living for? What are they living for? I guess to, to find a new, to seek out new worlds or whatever, however it goes. But I mean, that's, I think a question asked by this movie. It's like,

what, what are, what is, what are our society is going to live for? And I think it's just like, well, we actually do have big, we do have big things to solve. We do have big problems to solve, but we lack the imagination or it's not that there aren't problems it's that we just don't believe in ourselves anymore i mean it's a stupid way of putting it but it's just like why did it take the cold war to or the world war two for that matter which i think i argue the cold war is kind of like trying to continue i've said this before trying to continue the world war two by other means is like why did it take these events to regulate our or organize our society and why why is it that nothing else is working like why are we spinning our wheels like some people

said oh the pandemic will be a great well it's horrible but like I think people envisioned pandemic as a big time of social cohesion where we would have to come together and or some people said Trump would be the wake-up call or and now or Biden's new program of social uh social remedies to the pandemic and the economic things but but I mean I don't think there's any consensus built about about like oh well we need to do a we need a bare minimum of consensus on these issues so society can sort of be organized and move forward like nothing seems to be able why is it I mean this is a question for our podcast in general why is it nothing has been able to replace the Cold War. And why are these movies so filled with nostalgia, even

in the midst of its, this movie is just like, well, these people are going to have nothing to live for. And it's not exactly right, but there is something to it. There's something to the fear. I mean, I don't think it's true that they would start to, you know, just regress into Stone Age conflict, but I can see what they're trying to get at. I mean, maybe it's just so simple as that the Cold War provided an actual antagonist, you know? Like the Cold War, by way, I'll make this point by way of analogy. There was anti-slavery sentiment and organization and energy, you know, going back to the revolutionary period.

It wasn't as strong as it would become, but it was there. It was strong enough to both encourage enslaved people to make suit for their freedom. and to push the legislatures kind of under pressure from that energy to begin gradual emancipation. It was strong enough that, you know, former an ex-president, James Madison became, you know, was the president of the American Colonization Society, which, you know, sending all the black people away is a horrible solution, but it reflected at least what was the kind of the centrist anti-slavery opinion in American society. And you have this anti-slavery energy, you have respectable anti-slavery politics in the 1820s and in the 1830s.

But that anti-slavery politics, and with abolition on the fringes, right, abolition is like the fringe position. That abolition does not become a more mainstream position until the idea of the slave power emerges in the 1840s and the 1850s, that the ability to basically create like a personification of the political power, political and economic power. of slavery and of enslavers ends up being this really powerful political tool for generating an anti-slavery, a mass anti-slavery politics as opposed to an elite one. So the slave power is the thing you hear again and again, especially in the 1850s. I think in today's

verbiage, you call it a conspiracy theory, but it was a powerful political organizing tool. And I wonder if the Cold War, if, you know, communism, which existed before the Cold War, but didn't organize American society in the same way, needed an actual personification in the form of the Soviet Union to be able to do that kind of political work. And if part of, I mean, if part of the issue for those who want to recreate that dynamic is that there just isn't, there isn't that, right? like I mean I guess there was a suburb bin Laden but like he was a guy in a cave you know they had a real trouble trying to turn it into some kind of worldwide threat they had to kind of they kind of kind of call together like the axis of evil was just like a lot of places that didn't really have that much to do with each other and try to make yeah they had trouble okay yeah that's really interesting yeah I think I talk about this sometimes when I'm talking about

like what the meeting of all this election fraud stuff for the republic i think the right wingers are trying to create these kind of political myths that you're talking about domestically they're like the liberals are like a big evil borg that we need to defeat and they're like a little better at that form of imagination than liberals and leftists are at this point um yeah yeah i mean I mean, wokeness, quote unquote, wokeness serves the same function of as slave power. The difference being that slave power was like a real thing.

Right. Yeah. Exactly. They want to, they want to find, and they've, you know, to some degree succeeded to find these,

like, these, these, um, quilting point sort of labels that try to bring everything together. It's like everything that bugs you about liberals. We're going to name that. Um,

so they're a little better. like kind of creating these ideological conflicts than then then liberals are leftists are which which i mean i don't think it's the worst thing because usually like when liberals or leftists try to do this like there's quickly a critical process by which people are like well that's not a that's not a good label because it's actually leaving this out and you know like that's not really accurate and you know that's there is there is some kind of things like that that happen on the left which becomes sort caricatural labels but are you know kind of working frameworks for thinking about politics um but it seems like the right does it a lot better and they've just done it domestically now which is just like

you know basically you know there is this sort of evil liberalism woke power which is being you know put through the corporations and the media and it's brainwashing and et cetera, et cetera, which is sort of like draws on Cold War imagery, um, anti-communist imagery. Um, but yeah, like it's just our society as a whole has not acceded. I think, okay, I think liberals kind of made a stab at this with Russia gate, where basically the idea was, well, Russia, we've always disliked them. And we're going to make, Trump, I mean, not to say I don't believe some of this, but I'm just saying, let's just bracket it for a moment and just talk it purely in the realm of political imagination

in the way they see. So we're not, the podcast is not going to have an official statement on whether the P tape is real? Yes, no. Not, not officially. But, but I think that the desire there, the fantasy ideological desire there was to be like, okay, we're going to make, we're going to make Trumpism something foreign, and we're going to make it associated with this sort of authoritarian criminal regime that's very scary, and it's part of their evil plan to take over the world. And, you know, it's, uh, I understood where they were trying to go with this, with this messaging and this, and this imagery, um, and what, where this imaginative world was heading but it did not exactly have the same resonance for some reason you know people kind of

were found it far-fetched you know for some good reasons and and i think it just like for all the factual things about it for instance like i think that they're you know they were trying to get him elected i don't know how much contact they had in reverse but for all the factual things about it just did not capture people's imaginations that broadly. It did for a brief period of time, but it kind of broke down. So this, this, you know, desire to turn Trump into this espionage thriller type plot against the United States wasn't all that successful. But I think that the reverse, which is to turn, weirdly, which is even less plausible, to turn Biden into, like, the spearhead of some kind of neo-communist woke, I don't know what,

is, seems to, you know, seems to convince a bunch of people, like, okay, the election was stolen, this is the beginning of some kind of left-wing takeover of the United States, which is not terribly plausible, but it seems, for some reason, the imagination of people is more fired by that sort of stuff. I don't know what it is that just and I think there are liberals who are like frustrated by this and try like and and this is like where all this like liberal patriotism or left wing patriotism stuff is about is just like people like being like why don't you just why don't you just believe in this like we need something we need something let's just get on board this is good enough this is good enough but that's not like if you have to argue and like

If you're upset that people aren't finding it persuasive, it's not persuasive. Like, these things work on, these work on, these things don't work on the level. I mean, I think arguments do fuel them, but they work on a, on a different level than argument. They work on a level of passion. They work on the level of, of, of, I mean, the, uh, I was just thinking about how there's that, like, kind of the, those folks who want to blame wokeness on Kant or whatever. And I'm just thinking of, you know, Hume, like, you know, reason must be the slave of passions, meaning not that reason doesn't matter, but that passions are what kind of animate our imagination, passions are what animate us. And reason enters the picture in service of that. We rationalize our passions. We don't generate them through reason and follow them that way.

Yeah, we have an imaginative conceptions of the world. We think in terms of concrete images. And then, But, yeah, what were you going to say? I was just going to say just back to sort of this, the struggle to create some sort of new totalizing ideological conflict is that it, I think the war against wokeness or whatever, all of that stuff is a admission that that's failed in terms of in terms of unifying the entire society against an international or foreign adversary, right? That like, you know, Islamist fascism didn't work. China doesn't really seem to be work. But those energy still exists. There's still among some segment of the American population. So is a desire to have a big ideological foe.

And so it's just been turned inward. And now the ideological foe is the sort of phantom of a dominant, powerful left out to brainwash your children to, you know, love Ivermex, Kendi and hate their skin. But that's, it's sort of like it's been, it's been like displaced into domestic politics. And that in itself becomes a concession, right? That we weren't actually able to reconstruct kind of like a Cold War style international conflict. And so now we're going to bring the Cold War home, so to speak. Yeah. And I think it's like we need to create a discipline.

We need to create a new, we need to. enforce ideological discipline in the United States in order to face our foes abroad now and it's also like no one says it used to be it used to be that like well they still do this because they do this cultural Marxism thing where like the enemy comes from abroad and is like an alien force within the nation but now it's like like other countries are like wokeness comes from America and American conservatives are like yeah we saw like you know it's like this is coming from America and it's a big problem you know it's not like during the civil rights movement in before there was lots of efforts to kind of red bait about civil rights

leaders and the idea was that you know the Soviet Union was mind controlling blacks or whatever crazy idea or black leaders and they were actually working for the Soviet Union but the threat was coming and everything would have been fine if it wasn't for the communists right the problems weren't real the communists were bringing them from abroad but now like there's a weird recognition there is an internal social conflicts but they're because of some they're because of some singular something that happened that's that's what every time you have a conversation about this like obviously there are a lot of social changes going on there are a lot of different ways we think of talk about things but when you get into fights with this and you're like yeah but what are you

actually talking about they say well something has happened something has happened like they get very angry and they're frustrated like you're denying that something has happened and it's just like yeah because you're kind of taking you want to find a singular point at which all these things meet a singular you know nexus where these all these threads make sense um and i'm just like well there's a lot of stuff going on but i don't know if it's a single a single process but there's an insistence it must be a single process it must be a single process and I don't know if it I think the single process might be the lack of a single process you know like the lack of the lack of a of a unifying notion of what gives meaning to our lives or whatever is very frustrating and then when things

appear to change you know it becomes quick to be like there must be some single malevolent agency, whether it's an abstract process, like wokeness or a concrete enemy, um, that has to embody that. And, you know, I think it's just like, yeah, I think as you were saying, a lot of this stuff is just like, okay, let's, it's returning it to the world of the movies right now. This officer would not have become, have played a prank on his Russian counterpart. He would have become obsessed with wokeness. probably at his old age

and the wokening of the military and being like well this is sucking our fighting spirit which is just like I'll just say there's a little bit of that in this movie I mean I maybe I noticed this oh with his black CEO or executive officer

with all the black soldiers I don't know if you noticed this but sort of we've talked about this before just being for a military family but sort of I just immediately noticed how most of the service people in this movie are black right yeah his he's his um his his his he has a kind of tense relationship with his black executive officer who's a current another colonel lower ranking and who's a west point graduate

and sort of like i think is from a um you know a rich is portrayed as being from like a rich black family um yeah and he he it doesn't openly like break into racial stuff but that guy is like look, I believe in following military regulations, and the other guy just sort of treats him with contempt as being sort of a soft product of, you know, West Point and not a real soldier. But yeah, there is, like, I noticed that, too. Like, the movie doesn't exactly, like, poke on that racial subtext, but it's sort of there.

Because, like, the model officer who's, like, his replacement is black. And from, like, the new black bourgeoisie. Yeah, if this movie had a stronger script, like, you could easily imagine that actually being a real part of the narrative of this film. Well, they do that in Crimson Tide, which is a much better movie. Yeah. Yeah. I think with that said, we can kind of wrap up and get to our final thoughts. So final thoughts, John, last thoughts.

You don't need to see this movie if you don't want to unless you want to. I mean, if it's, it's a missable movie. I mean, like, if you want to be super completionist and get a real sense of this time, like we are like kind of doing a historical project, it's, there's, there's things that are interesting in it, but it wasn't, of all the movies we watched, this is the least so far, to me, the least entertained. I agree. We've done six episodes of this podcast so far.

This is the sixth episode. And this is my least favorite of these movies. I wasn't a big fan of No Way Out. but it was at least seedy and sleazy. It was, like, interesting in that sense. But this, this, again, it's like, it's a, it's a TV movie. You would watch it, you know, you're bored on Saturday afternoon, and you have other stuff to do.

So you put this on, and you look back, you see some explosions. You look back a couple times, and that's pretty much it's pretty forgettable. That, having said that, I do think, John, that your connection of this movie and of its themes to the end of history, I say, It's really interesting and revealing and fruitful. And so in that sense, I think this is a worthwhile movie, just as you said, to get a sense of the vibe and the feel and of some of the fears and anxieties that were animating Americans at the end of the Cold War. And animating in particular, since Frankenheimer is an older director, a generation of Americans who grew up during the Cold War, right? whose formative political and personal experiences happened during the Cold War and are themselves trying to figure out what comes next after all of this.

There's a subordinate point to make here that I won't go into too much, but to say that it might have been, you know, it was probably, it might have been a stroke of good luck that the president of the United States at this point was someone whose political memories and who's, formative experiences were with the Second World War and in the Depression versus the Cold War, who had a sense of the time before. But we can talk about that for another movie at a later date. That is our show this week. If you are not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, and Google Podcasts, and wherever else podcast are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review. It does help people find

the show. A lot of you have left reviews and ratings. We really appreciate it. So please continue doing that. You can reach out to both of us on Twitter. I am at Jay Bowie. John, you are. I'm at Lionel underscore trolling. We also have a Twitter feed for this show, which is not getting a ton of use right now. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do with it, but it exists. It is just at Unclear Pod. Episodes come out every other Friday, late Thursday night, and so we will see you two weeks after this episode with another show and another movie. And every time I do this, I have to go look up what the next movie is going to be. And the next movie is...

Is it the Russia House? Is it finally the Russia? It is not the Russia House. We have a few more before that. this one is by Dawn's early light directed by

a man named Jack Shoulder I have no idea who this is and starring Powers Booth and James Earl Jones and

Martin Landau so I have no idea what this movie is about this is this is going to be an interesting

one I've never heard of this so that's our next film by Dawn's Early Light and that's

be in two weeks. For John Gans, I am Jamal Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. We will see you next time. I don't know.