What 'ruined' Christmas this year was having to go home and spend it with my parents, one of whom is bedridden and non responsive from Alzheimers. It's more akin to a wake where everyone is focused on someone who is dead and there's little joy to be had. I've been doing it now for 5 years and there's no sign that it will end soon.
It is incredibly stressful and morose. Christmas isn't really joyful anymore because Mom could die at any time. The worst part of it is that all of us recognize that she's suffering and so are we, but the government won't allow any other outcome.
Still, the family shows up and puts in the work for caring for her for many reasons, the least of which is that she raised us for almost 20 years. She was a wonderful person and she's owed that, bottom line. It is uplifting in a way because we come together and work together for a purpose and while it's hard and sad, we've bonded over it nonetheless.
But.. what kind of Christmas will we have once she's gone?
While his later years were definitely marked with controversy and dumb to the point of evil decisions, he made decisions in earlier presidencies that without a doubt were helpful. You gotta understand this time period was what bought him the credence he used to get people to trust his later decisions.
It's complex and I encourage you to do research as this is all from the hip and might not be accurate.
It goes back to World War 2 and the suffering the Jewish people endured. The countries involved decided to give Israel their historical lands as a place where they could self-determinate and be safe. The problem is that other people owned that land at the time and had little say... these same people are understandably upset with that decision and have been fighting for their own land inside Israel since then. So there's automatically two sides living in the same country wanting the other out.
Terrorism was really coming into its own during the first couple decades, and terrorism works best for those that don't have an organized military... so the Palestinians sided with them. Black September, the PLA, Hamas... one after another these groups caused a lot of damage, which meant Israel locked all of them into one tiny part of Israel for their own security. Gaza.
But Israel isn't a saint in all this. They keep expanding their settlements into claimed territory and rarely through any civil means. They treat the Palestinians as the enemy, even when not all of them are. Same sort of struggle the whole west is having at the moment. There's lots of politics at play in the Middle East, and those countries also don't want Palestinians to come into their countries because of the damage those terrorist groups have done to them too. I believe it was Jordan that was completely destabilized after taking in a bunch of Palestinian refugees.
Then Hamas attacked Israel and killed a ton of people, have innocent hostages, and have vowed to never ever stop. Israel is at a crossroads. They obviously have to wipe them out... same way America felt about Al'Qaeda. But Hamas is hiding in Gaza, right in the middle of population centers. What to do?
Israel announced to everyone in Gaza that they needed to move south, dropped fliers saying they were going to attack, all the things. Then they attacked. Now innocent Palestinians are getting killed because they either couldn't or wouldn't leave, and Israel isn't allowing humanitarian aid in.
“People say it’s three hours, but come on, you can sit in front of the TV and watch something for five hours,” Scorsese said. “Also, there are many people who watch theatre for three and a half hours. There are real actors on stage — you can’t get up and walk around. You give it that respect; give cinema some respect.”
When we watch something for 5 hours we pause and get up whenever the hell we feel like it, and if everyone wants to stop, we do.
Theatre has intermissions. The reason? So people getting up to use the bathroom aren't consistently ruining the experience for everyone else.
There are no actors on stage in a movie theatre, so they don't give a flying f.
Is Scorsese just old or is he purposefully being an ass?
He emphasized his hope that viewers experience Killers of the Flower Moon on the big screen
I don't think it's BS so much as it's a symptom of the disease rather than the cause. At the same time, if I get a 105 fever from the flu, you best believe something needs to be done to treat that symptom.
I would sure hope so. If I look at myself (since that's where I have context) I'd say yes. I think a lot of the shittiness in people's personalities stems from trying to meet their needs (some of them unreasonable) and competing with everyone else to get them. That's a very me versus you mentality which leads to aggression and forms bad personality traits.
I'd like to say that everyone begins to understand wants versus needs after a few decades, and settles down into a pattern of contentment rather than resentment.