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storytime-reviews · 7 years ago

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Teen Wolf Review-Face to Faceless and Pressure Test

I actually watched these two episodes in the wrong order because I hadn’t realised that two episodes came out that same day, and so I accidentally watched Pressure Test first. Of course, I realised afterwards my mistake, and suddenly it made sense why the episode had felt out of place. There was a lot to really enjoy about each episode, and I can’t wait to see how the pack brings the fight to the hunters. Because of course Scott McCall would never run. I’ve also really enjoyed Theo’s addition to the team, even though I previously did not want him to come back to the show. But now I find that I’m enjoying the antagonistic element that he brings to the show. I think it’s also important to mention that even with Theo’s lack of compassion, he does consider taking the kids to Scott, who he knows will help them.

But what I really loved about these two episodes is how the pack stands strong together, against the hatred directed at them. In Face to Faceless, Liam, Mason and Corey work together brilliantly until almost the very end, whilst Scott, Lydia and Malia stand strong against the hunters who aimed to kill Scott as he showed up alone. They tried so hard to trap Scott by the implication of a negotiation because Scott is simply a good person, and yet they failed, because Malia refused to let him go it alone. Not to mention, previous to this, I absolutely loved Lydia putting on all of the power moves over the counsellor! I also love that this showdown with the hunters is also interspersed with scenes of Liam being beaten up. This clever directing of action emphasises the utter strength and team work of this pack, and the absolute willpower to get through literally anything. It’s significant precisely because they are going to face their toughest challenges yet, with everyone now out to get them. In Pressure Test, the team is stuck together in the Sheriff’s Station whilst the hunters wait outside ready to kill the two werewolves that escaped them. Again, even in their fear, the team works together to find a peaceful solution for everyone.

Identity

The faceless monster causing fear is no longer restricted to the morgue, with Parrish seeing the monster show up at the sheriff’s station. It’s clear that Chris and Melissa aren’t the only ones affected by this monster, for Parrish is extremely terrified by it. Luckily however, the Sheriff has been speaking to Melissa, and he not only believes Parrish, he thinks he knows what it is. Of course, the others don’t really believe that the body could have escaped, being locked in, but obviously this is the case. I honestly would’ve been more shocked if it was still in the morgue! Towards the end of the episode, during the showdown between the hunters and the pack, the faceless monster shows up, instilling fear in the hunters. But Lydia knows what she’s doing, and specifically brought Parrish with them for this reason, as he burns the monster. But this is hardly going to be the end of the monster. In Pressure Test, Deaton embraces the absolute terror in Eichen House in order to figure out what exactly this monster is, whilst Corey and Mason also find themselves unable to stop investigating it. All together, they are able to decipher that it is a creature with two faces, that feeds on fear, that when the two individuals come together it will be even more powerful. At least now they have some idea what they are up against.

Running

Running is a consistent theme throughout these two episodes. Chris desperately tries to convince Melissa to tell Scott and the others to run from Beacon Hills. He knows his own father, and after meeting him as Scott’s messenger earlier in the episode, it’s quite clear to him that Gerard will not stop until every single supernatural creature has been killed (I am so with Malia that Chris should’ve killed Gerard ages ago). I imagine also that some of Chris’ desperation comes not only from how much he has come to care for Scott, but also from what Scott meant to Allison. On some level, I believe that Chris sees some of Allison in Scott, and he couldn’t bear to have this connection to Allison destroyed. After all, Allison’s declaration that as hunters ‘we protect those who cannot protect themselves’ is clearly a belief that Scott has always followed as True Alpha. But Melissa won’t tell her son to run, and I suppose this is where Scott gets his indomitable spirit from. After all, Melissa has always counselled him on being his own anchor, and being a good leader, it would be no surprise that Scott’s refusal to leave is something that Melissa passed onto him.

I must admit that I actually fell for them running towards the end of Pressure Test, although perhaps I would’ve seen things differently if I’d actually watched the episodes in their proper order. I didn’t expect that they would stay away from Beacon Hills for good however, but of course it is much more in character for Scott and his pack to stay and fight. The writing choices make complete sense in this situation, for even after Scott’s father negotiated this ‘peace’ deal between them and the hunters, there is no way in which they could hand over the town to the hunters so easily. Whilst it’s significant that the pack chooses to defy these negotiations, it is also completely within their nature. Just as Scott, Lydia and Maria couldn’t leave Beacon Hills at the beginning of season 6B when it became clear that something sinister was happening in the town, they cannot leave now whilst others are in danger and the hunters basically have free rein. It’s not even just about the hunters, but also the faceless monster that is terrorising them all. Because there is no way that it’s terror would end with the hunters chasing the supernaturals out of town. I honestly can’t wait for the pack to defeat this monster and show everyone in town just exactly who they are, and how they have been fighting for everyone else this whole time.

Sad Excuses

To be quite honest, I couldn't care less about this new hunter’s pathetic sob story as to why she’s suddenly murdering innocents. La Bête did a lot of damage and killed a lot of people, and Scott and his pack are literally the reason why the creature was able to be stopped. Her excuse is terrible, particularly because she knew that Scott and the others were fighting this creature, fighting for people who cannot protect themselves, as Allison would say. But of course, let’s blame the teenagers for not being able to save literally every person in town from terrible monsters, it’s not like they didn’t have enough on their plates to deal with, and the guilt they feel when they cannot protect everyone is so real. Sure, maybe they made a mistake in not searching for any survivors, but can you blame them for thinking that la Bête killed everyone, and that they had a monster to hunt down? They're literally doing their best, they have a lot of terrifying creatures to deal with and to protect the town from, and they cannot always win. It’s actually the most pathetic excuse to turn against innocent supernaturals like Scott and his pack, and is even worse given that they know how much these teenagers have fought for everyone. I literally do not care about any of their sob stories, it just makes me hate them even more.

Tormenting Innocents

The actions of these hunters are appalling, particularly because they are tormenting innocent people, and encouraging others to perpetuate their brand of hate as well. We see this in Face to Faceless with werewolf Quinn being cornered by multiple hunters in the middle of the night (and it was a pretty creepy picture, what with several men essentially backing a lone young woman into a corner in the middle of the night). These two episodes simply emphasise that these hunters are terrorising innocent people, not only with this example, but also the treatment of Liam in the same episode, as well as the two teenage werewolves from Satomi’s pack in Pressure Test.

Liam is afraid of going to school, and has to be literally dragged out of bed by Scott, who makes him attend. He’s worried about how people will treat him after seeing him differently in the episode last week, but also part of his fear is that he believes he was responsible for the deaths of Lori and Brett. But something that Liam says to Scott in his bedroom really stands out, that these people ‘hate us for saving them’. Because that’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? These school children, these hunters, the entire town hates all of these teenagers with supernatural abilities, regardless of who they are and what they have done. Adults are literally willing to murder them, even though they are innocent, even though this whole time they have been trying to protect everyone from every manner of creature that attempts to destroy them. That’s what makes this even more distressing, because these teenagers have literally put their lives on the line over and over again to save people they barely even know. They have lost friends because of it. And yet, they are treated not even like criminals, but like a crippling disease that needs to be wiped out.

Whilst Mason and Corey try to protect Liam at school, they can only do so for so long. Corey uses his invisibility to determine what the others know about Liam and what rumours are spreading about him, and unfortunately, it is not good news. Whilst it does seem to stress out Liam, there are also positives in that it means Liam knows exactly what is going on, there is no fear of the unknown, which can oftentimes be even worse. Furthermore, Liam uses this knowledge that Nolan and Gabe are going to attempt to make him shift in front of everyone to his advantage when they beat him up, ensuring that they don’t achieve their goal. Liam is absolutely terrified, not only does he have to escape into the counsellor’s office at one point (at which time he realises that she is the new hunter), but also attempts to use Corey’s invisibility in order to get out school before Nolan and Gabe can find him. Unfortunately, they are unsuccessful, as Nolan spreads some powder over Mason and therefore Corey and Liam also, which makes them visible.

At this point, Nolan and Gabe drag Liam into an empty classroom, as other students follow in order to watch the fight. As the Gabe and Nolan beat him up, the other students watch and do nothing, holding Mason and Corey back so that they cannot help Liam. Even the science teacher doesn’t help Liam, instead saying it’s best to let them figure it out, which is obviously a disgusting thing to say, as an adult, but particularly as a teacher. I don’t care if she's feeling a bit of fear, that fear should be overridden by her duty of care. But Liam is incredible in this moment. He constantly fights against himself to retain control, to ensure that they will not make him break, that he will not give himself away. He will not provide these other two students with more ammunition to use against him and the rest of the pack. This is even more significant given his current anger issues and difficulty in controlling himself, which emphasises even further how successful he is. When it truly mattered, Liam contained all of that anger. But Mason suggests later on that part of what helped Liam in this is that he genuinely felt that he deserved it, that he was responsible for the deaths of Brett and Lori, and I can see how these thoughts would perhaps influence the situation. At the end of the day, the only one that comes to Liam’s rescue is Coach Finstock, who is absolutely disgusted with the behaviour of the other kids, and I really hope that we get to see this play out in later episodes.

Morals of the Moment

The current morals (or lack thereof) exhibited by various characters on this show at the moment is completely messed up. The hunters are essentially acting are a mob prepared to murder two innocent teenagers simply because they are afraid and murderous. Not only that, these adults are literally grooming teenagers to become just like them, we see Gabe shooting an arrow with them, and Nolan being prepped to actually follow through and kill people. The fear these teenagers have is being utilised by these adults in order to get them to join their cause and replicate their disturbing views. I will however note at this stage that Nolan and Gabe are clearly old enough to know better than to do something like beat Liam up and I’m not shifting the responsibility for their actions away from them, however it is also the case that actual adults are grooming them to be hunters also.

Pressure Test is a tense episode, full of suspenseful scenes which are particularly emphasised through the introduction of a time limit. But it’s also super disturbing in terms of the way that these adults are completely ready to murder two teenagers whose friends were murdered by these same adults. But I also don’t quite agree with how the Sheriff and Scott handle the morality of the situation at times. Because from my point of view, those hunters that the teenagers killed completely deserved it. I honestly don’t care that they killed these hunters, because these hunters were not innocent. These hunters murdered the rest of their pack, and I believe that these teenagers were completely in the right to protect themselves in this manner. And I'm not going to budge on this point. At the end of the day, the Sheriff is right and this is war, and as much as Scott doesn’t want anyone to die, the fact of the matter is that people will die.

#teen wolf #face to faceless #pressure test #scott mccall #liam dunbar #lydia martin #malia tate #chris argent #melissa mccall #gerard argent #sheriff stilinski #theo raeken #mason hewitt #corey bryant #alan deaton #tv review

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trendingnewsb · 7 years ago

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The GOP Is No Longer A ‘Conservative’ Party

To most Americans, conservative is interchangeable with Republican Party. After all, the GOP has usually been the more conservative side of a two-party system for a century. We also tend to understand who a conservative is based on the root of the word: someone who is cautious and respects the status quo, or, put more strongly, someone who is resistant to change.

But the term has philosophical roots, too, separate from the party. Political parties are fundraising organizations attached to a policy platform. Over time, platforms change. The Republican Party has been around more than 160 years and has changed directions many times, as has the Democratic Party. At its founding, the GOP was abolitionist (a radical position at the time), pro-Union (that is, for big government over states rights) and for the expansion of individual rights. The GOP became firmly conservative only in the 20th century.

From a European perspective, however, both U.S. parties have been conservative since World War II (that is, both are on the right end of the spectrum of most modern parliamentary democracies), and at the same time, both parties have always been liberal, as inheritors of Enlightenment notions of citizens rights, individual liberty and representative government.

But gradual shifts in the GOP over the last two or three decades that culminated in Donald Trumps election in 2016 have changed all that. The GOP is no longer a conservative party in any meaningful way. It is instead something else, and it needs a more accurate description.

Why should we care what European political philosophy has to say about U.S. politics? Because our politics arose out of that philosophy, and going back to those roots brings clarity.

Most knowledgeable philosophical conservatives today will tell you how unhappy they are with how far the Republican Party has drifted. Some prominent conservatives leaned toward Democrats in the 2000s, such as Catholic conservative commentatorAndrew Sullivan, and more have become never-Trumpers, including former Republican strategist Ana Navarro. This is because the GOP of Trump, House leader Paul Ryan and Senate leader Mitch McConnell has become a radical right. That may sound like a contradiction, since radical is usually shorthand for the far left, but the seeming contradiction demonstrates how restrictive our notion of the right-left political spectrum really is, and thats perhaps the most important thing we can learn from looking to our European roots.

The Battle Between Reason And Unreason

The best way to understand these roots is a historical survey of the long 19th century (from the French Revolution to World War I) and the short 20th century (encompassing both world wars and the Cold War), descriptions coined by historian Eric Hobsbawm. When I teach this period, I frame it somewhat facetiously as an epic battle between reason and unreason. In other words, the Enlightenment posed a question to Europe: What happens if we use reason (over tradition or religion) to govern ourselves? Of course, the debate was rarely that stark. Few rationalists were purely so, while proponents of the old ways pointed out how much rationality there was in tradition. Rather, I try to show students how modern European history has been a struggle between these impulses within movements as well as in opposition to each other.

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The French Revolution established notions of rights, individual liberties and the primacy of a secular state. But it also brought two centuries of reaction to the revolution.

The French Revolution can be seen as a rousing crescendo in the symphony of support for the rationalization of government and society in Europe. It established the notion of rights, individual liberties and the primacy of the secular state. From there we can draw a line to todays liberal democracies. Both major U.S. parties and most of postwar Western politics have been in this tradition until very recently. But the two centuries following the French Revolution were filled with jockeying over peoples reactions to the cataclysmic event, from reactionaries who wanted to turn back the clock to centrists who wanted to keep things as defined in the revolutions early stage to Jacobins, the leftist radicals who wanted to push rights still further by any means necessary.

This is where our right-left spectrum comes from: three broad categories of responses to the French Revolution. Most of modern Western politics is descended from the center-left responses that accepted rights as natural and argued only about who was included, the best ways to translate political rights into liberties and to what degree. On this spectrum, any conservatism within a democracy is already a centrist position because it accepts rights and representation, though in a more limited way.

The far-right position in the 19th century was known as Reaction. Reactionary religious philosophers like Joseph de Maistre prioritized Gods law over mans, arguably leaning toward theocracy. Reactionary statesmen like Klemens von Metternich primarily wanted to save or return to traditional power structures and were in this sense conservative, though their violent attempts to put down any perceived threat could be described as more paranoid than cautious. Konstantin Pobedonostsev a statesman and tutor of the future Alexander III, Russias most reactionary tsar made strong rational criticisms of democracy. He warned that representative government diluted power and that the press not the people or their representatives, who have little say in what writers and editors do had the power to make or break a democratic society. (Some members of Americas alt-right profess allegiance toward Reaction, though it can be hard to tell when they are sincere and when they are praising autocracy for the shock value.)

As monarchies increasingly failed to stem the tide of Enlightenment secularism, Irish statesman Edmund Burke took de Maistres place as a figurehead for mainstream conservative philosophy. Coming from the British tradition, he accepted rights and representation but wanted them limited to a (wealthy white male) few. This was an easier position to accept in a monarchy that was already limited and had inherited the liberal philosophy of John Locke. Burke was appalled by the vulgarity of the French Revolution and yet supported American independence. Though Burkes name is most strongly associated with conservatism to this day, he was a contradictory figure who does not best exemplify the post-Revolution conservatism that dominated propertied classes in Europe and North America in the 19th century.

Most mainstream conservatives were ordinary people who enjoyed some wealth and social position, and didnt question the systems they were born into. Their priority was to protect what they had.

Take the example of Russian provincial nobleman Andrei Chikhachev, who inherited serfs but recognized it as a system that couldnt last. He worshiped knowledge, working to expand education for serfs, and he welcomed technological advances so long as they were introduced cautiously. Rather than fearing revolution like a reactionary, he pitied decadent, urbanized Westerners from a place of complacency with his own more orderly (and unequal) rural idyll. If Chikhachev had been born in Boston instead of rural Russia, he probably would have accepted representative government as unquestioningly as he did monarchy, because it was there. He could have been just as pious, just as cautious, just as uncritically patriotic in either system, as indeed most propertied white men were then, whether they lived in a rising democracy or a failing autocracy.

The right wing, in other words, is not one thing. As it has changed over time, it has also varied greatly in degree and emphasis, and in context. There are multiple philosophical sources that inform different streams of thought, many of which end up in surprising places. There is a clear continuity from even the most liberal conservatives to extreme reactionaries(as American political theorist Corey Robin stresses), but there is also a meaningful difference between acceptance of representative government and social change (even if regretfully, cynically or pragmatically) and violent, organized opposition to either.

The Right And the Radical

What can it mean to be both right (resistant to change) and radical (pursuing extreme change)?

One answer has to do with nationalism.

Civic nationalism is a liberal compromise that ties voting and citizenship to the nation and state order, as in the modern U.S. or Britain. Ethnic nationalism, in contrast, offers as natural and timeless something that was constructed in the middle of the 19th century. To build a tribal identity around ethnicity, language, history and religion and use that identity to justify a state (as opposed to a monarchy justified by God) was new.

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Prussian Foreign Minister Otto von Bismarck’s mix of nationalism and power politics laid the foundation for World War I.

Germany is a tragic example of ethnic nationalism run amok. As foreign minister of Prussia in the mid-19th century, Otto von Bismarck added the element of nationalism to the drive for power he inherited from Metternich. Bismarck asserted that German speakers, then spread across principalities and empires, should be united into one German state. He achieved the unification of what we know as Germany in 1871, then acquired overseas colonies and helped perpetuate an arms race with Britain, leading to World War I. The militarization of Germanys government in this period, along with colonial atrocities, such as theHerero genocide,chillingly presaged the Holocaust before ever Adolf Hitler was rejected from art college.

Nationalism took its strong and ugly grip on Europe during a period of industrialization, expansion of middle classes and the entrenchment of large, bureaucratic governments that consolidated the principles of the French Revolution despite reactionary challenges (the long 19th century). Property-owning men increasingly wielded power and accumulated wealth through professions, business and government more than inheritance. But working classes and minorities saw their conditions deteriorate with few gains in political representation. Socialism, developing in response to industrialization, recognized that the liberal focus on rights and the free market was liberating only for some. This led to the idea that only economic equality could bring real liberty an idea that terrified the haves and intrigued the have-nots.

Nationalism emerged as a story that could unite whole populations regardless of vast disparities in wealth. And by defining us, nationalism also defines who is the other, providing someone to blame who is coincidentally not the people enjoying power and wealth. A system that was threatened by the poor and minorities told the poor to hate minorities, leaving minorities to fear the poor.

A system that was threatened by the poor and minorities told the poor to hate minorities, leaving minorities to fear the poor.

Nationalism called to our irrational impulses to assuage wrongs brought by (rational) technology and economics. By the 20th century, technocratic, largely secular nationalists used both pseudo-science and appeals to tradition to promote a genocidal agenda to aggrandize their own tribe (Nazism was one variant of fascism). Other fascists in Romania, Croatia, Portugal and elsewhere were explicitly religious and allied themselves wholly with the counter-Enlightenment, harnessing fears of change and difference to unite their nations. These political religions are another subtle variation on theocracy.

Where liberal democracy focuses on equal rights and opportunities for individuals to do what they want, short of imposing on others rights, socialism focuses on harnessing the productivity of all for the benefit of all, a collectivist perspective. Nationalism is also inherently collectivist because the nation is held above its component parts: the people. The core idea all fascists had in common was the supremacy of the nation over the lives or liberty of its citizens, as well as their nations superiority over others. The Nazi use of socialist in the full form of its party name, National Socialists, implied this collectivism but, by adding national, rejected everything else about socialism that made it socialism: its aim of economic equality without regard to divisions by ethnicity or religion. This appealed to voters who might have been tempted by the economic promise of socialism but recoiled from its rejection of their identity and traditional values.

Fascism And The Right-Wing Fringe

So, was fascism conservative? It had its roots in right-wing movements and appealed to counter-Enlightenment, reactionary values, albeit with a veneer of scientific-sounding rhetoric. It violently opposed both liberal democracy and socialism and strongly favored social hierarchy (inequality defined by race). But fascism was also radical because it embraced a strong bureaucratic government rather than inheritance as the basis for power and embraced technological progress (for its military and economic advantages). Therefore, it was not reactionary, unless we use that term so loosely it no longer defines the people it was coined to describe. But fascism also cannot be called conservative without losing that terms original meaning, since it sought drastic changes by means so vulgar as to be unimaginable to conservatives like Burke. So fascism was both right-wing and radical.

In other words, the left versus right terms we use to describe our politics (and the political compass variation on it) fail to take into account one of the most important political debates of the 20th century: individualism versus collectivism, with nationalism as the key concept within that debate. Those of us born to the Anglo-American tradition often miss this because our experience is of the seemingly easy compromise position of civic nationalism.

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Evangelical support has pushed the Republican Party toward theocracy. Here, students at Liberty University pray for Donald Trump before his inauguration.

But 2016 has forced Americans to pay attention to virulent nationalism and everything that goes with it. America has always had a resentful, white-supremacist nationalism based on hating the other and rejecting liberalism. What changed in 2016 is that a major party embraced this fringe, handed it power and is now refusing to check that power with anything more than a furrowed brow. Whether motivated by cynicism, greed, fear, delusion, helplessness or true belief, by its inaction the Republican Party has abandoned the last vestiges of a conservatism that is skeptical of change, values individual liberty and accepts the premise of representative government. This Republican Party is a radical right containing elements of theocracy (Education Secretary Betsy DeVosand the evangelical base) and fascism (the extreme alt-right, who remain unrenounced by the president and who are represented in the White House by Chief Strategist Steve Bannon).

Whether motivated by cynicism, greed, fear, delusion, helplessness or true belief, by its inaction the Republican Party has abandoned the last vestiges of a conservatism that is skeptical of change, values individual liberty and accepts the premise of representative government.

Clearly the old schemas always imperfect cannot capture the tectonic shift in American politics institutionalized by Trumps election. They are products of the Industrial Age, and so one way to begin mapping our new landscape is to consider how the current information revolution should be central to our understanding of todays politics.

We could start by appropriating the name Know-Nothings for the modern Republican Party, since its characterized by its denial of reality (the original Know-Nothings, who took their name from their secrecy, were anti-immigrant nativists). This term highlights a peculiarly postmodern twist this radical right has put on the big lie propaganda that Hitler famously recommended. Alternative facts dont just offer an unsubstantiated, and often absurd, narrative; they destabilize the idea that truth exists or matters. Political lying is nothing new, and even lying on this scale has precedents (though only in the worst regimes). Todays right goes a step further to undermine the value of any knowledge, education or evidence, for a receptive audience that cares only whether the script plays to their teams advantage or serves as a strike against the other team.

An Anti-Government Government

Liberals and conservatives, in the proper sense of those words, are now both uncomfortably covered by the shade of the never-Trump tent. Both accept the premise of rights and representative government, and watch in horror as norms are flouted daily. A party that used to represent limited government encroachment on individual lives moved through a religiously motivated drive to control womens bodies into a new present, where the president, Cabinet and Congress explicitly oppose the government they run in every respect but their personal domination of it. Their voting base largely white and evangelical cheer the undermining of democracy through voting restrictions and boo defenses of traditional American values, such as freedom of the press, separation of church and state, the right to protest, and checks and balances. These elected officials and their base voters are not conservatives in any sense that doesnt warp the term beyond recognition.

They are a radical right that recalls earlier radical right movements such as reactionaries, fascists and theocrats. But they are also a new phenomenon. They were elevated to power through hacking, bots, gerrymandering, voter suppression and PACs. The information revolution made it possible for the least knowledgeable and yet most extreme to push themselves to power to dismantle government from within, despite losing the popular vote and continuing strong popular opposition.

We will need new words to describe this, as it continues to develop in unpredictable ways. But one thing is sure: The familiar days of the right as cautious men in suits and the left as hairy hippies are over. The Cold War, with its comforting clichs about authoritarianism happening to other people, is over.

Were living something else now.

Katherine Pickering Antonova is an associate professor of history at Queens College, City University of New York, and author of An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia and A Consumers Guide to Information: How to Avoid Losing Your Mind on the Internet.