"War Is Not Over" is a Spanish war movie in 2019, which tells the relationship between the Spanish writer Unamuno and the coup army, especially the Franco faction, during the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, many members of the Spanish Army, especially Franco's North African Army, could not bear the leftist government's continuous redistribution of wealth, de-church and secularization policies, and launched a military coup against the Spanish Republican government. In response to the coup, the ruling Spanish Republican government, with the support of some army leftists, the International Wing and the Soviet Union, consolidated northern Spain, while Franco and other coup troops occupied North Africa and southern Spain and continued to fight with the Republicans.
Fearing that the left would successfully implement Stalin’s extreme policies, Una Muno, who was enamored with the Spanish tradition, initially chose to support the coup army, but when his friends were disappeared by the right-wing army, he began to oppose Franco’s right-wing dictatorship. . In the end, Unamuno was placed under house arrest until his death. In fact, the main story of Una Muno is a typical story of intellectuals resisting violence, not very new. What attracted me was mainly the vivid portrayal of Franco himself in the film. Before, Franco gave me the impression of being a hysterical little man, willing to serve Germany and Italy, massacring the Spanish Republicans, and a bloodthirsty person. But Franco in the film, although indeed very short, is totally unenthusiastic (even depressed), shy, low-pitched, and taciturn. He always seemed to doubt himself, speaking in a soft voice that was almost inaudible and without facial expressions.
When the time came in the second half of 1936, the coup army almost surrounded and captured Madrid, the capital of the republican government. Franco also began to plan to obtain the supreme command of the coup group. But the Republican army resisted desperately, and Madrid could not attack for a long time. Instead, the 1,000 men and women of the coup d’état in Alcazar Castle, the old capital of the Kingdom of Spain, were surrounded by the Republican Army and were about to be wiped out. Rescue Alcazar means Madrid will get a respite, and the war will last for several years. Within the Franco camp, there was a divergence between the two factions to quickly attack Madrid or rescue Alcazar. One day, Franco came to the fortified archbishop's residence in Salamanca in order to escape the air raid. He saw the mural depicting the medieval knight Cid resisting the invasion of Muslims, and was lost in thought.
A few days later, Franco watched no one on the plane, and said to his brother, I think we have to go back to Alcazar. My brother said that you will become a hero, but Madrid will take several years to conquer. Franco replied that Spain needs heroes. Besides, I was too impatient before. I actually need a few years to clean up the entire country. The older brother realized that his younger brother was about to execute hundreds of thousands of people, and said in a little astonishment, how would you persuade the people when they were tired of burying their bodies. Franco was silent for a moment, took out the persuasion form that Una Muno had drafted for himself, lightly sketched it, and gave it to his brother. My elder brother took the manuscript paper and found a line under "Christian Civilization in the West".
In this way, Franco successfully transformed a secular military coup to reverse the Republic’s left-leaning policy into a holy war for the survival of the nation to restore the glory of the Kingdom of Spain in the past. Yes, he wants to become a Christian knight like Cid, leading the unsophisticated Spanish people and defeating the Eastern pagans who intend to destroy Spain's deepest national religion. When Franco's rescue team came to Alcazar's castle, which had been almost razed, and was cheered by the survivors who had stood there for seventy days, he had won the Spanish Civil War. At that moment, he had become William the Silent into Leiden, Washington across the Delaware River, no, the Christ who was glorified into the Holy City, holding the supreme authority to resurrect the spirit of the entire nation. He immediately became the well-deserved commander of the coup army and a lifelong dictator.
In fact, I think it was Franco, not the previous left-leaning republican government, that succeeded in modernizing Spain, because the process of the general pre-modernization is the process of worshiping the nation or the country. It's just that Franco's victory means that the final will be national worship. If the Republican army is victorious, it is a state worship. Different objects of worship, but fanaticism and cruelty are the same. When a war breaks out, the left will slaughter the right, and it will not be better than the right slaughter the left. Because, as Clausewitz said, war will inevitably lead to the maximization of violence, whoever is weak will suffer, whoever will lose the war, and then be slaughtered. In Madrid, even Stalin’s purge of the Trotskyists within the left is no more soft-handed than the Franco militia massacring the left. "We at least give them a chance to repent so that they can enter heaven." Franco said softly to Una Muno.
But in fact, movies attracted me because the Spanish Civil War always attracted me. In my opinion, the Spanish Civil War shows the worst situation that any modern country will face-if it is caught in a war, it will inevitably lead to the worship of right-wing nations or left-wing nations. The rapid development of economic and cultural realities in modern society always makes it impossible for the political system to follow up in time, resulting in social crises and confrontations, which may push the country into a desperate situation of war-right or left dictatorship. This is the case in the United States where I have lived for many years.
The United States is facing the challenge of globalization of finance, technology, and information, and the political system is difficult to deal with. The current political system of the United States originated from the New Deal since 1930-it can be said that it is the third nation-building since the War of Independence and the Civil War. The New Deal established the state's supervision of banking, industry and agriculture, and established the state's welfare system to protect the survival of individuals-old-age medical insurance and unemployment protection, supported by a complete set of administrative agencies. This has effectively alleviated the social conflicts brought about by the globalization of finance, technology and information in the 1930s-people’s deposits in financial institutions will be protected by state-sponsored insurance, the unemployed population of industrial and agricultural industries with overcapacity will be hired and subsidized by the state, and labor-management relations will also There will be state administrative agencies and trade unions to supervise. At the same time, Japan, faced with similar crises, was unable to operate and improve the democratic system since Taisho Democracy. After the actual civil war of the February 26th Incident, it embarked on a comprehensive right-leaning national worship line. In the end, the soldiers started the Pacific War with the support of the chaebol, which led to the destruction of the country and a global disaster. The same goes for the Weimar Republic in Germany.
The political history of the United States after 1930 is a history of struggles between the New Deal and anti-New Deal forces. From the legendary four-term Roosevelt to Truman, from the ordinary but determined Truman to Kennedy, from the brilliant and charismatic Kennedy to Johnson-the last fighter of the New Deal, the New Deal has advanced all the way. The administrative state continues to develop, and the state's supervision of the economy and intervention in people's livelihood continue to increase. However, since Johnson, Nixon and Reagan have carried out radical anti-New Deal policies-reducing state supervision, strengthening legislative and judicial supervision of administrative agencies, privatizing state departments, reducing public expenditures such as welfare and education, and so on. After Reagan, the New Deal never resumed its previous momentum. Even Clinton has implemented policies that are partial to the Republican Party, such as reducing spending and encouraging private enterprises. Obama symbolizes the latest effort to seize power by the New Deal forces-he has begun to reinforce the state's supervision of financial institutions, implement universal medical insurance, and strengthen social welfare. This also caused a big backlash from the anti-New Deal forces, which eventually led to Trump coming to power and completely canceling Obama's policies to return to the New Deal.
But the fact is that reality will not wait for politicians to wrestle. When the safety valves established by the New Deal were removed one by one, the reality has accelerated to become more severe than in 1930. Financially, the global capital is now concentrated in the United States, not the entire U.S. capital in 1930. In terms of technology, automation and artificial intelligence have led to the decline of traditional industries, the number of unemployed and unemployed people has increased sharply, and many large companies have become very rich in capital, and the gap between the rich and the poor has greatly widened. In terms of information, the rise of social media has made people’s emotions more likely to be incited and exploited. However, the US political system has fallen far behind the new reality-financial education is short of money and further declines, resulting in a decline in the proportion of the educated population, unemployment, and an increase in the number of people who are difficult to find; financially, the law has implications for hedge funds and other non-mainstream financing methods. The supervision of the company is still zero, allowing capital giants to easily enter the market, and the gap between the rich and the poor has further widened, and because the Supreme Court insists that corporate donations will not affect the fairness of political elections, the political contributions of large companies can often further relax supervision and affect policy formulation. Increased public participation and resentment; in the media, because of concerns about threats to freedom of speech, they have failed to formulate effective regulations to control false information and inciting speech, which often deepens large-scale social conflicts and confrontations. It's on the verge.
In my opinion, the struggle between the New Deal and the anti-New Deal has no distinction between absolute justice and evil. A country always needs a constant balance between distributive justice and accelerated development. But because the balance has been moving towards accelerated development for too long, and when the actual economic, cultural, and social contradictions have exceeded historical peaks, the entire system will collapse, that is, the danger of civil war. What’s more difficult is that both sides have begun to radicalize-the American left has begun to advocate the use of national power to implement policies on many personal conscience issues, such as sexual orientation, historical figures, and online speech positioning, without considering the omnipotent government. Harm to traditional freedom. On the other hand, the American right holds high the banner of nationalism, racism, unrestricted capitalism, and xenophobic isolationism, without considering social justice and the United States' global leadership role. Such extremeization also reflects the sharpness of American social contradictions and the disconnection of the political system from economic, cultural, and international realities for too long. In such an atmosphere of radicalization, it is difficult to balance the balance of political power to make necessary reforms to the outdated parts of the political system, because no one is willing to compromise, and everyone wants a winner-takes-all. This country is gradually moving towards the picture of the Spanish Civil War under the zero-sum struggle of state worship or ethnic worship.
How to go and how to change in the future is indeed not something I can think of. The nature of the crisis faced by all countries is the same, because the political system is out of touch with the rapidly developing economy, culture and international reality, causing the people to fall into the deadly temptation of national worship or ethnic worship, which is really like a journey in an Odyssey. The ship is trapped in the dilemma of fairies and whirlpools. People must resist the temptation of these two seemingly simple solutions, but they are actually deadly poisons, and take a middle-of-the-way negotiation method to avoid the most tragic tragedy.
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