Three brothers

I went to see the documentary movie Three Identical Strangers this afternoon. In 1980 three young men discover they are triplets separated at birth, adopted and raised by three different families. The brothers rejoice in each other and the world marvels over their similarities (and doesn’t think to ask about their differences). Their parents begin to ask questions. Why were they separated? Any of these couples would have taken all three. Why weren’t we told of the others? We slowly learn that they were part of a study of nature or nurture – is our adult self more influenced by our genetics or by the care we received from our families? But with the news of the brothers finding each other the study was abandoned and all the record sealed. Such a study is now viewed as highly unethical. The brothers grapple with the knowledge their lives were manipulated.

Before the movie started one of the previews was for American Chaos. It will be in theaters in a couple weeks. The basic idea is a reporter (and I didn’t catch who) has been going around asking people why they voted for the nasty guy. Some of those comments were, of course, in the preview – and *every one* of them was based on preserving social hierarchy, the ranking I talk so much about. So I have no doubt the reason why the nasty guy is in office is people want him to keep marginalized populations marginalized. He’s there to enforce racism, misogyny, homophobia, class warfare, and all the rest. I don’t think I could sit through 90 minutes of that.

When the preview was over I heard a male voice behind me, “Must’ve been made by a Democrat.”