The war mindset is honestly good for this, because it can acknowledge that your side has responsibility for the tactical and strategic mistakes they make in the conflict without assigning your side responsibility for the conflict itself.
An old David Frum article had the thesis, 'if conservatives think they can't get what they want through democracy, they won't abandon what they want, they will abandon democracy.'
Well, Dave, I can see how that would be a problem for me. At the same time, I'm not seeing how that's my problem.
A major imbalance is that the far right wants to hurt people who have already been hurt, and the far left wants to hurt successful people who haven't been hurt.
We already know we can survive the first one. It's happened before. If it happens again, it's business as usual. We have procedures.
Noting this down for when I'm off work.
Oh shit, now I gotta watch that as soon as I get home from work.
While Democrats assume that Republicans are somehow being tricked or hoodwinked and that, if they were only properly educated, they would realize that they actually wanted what Democrats are offering them all along. It's the same coping impulse - 'everyone else secretly agrees with me.' 2/2
I'd say it's more of a Democratic thing than a Republican thing, but obviously you can always find a few examples. I think the primary difference is that Republicans assume that Democratic voters are fraudulent (either legally in assuming election fraud, or morally in 'not real Americans') 1/2
A horror movie where the horror is "simply having to live in the past"
Joseph McCarthy lived in a time where it was impossible to go to large coastal cities in America without tripping over a Communist plant of some sort. However very few of them seemed to attract his interest. This was because rolling back the New Deal was really his agenda, and Cold War a pretext
the funniest thing about this, though, is that a maximally uncharitable view of Soviet penetration into the US actually makes McCarthyism look worse
I mean, a lot of these guys very transparently have fantasies about executing deviationists, and Stalin and Beria are aspirational figures for them.
The fact that putting that lyric there makes me imagine a folksy cowboy in 1880 playing a ballad on his guitar in the West that includes a shout out to Vishnu is amazing. Folklore crossover is fantastic.
... Didn't you say you have a mecha story based on one tale I can't remember the name of?
I am a normal person who can be trusted with writing things. 3/3
It's like Sam Darnold saying that playing against the Patriots linebackers was like 'seeing ghosts'. Implying that a human being has reached a level of mastery so complete that only the language of the supernatural can be used to describe it. 2/3
I know it's being played as comedy but legitimately I think this has legs for a sad tale with the ending, and the Vishnu line is *heat*. 1/3
I remember talking with my Dad about how my Mom is a moderator of a QAnon forum that publicly fantasizes about killing me and every one of my friends in 'the Storm'.
"Yes, she is," Dad acknowledged, "But she's willing to make an exception for you. Don't you think that should matter?"
I didn't.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7W4...
"The Mongoose Mountain Gang/
Played dirty with a twenty man crew/
But tales are told that Joe grew/
Eighteen arms that day as a gift from Vishnu"
is the smoothest cowboy-related song lyric since Will Smith's 'you don't want to see my hand where my hip be at'.
I remember you talking about how gods in the Hindu tradition are portrayed as having multiple arms because they are constantly acting in multiple ways constantly around the world and it's not so they can punch people four times at once
And this is true, *but* 1/2
The key part of Trump’s appeal is as something the virtuous people can inflict upon the perfidious politicians (who are captured by “urban” and “cosmopolitan” interests)
A great deal of internet socialism is only really understandable as "After The Revolution, the people I like will be richer, and the people I hate will be poorer." This is a fairly mundane and normal desire to have, but dressing it up in proletariat cosplay will never not be ridiculous.
But the knowledge that I was so insufficient that given all the advantages I still lost, that burns inside me so deep that I can see why most people will do anything to find someone else to blame, some radical clothes to dress up their desire to be in the upper class again.
To be honest, the most painful part of it, the most embittering part, is that I know you're completely right. That I failed downward, and that is necessary for others to succeed upwards. I have many things I can blame, some my fault, some other people's.
It's very reassuring to say that the only reason someone could disagree with you is because they're being fooled. I've commented that Republican voters see Democratic voters as their enemies - Democratic voters see Republican voters as insufficiently educated Democrats. This is a major imbalance.
It's like watching someone complain about capitalism when they're actually complaining about scarcity and the need to labor. Like, I'm sorry, but the curse of Adam is a thing, and would continue to be a thing if you threw every CEO in the world out of a helicopter.
As long as humans want to use power to dominate and destroy others, you can’t really separate “giving them power to build and create” and “giving them power to dominate and destroy.”
I don’t know how to say it properly, but Tolkien reaches a point of essentially blaming technology rather than the humans who use it. As though the Maxim Gun itself had caused WWI, despite the best efforts of the people using the Maxim gun.
I’m very interested in a story about knights, all of whom know what mustard gas smells like - I’m unable to phrase this well, but I’m bouncing off something that doesn’t understand that plenty of knights would have been happy to use mustard gas themselves back then.
To be honest this is sort of why I bounced so hard off Lord of the Rings when I tried to get back into it as an adult. I’m fine with extremely long forewords about hobbits, I’m not fine with Tolkien going “oh, they like industry, but only the good kind of industry, not the kind that caused the War.”
I legitimately wonder, constantly, if Pokemon would have had the guts to pull the trigger on Fairy typing if Clefairy had been Ash's starter as intended. No, Clefairy isn't named Clefairy in Japan, it's named Pippi, but it would be hard to explain in the largest market...