july/august 2018

Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup. It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place. If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect.

The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote. People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means. Given the opportunity, they will act. They are acting already.

Who or what will safeguard our constitutional order is not apparent today. It is not even apparent who will try. Democrats, big and small D, are not behaving as if they believe the threat is real. Some of them, including President Joe Biden, have taken passing rhetorical notice, but their attention wanders. They are making a grievous mistake.

For most fully vaccinated people, a breakthrough coronavirus infection will not ruin their health. It will, however, assuming that they follow all the relevant guidelines, ruin at least a week of their life.

That very frustrating week began for Joe Russell on November 11, the day he found out he’d tested positive for the virus, just one month after getting a Pfizer booster, and about five or six days after he’d first felt an annoying tickle in his throat. Russell, a 35-year-old hospital-supply technician in Minnesota, dutifully cloistered himself in his basement, far from his fully vaccinated wife and his fully unvaccinated 2-year-old son, and phoned in sick to work. He stayed there through the 15th—the requisite 10 days past his symptoms’ start. Then, fearful of passing the pathogen to his family, he tacked on one more day, before venturing upstairs on the 17th, still in a mask.

At the end of last year, I pondered whether the pandemic was irrevocably changing cinema or merely interrupting it; whether the medium would soon return to being a public, collective experience or overwhelmingly remain an at-home event. With another year gone, I still don’t know for sure. In 2021, we’ve seen the resumption of blockbusters showing at multiplexes, but as with so many aspects of life, a return to “normal” still feels distant, and many people aren’t attending theaters regularly.

As such, this has been an odd year for films. Some of my favorite works of 2021 have yet to be released, while others have had limited runs to qualify for awards contention and will roll out widely in the coming months. But cinema still has the power to excite and amaze, no matter the size of the screen. New films from around the world have ranked among the most enthralling viewing experiences I’ve had in my life. Even as we continue to rethink the idea of what a movie is, this year has affirmed for me the conviction that movies aren’t going anywhere.

Every day, as dawn’s rosy fingers reach through my window, I arise and check in with Twitter, to see what fresh hell awaits. Generally, by about 6:30, I’ve been made furious by the outrage du jour. But recently, I experienced more of a sense of bemusement than ire, as I took in Deadline’s headline: “Mel Gibson in Talks to Direct Lethal Weapon 5.”

Gibson is a well-known Jew-hater (anti-Semite is too mild). His prejudices are well documented. So my question is, what does a guy have to do these days to get put on Hollywood’s no-fly list? I’m a character actor. I tend to take the jobs that come my way. But—and this hurts to write—you couldn’t pay me enough to work with Mel Gibson.

Now, I love the Lethal Weapon movies (at least the first few). And Danny Glover’s a gem. But Gibson? Yes, he’s a talented man. Many horrible people produce wonderful art. Put me down as an ardent fan of Roald Dahl, Pablo Picasso, and Edith Wharton; can’t get enough of what they’re selling. But these three had the good taste to die. That makes it a lot easier to enjoy their output. Gibson lives. And Tinseltown need not employ him further.

At the bleakest moment in the pandemic, when you felt your most stressed, most scared, least centered, you probably heard some variation of the phrase This is really hard. Maybe you read it; maybe your manager said it to you; maybe you said it to yourself. But that’s the truth: Our nearly two years of living through a pandemic have been hard. And like everything else in the United States, that difficulty has not been evenly distributed. It has been hardest for those on the front lines, those afraid of how customers will react to their requests to put on a mask, those out of work or in constant fear of the way COVID variants are whipping through their community. It has been hard, in different ways, for those attempting to work and supervise school from home, for those in complete isolation, for those terrified of being around other people. It is fucking hard, in so many intersecting and unfair ways.