Halloween night our whole family huddled in a dark room to see the 1978 remake with Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum and Leonard Nimoy, as Young Son’s gentle inauguration into horror movies.
He enjoyed it. We were all thinking the original still was better, but he didn’t have the classic in his memory banks like we did, so we just met him where he was and enjoyed this one along with him.
One of the movie’s taglines is, “Watch out! They get you while you’re sleeping!”
It didn’t keep me up with bad dreams. 😉
But here’s a strange thing. It stayed in the back of my mind over the weekend as the election was Story One around here. I watched election coverage round the clock. DH voted Saturday in a long line, and we got calls from both campaigns, one of which offered us passes to see Joe Biden on campus Sunday morning. Favorite Daughter and her boyfriend accepted and they had a great experience. Young Son and I watched the Biden rally on live cam from the Tallahassee Democrat website, and when FavD called on her cell phone, we were able to spot her live in the crowd, as she said, see, I’m lifting my sign and now I’m lowering it again. It was so cool.
Back to the body-snatchers — homeschooling dad Paul D. sent Nance and me an analysis of how our politics have been invaded, and a solid 25% of the voting population body-snatched. They’ve submitted or succumbed, irrevocably reborn as pod people literally without individual mind, heart or will. They are worker bees serving the Dear Leader, some otherworldly hierarchy of control over their individual and collective “body” that must remain unquestioned. And YOUR body is next to be conquered by their collective . . .especially if you’re a woman with reproductive parts but don’t get me started on THAT issue. (Young Son sees the invasion of human autonomy parallels without needing to go there.)
The leading authority on right-wing authoritarianism, a man who devoted his career to developing hard empirical data about these people and their beliefs, is Robert Altemeyer. Altemeyer, a social scientist based in Canada, flushed out these typical character traits in decades of testing.
Altemeyer believes about 25 percent of the adult population in the United States is solidly authoritarian (with that group mostly composed of followers, and a small percentage of potential leaders). It is in these ranks of some 70 million that we find the core of the McCain/Palin supporters. They are people who are, in Altemeyer’s words, are “so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds.”
They SOUND like thinking humans and they LOOK like thinking humans but don’t be fooled.
Wake up!
Cocking A Snook! 
LMAO! Go Gators, I always knew we had the best and brightest, even the Republicans. I can’t say for the FIRST time I’m really proud of my alma mater but I sure can say it again!:
Audiences across this great (Gator) Nation arise — yes you CAN awaken and fight off the pod people, even if they’ve had you in their tendrils a long time. We’ll help you, the tide is turning at last, yes you CAN join the future instead of staying root-bound in the muddy misery of the past, and join real sentient humans in the united fight for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in the REAL America!
Btw, another power of story classic is “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and it’s been remade for holiday release next month. So here’s a scholarly preview, to keep Thinking Parents in the know and on the smart, complicated side of the story’s power — Ronald Reagan loved that movie, even brought it up in a summit with Gorbechev, although it was clearly supportive of UN-type global collaboration among all the people of the Earth.
[…] more charitable, maybe they’re of earthly origin like the rest of us but were the first to be dehumanized and body-snatched . . […]
[…] if Invasion of the Body Snatchers IS a true story — not written by HG Wells, but then history has many […]
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