Do You Wish Philip K. Dick Was Still Around To Write About Señor Trumpanzee? So Does Alan Grayson

Robert Reich's video about the 7 signs of tyranny appears to be tailor-made to explain the first six months of Trumpism. Newsweek ran an OpEd by Reich putting it into some kind of context this week:

It seems an eternity ago but it was only last Tuesday night when Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress and stuck to the teleprompter without going off the deep end-- eliciting rapturous praise from the media.

“Donald Trump at his most presidential,“gushed NBC; “a recitation of hopes and dreams for the nation,” oozed NPR; “the most presidential speech Mr. Trump has ever given-- delivered at precisely the moment he needed to project sobriety, seriousness of purpose and self-discipline,” raved the New York Times; “he did something tonight that you cannot take away from him. He became president of the United States,” rhapsodized CNN’s Van Jones.

The bar was so low that all Trump needed to do was not sound nuts and he was “presidential.”

But that all ended Saturday morning when the old Trump-- the “birther,” the hatemonger, the thin-skinned paranoid, the liar, the reckless ranter, the vindictive narcissist, the whack-o conman-- reemerged in a series of unprecedented and unverified accusations about his predecessor.

In truth, the old Trump was there all along, and he will always be there. He’s unhinged and dangerous. The sooner congressional Republicans accept this, and take action to remove him-- whether through impeachment or the 25th Amendment-- the better for all of us.

Reich used the word "conman" to describe Trump. Alan Grayson likened him to "a crap artist," namely a Philip K. Dick character, in an e-mail to his supporters yesterday.

Does Donald Trump actually believe all the stupid things he says?

My favorite author is Philip K. Dick, and I think that Dick can shed some light on this. Lots of Dick’s work has been made into science fiction blockbuster movies:

Blade Runner, Total Recall, Screamers, Impostor, Minority Report, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, Next, and Radio Free Albemuth.

Philip Dick’s Man in the High Castle is Amazon’s most popular original show, and Hollywood is putting the finishing touches on Blade Runner 2049, the Blade Runner sequel.

Philip Dick also wrote lots of “straight” fiction, not science fiction. It was not well-received. Every single one of Dick’s “straight” novels was rejected for publication during his lifetime, except one. The only one that saw the light of day while Dick himself saw the light of day was called Confessions of a Crap Artist.

Jack Isidore, the soi-disant crap artist in Confessions of a Crap Artist, actually isn’t such a bad person. He simply is incapable of distinguishing between fact and fiction. His BS meter is permanently broken. He doesn’t know what passes the smell test; he has no nose for it. He wasn’t born yesterday, he was born like an hour ago. Think of him as Captain Credulity.

Because he is the way he is, there is a very good chance that whatever Jack Isidore tells you is wrong. And everyone in his life knows it.

The saddest thing is that Jack himself has no idea that he’s such a fool. He believes whatever is coming out of his mouth, true or false. Even though no one else does. Everyone else in his life has to wrestle with the truth, but Jack is blissfully excused from that burden.

Is he a liar? Not exactly. The French have a term for someone like this: barjo. In fact, the one Dick novel deemed worthy of being made into a French film was this one, entitled Confessions d’un Barjo.

Philip Dick foresaw that we might one day have a simulacrum as President (The Mold of Yancy, The Penultimate Truth), but he failed to predict that we would have a crap artist as President.

With Jack Isidore in mind, I don’t think that you can depict “President” Trump as the proverbial turd-in-the-punchbowl like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, who force-fed nonsense to Trump (and millions of other marks) for decades, like geese soon to be pate de fois gras. Look at O’Reilly when he’s conveying some huge whopper. He has a “tell.” A little smile plays over his lips. He knows when he’s flinging cow pies at you.

And Trump? Maybe not. This is a man whose first political act was to take out a full-page ad in the New York Daily News demanding the execution of the “Central Park Five,” five men charged with the assault and rape of a Central Park jogger, all of whom were completely exonerated when the real attacker confessed and his DNA matched what was found at the crime scene. (Note to Donald: the Constitution prohibits the death penalty for all crimes other than first-degree murder and treason, but that’s beside the point. The point is that you fell for it.)

Remember that Trump first came to national political attention by arguing incessantly (and hiring investigators to try to prove) that President Obama was born in Kenya, and therefore ineligible to be President. As if those two different birth announcements in Honolulu newspapers as well as Daddy Obama’s contemporaneous immigration file (not to mention the Obama birth certificate), meant nothing. [Footnote: One of my relatives, a Fox News addict, recently tried to convince me that Obama was born in Kenya. I mentioned the birth announcements. With not even a hint of irony, she warned me, “don’t believe everything you hear.”]

So, does it come as any surprise that since the election, Trump claimed to have won the biggest Presidential landslide in recent history? (As Trump would say, “WRONG!”) That the turnout for his inauguration was the largest ever? WRONG! That the US murder rate is the highest that it’s been in 47 years? WRONG! That there was a recent fatal terrorist attack in Sweden? WRONG! That President Obama tapped Trump’s phones? WRONG!

Yet these are all things that Philip Dick’s Jack Isidore would have said-- and would have believed.

It’s remarkable that someone so dupable (is that a word?) could function successfully in business. On the other hand, Trump’s companies did go bankrupt four times, so Trump’s lenders must have been pretty dupable, too.

It’s a question that comes up again and again when you try to judge some malignant political figure: Is he evil, or just stupid?

Maybe it just doesn’t matter that much. Maybe it’s just as bad to have a fool in a position of power as it is to have a liar. Time will tell.

Either way, unless we can figure out a way to send the Prevaricator-in-Chief back to Mar-a-Lago more quickly, there will be lots of mistakes to be made in the next four years. Think of the Trump Administration as the “Reign of Error."

If Hillary Or Cruz Blocks Bernie's Path Revolution, Maybe The Musical Way Will Work-- Phil K. Dick's Radio Free Albemuth

Any Philip K. Dick fans in the house? You know, the San Francisco guy whose work is categorized as science fiction while much of it is about the evils of monopolies and tyrannies. Among his 44 novels and 121 short stories, The Man in the High Castle won him a Hugo Award for best novel in 1963 although he's probably best known for the books and stories that were made into movies, like Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall (We Can Remember It For You Wholesale), Minority Report, Imposter, Screamers (Second Variety), The Adjustment Bureau, The Scanner Darkly), Paycheck and more recently (2010), Radio Free Albemuth, a dystopian alternative history novel he wrote in 1976 but which wasn't published 1985, until after his death (1982).

The book looks into the future and sees (aside from an heroic music industry)... Ted Cruz, an amalgam of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon, who he names Ferris F. Fremont (numerologically 666), an authoritarian/fascistic Republican. Fremont, like Cruz, is a paranoid and opportunistic right-wing populist who is adept at working up the populace with conspiracy theories involving threats to society's safety. And that's the end of the Bill of Rights.

The low-budget indie film, which had a very limited release in 2010/2011-- but is currently streaming on Amazon-- stars Jonathan Scarfe, Shea Whigham (who plays Philip K. Dick) and Alanis Morissette. Predictably, the reviews were mediocre, though Richard Kuipers, writing for Variety, was less brutal than most of the corporate media.

Set in a quasi-Fascist alternative U.S. of the 1980s, “Radio Free Albemuth” is an engrossing adaptation of the same-named novel by Philip K. Dick. Produced on a much more modest scale than previous Dick interpretations such as “Minority Report,” this well-performed paranoia piece about a music exec rebelling against the state after receiving messages from an alien intelligence should connect strongly with Dick’s fanbase and attract upscale auds seeking sci-fi with political and philosophical substance. John Alan Simon’s helming debut, which hasn’t yet secured Stateside distribution, could prosper in niche situations if correctly marketed. Hefty worldwide ancillary action is assured.

Posthumously published in 1985, the source material is among Dick’s most autobiographical works. Very faithful to the novel’s detailed plot and complex meditations on the interplay of earthly realities, spiritual beliefs and otherworldly powers determining the protag’s destiny, Simon’s screenplay is inevitably talky but consistently absorbing.

Setting is Berkeley, Calif., during the fourth term of President Fremont (Scott Wilson). A scaremonger who has withdrawn civil liberties and imposed Draconian internal security measures, Fremont claims the U.S. is under threat from “Aramchek,” a subversive organization attempting to install “a Godless dictatorship.”

The story revolves around Dick’s two alter egos: narrator and audience conduit Phil (Shea Whigham, Boardwalk Empire), a successful sci-fi author; and Phil’s best friend, Nick Brady (Jonathan Scarfe), a record-store employee who is experiencing trippy dreams of his future self in another universe. (The character of Nick is the manifestation of identity-transforming visions Dick claimed to have experienced in 1974.)

Acting on messages received in a dream, Nick impulsively relocates to Los Angeles, with his understanding wife, Rachel (Katheryn Winnick), and is soon offered a top job with a major music label. Any lingering doubts Nick has about a higher intelligence guiding and protecting him are erased when he meets Sylvia Aramchek (pop diva Alanis Morissette), a singer in remission from cancer who has received transmissions similar to Nick. The upshot is Nick’s decision to produce a catchy pop song with subliminal lyrics that will inspire an oppressed population to rise up against Fremont.

With level-headed Phil gradually coming to understand the how and why of Nick’s radical metamorphosis, the pic operates successfully as a study of enlightenment and a straight-ahead conspiracy thriller. Although the discussions about the alien satellite communicating with Nick and Sylvia are a tad lumpy in spots, the narrative delivers satisfying intrigue and suspense, making the threat posed by Vivian Kaplan (Hanna Hall), a smarmy young agent working for “Friends of the American People,” a creepy state-sponsored organization, seem very real.

Gritty HD lensing and imaginative, old-fashioned-in-a-good-way effects showing the alternate world surrounding Nick and Sylvia. A terrific score by Canadian composer Ralph Grierson and British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock is the jewel in a first-class tech package.

Robyn Hitchcock put together the soundtrack and included a long-time favorite song of mine, "I Wanna Destroy You," by the Soft Boys, the band he used to be in:

Orwell Updated-- In An Infiniti Q50 TV Ad?

Or maybe it was Aldous Huxley's 1931 dystopian novel, Brave New World that the creators of Infinity's new television ad for the Q50 ("Factory of Life") based the new ad on. The blue chip advertising company, TBWA\CHIAT\DAY (part of the edgy and "disruptive" Omnicom marketing group) was also responsible for Apple's classic "1984" campaign for the newly introduced Macintosh (below) thirty years ago! That ad was conceived of by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas and Lee Clow at Chiat/Day, in Venice, California and directed by Ridley Scott, who had just directed Blade Runner, based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, the year before.

Lee Clow, formerly Chief Creative Officer of TBWA/Worldwide, is now Chairman and Global Director. Advertising Age says he's the advertising industry's "art director guru. With his low-key, casual manner belying his hard-work ethic, the bearded adman-in-flip-flops' leadership style has brought TBWA/Chiat/Day virtually every national and international award and honor." Clow earned a 2-year degree from a community college, Santa Monica. He's obviously read 1984 and seen Blade Runner. I have no idea if he's ever heard of Huxley's Brave New World, but I'd bet he has and that the team that did the Infiniti ad has as well.

Huxley, who was living in Mussolini's fascist Italy when he wrote the book (set in London in the year 2540), has told people he was influenced by H.G. Wells' A Modern Utopia and Men Like Gods, although there is some controversy over whether or not Huxley also drew from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. Fascism, corporate tyranny, behavioral conditioning and America's growing role in the world are all interwoven into the novel. He's not a fan of fascist, anti-Semitic American car manufacturer Henry Ford. Neil Postman contrasted the world's of Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Postman added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

Special Monday afternoon DWT bonus: my favorite song by The Feelies: