This is political commentary, not a holistic review of the movie.
Around the world, people want to trample on our right to immigrate, most explicitly now in our very own government. We forget ourselves.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”~ The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus | Engraved on the Statue of Liberty
Watching One Battle After Another worried me. The film, both dispiriting and enlightening, arrives at a time when most Americans, like many humans before them, are sleepwalking into subjugation.
Like all great art, One Battle After Another has a deeper meaning, and that meaning has awakened me to the central problem of our time: There is no end in sight for the continual destruction of our freedom, thanks to the authoritarian indulgence of the present conservative movement.
There is currently an ongoing attack on the core American philosophical disposition: freedom. Free from social desirability bias, credence in freedom’s intrinsic value has weathered the storms of the long and winding journey of American philosophical beliefs.
But perhaps you’d say I’m exaggerating, that we don’t live in the world of One Battle After Another yet. That I’ve just been emotionally touched by a film that portrays a much more authoritarian alternate history than the one we live in. But the Venezuelan case is relevant here.
If the government can wantonly deport people without due process, I have to ask the question: how far are we from One Battle After Another?
To remind you, the Venezuelan migrants were arrested based on them having tattoos, and then flown to a dungeon in El Salvador, otherwise known as the maximum security CECOT prison, for a completely unspecified amount of time, without any due process! The invocation was the Alien Enemies Act, which then had to rely on the claim that the Tren de Aragua gang was acting for Venezuela, even though U.S. intelligence didn’t back that connection at all.
27 of the 50 had pending asylum cases. In fact, Bukele was uncomfortable with these guys even coming to his prison, as he didn’t think the evidence was anywhere near high enough for conviction. Think about that for a moment. As Richard Hanania wrote, “The guy who calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” who is famous for mass prison camps, thinks that the U.S. is going too far in locking people up without evidence.”
Let’s keep going. It’s not just about Venezuelan immigrants.
There are 3.4 million cases in the Immigration Court’s backlog.
This year, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded the 2021 protected areas for ICE capture, which included schools, hospitals, and shelters. It is a “Anywhere, anytime” interior enforcement policy now.
Previously, immigrants could schedule appointments and provide information through the CBP One™ mobile application, this feature has been removed, and all appointments cancelled in an effort to constrict migration flows.
From federal reimbursements to performance awards, ICE has been hiring more and more local cops to act as force multipliers:
“From border counties to big-city police departments, more than 1,000 local and state law enforcement agency partners in 40 states now work directly with DHS and ICE to protect their communities. These historic partnerships are a force multiplier for DHS as the Administration continues to use every tool in its toolbox to find, arrest, and deport criminal illegal aliens.”
D.C. has been militarized, and Memphis, and Chicago are likely next on the chopping block.
Large immigration crackdown operations have been deployed, from the crackdown in California this past summer to the “Chicago Blitz”, which have resulted in a record 59,000 in ICE detention, (71% of which have no criminal record!).
It’s not just immigration, either.
Our current FBI director, a lickspittle who got famous for making children’s books about the president, is doing loyalty purges in the FBI. I don’t blame him, as he’s merely learning from the man who hired him.
Trump routinely prosecutes his opponents, has threatened to remove licences for TV networks that give him bad publicity, has disbanded the FBI D.C. public-corruption squad, has scorned the courts, and has instituted taxes on us without our consent.
And perhaps most depressing, and most similar to Paul Thomas Anderson’s world, is this piece of news:
“Trump administration officials on Monday responded to the activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination by threatening to bring the weight of the federal government down on what they alleged was a left-wing network that funds and incites violence, seizing on the killing to make broad and unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents.” NYT link here.
So I ask again, how far are we?
I wouldn’t be writing this review if One Battle After Another were another simplistic leftist movie, casting conservatives as evil and leftists as heroes. Yes, it presents some conservatives as militaristic, racist psychopaths. It takes a sympathetic look at what it would feel like to have to scurry under floorboards like mice, or to have your store broken into by an authoritarian government with no warrant.
But Marxist terrorists are either cast as impotent or villainous. Sensitive woke types are made fun of multiple times throughout the film.
Too many people specialize in politics, and, running around amidst the chaos, cannot simply look down. One has to look down upon things to understand what is really at stake. Paul Thomas Anderson has done this. He correctly understands that freedom, most explicitly freedom of mobility, is under attack by an authoritarian regime, and everyone, left or right, has to come together to push back. We need to sober up about the efficacy of political violence, we have to be able to laugh about microaggressions, and we need to remember what could be lost if we forget what truly makes America, America.
Freedom is easy to forget. Great art like One Battle After Another has reminded me what it feels like to have to hide in basements for the crime of seeking a life free from poverty, it has reminded me of the terror of a world without due process, one where the military can break into your home with no search warrant. It has reminded me of the sickness of a person who desires to harm innocents just because of their tribalistic out-group bias, or the unfairness of an illegal immigrant who gets deported to a life of poverty for a speeding ticket, while a citizen who commits dozens of crimes can continue to endanger our streets.
I don’t want to dunk too much on the MAGA movement, as I’ve already written an essay partly on how they are slave morality incarnate, and also one partly on debunking the “immigrant crime” debate. There is no point in engaging in a dodgeball contest of left vs right. That’s been done. This is exactly the point of the film. Move on from the culture war, and focus on our core American values. Once you center freedom in your mind once again, you will, with fresh eyes, see the humanity at the border, the authoritarian excess in D.C., and the similarities of your fellow countrymen.
One Battle After Another forces you to think of the Venezuelan deportations in the context of authoritarianism, and with great emotional power, reminds you that if the government can wantonly deport people without due process, that is a problem for all Americans, not just those who have a Latin American phenotype. The film has firmly placed freedom back in my heart and at the fore of my philosophical convictions. For that, I thank Paul Thomas Anderson.
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
~ First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln. March 4, 1861.
Fireeeeee