Red Dawn 2020?

Promotionally entitled, "McDonald's Drive Through," this movie lobby card produced for the 1984 release of the Patrick Swayze film, held an iconic image.

Red Dawn is a 1984 American war film directed by John Milius, with a screenplay by Kevin Reynolds and Milius. It stars Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Grey, Ben Johnson, Harry Dean Stanton, Ron O'Neal, William Smith, and Powers Boothe. Red Dawn was released on August 10, 1984.

The vanishing of the actors in Red Dawn has been rather whole scale. Patrick Swayze, 57, died September 14, 2009. CBS and Warner Bros. terminated the then-46-year-old Charlie Sheen's contract on March 7, 2011. Ben Johnson, 77, died on April 8, 1996. Harry Dean Stanton, 91, died on September 15, 2017. Ron O'Neal, 66, died on January 14, 2004. Powers Boothe, 68, died May 14, 2017.

On November 16, 2012, Enki King wrote in the comments here that "[he] looked at the stars of the Dawn films and their symbolic alchemical significance. Kristen Stewart was albedo-resonating Snow White and Bella Swan; and Chris Hemsworth, who stars in the 2012 Red Dawn, co-starred with Stewart in Snow White and the Huntsman. Hemsworth also starred in Thor, and toward the beginning of that film, when Thor falls from the sky (Skyfall), scientist Erik Selvig exclaims, 'I thought you said it was a subtle aurora!'"

On November 21, 2012, the wide release of Red Dawn (directed by Dan Bradley and starring Chris Hemsworth and Jeffrey Dean Morgan) occurred.

Within the world of the Twilight Language, another "Red Dawn" appeared in 2012. "Colorado Aurora," literally translated as "red dawn." I have mentioned before the meanings of Colorado (= red) and Aurora (= dawn). See the many links here.

On July 20, 2012, Aurora was the site of the third largest mass shooting in terms of number of casualties in United States history at the time, now the eighteenth largest, and the second-deadliest shooting in Colorado after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. The shooting occurred just after midnight, when James Eagan Holmes opened fire during the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in a Century movie theater, killing 12 people and injuring 70 others.

What are we to make of the Soviets at a McDonald's in 1984 through the lense of 2020? It appears to seem troubling and prophetic, all at the same time. This appears especially true when in 2019, both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald Trump are still talking about the Russians.

Will 2020 usher in another "red dawn" event? Perchance, not at a McDonald's, but at a Waffle House?

Red Dawn at Waffle House.

“A red sun rises. Blood has been spilled this night.” 

...

"It is a red dawn. Strange things await us by the eaves of the forest. 

Good or evil, I do not know; but we are called. Awake!" 

~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, 1954

"Let this be the hour when we draw swords together. 

Fell deeds awake. 

Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the red dawn. 

Forth, Eorlingas!" 

~ The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 2002

Selina Kyle: There's a storm coming. 

Bruce Wayne: You sound like you're looking forward to it. 

Selina Kyle: I'm adaptable. 

~ The Dark Knight Rises, 2012

"The Aurora, Colorado shooting appears to be a 'red dawn,' a milestone awakening event of which we can only guess what it might really mean in the near and distant future."

Loren Coleman, Twilight Language, July 22, 2012

"'Red dawn event,' a milestone manifestation of unfathomable future dimensions."

Loren Coleman, Twilight Language, July 24, 2012

Cryptokubrulogy Meets Trump

Cryptokubrulogy shows that Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut of 1999 collides with Donald Trump's reality television presence in 2005.

Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 erotic drama film directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick. Based on Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story), the story is transferred from early 20th century Vienna to 1990s New York City. 

Principal photography for Eyes Wide Shut began in November 1996. Filming finally wrapped in June 1998. The Guinness World Records recognized Eyes Wide Shut as the longest constant movie shoot, "for over 15 months, a period that included an unbroken shoot of 46 weeks"

Kubrick died six days after showing his final edited cut to Warner Bros.

The framing of Donald Trump in the Hollywood Access tape with the blonde woman who wears almost the same style and color of the dress nearly matches the above scene from Eyes Wide Shut. 

The Hollywood Access video was recorded in September 2005 in the NBC Studios parking lot while Trump was preparing to appear in an episode of the NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives.

Upon arriving at the lot, the camera crew was let off the bus so they could record Trump and Billy Bush disembarking and meeting with Arianne Zucker, who portrayed Nicole Walker on the soap opera and appeared alongside Trump in the episode in which he guest starred.

On October 7, 2016, during the 2016 United States presidential election, The Washington Post published a video and accompanying article about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and television host Billy Bush having "an extremely lewd conversation about women" in 2005.

William Hall Bush was born in Manhattan, New York, to Josephine Colwell (Bradley) and Jonathan Bush, a banker. William Bush's uncle (his father's older brother) is George H. W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States. George W. Bush, the 43rd President, and former Florida governor Jeb Bush are William Bush's first cousins.

Suicide On A Bridge In Wake of Sexual Molestation Accusation

It was a quiet enough bit of news. But is it an old reaction added to the new stories? Will copycats follow?

In the wake of the tsunami of sexual assault allegations and sexual misconduct revelations, a sea change in our culture is occurring in late 2017.

On December 13, 2017, a suicide has been added to the storm. Suicidologists may be a little surprised it took two months for this behavior to surface.

The victims of the alleged sexual abuse incidents should rightfully be listened to, although the focus of the media treatments have often been the alleged predators.

One such individual, Kentucky state legislator Dan Johnson, appears to be the first publicly discussed suicide. He shot himself on a bridge in Mount Washington, southeast of Louisville, Bullitt County Sheriff Donnie Tinnell told WDRB. His body turned up on a riverbank near the bridge and the weapon reportedly was found at the scene.

Bullitt County Coroner Dave Billings said Johnson died of a single gunshot wound December 13, 2017, Wednesday night on Greenwell Ford Road in Mount Washington, Kentucky. Billings said Johnson stopped his car at the end of a bridge over the Salt River in a secluded area, then got out, walked to the front of his SUV and shot himself in the chin. An autopsy is scheduled for Thursday morning. Johnson was 57.

Johnson (October 18, 1960 – December 13, 2017) was an American evangelical pastor and Republican member of the Kentucky House of Representatives, representing the 49th District in 2017. In December 2017, Johnson was accused of having molested a member of his church in 2012, when she was 17 years old. Johnson refused to resign, claiming the allegations were untrue, and died by suicide two days later.

A KyCIR investigation published Monday (December 11, 2017) outlined Johnson’s history of alleged crimes, lies and deceit and included the woman’s account of the alleged molestation. The account, based on police files and interviews with Maranda Richmond and her family, detailed how detectives closed the sexual assault case, citing Richmond’s lack of cooperation.

But Richmond denied that assertion. She said she had always pushed for Johnson’s prosecution. Experts who reviewed the case file at the request of KyCIR said police botched the investigation from the beginning, misclassifying the charge and more.

Richmond alleged Johnson molested her in the church’s basement following a New Year’s party. She said Johnson shoved his tongue into her mouth, groped her breasts under her shirt, pushed his hands down her pants and penetrated her with his finger.

Richmond spoke at length about the encounter and the impact it had on her life. She shared notes from her therapists and police files, including a scratchy recording in which her father, at the LMPD’s behest, called Johnson on a recorded line and sought his confession. She also shared a Facebook message from Johnson in which he claimed he was drugged that night and apologized for being “mean” to her.

Johnson was a bishop at the Heart of Fire Church in Louisville, Kentucky. The church is nondenominational and evangelical. Johnson referred to himself as the "pope" of the church, and was once photographed with Donald Trump.

Johnson was elected to the state House in 2016, defeating Democratic incumbent Linda Belcher by a narrow margin. He was elected from the 49th House district, covering Bullitt County. Johnson was known for his inflammatory comments on Facebook, including posts depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes and anti-Muslim comments, and the use of Confederate flags and noting his love of "white people." These activities prompted Republican leaders to call on him to drop out of the state House race. He didn't.

Edit

On December 11, 2017, Johnson was accused of having molested a member of his church on New Year's Eve of 2012, when she was 17 years old. Although the Republican Party of Kentucky requested his resignation, Johnson refused to resign, claiming the allegations were untrue and were politically motivated.

A rambling pre-suicide posting of Johnson's was found on his Facebook page.

Johnson died by suicide on December 13, 2017, almost immediately after the accusation
against him was made public. In a message posted to Facebook (above) shortly
before his suicide, Johnson reiterated his claim that allegations that he had
sexually molested a minor were false, and he stated that he was no longer
able to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder he alluded to having
developed after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

The Salt River, Mount Washington Bridge, Greenwell Ford Road, Bullitt County, suicide by gun. Heart of Fire Church, Kentucky, "pope."

Gorsuch: Yankee or Cowboy?

In the invisible battle occurring in The Yankee and Cowboy War, the Cowboys appear to have scored a nominee for the highest court in America.

Neil M. Gorsuch, a 1991 graduate of Harvard Law School, is President Donald Trump’s pick as the next justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Michael W. McConnell, who served with Judge Gorsuch on the appeals court and is currently a law professor at Stanford, was quoted by the New York Times as saying, "He’s a Westerner. There are so many cases that have to do with the West, and I also think the cultural sensibilities of the West are different. He’s an outdoorsman, and the Supreme Court needs a little bit more geographical diversity.”

Gorsuch on at least one occasion went fly fishing with Justice Scalia. Considering the person Gorsuch may replace on the Supreme Court, and the meaning of his name, this moment in history might seem more than coincidental.

The meaning of the English name Gorsuch derives from the habitational name from the hamlet of Gorsuch, Lancashire, earlier Gosefordsich, from Old English Gōsford = "goose ford" + sīc = "small stream." This name is first recorded as that of a manor near Ormskirk held by Walter de Gosefordsich in the late 13th century.

Neil is a masculine given name of Gaelic origin. The name is an Anglicization of the Irish Niall which is of disputed derivation. The Irish name may be derived from words meaning "cloud," "passionate," or "champion."

Neil Gorsuch is the author of  The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, published in 2006 by Princeton University Press. The book argued that laws banning those practices should be retained. He is also one of 12 co-authors of The Law of Judicial Precedent, published by Thomson West in 2016.

While a student at Harvard Law School, Neil Gorsuch (near top, on left) was a member of the Lincoln’s Inn Society.

Lincoln's Inn Society was the only social club based at Harvard Law School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its name echoed Lincoln's Inn in London, which is one of the four Inns of Court where English barristers are based. Originally, Lincoln's Inn was known as Choate Inn of the International Legal Fraternity of Phi Delta Phi but became a private club when the Harvard Faculty voted to ban all fraternities in 1907. The Inn was a student-run refuge where students meet to relax after hard weeks of study. As a student-owned club, Lincoln's Inn is beyond university regulation. The Inn had a diverse and dynamic membership that was open to all members of the HLS community. Lincoln's Inn membership was once strictly male but it now admits women, and women have been President of the Society on numerous occasions. It has become especially popular with first-year students as a way to meet their classmates.
Some of the most distinguished members of the legal profession count themselves among the society's over 3,200 alumni, including U.S. Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter, several U.S. Senators and Representatives, and managing partners from the nation’s most prestigious law firms. Source.

The Yankee and Cowboy War is available as a free download, here.

For more on this point-of-view updated during the 2016 campaign, see here.

So, was the eventual winner, Donald Trump, a Cowboy or Yankee?

Mosque Attacks

One Mosque was burned in Texas, and six people were shot dead at a Canadian mosque over the weekend. These incidents followed in the wake of a week of President Trump's executive orders that are being seen as a "Muslim ban" on travel to the USA.

An early-morning fire on Saturday, January 28, 2017, destroyed a Victoria, Texas mosque that was a target of hatred several years ago and experienced a burglary last week.

Meanwhile...

Quebec police said six people were killed and an additional eight were wounded in a shooting at a mosque on Sunday, January 29, 2017.

Some of the wounded were gravely injured, said Christine Coulombe, the Quebec provincial police spokeswoman. Those killed ranged in age from approximately 35 to 70 years old, she said. Thirty-nine people were in the mosque at the time of the attack.

Coulombe initially said two people have been arrested. On Monday, police confirmed that only one was a suspect, and the other individual arrested in d'Orleans was an eyewitness.

The Quebec shooter, who killed 6 in a mosque, is a white male student who made right wing & anti-woman remarks on Facebook. Court clerk confirms the name of the suspect in Canadian mosque attack is Alexandre Bissonnette.

Quebec City Islamic Cultural Center President Mohamed Yangui said the shooting happened in the men's section of the mosque.

Local newspaper Le Soleil said it had obtained information that the suspect was a 27-year-old with "a Québec name," and one had an AK-47 automatic weapon in his possession. Police, however, have not released nor confirmed these details.

A witness told CBC's French-language service Radio-Canada that two masked individuals entered the mosque.

"It seemed to me that they had a Quebecois accent. They started to fire, and they they shot they yelled, 'Allahu akbar!' The bullets hit people that were praying. People who were praying lost their lives. A bullet passed right over my head," said the witness who asked to remain anonymous.

Other mosques in Quebec experienced "incidents" throughout the weekend.

Police protection has been increased around mosques throughout New York City.

This is just the beginning.

Death, Immolation, and the Inauguration

Death may be knocking on the doorsteps of Donald Trump's Inauguration as the 45th President on Friday, January 20, 2017.

It appears to be a time when the unexpected may surprise those who wish to have things so well-ordered and planned.

This was a special week in January 1989 called "Palach Week." It marked the beginning of the end of Communism in Czechoslovakia, and the Velvet Revolution. There is a powerful documentary made in 2014, Agnieszka Holland’s Burning Bush (image above is from that film) that chronicles those times. The title has many meanings, of course.

Self-immolations have a way of changing the course of history, as the form of protest is so powerful, radical and shocking.

The Burning Bush

Concidentially, another kind of Bush may be important in the midst of this upcoming very political American weekend.

On Wednesday, January 18, 2017, the 41st President George H. W. Bush was admitted to the intensive care unit at Houston Methodist Hospital to address an acute respiratory problem stemming from pneumonia. Bush underwent a procedure to clear his air passages. His wife Barbara, furthermore, was hospitalized as a precaution.

The 36th President Lyndon Baines Johnson died on January 22, 1973, two days after Richard Nixon was sworn in for this 2nd term. Johnson's death disrupted Nixon's "celebration" of the start of what would be his shortened term, and LBJ's state funeral was held on January 25, 1973.

In an era of wall-to-wall media, the death of George H. W. Bush would be an auspicious beginning for Trump's first term.

Immolations 2017

Two reports of self-immolations (suicides by fire) in which both people lived surfaced yesterday. One is directly related to Trump's assuming power.

On Tuesday night, January 17, 2017, a man set himself on fire outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
DC Fire and EMS received a call at 9:23 p.m. about an individual trying to place himself on fire.
"We did arrive and did find a male adult with burns and we transported that patient to an area hospital with potential but not life-threatening burns," DC Fire and EMS Department spokesman Vito Maggiolo told CNN Wednesday. The man attempted to start the small blaze outside the Trump hotel but was burned badly in the process and taken to a hospital for treatment.

The 45-year-old man, who has not yet been identified, said the act was in protest of the President-elect's looming inauguration, Daily Mail reports said.

Witnesses described how he yelled 'Trump' several times as 'flames ran up his back' before lying down in the street.

Also on Tuesday night, January 17, 2017, another self-immolation occurred, this one in Nashua, New Hampshire. The Union Leader reported:

Officials said a pair of passers-by came to the aid of a man who tried to immolate himself in a city parking lot Tuesday night, using jackets and snow from the ground to put out the fire.

Police and fire said they received the report of the unidentified man on fire just before 10:30 p.m. in the parking lot of the Headlines store at 37 East Hollis St.

According to a press release from the Nashua Fire Department, the man had just purchased gasoline from a nearby gas station, poured it over his head and ignited himself.

The Fire Department said the man suffered burns over at least 20 percent of his upper torso, but was conscious and breathing. He was taken to Southern New Hampshire Medical Center.

January 1969

In my book Suicide Clusters (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1987), I revisited how Prague and immolations were keys in overturning Communism. Here is my summary from a later work.

Jan Palach, a student at Charles University in Prague, startled passersby by pouring a liquid over his body at about 3 P.M. on January 16, 1969, and then setting himself ablaze. The twenty‑one‑year‑old student chose the statue of Wenceslas, the Czech hero saint, as the site of his protest in Prague. Palach had left a note declaring that he belonged to a group whose members planned to self‑incinerate themselves, one every ten days, until the Soviet troops departed. Palach's protest and death three days later got worldwide media coverage with others following his lead.

On January 20, 1969, crowds of people waving the Czechoslovak state flags, black flags and enlarged photographs of Jan Palach, gathered at the spot of Palach’s suicide. In the Philosophical Faculty building, the clocks were stopped so they showed the exact time of Palach's death (3:15 P.M.). Josef Hlavaty then self-immolated himself just as Palach had. Two days later, on January 22, Miroslav Malinka killed himself through suicide by fire, and Blanka Nachazelova suffocated herself with coal gas. On the day of the Palach funeral, Hlavaty died. 

In the next well-publicized suicide, Jan Zajic, an 18-year-old student at a vocational school in Sumperk, set himself on fire on February 25, 1969. Before his death, he gave his friends a poem about Palach and four letters, in which he described himself as “Torch no. 2.” He did it in Prague in the passageway of a building on Wenceslas Square, as he was trying to run to the statute, but he fell in flames and died there. He said he decided to immolate himself after seeing that life was returning to its old routine despite Palach's action.

On April 4, 1969, in another square, this time in the southeastern Bohemian city of Jihlava, Evzen Plocek, 40, set himself on fire. At least 26 people attempted suicide between January 20 and the end of April 1969, with at least seven of these dying by fire in Czechoslovakia, Scotland, and Hungary after Palach's death. Reports of seven other fatal self-immolations came from India, Pakistan, England, and the United States. ~ The Copycat Effect, (NY: New York, 2004).

Self-immolations, exactly 20 years later, in 1989, set off the overthrow of the Iron Curtain throughout the Eastern Block.

The self-immolations in the Arab Spring changed the political landscape, once again.

++++

“Hold on—that’s a trash fire. Over there is Trump’s Inauguration speech.”

The above (by coincidence) is The New Yorker's Daily Cartoon (by Tom Toro) for January 18, 2017.

Update:

During a live report on [January 19, 2017's] Thursday’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on the Fox News Channel, a young man protesting in Washington, DC claimed to have started a fire in the street, “Because I felt like it. And because I’m just saying, ‘Screw our president.'”

Synchromystic Of The Year 2016: Joe Alexander

Back to the Future Predicts 9/11's filmmaker Joe Alexander.

The Twilight Language is giving its Third Annual "Synchromystic Of The Year" Award to Joe Alexander on December 15, 2016. The annual honor is bestowed upon a deserving individual who has contributed to the broad dissemination of a better understanding of the objectives and goals underpinning the field of synchromysticism.

"Synchromysticism: The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance." ~ Jake Kotze, The Brave New World Order, August 18, 2006.

The filmmaker Joe Alexander produced Back to the Future Predicts 9/11 and released it via YouTube on July 27, 2015, under his moniker "barelyHuman11." As of December 2016, it has been viewed over 2,997,000 times.

==============================

===============================

The Atlantic on the real October 21, 2015, which as a fictional date is well-known to Back to the Future trilogy students, observed:

A 12-minute video that’s making the rounds this week claims the 1985 film Back to the Future contains a coded message warning of the 9/11 attacks. The gist of this theory: Twin Pines mall, where one of the movie's main characters is attacked by terrorists, is meant to represent the Twin Towers. (There's also something about how film is a portal to transcendence.) The name of the group that made the video, Apophenia Productions, seems appropriate. Apophenia refers to the tendency to perceive a pattern among unrelated or random ideas or objects.

It is all about time, symbols, and foreshadowing.

Back to the Future Predicts 9/11 is a dizzying watch, full of big breath statements like, "Zemeckis, a pre-cogging conduit, channels the 9/11 archetype with his tower strike Twin Pines terror attack cinematic superimposition, both scenes featuring the transdimensional portal, pointing to 9/11 as the archetype of transcendence." 

...Short films like Back to the Future Predicts 9/11 are playful exercises in pattern recognition, searching out meaningful coincidences that they believe may emerge from a mystical, universal holism, ” writes Andrew Whalen in iDigital Times.

Whalen asked Alexander why he picked Back to the Future? The filmmaker answered:

I think it chose me to be honest. I think that these sub-plots, they wanted to be expressed on some level. We come back to intention, like in the way a human being has intention. Can a movie have intention? Can something that doesn't seem to be conscious have intention? I think it can because it's ultimately tied to the infinite consciousness of the universe.

Joe Alexander has something to tell the sync community about the future, and does it through his examination of the continuum in Back to the Future and events that occurred after the movies of the trilogy appeared. As far as documentary movie-making goes, Back to the Future Predicts 9/11 joins treatments like Rodney Ascher's Room 237 (2013) and Jake Kotze's videos to form a growing body of sync-comparative works.

Alexander's 2015 film talks of 2001's 9/11, as well as about events that were predicted in Back to the Future's films for 2015. But when some of the "predictions" appeared to be potential failures for 2015 - like the Cubs winning or Trump's president run - they turned into successes in 2016.

That is why Alexander gets the award for 2016.

Alexander's other videos (see here, here, and here) are all worthy of your time, also.

Cubs win.

The notion that Donald Trump's presidential run and election were foretold in the Back to the Future films has a solid foundation.

Andrea Mandell 's USA Today article of October 21, 2015, "Believe it: 'Back to the Future' predicted Trump's run," relates the facts. Mandell reports, "Back to the Future II screenwriter Bob Gale told the Daily Beast that Marty McFly's arch nemesis, the wealthy villain Biff Tannen, who turns his fortunes (among them, casino) into a quest for political power was...based on The Donald."

In the 1989 sequel, Biff uses the profits from his towering casino to help shake up the Republican Party, before eventually assuming political power himself. In what becomes a lawless, dystopian wasteland, Biff encourages every citizen to call him “America’s greatest living folk hero.” Source.

As seen below, the Comedy Central's At Midnight dealt with the thin line between humor and the unknown unknown shown in Back to the Future Predicts 9/11. The host's podium mirroring the Twin Towers was hardly subtle.

Therefore, Joe Alexander, besides creating a thoughtful, enjoyable film and other videos about the synchromystic side of Back to the Future's "predictions," has had an impact, in 2016, beyond his one contribution. He caused ripples through the sync world every time anyone watched Back to the Future and other films. Thanks to him for showing us what he sees.

Congratulations to Joe Alexander, the Synchromystic Of The Year 2016!

Honorees and their award mugs:

For 2014 ~ Alan Abbadessa-Green

For 2015 ~ Will Morgan 

And now, for 2016, Joe Alexander.