Is this escapism or stoicism?

The following is a rambling and very personal post that just trails off instead of reaching a conclusion.

This carnivalesque portrait of provincial Italy during the fascist period, the most personal film by Federico Fellini, satirizes the director’s youth and turns daily life into a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, and political subterfuge, all set to Nino Rota’s classic, nostalgia-tinged score. The Academy Award–winning Amarcord remains one of cinema’s enduring treasures.

I've been listening to a couple of podcasts that could nicely be summed up as  "a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, and political subterfuge". The podcasts in question are called Creek of the Week and Beyond Yacht Rock. Both are light and amusing and really funny provided you have a very high tolerance for sophomoric and vulgar male humour. I, as my wife would insist, pretty much have to have a very high tolerance for sophomoric and vulgar male humour. If I didn't I'd have to hate myself.

That will come as a surprise to anyone who knows me only through this blog as I don't engage in much of it here. There is some but not a lot. You could read that two ways. Either 1) I am a deeply conflicted person who puts on a false front for public consumption or 2) I'm a person who strongly believes that the public and private spheres should be kept separate. I tend to favour the second but I can understand why others might go with the first. I believe they are wrong but, the problem is, they have access to exactly the same set of facts as I do—that facts are not in dispute, only the interpretation of those facts.

And I'll just leave that there.

Back to the podcasts, while I laugh very hard at both, I'm feeling a bit uneasy about it. There is something ineffectual and wimpy about this. Both podcasts are also nostalgic, something that isn't necessarily a problem but can be.

Closely related to that, both podcasts are deeply political and partisan. The partisan side of it—mostly blind, irrational rage at Donald Trump—I don't share. That actually makes it more troubling as I can recognize something of myself in their rage even though I don't share their particular set of paranoid concerns. I have my own set of paranoid concerns. The similarity I recognize is a way of not-really-dealing with reality.

And I'll just leave that there too.