I FIRST LEARNED of the wonderful writer and actor Wallace Shawn from watching My Dinner With Andre. At first I thought I was going to hate the movie because of Andre Gregory's long stream of bullshit semiconsiousness of a kind I'd gotten my fill of during my college years - for its devaluation of mysticism into that kind of bullshit, too.
But then "Wally" took over and I liked the movie a lot more after that. I have, from time to time, looked at what Wallace Shawn has been up to, some of his plays have been the kind that I think are the most important, disturbing, troubling, questioning, forcing uncomfortable situations to conscious consideration. Aunt Dan and Lemon, for example.
Here he presents why he calls himself a socialist, it is one of the best short essays I've heard or read in a long while. I don't call myself a "socialist" for the same reason I rejected the word "Christian" for myself, though I certainly believe in the Gospel of Jesus and most of what is said in the rest of the New Testament and by a good part of the Christian tradition that takes those seriously. I think the word, itself has lost its meaning and any positive usefulness through its appropriation by some of the most vile of political ideologies, Fabianism, Marxism, various right-wing "socialisms" and, of course, the contradictory claim of a form of it as "National Socialism" (which makes almost as little sense as "Christian nationalism"). The term "antisemitism" (which I have heard applied to Mr Shawn) has lost its meaning through a similar appropriation by those with evil ideological intent and it is not only meaningless but has been weaponized by fascists around the world, many of them actual antisemites.
But here is a voice of reason for the last day of the long American weekend