#it’s like the most centrist libertarian thing

[imsosocold]

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT OI OI OI HOLD UP A SWEET FUCKING HOT POCKET SECOND. King’s father’s whole “oh Belos is just evil and has always been ig” shtick. Isn’t that logic the same as BELOS’S?!! That’s why he does everything? Cause he thinks witches and demons are the creations of Satan (or something like that ig who needs properly explained motivations in fiction anyway)? And that by their mere existences witches and demons cause misery and suffering? And that the only way humanity can be safe and freed from their potential influence is through all their collective deaths?!! DANA AND CO YOU HAVE TO BE SHITTING ME-

[wanderingtycho]

By far one of my favorite things about the way Disco Elysium handles politics is that Libertarianism is treated as an absolute joke. Like the game is obviously sympathetic towards communists, but there are elements of sympathy towards the moralists and fascists as well. Not sympathy in the sense of “oh can’t we all just get along, we’re all human” BS, but sympathy in the sense that you are able to understand a persons thought process that would lead them to embrace moralism or fascism. Even if that thought process is deeply flawed, and leads to horribly off kilter conclusions, going through the centrist and fash quests gives you meaningful insight into the appeal of those ideologies.

But Ultraliberalism? The game just laughs at you, repeatedly and mercilessly. As it should, you’re a cop so poor a guy you’ve known for one day has to pawn some fancy hubcaps so you can afford rent, yet all you talk about is your grindset. Your hustle, how you’re gonna disrupt the market and groove your way into the lap of luxury. It’s delusion, utter stark raving madness, and characters treat you as such.

Kim is at a loss for words whenever you crank on your libertarian spiel, Evrart calls you a retard, you have to *trick* the mega-rich light bending guy into giving you mercury mining stocks because he’s simply too perplexed by you. Joyce, last of the self identified Ultras, doesn’t take you seriously. Sileng just goes along with it the same way he goes along with any of the other nonsense you can spout, because he’s on his own hustle, and there is no loyalty among charlatans. The only character who is wholeheartedly onboard with the money engineering and the visionary wave making lifestyle is literally named IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL.

But you see, all these things are just incidental, where the game makes it most potent jab at libertarians is when the vision quest stops. Notice I said *stop* not *end*. The communist quest line ends with a Rhetoric check in order to ask The Most Important Question about Communism. The fascist quest has you look yourself in the eye with an Endurance check to see if you can stomach the truth about yourself and your Vöws. The moralist quest ends with a heart wrenching Empathy check as you beg the iron grey and soulless enforcers of the status quo to please god help this district before war breaks out in the streets. There’s real personal stakes for Harry in all these disparate paths he can walk, what does Ultraliberalism get?

You and Kim look at a statue covered in tinsel and disco balls, Kim asks you why you went through with all this, and no matter what response you pick he’s like “Right, yeah, okay. Anyway, let’s finish the case.”

That’s it, no grand moment of pathos, no red Savoir Faire skill check to see if you really are the baddest hustler in the neoliberal hood after all. It’s completely limp, flaccid, lackluster. The game treats all the effort you put into this as exactly what it is: sad, cringe fantasies of a poor old man who’s huffing copium over the embarrassed millionaire mythos.

Disco Elysium doesn’t give libertarianism a poignant, profound conclusion because it’s an ideology undeserving of such treatment. It’s a hyper-capitalist cult mentality of toxic positivity and confirmation bias, a way for desperate people to trick themselves and other chumps into thinking they can bootstrap their way into wealth and prestige. It goes past wishful thinking into pure delirium, the game doesn’t engage with it seriously because it doesn’t have to, the only people who sincerely believe any of its tenants are morons and the clowns who sucker them.

[cotta-therian]

🌱 . → Introduction ;

Hello ! Im Cotta, but you can also call me Bia or Bea. This account will be about my interests, hobbies and identities, among other minor things. I will generally write things in english, but sometimes portuguese. Here are some things about me:

My pronouns are she/her; I dont really like neutral (they/them) pronouns, but feel free to use them, as long as you don't refer to me with masculine pronouns (he/him) ;

I identify as an alterhuman: therian (caramel hooded crow · dall sheep · tabby cat · tundra wolf · ant), otherkin (centaur) and phytanthrope (daisy). There is a photo of them below ;

I really like spirituality and religion. Im a "kardecist spiritist" and witch, I also really enjoy learning about new cultures and stuff like that. No discrimination, though ;

The subcultures Im part of and styles I like to use/wear are mainly alternative, goblincore, cotta(ge)core, cowboy/cowgirl style and whimsical. Normally things related to nature and green/brown colors ;

I enjoy collecting trinket-stuff and doing things like sunbathing and daydreaming. Other hobbies of mine are making masks, drawing and playing piano ;

Im lesbian and hypersexual ;

I dislike talking about politics, but I consider myself a libertarian or just centrist in general ;

I use tone tags (mostly /gen [as gentle instead of genuine], /j, /srs, /nbr, /nm) and emoticons (mostly :3, :), :P, :D) ;

Im anxious, kinda agressive and I have difficulty in focusing well, so I may reply you in a rude way. I dont mean it most of the times, sorry if I act that way ;

Im not really worried about your content or what you post, just DONT talk about any of those here:

NSFW and sexual stuff ;

Wars and politics ;

Anti-alterhuman, anti-nonhuman, anti-holothere, anti-physical-alterhumanity stuff ;

"Anti-paraphilia" or pro-con paraphilias stuff ;

Transmed, homophobic, transphobic, anti-self-diagnosis, sysmed and anti-endo stuff ;

Flirting and romantic relationships (do not flirt with me) ;

Rude, grotesque-like comments and harassment ;

Obvious others (racism, sexism, ableism, etc) ;

I guess thats it. You can ask me about anything you need !

[beardedmrbean]

As someone who voted for a far right EU party, I can tell you exactly why I did it : Low salaries, high cost of living, I'm being taxed to hell and back, everyone's on minimum wage and lives on the extra money from benefits, my personal freedom is getting more and more restricted "for the greater good", insane amounts of immigration, the job market is a mess... and the only thing politicians debate on is Ukraine and Israel, covid, and EU measures. No one is campaigning to cut benefits and lower taxes, they're all socialists who disagree on how to spend the loot.

I've seen governments from the left, from the right, from self-proclaimed "centrists" and "liberals", and they never failed to make my life worse. The only ones I haven't seen are libertarians, who have been hunted to extinction in there, and the anti-self-proclaimed "far-right", whose whole campaign is "curb immigration". At this point I'm just willing to try anything. If a politician tries to convince me that the other guy is bad and will destroy democracy or something, I just shut them off. At worst, they're just as incompetent as their competition, and at best they're going to be just as incompetent as their competition BUT they'll shake the political climate a bit, show the bipartisan conglomerate of half rotten zombies that wants to set a "united fromt" "for democracy" (= a one party state) that they can stick it where the sun don't shine.

That sounds about right or at least sounds a whole lot like what I've been saying as a reasoning behind voters going that route.

And then when the "far right™" parties start picking up votes they don't look at the why the voters are going that route, they just call them nazis or something like that and demonize them and then carry on doing the same thing they've been doing.

Skinner "no the children are wrong" meme, but it's no the voters are nazis instead.

Eventually in Germany and several other EU nations parties like AfD will have enough seats to operate without worrying about trying to secure any votes, granted that's the only way afd can since there's the whole 'won't form a coalition with them' agreement from all the other parties, but I shudder to think what might happen if/when that does happen over there.

Most of the people I'm seeing voting for those parties aren't far right at all, they're just tired of the people at the top not listening to their concerns, or just outright dismissing them even.

So they're going to take their votes to the people that do seem to be listening even if they would rather not. ____________________

gonna be people on here that read this and say I'm trying to promote a far right agenda or something like that, which is sad since it's the reverse of that I'm promoting.

This is how to keep a far right agenda from taking hold, one way at least.

[transmutationisms]

why do you think the sibs are all on different parts of the political spectrum when they grew up mostly the same? as billionaires it's kind of expected that they'd all be (at best) moderately conservative, so it's interesting that shiv is very left-leaning, kendall is kind of a centrist, roman just goes with whatever his dad wants, and connor is an independent, if not libertarian.

shiv is the most interesting to me, since I feel like, along with the rest of her family, she easily has the privilege of politics not meaning anything to her, she's just above that, yet she has made a career of it. I want to say she's the best of them, since left-leaning policies are just generally better for people, yet her response to the cruises thing and how easily she sucked-up to mencken just confuses me.

i've written more about this in my succession politics tag, which i'll stick this post into, but shiv is not left-leaning. she's a democrat, a centre-right party. that the rest of her family thinks her politics are unlike theirs says more about these people's limited worldviews than it does about her actual political positions, and her politics are not beneficial for workers in america, anyone in the countries her father / waystar meddle with politically, or even, like, most white american women. at the end of the day, yes, she wouldn't do everything she could to stop mencken because doing that would have been counter to her personal professional interests—same as the rest of her family, that's her priority when it comes down to it. with cruises, she sympathises with the victims, but again isn't going to prioritise them over her personal interests with the company / logan, and her attempted threesome with the yacht employee also shows how she ultimately also views workers as lesser-than and uses her structural position to exploit them, including a willingness to do so sexually—again, like the rest of her family.

the siblings' specific ideologies do tell us a lot about them psychologically, ie shiv's belief in abstract equality, personal merit, and an us–them paranoia telegraphed by her hygiene fixation; roman's eroticisation of masculinity and father figures; kendall being ideologically flexible in much the same way capital itself is; connor's view of reproduction / productivity and his semantic conflation of sperm and money. so like, i'm not saying there are no distinctions and i actually do think this writing is pretty nuanced. but the show is also quite clear about the fact that these characters are all capitalists, none of them are challenging the reigning political ontology, and their ideological disagreements are not in contradiction to that at all.

[stlangels]

Analysis of Voter Turnout

In 2016: Trump had 62,984,828 votes. Hillary had 65,853,514. Gary Johnston (libertarian) had 4,489,341. Jill Stein had 1,457,218. Total: 134,784,901

In 2020, Trump had 74,213,893 votes and Biden had 81,268,720. Third party candidates together had 2,922,155. Total: 158,404,768

In this election so far (Nov 6 2:15pm pst), Trump has 71,083,860. Harris has 67,274,908. Jill Stein has 629,996. RFK Jr has 602,173. Chase Oliver (libertarian) has 568,034. Other candidates have 319,399. Together 3rd parties have 2,119,602. Total (so far): 140,478,370. The only states still counting are Nevada and Arizona. Nevada has a population of 3.194 million and Arizona has a population of 7.431 mil. Even if every person in both those states voted and none of their votes had been counted yet, voter turnout will be less than in 2020.

So, some results. In this election, voter turnout overall is significantly lower than in 2020. Both Trump and all 3rd party candidates got less votes in this election than in 2020. While lower voter turnout overall could account for some of this loss, it cannot account for all of it.

Kamala's lack of votes (not electoral, but actual cast ballots) most likely comes from people choosing not to vote, rather than voting 3rd party or for Trump.

The reason she lost the popular vote is because her campaign could not convince democrats and left-leaning americans to vote for her. And, yes, yes, it was wrong and dumb for them to abstain from voting because of moral hang ups or apathy or indecisiveness or whatever reason. But the democratic party and the Harris campaign consistently focused on appealing to centrist and center-right voters and swinging them rather than ensuring that the turnout in 2020 repeated itself. Rather than focus on galvanizing her base, the campaign focused on gaining new voters and as a result did very little to appeal to the Biden 2020 voters.

Racism and sexism and associations with the Biden presidency most certainly negatively affected Kamala's campaign, but that would have been unavoidable in any campaign she ran. The campaign they did actually run failed to address any issues brought up from the left (not even leftists, those left of center). Like what genius decided to send a Clinton and a Cheney to a place where the campaign wanted to secure Arab voters?

I do not think it was a good thing that people did not vote. However, it is plain stupid of democrats to expect that people will continue to fervently support any candidate they nominate when they demonstrate almost no effort to appeal to minority groups and the left and then blame the foolishness or rightward shift of those groups on their losses. The dems should not have expected that all they needed to be was less bad than Trump to get the kind of turnout Biden got in 2020. The Trump campaign actually focused on keeping the voters from 2020 and strengthening that pre-existing support. Thats why his total vote count changed so little from 2020.

Democrats cannot expect the habit of appealing to nonexistent voters and neglecting their base and then blaming the state of the country on like 15,000 people who were apparently too foolish or morally wrong to "do the right thing" to work. Its stupid.

[nonegenderleftpain]

Just had the most fucking infuriating conversation. My lovely partner was dealing with their shithead centrist roommate and his opinions on trans people in prisons and I was like hey, send him to me! I do trans education with guys like this professionally, and that way maybe you won't have to deal with his shit without adding more tension to your household. So we connected, and I set a boundary: I was upfront about being bipolar, because it affects how I communicate and how my emotions react to things, and I said that I needed him to trust that I and *only I* knew when I was being "too emotional" to talk rationally. I told him that I did not consent to anyone except my physicians commenting on my mental state, and that I have dealt with my particular cocktail of mental illness for years while he has not. I gave him a yes or no question - can I trust that you will not use my disability to undermine my professional knowledge about trans issues?

I sat and watched him go off about how he's getting a PhD in clinical psychology, and how dare I presume he doesn't know things about bipolar disorder, and on and on. I asked him if he had bipolar, and told him again that if not, I do not consent to discussing it with him except to get his agreement that he will not use it to belittle me. He then proceeded to state that unless my physicians also have bipolar, then it's a completely unfair question, etc etc. I repeated the question, clarifying that this was a yes or no.

I got ANOTHER paragraph of going off about how the way I set my boundaries was rude and inappropriate and he doesn't respect the way I said it, etc etc. I gave him one last chance to answer my yes or no question - a chance that he failed, when he proceeded to tell me that I was using my disability as an excuse (an excuse for what, he never answered when I asked), and that I had "blinders on about my own behavior."

I clarified what happened - that I gave him three chances to answer a yes or no question guaranteeing he would not use my disability as an excuse to brush aside my years of knowledge on trans issues because I might get emotional, and he chose three times not to answer. After which he blocked me.

Now, if you are a minority educator, you may have caught what I did here, but maybe not, so I'm going to explain. When this man said he had "concerns" about trans people in prisons, I decided to test how sincere he was about engaging with me as a minority. I set a reasonable boundary in a polite but no-nonsense way about an axis of discrimination that had *nothing to do* with the thing we intended to discuss. To be fair, I was trying to give the guy some warning about my emotional regulation problems and how they affect response times, but really, I was testing how he would respond to being told no. I chose to be mildly vulnerable about an axis of oppression that is under legal protections, in order to both protect myself and to test his responses. If he could not respond appropriately, and with some level of consideration, to a request about an axis of oppression that he cannot deny exists, he could not be trusted to engage with me on an axis he sees as debatable.

Do not give people your heart to get them to respect you. If they cannot respect your "no" with something objective and concrete and communicate clearly, they will not respect your "no" when it is hurting you. And remember that you NEVER owe people like this your time and energy. Never. It doesn't matter who they are. I chose to step into this conversation knowing it was unlikely to go well, because I am an educator. You do not have to be an educator just because you are a minority. If you're Just Some Guy, it's not your job to listen to people shit on you or use this libertarian-ass centrist doublespeak to avoid answering simple questions like "can I trust that you will not discriminate against me if we talk." Just tell them to fuck off and you will be so much better for it.

(And on another note, for his patient's sake, I hope this man fails med school. Someone like that is not ready to interact with vulnerable groups, and I told him as much before he ran like a coward from having to admit that no, he WAS going to use my disability to undermine me if it was useful for him to.)

[nokingsonlyfooles]

The Dark Secret of Zootopia? (Part 1, Identifying the Problem)

What? If you're a fan, you already know Zootopia's "secret."

It was originally a dark dystopia where the predators wore "tame collars," but the Zootopia team got nervous about how depressing it was and did a last-minute rewrite that used most of the old assets and plot points! Right? So are we gonna do a deep dive on that?

Not quite.

What if I told you that despite the rewrite that took out the obvious metaphor for systemic oppression, more evidence of systemic issues remains and... it probably doesn't make any difference?

So that half-assed poll I put up suggests more than one person would like to see me take Zootopia apart, and that probably means delving into the racism metaphor, but, man, I don't have the headspace for that today! So I took a spin through the Headscratchers page, hoping to find something a little more compact. There had to be something other than the racism metaphor that a lot of people had trouble with, right? Sort of an appetizer for a busy Tuesday?

Nnnot really.

Here's an obvious Libertarian voter who can't fathom that people would be racist when it runs contrary to good business practices! We go through quite a few tropers positing non-racist or less racist reasons to refuse Nick service - including one who believes prejudice against predators "wasn't a thing" until Judy's press conference, and before that people just didn't like foxes - before some hero arrives with a fire extinguisher and says, I'm paraphrasing, "Racism isn't rational! End of story!"

Then we got this question, which has the answer contained in it already!

I've trimmed the first response, from someone who apparently sees nothing wrong with just rolling up and asking to pet a sentient being. "It doesn't have to be a metaphor for anything"!? They go on to posit that maybe it's a taboo in funny animal society. 'Cos, you know, you don't have to read Zootopia as a metaphor for human society if you don't wanna.

(The Author! He's already dead! Why you gotta desecrate the corpse like that?)

It takes a few more self-soothing responses from evident people-petters before, again, someone rolls up and says, "It is exactly white people wanting to 'pet' black people's 'weird' hair, something that is unfortunately a fairly common patronizing occurrence in the U.S., at least."

And after that, we still get this:

"I have a Black friend and he lets me pet him all the time! Cut white people some slack! They're just curious! Let us pet you!"

Zootopia is racism lite, folks. Zootopia calls out racism primarily as something an individual does when they make decisions based on their preexisting biases - which, in Nick and Judy's cases, stem from childhood traumas that we get to see on-screen.

This is a version of racism that a child - with a little hand-holding from a caregiver - could understand. All but the most toxic conservatives ought to be okay explaining this kind of racism, including the toxic neoliberal centrists! "You see, little Kayden, there is no such thing as 'society.' 'Racism' is what happens when a lot of individuals make bad decisions. All you have to do to stop it is make better decisions, and encourage others to make better decisions too! Why, when I was your age, we chose better hairsprays without CFCs in them, and that fixed global warming and the hole in the ozone layer forever!"

"Auntie Margaret Thatcher, isn't climate change still a..."

"WE FIXED IT FOREVER, LITTLE KAYDEN." *strained smile* "So just don't buy fox spray! If enough people don't buy it, they'll stop making it."

"Why is it okay for someone to make a spray specifically to hurt foxes in the first place?"

"...If you don't stop asking questions, I shall bury you under the Aberfan coal tip with all the rest, little Kayden. Eat your popcorn."

But even that's too much for some folks! They retreat behind the ambiguity of the metaphor and wonder why the funny animals make such odd decisions, in the willful absence of context. With no context, why would a bunny be able to say, "It's okay if we call each other 'cute,' but you shouldn't." That's blatant hypocrisy. Bunnies don't own "cute." It's just a word!

Don't apologize, Benjamin! Why would you do that?

This entire movie is a modern Aesop fable and you need that human context. "Cute" privilege to "n-word" privilege is a one-to-one correlation, like petting a sheep is to petting a Black person. It only makes sense because you live in human society and you can fill in the blanks - because you have seen similar manifestations of bias and you already know they're not okay. You don't even have to know why or agree. To get the joke, you just have to know this stuff happens and people think it's rude. That is not a high bar to clear!

And that is, apparently, the level of anxiety we have about unpacking our own racism. Not even the systemic kind. Not even the big issues those scary "woke" zombies are trying to "cancel" you about. Just, "An individual - including you, for you are an individual - can make bad decisions based on their experiences."

Whaaaat? No I don't!

"These animals have nothing to do with me and therefore, this movie makes no sense."

These are the people Zootopia needed to reach. Not the ones who already had a clue, the ones who were so scared of getting one that they buried their heads in the sand and refused to acknowledge reality itself. So here's a cheerful little film with an animal metaphor and an optimistic resolution! Surely they must feel safe enough to unpack racism in this context?

But they didn't. Much like Green Book, this film was safe and simple enough to walk away with an Oscar from an Academy that's mostly white, male, and terrified of minorities - and the people who didn't want to get "woke" slept right through it. I don't think that's what they were going for, given that V 1 of this film had systemic oppression worn around the neck of every predator with a blinking light on it.

Remember, they reused assets and plot points from the original and rewrote everything fast. Traces remain. But if the ostriches in the audience can't understand "cute" privileges, do they have any hope of noticing Judy's bathroom at the police academy has a toilet that can kill her and no accommodations for a species her size?

Well, they might have. But the way the film handles it gleefully assassinates everyone's chance to see the systemic issues and respond to them appropriately.

Tune in next time, for Judy Hopps, bunny cops, "Black Excellence" and our old friend Barack!

[smalltittiesbigdreams]

I have watched The Office from start to finish and created a list of what I believe every character’s politics to be, listed in order of who would be most likely to scab.

Disclaimer: I do not think that being a scab or having bad politics makes the character inherently bad, this is just how I think they would act. Also I know I left out some later characters bc I hated seasons 8 and 9, sorry. 

Jan: girlbossy suburban Republican mom vibes, literally union busts the warehouse workers

Todd Packer: alt right

Dwight: right wing authoritarian, believes in weird conspiracy theories, volunteer police officer, always jumps at the opportunity to impress the boss

Angela: conservative Christian, Reagan Republican 

Michael: “fiscally conservative but socially liberal” vibes, probably votes Republican for tax reasons but wants to think he’s unproblematic, reports warehouse workers’ union drive to Jan

Gabe: libertarian with creepy racist/misogynistic vibes

Andy: votes Republican bc his parents do

Kevin: libertarian, would probably do crypto and stan Elon Musk

Ryan: after being fired becomes an internet leftist who reads Marx for clout but would still throw his coworkers under the bus at any moment for his own personal benefit

Karen: ladder climber, girlbossy liberal

Toby: conservative Democrat, would scab bc he works for HR

Holly: center-left Democrat, the type of person who thinks the New York Times is objective

Phyllis: centrist Democrat, NIMBY vibes

Roy: supported unionization as a warehouse worker but becomes conservative after starting his own company

Jim: milquetoast Democrat, more left leaning in the earlier seasons but drifts more centrist as he becomes a homeowner and gets promoted to management positions

Pam: more left than Jim but is afraid of things that veer too far from the mainstream (read: socialism)

Kelly: liberal, gets all her news from social media

Erin: doesn’t pay attention to politics

Creed: participated in 1960′s counterculture but has gone down some sort of weird fringe path

Meredith: the wild card, doesn’t vote bc neither party adequately addresses her needs

Oscar: progressive Democrat with radlib characteristics

Stanley: was a radical when he was younger but has become cynical and resigned to life under capitalism

Darryl: progressive Democrat, wanted to unionize the warehouse workers

[holycartoonwarrior]

The episodes four and five were rlly weak politically. Amazing character work as always and exploring Joel and Ellie’s relationship so it’s so jarring the show has such black and white centrist takes on politics in the fucking apocolypse?

Kathleen deserved better writing.

I’m sorry but revenge is bad, non violence good. Is not an interesting take. It’s why I didn’t like TLOU2. Kathleen clearly cares abt helping her ppl, that’s WHY she was so motivated for revenge. which means it makes NO sense for her to lie abt the infected underground. Why it makes NO sense for her to kill collaborators who she is AWARE r poor and already gave a better solution for dealing w. Something firm and tough and cruel but understandable in the fear of fascism returning. U could actually have a moral struggle abt if this is better.

INSTEAD. She goes all “KILL THEM ALL” so u can’t even question if she’s morally good or not. They WANT her to be evil so BADLY. A real shame I thought it was going somewhere w the fact Henry was aware he was a terrible person who had commited a genuine wrong against his ppl. One he felt he had to make but was sacrificing more ppl than he was helping.

Again utterly squandered by Kathleen giving the weirdest nonsensical speech abt why Sam needs to die which doesn’t ALIGN AT ALL w being a resistance leader. She lead an uprising against a fascist dictatorship? WHY WHY WHY would she suddenly talk abt resigning urself to fate? U could have her talk abt weather it’s worth saving one kid who could die any moment without going “eh fate IG”. The show is so scared of exploring this. Cuz they want the Joel mirror character of Henry to go as little challenged politically as possible.

A real shame cuz I did like at the end it shows that his attachment to Sam and Sam alone was deeply dangerous and doesn’t foster a healthy mindset. Perhaps this could’ve gone against Kathleen if they actually went w the communal utilitarian view w her and commited.

All in all they should’ve just had Kathleen be a simple done and done fascist or done her better.

I don’t want Joel to becoming morally better. That is NOT his story. I do not want the idea sacrificing for one person is a good thing. The game was good abt keeping that for u to decide. And so far it’s not too bad it was done rlly well w bill being a libertarian nut job and Henry putting all this emotional pressure on a child just scared it’s slowly getting there.

Inshallah it’s not, It’s still a great show. And I believe it’ll be fine for the most part. Just jeez Kathleen was such a waste of potential.

[theelectricfrog]

The sheer number of people with horrible, fascistic takes in the replies for this. "Heinlein was a libertarian, so his ideal society couldn't possibly be fascistic." Being libertarian doesn't mean you can't hold fascist ideals. Further, Heinlein claimed in 67 that he had always been a libertarian, but even then, he said it was only because it was easier to explain than "philosophical anarchist" or "autarchist". This is on top of the fact that he openly identified as an anti-communist Democrat until 1954. In 1964, he actively supported the presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, whose platform was built on being anti-communist and anti-union, the man credited with reviving American conservatism and paving the way for the election of Ronald Reagan. Also, Heinlein openly endorsed the Vietnam War in 1968. Heinlein was a libertarian in the sense of he didn't want anybody else telling him what to do, but he was fully in favor of using overwhelming military force to tell other people what to do. Which is reflected in several of his works. Including the original Starship Troopers novel. Combining that with the machismo and hyper-masculinity present in the novel, and you already have all the main ingredients of fascist propaganda. Verhoeven took the fascist undertones already present in the work and critiqued them through parody.

"The bugs are communists and all communists deserve to be killed." This speaks for itself.

"The Arachnids are clearly the aggressors, but the Federation's response is to gleefully drop down to their level." We're never shown in the film anything at all suggesting the bugs are the aggressors. Humanity is already at war with the bugs at the beginning of the film, as evidenced by things like the dissection scene during the school segment. Buenos Aires was, at most, an escalation, and it's not even definitively shown to be that. It's just the moment where it becomes personal for our POV character. This comment is centrist rather than actually fascist, but it operates by assuming the fascist propaganda is true to begin with with absolutely no evidence.

Even the scene everybody keeps using to "prove" the brain bug deserves to die, the scene in which it eats somebody's brain, is wildly misinterpreted. First, the bugs lack any means to communicate with humans other than this. Second, the people whose brains are eaten are all military personnel actively invading the bugs' planet and have knowledge about attack plans. Third, this again mirrors the dissection scene. We see at the very least 8 bugs (pretty sure it's 9, but one is obscured) being cut open and having their organs pulled out one-by-one in a single classroom, notably happening IN Buenos Aires, and the scene is treated as exposition with comedy mixed in. It also has a monologue from the teacher heavily dehumanizing the bugs (a theme present through the entire movie), including her outright saying, "has no fear" as part of her evidence. The scene where the brain bug is captured, Jenkins's line is "It's afraid!", met with cheers from everybody around. It doesn't matter that the dehumanizing propaganda is explicitly disproved, because it's already done its job.

[gorey-gorella]

It’s a genuine shame that you think academics like Cathy Cohen aren’t worth listening to because they supposedly use too many “buzzwords” (another silly anti-academia fear mongering term) or “get to the point quickly enough”... It’s obviously important to consider the positioning/background of your sources, but Ieft-leaning ones tend to be more in line with facts than right-leaning ones, especially notorious grifters like Shoe0nhead.

You keep bringing up observable reality as if it exists in opposition to my positions when it’s not. As a fellow atheist, I also acknowledge that subatomic particles not being observable by my eye does not make them any less real or measurable. Things like systemic racism have numerical evidence and historical context.

I called your description of the left exaggerated because you clearly do not understand what “be gay, do crime” even means (i.e. associating it with gays thinking they’re above the law as a whole as opposed to it’s actual meaning of participating in civil disobedience/good trouble to create more just laws/eradicate unjust laws).

Mike is literally one of the creators, safe to say he knows what ATLA stands for better than you do.

A show can be leftist and also critique it. The video game Disco Elysium is communist but critiques communism. Also, a monarchy is still a form of government and the show doesn’t need to display a one-to-one governmental representation of its ideology to hold said ideology (After all, suggesting Mike is advocating for monarchy would be a silly lack of media literacy). Furthermore, saying that authoritarianism isn’t bad on its own is interesting, to say the least… Also, while liberalism, leftism, and libertarianism may have some overlaps, they are all distinct and you seem to keep conflating them. I think it’s similarly interesting that you think Airbenders were too pacifistic, but label the entire anti-fascist movement as too extreme (i.e. support more active forms liberation for fictional characters, but not for real oppressed people). ATLA promotes balance as a means to prevent/resist authoritarianism and fascism, not to endorse centrism.

Of course not all right-wingers are exactly the same, people across the board are individuals. Some extreme right-wingers love Trump and some hate him because they’re also not a monolith. However, at its core, the right is united by inherently harmful and dehumanizing ideologies.

I’m obviously left-leaning and I own that. Bias is impossible to avoid, being a centrist is still buying into certain forms of propaganda, so the best one can do is align themselves with whatever position is most in line with facts/has the most consistent and harm-reductive worldview. I am, however, not caught up in culture war bull like worrying about people’s gender identity. You genuinely think the left is out to “eliminate masculinity” or whatever that means when it’s all in your head and you responded in earnest to a shitpost. No one is force-feminizing men against their will and you seriously need to change your media diet if you think that.

Buzzwords aren’t a leftist thing. If a right winger is saying top many buzzwords, I tend to tune off from them, too.

I never said anything in my other post about the left holding men down and making them wear a dress.

My point was that the left hates men who are mentally dominant and have their own opinions in any way. They don't actually care for men being able to express their feminity. They just want men to submit everything. Most 'feminine' men I see on the left are either gay and act exactly like stan Twitter users or just completely submit themselves to the left, and they drink, 'respect women juice'.

They may be 'joking', but I can tell its based on their own beliefs. Especially since one of the comments was on the person's side and was all like, 'The misandry truthers' like if misandry clearly doesn't exist.

As I said, it's not like I don't use data at stuff at all, I just don't use the ones with buzzwords, half-ass data, and clearly with an extreme bias. Cathy Cohen has a clear bias of wanting to make blacks and lgbt people look like victims of everything.

I'm not rejecting data or academia. I'm rejecting studies that are clearly agenda-driven and full of emotional buzzwords. Bias exists in academia, and that's why I won't blindly accept someone like Cathy Cohen, who constantly frames minorities as helpless victims of everything.

Mike literally can be flawed. And just because years later, he quoted some dumb shit doesn't mean that ATLA meant that back then.

I never said Mike meant that we should become a monarchy, I meant that the show, in general, was anti-extremes. That's why they didn't dismantle the monarchy, he may disagree with it, but it's not an extreme in it of itself, that's why the monarchy wasn't destroyed.

Just because Mike DiMartino is the creator doesn't mean his later political takes rewrite the themes of ATLA. The show is about balance and resisting extremes, not about pushing a single political ideology. Creators don't get to dictate how we interpret their work years later.

Antifa is a garbage movement. I am anti-fascist. That doesn't mean much. That doesn't say much about my beliefs. Saying your anti-fascist does really mean anything. Antifa is a radical, dangerous movement that harms those they disagree with.

I literally agreed it was anti-fascism. It's just not completely anti-auth, or else, the Firelord and Royal system would be dismantled all together.

The right thinks the same thing of the left. They think at its core, all the left and libs are trying to destroy everything they love.

For me, centrism makes the most sense because it's not on one side. It takes in all perspectives.

Centrism isn't propaganda-it's about taking a balanced view and rejecting extremism on both sides. It allows me to evaluate issues based on logic and evidence, not just tribal loyalty to a political camp.

I call out the night's bullshit too. Where did you get me saying I'm worried about that? I'm saying the left never has cared about men(exactly why the right can easily brainwash them on being on their side).

The left ignores men's issues, which is why the right has such an easy time pulling men into their camp. The left only 'cares' about men when they fit their agenda, and that's why many men feel alienated and brainwashed by the right.

Also, Mike and many other creators can be stupid, especially in the future. He could just be following the dumb modern trends now.

I'm not sure if Mike quoted it 2016(the time of Trump) or in a later year, but ATLA was made in 2005 and ended in 2008. That's years from even 2016 and even more years from a year above 2016.

Clearly, back then, it was anti-extremes. His newer opinions don't change what ATLA, the TV series, was all about. It was about harmony.

I mean, wow, nothing says anti-auth like continuing the Firelord and Royal system, even in LOK.

[neptunianashes]

Today Javier was invited to the opening ceremony of the Olympic games and I have a few things to say about it. First and foremost Macron is NOT an ally of Javier ideals, for starters he is not even in the right wing, he is a centrist and worse he likes to lean towards the left, if in danger he is willing to side with the leftist to fight the right wing in France, so Macron is no where near close to libertarian ideals despite whatever the fuck he says about liberty. But the worst part it's not even Macron, the worst part is that the patriotic right wing opposition led by Le Pen is ALSO a Statist collectivist right wing. France is soooo far deep in shit with the State and Socialism that even their own far right wing parasite the people as much as the left.

they have both the highest taxes and the highest government spending as a percentage of gdp not only inside of Europe but the world. The communist of the USSR if still alive would have been very proud about modern France. Both Macron and Le Pen are enemies to libertarians ideals as much as the communist so why Javier is accepting the offer made by the french of travelling there? I'd say because of 3 reasons. The first one being our country has sailed further and further away from Europe for almost 80 years now, it's been a long time since we entered the decadent socialist hellhole and every year we sided more with the chinese and russian and the like and we lost our trust and place. Even if France has nowadays such disastrous leaders, their country remains one of the founding pillars of the western world. And even if Javier personal ideals are libertarians and anarcho-capitalistic, his values and beliefs are below his transitory job as president of a nation, he should aim to get our country closer to Europe once again regardless of his own values and regardless of the french having collectivist leaders. Second reason is even longer to write but to put it short, it's more important for the right wing to stop fighting among themselves with the difference there are between ideologies of the right, and instead to focus the effort on first beating the leftists who are always united which is something the right wing has trouble to do. So even if Le Pen is like on the opposite side of libertarian ideals, she is still inside the right wing and hence closer to us than the leftist which have a quicker and aggresive way of removing liberties for human rights, and we should side with them regardless of them being a type of Statist right wing. And the third reason, if he was invited to give a speech by an enemy statist president like Macron, he can still take the opportunity to spread libertarian ideals in a big event with lots of people listening and inside one of the most leftist countries in Europe.

[magz]

re: your post about tumblr adding support for fediverse--at the same time it's significantly better than the twitter thing, i'm generally not impressed by open source devs' approaches to free speech n stuff they're not much better than libertarians at best

The hypocritical obsession with ““free speech”” by some developers is a consequence of open source being contributable and directable by most anyone.

And it giving them the freedom to moderate however they like.

.

Just as much as there are leftist-identified developers, there’s centrists and conservatives that have their own agendas

when they support an internet not fully controlled by few big social media corporations and closed-source software.

Since they get banned at random for their hate speech in other circles.

.

I’m somewhat wondering how Tumblr would interact with that…

since some staff members recently claimed they want to restructure things to limit and ban white supremacist stuff,

and are preparing to make changes to do that but… i dunno.

At the very least ban fascist fediverse instances, please.

[nyeogmi]

the trope of “you’re in an echo chamber”

preemptively: i'm not, i hang out with old libertarians and even periodically interact with kiwis and trump fans. i have defended republicans before and i engage with centrist and right-wing news sources. i used to be a right-leaning libertarian with fairly conservative social views

when people go around saying "you're in an echo chamber" i think most of the time it's basically a way of saying "what if there are very good reasons to believe the thing we believe that you don't know about" without having to actually produce the reasons

a lot of people won't want to take that bet. like, maybe they have not _directly_ engaged with conservative sources and have only heard the tropes secondhand from people who they correctly assume are not good mouthpieces for those viewpoints

otoh you have people who have sought out opposing views and even people who are converts from those viewpoints. making the echochamber accusation against this kind of person makes little sense

in those cases, making the accusation is basically making an excuse for the crowd to ignore that person. it's usually not a serious challenge based on evidence, but instead just an appeal to a stereotype.

like, laptop-wielding nerds run the full political gamut but it's considered acceptable to act as if everyone who's a demsoc only interacts with laptop-wielders who are _also_ demsocs

imho this is not the only way that extremists and fringe go around innuendoing "i have good reasons, but i won't post them." you see a lot of "if i post the truth, they'll ban me" as well as people who act like "the deep and insightful reasons for why i think naziism is correct are buried in this book that costs $8 which i will not summarize"

maddeningly, moderates tend to assume that people who consistently say "well yes, i can prove it, and no, i can't tell you how" are telling you the truth

[skaldish]

So recently in a discussion I had with two other heathens about abortion rights and after both of them basically "mansplained" to me, a person that has the organs to push out a human how those organs worked. Told me to stop being a "snowflake liberal" and said that heathenry has always been a conservative religion and people like me are ruining it for everyone else. And they also said that I should watch for Freya, as She will most likely abandon and punish me because I'm a "baby killer supporter"

So actual question, as I'm not all that smart when it comes to academic research, is/was heathenry really conservative, I mean to the extent that it's starting to sound suspiciously like another religion..

Sorry, I know I should do the research but I have a really hard time comprehending academic papers, and need a layman's explanation 😅

No, and that is because our concepts of "liberal" and "conservative" are contemporary inventions. To retroactively fit either of them onto heathenry would be revisionist.

There is one exception though, and that is Odinism. This particular brand of Heathenry was born out of Nazi Germany and leans drastically right, valuing typical Nazi things such as "traditionalism," ethnocentrism, folkism, nationalism (in the form of tribalism, in this case), and "racialism" (separation of the races). The Nine Noble Virtues come from this lineage, actually, invented in the 1970's by actual literal fascists.

It's this kind of Heathenry that right-wingers (and some self-identifying libertarians and centrists) think of when they refer to Heathenry, often without realizing Odinism doesn't predate 1890 at the absolute earliest. (They also don't always call it Odinism--I just do for the sake of distinguishing it from older forms of Heathenry like forn sidr/forn sed).

They also tend to subscribe to a more boiled-down version of it, which is why the fascist components typically go unrecognized (or ignored in favor of the viking glamour).

Now, as for what Heathenry on the whole has always been? That has varied with time, location, and the sensibility of individuals. Our values are something we add to our Heathen practice, as opposed to something Heathenry gives us to follow. We can see this reflected throughout history.

The only real constant element in Heathenry is Animism--the belief that all things are interconnected and, to some degree, possess a vital essence of their own, and therefore agency. It's considered good manners to interact with the forces of the world in positive ways, because doing so will make our living environments and everyone in them happier and healthier for it.

Keep in mind that Heathenry is not a religion of doctrine. It's not like Christianity where you must do XYZ thing or be punished. We don't fear our gods, and they don't act as our lords, let alone the distant arbiters of our lives. And from what we can discern from text and culture and just the experience of them, punishing us for exercising bodily autonomy seems to go against everything they gods represent and stand for.

(The idea that Freyja would abandon anyone for saying women should have bodily autonomy is, frankly, fucking absurd. It's Freyja. Have they even met Freyja? This goddess rages at the mere mention of getting married off against her will. If you show her an idiot who tells her what to do with her body, she'll show him a one-way ticket to Helheim.)

If you want some gimmicky historical viking thing to go off of, consider this quote: "trúa á mátt sinn ok megin." I forget which exact saga it comes from, but it refers to trusting in one's own strength and power; the ability one has to exercise their own will and agency ("megin" has a complex meaning).

So in other words, choosing to exercise authority over your own body is probably as viking as you can get.