Gone with the wind

The great culture war of the world used to be capitalism vs. communism, which capitalism won thanks to communism going wrong much, much faster. Capitalism has only reached its Stalinist period recently, and to distract from the fact that a handful of billionaires are so consumed with greed and high on their own hype that they’re trying to bring back feudalism, they’ve started the new culture war: the war on “woke.” Which is to say, the demonization of empathy. Right wing politicians the world over are trying to convince voters that their problems aren’t being caused by destructive greed and escalating wealth inequality, no, your life is being made worse by pronouns.

A statement utterly devoid of logic, meaning, or understanding of language, but there are those so determined to hate people different from them that they buy into it, and now here we are, spiralling into corporate-controlled fascism because being nice to trans people was inconvenient.

Which brings us back to Clive Palmer’s claim that Titanic II would be an “antidote to woke politics” by representing more “traditional” values. When pressed about this by Rolling Stone, he gave one of the most generic, rambling “Uh because you know cancel culture is bad” statements I’ve ever seen, elaborating that society is built on differing opinions and having to all think one way is bad… which is what “woke” politics fucking ARE you inconceivable nitwit, respecting that people are different but still valid.

Anyway. End of the day, what is the “traditional value” of the Titanic? White-glove luxury service? Edwardian architecture? Table manners? No. The Titanic harkens back to First Class passengers receiving not just better accommodations, but their own section of the ship untouched by the lower classes.

The traditional value of the Titanic is caste systems. That some people, because their grandfather was a baron or through inherited wealth, are just better than other people, translated to the modern notions that CEOs are more important than their workers, that shareholder value matters more than customer experience. Which, yeah, I can see why the wealthy elite wants these values back, and why criminalizing empathy might be an important part of that process.

But that’s not how you make an iconic travel experience. You can’t build a cruise ship that’s the envy of the world by exclusively appealing to the elites while convinced that since you did well in one industry you can master any. That’s how you make Fyre Fest. And considering that we’re 13 years into this project and it hasn’t actually started yet, maybe that’s being unkind to Fyre Fest. Because sure it was such a disaster they made two documentaries about it and the creator went to jail for a minute, but at least it fucking happened.

Also, and I didn’t have a chapter heading for this, they asked the great-great-grandnephew of J. Bruce Ismay to be on the board of directors. And like… why? Ismay is famed for two things, caring about aesthetics more than safety, and noping out on a lifeboat when it all came back to bite him (and everyone else). Even if we assume that history has been unfair in giving Ismay the blame for the Titanic recklessly piloting through an icefield, even if we blame the lack of lifeboats and insufficient bulkheads on the industry of the time not knowing what a shipwreck of this nature would be like… what are we saying the Ismay bloodline has to contribute here?

Anyway, don’t remake Titanic, don’t trust anyone who says they want to.