Paul Schrader (above) wrote the classic Scorsese movies Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Skip forward a few decades and Mr. Schrader’s Hollywood career has languished. His latest film — Dog Eat Dog — was not well received. “Movie fans might be better off watching a dog actually munch on another dog,” New York Daily News pronounced. “All Dog Eat Dog reveals is a group of talented people with their best work long behind them,” Starburst opined.
Perhaps Mr. Schrader’s search for street cred — or ticket sales for the [latest] Nicholas Cage turkey — led him to post the following on Facebook: (emphasis added):
I have spent the last five days meditating on Trump’s election. Upon consideration, I believe this is a call to violence. I felt the call to violence in the 60’s and I feel it now again. This attack on liberty and tolerance will not be solved by appeasement. Obama tried that for eight years. We should finance those who support violence resistance. We should be willing to take arms. Like Old John Brown, I am willing to battle with my children. Alt right nut jobs swagger violence. It’s time to actualize that violence, Like by Civil War Michigan predecessors I choose to stand with the black, the brown and the oppressed.
So, this tough talking Trump hater from Lake Carmel, New York — an admitted cocaine abuser who kept a gun in his desk in case his psychosis required ballistic intervention of one sort or another — wants take up arms to start the second American Revolution and live out his fantasies of violence. And he’s volunteering his children to the fight with him in his Quixotic quest. That’s worthy of a nomination for Dad of the Year!
Mr. Schrader now claims that he’s received a barrage of death threats and “racist” name calling. He’s pulled the earlier post, but isn’t done with opening his mouth and removing all doubt of his foolishness. Here’s his latest:
Infowars has “listed” me resulting in a barrage of death threats and racist name calling. I just posted this retraction on the Inforwars comments section: “I retract my statements about a call to violence. I neither own a gun nor know how to make a bomb. Violent times inspire violent reactions, true, but given the latest report from the journal Scientific Advances http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/11/e1501923 which states that given current environmental models human life will not be sustainable on earth after 2100, it doesn’t make much sense to fight a system doomed in our grandchildren’s lifetime. Now is instead the time to look within for inner peace and without for divine consolation. Paul Schrader”
And now he claims he doesn’t own a gun or know how to make a bomb? That’s going to be one short-lived insurrectionist fight!
As for his doom and gloom, I remember my EEE105 professor at the University of Illinois telling me in 1986 that the world would be out of oil by the end of the last century and that the earth couldn’t sustain its population. Looking back, he should have been fired for his alarmist propaganda posing as education. As for Paul: I think we’ll be okay in the year 2100.