All my sons

All my sons ⁱ is a bad cinematographic reprise of a bad play. I'll go into detail like dissecting a corpse - it's not really worth watching, which means it's not really alive.

As the story goes, a rich guy was confronted with the usual choice of life : either fuck the guy down the line or face the end of your line. You know how this bullshit dilemma plays out whenever poor people are involved, nobody's yet proposed that some inept fishermen in Sicily commit seppuku for the crime of being useless. It's alright for them to pass the buck, you see, because they're poor, and that counts somehow, magically. They don't have to face the music, god forbid, shame on you for even thinking about it. What are you, some kind of sociopath ?! No, they "should" be helped, understood and of course supported. Emotionally, but most of all monetarily - out of imaginary public money that doesn't exist. That's what the fiat state is for, right ?

Anyway. This guy does what poor people do, and passes the buck. But it's not okay for him, the story goes, because he's rich. And rich people, as you know, are very much guilty for being rich, because being rich is bad mmmkay. So his one son commits suicide, and then his other son huffs and puffs like an idiot, until the poor guy, thoroughly disgusted by the scum he's leaving behind, gets a little bit of fast acting colon cancer to the headⁱⁱ. Yes, exactly like that other guy thoroughly disgusted with the scum he's leaving behind, the one in the good play.

Then there's a lot of song and dance about how we're all one goodness soap and assorted Californy insanity, and then that's that, the end. Perhaps notably, the man condemns his entire family, notwithstanding that his very obviously Idish speaking Polish wifeⁱⁱⁱ is both loyal and respectable. Yet they've made the idiot mistake of raising their kids "American", and now those kids have no place in the world and no value to anybody. Very much like Arthur Miller himself, actually.

That's not usually a mistake people wish to see, that they've raised their kids wrong. Nevertheless, it's the true moral^iv of this unfortunate shambling horror of an agitprop piece - do not raise your kids as if the fiat state matters. Not only it does not matter ; but the atrocious poison of its nonsense will kill them ; and it will kill you.

There's really no greater crime than telling some impressionable young mind that "we're all one" and the rest of the bullshit in that line. Getting them to believe in Santa and Pillow Pants the Cunt Troll is merely ridiculous ; but this will kill them, as sure as it will kill you.

Just say no to socialist lunacy. All the time. Everywhere. Starting today.

1. 1948, by Irving Reis, with Edward G. Robinson, Burt Lancaster, Mady Christians. [↩]
2. To quote,

   Nothing is bigger than that. And youre going to tell him, you understand? Im his father and hes my son and if theres something bigger than that I'll put a bullet in my head!

   Yeah, I'm aware that the official nazi interpretation, taught in every school to the "new man" child doesn't wish to confront the obvious. Nevertheless, the old guy doesn't kill himself because he gives a shit about your inept notions of guilt. He kills himself because he's - rightfully - ashamed scum like you came out of his body.

   I would be too. [↩]

3. Really, a Platdeustch speaking Austrian woman. Who, irony of ironies, died of a stroke a coupla years after this film came out. She had been blacklisted, you see, and it didn't sit so well with her. [↩]
4. We've discussed before this strange tendency of actual truth to break through bad socialist ideology and turn the whole aesop on its head. As if there's no room for the scum on Earth, somehow. [↩]