#most Americans approved of Hitler and his policies before America joined the war

[crepuscular-girlthing]

can you believe that some people want to *gasp* kill Hitler??

i know people disagree with him on some issues, but really, it's just such a fundamental social breakdown when you can't have political discourse without threats of violence!

He has a family, and millions of people agree with him! Would you kill them too???

Besides, he could still be persuaded to make reparations to the families of the people who've been killed suffered under his leadership. Justice can't be done with violence.

[beinglibertarian]

What Is Going On In Syria?

This is the third time that I’ve sat down to write about the situation in Syria. The third time there’s been an unexplained chemical attack that, after the hype has died down and the media stopped reporting, turns out to have very little evidence substantiating it. Once again the media and both the political left and right are calling for military intervention to stop this atrocity – an atrocity that the US government cannot confirm at this time had anything to do with Syrian government forces.

But, of course that hasn’t stopped the “herd” from joining the cacophony calling for intervention, saying “it’s time dictatorship gave way to democracy, and it will take our bombs to bring that democracy.”

With logic like that how can anyone disagree or call for patience until further evidence is produced; after all, “you support democracy in the Middle East, don’t you?”

The team at CBS News seems to lack the ability to differentiate Syria from Iran on a map, and most of the people I’ve had the pleasure of discussing the Syria issue with have yet to speak with a single person from the region, yet all are experts when it comes to what should be done with one of the last secular governments in the region.

It worked out well for us in Iraq, right? There was no long drawn-out attempt to rebuild, that cost trillions of dollars, and was almost thwarted completely because of a premature withdrawal by US military personnel leading to the rise of ISIS in the region (arguably the most brutal enemy of humanity since Nazi Germany).

How about in Libya? “We came, we saw, he died,” said a gleeful Hillary Clinton (under whose direction the US support of “moderate” rebels in Syria began). Hurrah! Three cheers for the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s state department. One less brutal dictator and finally those poor people of Libya can experience the American Dream – except, for them, it quickly became the American Nightmare. A nightmare in which the US did nothing to help guide the people of Libya into a more prosperous future. Rather, they funded and armed the very jihadists that up until that point had been kept at bay by a key US counter-terrorism ally – the Gaddafi regime!

Andrew McCarthy wrote for the National Review that:

“The Obama administration, like the Bush administration, had touted Qaddafi as a key counterterrorism ally against rabidly anti-American jihadists in eastern Libya. Nevertheless, Secretary Clinton led the policy shift in which our government changed sides in Libya — shifting support to the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, just as Mrs. Clinton had urged shifting U.S. support to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In Libya, this included arming “rebels,” who naturally included a heavy concentration of jihadists.”

“But… you support democracy in the Middle East, don’t you?”? I guess we can tell the Africans currently being sold in open slave markets in Libya how it’s their fault that the democracy we created in the vacuum never materialized.

Democracy is a good thing; freedom and individual liberty (as anyone who has read any of my previous work or who follows this publication will know) are invaluably good things.

We can only hope that the people of the Middle East will be able to experience that same freedom and support them in their struggle for it and, if democracy were truly our goal, we would support their education in classical liberal – Western – values.

We would support their understanding of (as Professor Niall Ferguson so adequately stated it in his book Civilization: the West and the Rest) the “6 killer apps” that caused the dominance of the West over the rest for the last 500 or so years.

We would check our own example (See “Why Arabs Don’t Trust America”) and ensure we, in our respective nations, are adhering to our own values, that we are living the examples of free speech, individual liberty, and tolerance that would provide the “city on a hill” example for others to follow.

But that’s not why we want the Assad government out. If only that was the real reason.

If only we were as noble as we actually believe ourselves to be, risking life and treasure for the good of mankind. If spreading democracy really were our aim, why stop with Libya or Syria?

Why did we not liberate Zimbabwe during the decades that it endured the brutal Mugabe Regime?

Why not remove Teodoro Obiang Nguema from power in Equatorial Guinea?

Or how about freeing the people of Eritrea from the dictatorship of Isaias Afewerki? After all, Eritrea has a worse record of human rights abuses than North Korea. Where are the calls from media and concerned citizens to remove these dictators?

The reason there is no mass movement for the removal of any of these other dictators, as brutal as they may be, is because no one told us we should.

Had you heard of Bashar al-Assad before the media began its regime change narrative?

No.

The reason for regime change in Syria is geopolitical.  It is not about democracy; rather, it is about positioning. It is about the weakening of other enemies in the region in the form of Russia and Iran, and the bolstering of allies like Israel and the Gulf States.

Award winning investigative journalist, Phillip Knightly, wrote in The Guardian in 2001 about the “depressingly familiar formula” that Western media follow when preparing a nation for conflict, saying there are four stages taken when preparing a nation for war:

1. The crisis. 2. The demonization of the enemy’s leader 3. The demonization of the enemy as individuals 4. Atrocities

Knightly explains the stages further:

“Stage one, the reporting of a crisis, which negotiations appear unable to resolve.  Politicians, while calling for diplomacy, warn of military retaliation. The media reports this as “We’re on the brink of war,” or “War is inevitable”.

News coverage concentrates on the buildup of military force, and prominent columnists and newspaper editorials urge war. But there are usually sizable minorities of citizens concerned that all avenues for peace have not been fully explored and although the mainstream media ignores or plays down their protests, these have to be dampened down unless they gain strength.

We now enter stage two of the pattern – the demonization of the enemy’s leader. Comparing the leader with Hitler is a good start because of the instant images that Hitler’s name provokes. So when George Bush Sr. likened Iraq’s takeover of Kuwait with the Nazi blitzkrieg in Europe in the 1930s, the media quickly took up the theme. Saddam Hussein was painted as a second Hitler, hated by his own people and despised in the Arab world.

Equally, in the Kosovo conflict, the Serbs were portrayed as Nazi thugs intent on genocide and words like “Auschwitz-style furnaces” and “Holocaust” were used.

The crudest approach is to suggest that the leader is insane. Saddam Hussein was “a deranged psychopath”, Milosevic was mad, and the Spectator recently headlined an article on Osama bin Laden: “Inside the mind of the maniac”. Those who publicly question any of this can expect an even stronger burst of abuse.

In the Gulf war they were labeled “friends of terrorists, ranters, nutty, hypocrites, animals, barbarians, mad, traitors, unhinged, appeasers and apologists”. The Mirror called peace demonstrators “misguided, twisted individuals always eager to comfort and support any country but their own. They are a danger to all us – the enemy within.” Columnist Christopher Hitchens, in last week’s Spectator article, Damn the doves, says that intellectuals who seek to understand the new enemy are no friends of peace, democracy or human life.

The third stage in the pattern is the demonization not only of the leader but of his people.

The simplest way of doing this is the atrocity story. The problem is that although many atrocity stories are true – after all, war itself is an atrocity – many are not.

Take the Kuwaiti babies story. Its origins go back to the First World War when British propaganda accused the Germans of tossing Belgian babies into the air and catching them on their bayonets. Dusted off and updated for the Gulf war, this version had Iraqi soldiers bursting into a modern Kuwaiti hospital, finding the premature babies ward and then tossing the babies out of incubators so that the incubators could be sent back to Iraq.

The story, improbable from the start, was first reported by the Daily Telegraph in London on September 5 1990. But the story lacked the human element; it was an unverified report, there were no pictures for television and no interviews with mothers grieving over dead babies.

That was soon rectified.

An organization calling itself Citizens for a Free Kuwait (financed by the Kuwaiti government in exile) had signed a $10m contract with the giant American public relations company, Hill & Knowlton, to campaign for American military intervention to oust Iraq from Kuwait.

The Human Rights Caucus of the US Congress was meeting in October and Hill & Knowlton arranged for a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl to tell the babies’ story before the congressmen. She did it brilliantly, choking with tears at the right moment, her voice breaking as she struggled to continue. The congressional committee knew her only as “Nayirah” and the television segment of her testimony showed anger and resolution on the faces of the congressmen listening to her. President Bush referred to the story six times in the next five weeks as an example of the evil of Saddam’s regime.

In the Senate debate whether to approve military action to force Saddam out of Kuwait, seven senators specifically mentioned the incubator babies atrocity and the final margin in favour of war was just five votes. John R Macarthur’s study of propaganda in the war says that the babies atrocity was a definitive moment in the campaign to prepare the American public for the need to go to war.

It was not until nearly two years later that the truth emerged. The story was a fabrication and a myth, and Nayirah, the teenage Kuwaiti girl, coached and rehearsed by Hill & Knowlton for her appearance before the Congressional Committee, was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. By the time Macarthur revealed this, the war was won and over and it did not matter any more.

So what should we make of the stories in the British press this week about torture in Afghanistan? A defector from the Taliban’s secret police told a reporter in Quetta, Pakistan, that he was commanded to “find new ways of torture so terrible that the screams will frighten crows from their nests”. The defector then listed a series of chilling forms of torture that he said he and his fellow officers developed. “Nowhere else in the world has such barbarity and cruelty as Afghanistan.”

The story rings false and defectors of all kinds are well-known for telling interviewers what they think they want to hear. On the other hand, it might be true. The trouble is, how can we tell? The media demands that we trust it but too often that trust has been betrayed.”

How can we tell, indeed.

From the Gulf of Tonkin incident that catalyzed the Vietnam War (and was only recently outed as a false flag attack after the release of previously classified documents) to the “Dead Baby Story” which, though initially corroborated by Amnesty International, when it was later discovered to be false, caused Jack Healey (then Executive Director of Amnesty International)  to accuse the Bush administration of the “opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement”.

We all know the story of the next Iraq War. Colin Powell presented the intelligence images of weapons of mass destruction sites in front of the UN General Assembly, which was a key moment in the buildup to, and eventual declaration of, war in Iraq.

Is our memory so incapacitated that we will fall for this same routine again?

As Herman Goering said during the Nuremberg trials:

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship…

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

In this case all that was needed were reports of attacks, and with each successive wave of propaganda the public has become more and more convinced of the opinion told to them of what the fate – of a nation they can’t even find on a map – should be. By the time the facts of these attacks come to light, it will, like in so many cases before this, be too late to go back and undo the damage.

One thing is certain in my mind: In their fixation to depose al-Assad, Western powers presented the Syrian people with a horrific alternative – the only viable opposition in the region – fundamentalist groups like al-Nusra (with large contingents of al-Qaeda fighters, many of whom were fresh off the battlefields of Iraq where they were fighting US military personnel) and ISIS.

When the option is replacing dictatorship with democracy one can sympathize with the cause, but when the option our intervention provides is between dictatorship and an exponentially more brutal dictatorship, we (Western nations) must stop to reevaluate before we (through our intervention, our “blood and treasure”) subject the innocents of Syria to the barbarism of fundamentalists like ISIS or, if history is any indicator, the anarchic tribalism that we unleashed in Libya.

The post What Is Going On In Syria? appeared first on Being Libertarian.

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[segafunk]

Teddy Roosevelt, Eggman, and the Message of Classical Sonic

The origin of both Sonic the Hedgehog and Eggman was a character design contest for a mascot held by Sega of Japan, with the designs submitted to the approval of Sega of America on the perception that a game to compete with Mario on the new Sega Genesis would need to do well in the ‘States. Many of the characters resemble American more than Japanese animation influences from Max Fleischer to The Simpsons (images @ The Cutting Room Floor). One design is even a wolf in an American flag shirt brandishing his fists, a rather backhanded compliment to a country that emerged as the predominant global superpower while both the Japanese economy crashed and the Soviet Union collapsed not long before in 1991. In any of the possible characters selected for a mascot, there’s a kind of commentary to Americans about American culture, not least in its edginess and rebellion. Commentary on the selection of Sonic himself will have to wait for another day. But it’s important to note that among the entries is a character in his pajamas who impeccably resembles Eggman. Or put another way, both characters physically resemble the iconic 26th President of the United States of America, Theodore Roosevelt.

It’s important to realize in this context that if Sega of America had favored his design, there would probably have been a side-scroller starring the Roosevelt character given the adorable Teddy Bear treatment as the heroic lead. Roosevelt is indeed often regarded as a heroic figure American history, confronting the monopoly capitalism of robber barons in the Gilded Age with the avowed intention to give Americans a Square Deal. His design more resembled the features of Mario himself, while trying to sell kids and their parents on a blue punk rocker was a riskier decision. But what happened rather was that a very deliberate decision was made to take the same character, and make him the bad guy. In other words, why might one make the exercise seeing Roosevelt as emblematic of the bad guy in a narrative the Nostalgia Critic rightly observes has “an environmental message that’s… subtle”? Wasn’t it Teddy Roosevelt who enacted landmark conservation legislation like the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate National Monuments protected for posterity from extraction and development by industrialists?

Roosevelt exemplifies the paradox of the hunter and taxonomist who was very prolific in gunning down hundreds of animals, but within those experiences became interested in the politics of conservation to institute limits against relentless industrial extraction of resources. If Sonic and his friends are wild animals, it’s easy to see how they could become threatened by someone in his likeness. For Roosevelt, the experience of joining in the Westward expansion of America was pivotal both to his sense of identity and his political persona. Among other things, Roosevelt went to the Dakota Territory to participate in the massive boom in cattle ranching seeking fortune and solitude. The obverse of an enterprise ultimately linked to the industrialized slaughterhouses of Chicago was the mass extermination of the buffalo and corresponding mass starvation of indigenous peoples. Here at the 21st century, American cattle culture is often regarded as a major factor in global climate change because of the methane emissions they produce.

Roosevelt ultimately conceived of an America to become a massive expansionist imperial and industrial power, and acted toward what would come to be called the “American Century”. But in seeking to place limits upon this power, combined with his nephew Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, he engendered a powerful enduring hatred among political interests who sought no restrictions and no protections from its exercise. Among other things, this expresses itself in the continual efforts to scale back and repeal the elements of the New Deal and any remaining economic and ecological safety net in America, and in books with a conservative or libertarian bent sincerely arguing that both Roosevelts were fascist or communist dictators. In terms of “communism”, the actual belief of the Roosevelt Presidents was that only political reform could stave off radical revolution, so they are more accurately identified with the politics of progressivism or a noblesse oblige sensibility.

In terms of “fascism” in a broad sense, it was rather the case that the imperial expansionism of Italy, Germany and Austria, and Japan drew on precedents in American society and culture in seeking to have what Americans had, their understanding of what Made America Great. Consequently, when common themes can be found between the writings and declarations of Roosevelt with those of Hitler and the Nazi Party, this was not because the former was an exceptional figure, but because for better and for worse he articulated views common to American culture in the Gilded Age. Where Americans, Europeans, and Japanese invested in competitive cultural projects of imperialism and industrialization sound retrospectively like Nazis when they spoke on themes like Social Darwinism and eugenics prior to World War I, that is because the Nazis were steeped in such ideology and influences. Fascist movements flourished most in nations where there was a widespread feeling of being slighted or scapegoated by the new world order effected by the Treaty of Versailles, sufficient to build mass support to defy the League of Nations, and launch massive projects of empire building and effect systematic war crimes against colonized populations. Fascism as such did not arise until 1919, the very year Teddy Roosevelt died without achieving his ambition for a third term as President.

A more fruitful consideration would be the extent to which American democracy, with all its violence and injustice, whether codified into law or exerted in lawlessness lent de-facto toleration, has lent the scripts and justification for oppressive regimes. To look on America from the outside must be very disconcerting. The polarized two-party system routinely alternates Presidents, typically every 4-8 years, and with them national policy becomes most opposed to the things it most supported. Or else, continuities between parties where there should not be, such as building up a massive military-industrial complex from the Cold War onward in the teeth of the older conception that America should not maintain a standing army because the presence of such a force was a sure road to tyrannizing absolute monarchy. Still more blatant, the contradiction between a society that simultaneously declares an aim to make the world “safe for democracy”, as Woodrow Wilson said of America entering World War I and shaping the ensuing balance of power, and a society that has overthrown democratically elected leaders, installed fascist or military dictatorships, and supported the systematic atrocities they have carried out. The culture of Japan, having undergone radical transformations following American military interventions in 1853-1854 and from 1945-1952, has developed an acute sense of this Jekyll-and-Hyde conundrum constantly effecing their position of the world. It’s not unreasonable to assume that the Sonic Team under Yuji Naka, collaborating first with Sega of Japan on Sonic the Hedgehog and then with Sega of America on future sequels for the Sega Genesis, would want to include implicit commentary on this state of affairs in communicating to Americans and an Americanized international audience.

I propose that the link between Teddy Roosevelt and Eggman is that the face of the famous American President as the game antagonist is included because he symbolizes the cultural project of the American Century. Because the faces behind the office change so frequently, one face must be chosen who exemplifies the traits of a wider paradigm spanning between them. To show the first face in such a lineage can be particularly effective. When exactly the “American Century” began is a matter of historical debate, although most agree it to have been fully in effect after World War II when America assumed many of the roles that had been carried out by the British Empire in the “British Century.” However, as early as the turn of the 20th century, America had already made cultural decisions toward facilitating such a world-historic shift under the Presidency and punditry of Roosevelt.

The Westward expansionism of America after its Civil War not only brought a considerable number of European immigrants, but also aroused considerable envy contributing to the volatizing Scramble for Africa as the empires of Europe sought to claim their own frontiers at the expense of a stolen continent. Roosevelt not only participated in settler colonialism and its economic frontier, he also promoted it as a paradigm and way of life. It’s fair to say that if Buffalo Bill’s carnivalesque Wild West shows popularized Manifest Destiny to the masses in the field of entertainment, Roosevelt’s writings did the same in the field of intellect. Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” in the 1st United States Voluntary Cavalry were meant to give the impression of the extension of this paradigm into the Caribbean in the fight against the Spanish Empire, creating the impression of chivalric modern warfare waged by manly rugged Americans.

In this context, a major cultural rift opened among Americans in terms of whether America should define itself as an imperialist power or an anti-imperialist power facilitating decolonized self-determining nations. Roosevelt, along with his processor William McKinley, were distinctly on the side of American imperialism. This created certain cultural contradictions; how could Americans have been so outraged by reports of atrocities and concentration camps by the Spanish in Cuba, and then go on to carry out atrocities and institute concentration camps to claim the Philippines as a U.S. colony? It was this contradiction that brought Roosevelt to power, insofar as the radicalized steel worker Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated President McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo in 1901 spoke of “outrages committed by the American government in the Philippine islands.” (Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States p. xxviii)

The ensuing policies effected by Roosevelt involved both outright colonialism to assert naval dominance over the Pacific (even as he realized a catastrophic war with Japan became a virtual inevitability), and of neo-colonial military and economic presence in Latin America and the Caribbean, most famously in the political intrigue surrounding the creation of the Panama Canal. America was already asserting themselves as a diplomatic superpower, brokering the treaty in the Russo-Japanese War under Roosevelt, and then playing a major role in the Treaty of Versailles under Wilson. Teddy Roosevelt can also be seen as an early phenomenon of modern American pop culture, including the teddy bears prototypical of Sonic himself. By the 1920s, America became a cultural superpower, as people internationally consumed American pop culture like cinema and jazz records to assert a cosmopolitan sense of modernity against the stagnation and entrenchment of old world powers. The parallel sense of Japan as a cultural superpower around the turn of the 21st century involves a complex relationship to a hybridization of American forms and Japanese content, a globalized phenomenon in which Sega was a major player.

If the question is posed what the world looks like to Eggman, it must be said that the world looks like an unending number of frontiers, with living and dead carbon-based lifeforms to be extracted and exploited for his personal aggrandizement in the empire he is building. In effect, classical Sonic games position the player on the receiving end of Manifest Destiny, contrasting with the many computer games to relish in the ego-trip of empire-building. Even without conscious associations to any U.S. President, it’s easy to identify a certain anti-intellectualism wherein players as Sonic, embodying the nineties “cool pose” in his hip sneakers, revel in blowing up the arrogant ‘egghead’ in his hover ship time after time. There’s something familiar about him in a bad way. Blake J. Harris identifies Sonic with political and cultural shifts in the nineties away from the 12-year Reagan and Bush era (which also included a shift away from climate change denialism in policy): 

Sonic wouldn’t just become the face of the company but also would represent their spirit: the tiny underdog moved with manic speed, and no matter what obstacles stood in his way, he never ever stopped going. Sonic embodied not only the spirit of Sega of America’s employees but also the cultural zeitgeist of the early nineties. He had captured Kurt Cobain’s “whatever” attitude, Michael Jordan’s graceful arrogance, and Bill Clinton’s get-it-done demeanor. (Blake J. Harris, Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Nation p. 76)

In terms of the message of classical Sonic games, it’s helpful to consider the almost wordless story told by the level design, and the sequence of levels. Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, and Sonic & Knuckles all begin with an opening level filled with resplendent natural beauty encroached upon by a cyborg army that constitute an imminent threat to the homeland of Sonic and later Knuckles. Sonic 3 later evocatively has the lush tropical landscape Angel Island Zone set ablaze by a combat drone as an ecologically disastrous act of scorched earth warfare. Sonic the Hedgehog then brings players into the Marble Zone, another instance of Sega’s fascination with classical ruins, culture, and mythology that stand as a counterpoint to the way the game company aesthetically defined themselves with the public image of a hip nineties urbanism. In terms of these levels appearing throughout the four classical Sonic games that take the player through areas resembling Greek, Roman, and Egyptian ruins, the idea is a kind of gothic contemplation on the frailty of civilizations that would define themselves as eternal, what courses of actions might prolong or accelerate the collapse of a civilization. By repeatingly alternating these levels with chaotic metropolises filled with high-tech mad science emphasized by the jazz-funk music and weaponized cyborg animals, Sonic the Hedgehog applies this lesson to the present and near-future. Both the ecological and civilizational zones are threatened with collapse by Eggman’s aggressive Manifest Destiny paradigm.

Sonic 2 makes this subtext more explicit as it brings the player through levels suggestive of extractive enterprises devastating to the ecosystem inhabited by Sonic and his friends. Chemical Plant Zone is filled with massive pools of deadly toxic chemicals. Mystic Cave Zone has become the site of a large mine prone to collapses and hazards. Oil Ocean Zone and its music has a certain Middle Eastern feel in its music evocative of massive petro-states and the politics of hydrocarbon consumption so culturally contentious then as now. If the slogan “no blood for oil” appeared in the Gulf War just as it did in the Iraq War under two Bush presidencies, Sonic Mania evocatively has the oceans of oil burning like the huge oil fires in Kuwait during the former conflict when it remixes this level. This can’t be good in terms of carbon emissions and climate change, which is much the point. Sonic 2 introduces sites of Eggman’s military-industrial complex in zones like Wing Fortress Zone and Death Egg Zone, a weaponized space program akin to Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiatives to rain death from above. Takashi Murakami’s book Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture explores how Japanese pop culture has been haunted by the shadow of the nuclear bomb after World War II (itself a product of the nuclear arms race between Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler). So it is for the scramble for the chaos emeralds in the Sonic games, as collecting them all will grant either Eggman or Sonic with invincible power. The metaphor isn’t terribly subtle.

Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles (originally intended to be one game) introduce a colonial dimension on the Caribbean-like floating island, inhabited by the dreadlock-headed Knuckles the Echidna as he is manipulated into battling Sonic before eventually realizing Eggman is the true enemy to all he holds dear. There’s a great deal of lush tropical beauty here interspersed with the ruins of a mystical civilization from the bygone past constructed on the immense power of the Master Emerald that keeps the island flying (i.e. the sequence from Lava Reef Zone to Sky Sanctuary Zone). It’s quite easy to draw comparisons to Hayao Miyazaki’s anime film Castle in the Sky where a European-styled imperialist and his army receive their comeuppance on the floating ruins of a similar island. The environmentalism of Studio Ghibli films is widely acknowledged, but that of Sonic games is less so.

Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles continues many of the tendencies in level design discussed hitherto, now including the transformation of environments for worse or for better. The stage Carnival Night Zone, like Casino Night Zone in Sonic 2, imply a certain neon-drenched conspicuous consumption in tandem with the extractive enterprises shown, evocative of two Gilded Ages around the turn of the 20th and 21st century. America and Japan alike would recall the lavish décor of the yuppies exemplified by the architectural design of Donald Trump’s casinos, hotels, and resorts. The Trump Taj Mahal could easily fit in here. By the time of Sonic CD on the ill-fated Sega CD, the designers introduced the innovation of multidimensional time travel to show what the levels used to be, what Eggman has turned them into in the present, and two divergent possible futures in terms of their destruction or rejuvenation. This is, I think, an important imaginative exercise in an era of what Naomi Klein terms “disaster capitalism.”

In the context of the counterprotests to the Unite the Right rally in Charleston, Virginia, where so many torch-carrying Neo-Nazis and armed paramilitaries where in evidence, a young Asian man was photographed in a Sonic cap with a spraypainted shirt in which the blue hedgehog extends the middle finger as the text declares “Sonic Says NO To fascism and racism”. The image has since become a t-shirt sold on Redbubble. That interpretation is both plausible, and humorously riffs off the old “Sonic Says” segments on the cartoon Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. I have here tried to argue that what “Sonic Says NO” to is not only a neo-fascist politics to “Make America Great Again” by rejecting the international order effected after World War II in terms of paranoid ravings about other countries “laughing at us”, but also to institutionalized practices of systematic destruction rationalized more than a century ago in terms of Making America Great. On this view, Sonic would also get behind politics of environmentalism, antimilitarism, anticolonialism, and indigenous rights in the sense that we should too. Insofar as Teddy Roosevelt is implicated in a model of the American presidency that sustains ecological and economic devastation internationally to the peril of all, his face has been lent to Eggman as a video game antagonist exemplifying these qualities.

[citizentruth-blog]

Time to #WalkAway: The Exodus of Blacks and Free Thinkers from the Democrat Party - PEER NEWS

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Time to #WalkAway: The Exodus of Blacks and Free Thinkers from the Democrat Party

African Americans and free thinkers are finally leaving the left in droves.

Candace Owens, director of Turning Point USA, has been the victim of vicious liberal attacks because she is a black woman who supports President Trump.

On a recent Fox News interview, she said, “I think the black vote is going to become the most relevant by 2020” and “we’re already seeing a major shift,” referring to the exodus of African Americans from the Democrat Party. The conversation is changing. The black voters of America are no longer remaining stuck in that victim mentality courtesy of the Democrats and are opening up to the choice they have between a party that holds them back and a party that was initiated to put a stop to slavery.

Digital media has allowed for all of this to happen. Social media has given everyday people and insightful influencers alike a voice. We no longer have to stay trapped in the fake reality that CNN and others portray to us. Today, we are hearing different voices and convincing ideas from all kinds of people. And because of this, people like Owens and Kanye West are speaking out about how the Democrats have betrayed them and left them behind in their pursuit of illegal immigration, uninspiring anti-Trumpism, and open borders.

“There is going to be a major black exit from the Democrat Party, and they are going to have to actually compete for their votes in 2020,” Owens stated.  

Fox News’ Laura Ingraham had Brandon Straka on her show recently. Straka is the founder of the #WalkAway Campaign freeing disgusted Democrats to leave their party and join the winning side. He had a red pill experience in 2017 after the Donald was elected which was after he cried when Hillary Clinton lost two Novembers ago. And he decided to walk away from the Democrats because of their nasty rhetoric, incessant intolerance, name-calling and hypocritical judgment. Now, he’s not only worried about all that, but he also now fears outright violence from his former party.

“Their party has no future. It’s over,” Straka said. “People are leaving the left by tens of thousands.” He receives thousands of authentic testimonials from former Democrats regarding how the left has become intolerable to them. They don’t recognize their party anymore. What do they stand for? They hate Trump and love illegal immigrants. Anything else? Please email me or comment below and let me know!

“I want gay people, I want all people, but particularly minorities, in America to note that you have a choice. You don’t have to vote Democrat just because you’re a gay person. You don’t have to vote Democrat because you’re a black person. If you’re a minority, you have a choice, and that’s what this campaign’s about,” Straka finished.

Rob Smith is a black, gay former Democrat. He is also an author who has become one of the many strong voices online decrying what the left has become. He calls this the “I Don’t Have to be a Democrat Just Because I’m Black Movement,” which embraces traditional values as Democrats move farther left, defending illegal aliens while taking African Americans for granted and leaving them stranded in poverty and perpetual victimhood.

“There is a movement right now of black people standing up because we are always expected to be Democrats,” Smith said. “And there is a movement right now of younger black conservatives, which I am becoming a part of, that is saying, ‘No, you don’t define who we are, you don’t define how we think; you don’t get to control and own our voices.’” As I mentioned in an article in late April, free thinking is on the rise, and many African Americans are getting red pilled with Trump in the White House and Democrats becoming the party of MS-13 and illegal aliens.  

Democrats are not looking to better America in any way. As they proved by their lack of patriotism over July 4th, they despise our country and would welcome a second civil war as they did the first one. Instead of devising a winning strategy and an optimistic message to counter Trump’s rising America First voting bloc, they are attempting to legalize a swath of illegal immigrants to ensure another reliable group of Democrat voters for decades to come, just like they did with African Americans in the second half of the 20th century.  

The summer of 2018 has been inspirational in many ways. In the face of liberals melting down over every Trump win and Supreme Court nominee, we have also witnessed a rise of black influencers coming out of their closet of shame in support of Donald Trump. The Democrats’ stranglehold of blacks voting unanimously for their party of hate is finally coming to an end.

This has been a long time coming.

It all started in the spring with Kanye’s internet-breaking tweet stating that he loved the way Candace Owens thinks. In another tweet on April 25th, West said, “You don’t have to agree with Trump, but the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy. He is my brother. I love everyone. I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.” The color of your skin does not mean you have to vote for one party or another. We need to be a country of individuals and free thinkers. If we all do what’s best for ourselves and our families, we will all be better off for it. Black people are not owned by the Democrats. They are no longer slaves to their lies.

The Democrats keep pushing 'Resist" so that America will no longer "Exist" Don't Wait until Later; Do It Now#WalkAway #RunLikeHell #DitchandSwitchNow Vote Them All Out!

— Diamond and Silk® (@DiamondandSilk) July 9, 2018

“I think there was a tripling in Trump’s approval rating when Kanye came out,” declared Ali Alexander, a 32-year-old political consultant born to an African-American mother and Arab father who saw the beginnings of this movement back in 2012 when the largest sub-demographic of blacks who voted for Romney were black men in their 20s and early 30s. According to a Pew Research exit poll, Romney achieved double-digits in the black vote against a black president. A cultural and demographic shift is underway that cannot be undone if the Democrats continue on their divisive path.  

“So I knew that something bad was coming for the Democrats, and Kanye, I think, is the ball that’s bursting,” Alexander said. “It’s like, wait, when this economic pie is growing, are black people gonna have a piece of that? These demographics have been happening for decades.” To Alexander, West’s tweet was a wonderful moment that caused blacks to wonder what the welfare state does for them if they don’t plan to be on welfare. “And I think that Kanye dived on a grenade for the rest of the black community, to have them start flirting with the idea of that.”

While black unemployment is at an all-time low and jobs are available to anyone who wants to work, we are being barraged with how Trump is the new Hitler and a racist dictator who is in league with Russia. But how can Trump be a racist when he kisses black babies, and black women hug him and black men praise him for his pro-job policies? How can more and more blacks be coming around in support of Trump if he is a racist trying to keep minorities down?

Yep, #trump is a racist…. #LiberalSickness#LiberalLogic#MAGA #WalkAway #TrumpTrain pic.twitter.com/pzvLxxlhaU

— Tim Tim (@timnexis) July 9, 2018

“It has all been a lie,” said conservative black YouTuber “Uncle Hotep,” a father of two from Pennsylvania. “It’s unfortunate because a lot of us believed it blindly.” He points to the simple fact that each paycheck he gets is $100 higher than it was before the tax cut. Trump is helping not just African Americans, but all Americans. “He’s put money in my pocket.”

“I voted for Barack Obama his second term,” began conservative “Uncle Hotep,” who went on to say, “The Democrats, in my honest opinion, based on my research, I believe the Democrats have historically hated black people. And I think they still hate black people today.” It is historically accurate that Democrats defended slavery as long as possible and lamented integration of white and black society in the 1960s. They voted against not only women’s suffrage but also black citizenship. The Democrats in Congress were also mostly against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 despite the Kennedy administration’s push for it. The Republican Party was started in the mid-19th century to demolish slavery and defend individual rights for all Americans. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, and he promised to free the slaves and even went to war against a slavery-loving south run by Democrats. Don’t let revisionist history fool you!

“Hotep Jesus” is a black conservative comedian and author who became an internet sensation when he went into a Starbucks and demanded a free cup of coffee, as “reparations” for slavery, since he “heard y’all was racist.” The clip is hilarious and so poignant for these politically correct times.

The African American Pastor Darrell Scott put it best during his 2016 Republican National Convention speech endorsing Trump when he said: “The truth is, the Democratic Party has failed us. America is a melting pot. We’re a country of diversity. And we stand poised to make history by standing together as Americans.” Diversity is our greatest strength not because we are all different but because we are all individuals who mostly love America and have the right to think and choose for ourselves.

As Owens recently told Fox, “I really do believe we are seeing the end of the Democratic Party as we know it.” I think there is ample evidence to prove this is surely the case.

Despite almost a month of continuous Trump is Hitler incarnate and our racist in chief coverage from the mainstream media following the separation of illegal immigrant children at the border, the president’s job approval rating has remained well above 43 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics average.

Prepare for another Trump landslide in 2020 my liberal friends.

  Follow me @BobShanahanMan

  FBI Jailed Black Activist 6 Months over Anti-Police Brutality Facebook Posts

[themeatlife]

Let Freedom Ring

Fair warning, this will probably be winding and rambling and a bit of a rant. I usually write about sports or entertainment or tech. But on this rare occasion, I write about the idea of freedom. 

When I was growing up, the American Dream was a sacred ideal. An ideal that seems to slip more and more each day. I wanted to write about this before the upcoming presidential inauguration. Being a first-gen American, it seems to be tricky business in the dawn of this new era. But like any child of immigrants, I am always filled with the hope and promise of the future. 

A little background. My parents are from the Philippines. They came to this country for a better life but they came over in the 1970s post-Vietnam War where confidence for the USA was down. Looking for work, my father joined the US Army and ended up serving this country for 22 years. My parents are living out their American Dream. Three kids put through college. Possessing property of their own. Now four grandkids. This country and their hard work have given them that opportunity. 

In our household, we took patriotism seriously. We had small little American flags around our house and Dad would get onto me and my brother if we dropped them or left them on the floor. “The flag should never touch the ground,” he would scold us. Being around military bases growing up, it was like a history lesson and patriotism lesson every day. My personal experience might be skewed more toward the idealist because of this. 

They raised us to be aware of our world. Every night at dinner we had on either World News Tonight with Peter Jennings or sometimes NBC Nightly News. I remember playing in my parents’ room while Mom and Dad watched the Berlin Wall fall. While we lived in Germany when my dad was stationed there we watched AFN News and kept up with exchange rates and deployment announcements. 

When I was a teenager and my dad was retired from the army, we were encouraged to eventually fulfill our civic duties like jury duty and voting. I remember my dad getting called to jury duty once. He never complained about it. And both my parents were proud to be able to vote. As an American I believe voting is both a privilege and an expectation. You want your voice to be heard? You want to make change? Vote. And not just for presidential candidates. Because believe it or not, on the local level who is president has less of an impact than all the local stuff that’s on the rest of the ballot. 

That is why I never understood why people like Colin Kaepernick supposedly want to make change but sit out because they don’t like the presidential candidates. If they didn’t sit out during the primaries, there might have been someone different getting inaugurated this week. Also, be involved in the so-called “minor” elections. Bond issues. State reps. State and local questions. Those make the most difference in your community and your surroundings. On the very same token, it doesn’t make sense to me for Congress to not vote on whether or not to approve a Supreme Court appointment. If you don’t like the appointment, vote no. If you end up losing that vote, there will always be the next opportunity to win the next one. I never understood why you would not vote. 

The biggest example of this is education in Oklahoma. On the news and on social media and public opinion polls say that most citizens are concerned about the quality of our state’s public education. And yet this past election the voters overwhelmingly voted against the measure to increase the sales tax by 1% to put toward education AND reelected all the state legislatures responsible for reducing the state’s education budget. So how can so many people be concerned but nothing changes? Because too many people sit out. The eligible voters that could have voted could have potentially been the difference. 

So if you are upset with the way things are, follow President Obama’s advice in his farewell address. Get involved. Run for office. Get in on city council meetings. Pay attention for those bond issues in your area. There are too many good people who don’t get involved who can make an impact on the community around them. So vote and get involved. Then we can expect better candidates and better outcomes. People didn’t fight and die for voting rights or civil rights for nothing. Yes it is your right to sit out and not vote. You have every right to do so. But in doing that it trivializes everything that those people fought for. That’s just my opinion though. I’m an idealist. 

Another thing we can do is not villainize the other side. Every president you don’t agree with is not Hitler. We all may not agree with capital punishment or abortion, but let’s work on things that we agree we can work to improve. Education. Infrastructure. Healthcare. We don’t need to shun the other side. We don’t need to make people fear immigrants or call working class people who vote a certain way “deplorable.” I may not agree with President-Elect Trump on his agenda, but I’m more fearful of people’s reaction to him than to his agenda because of the way we make villains out of the political opposition. 

It seems that we forget that despite our disagreements, we are all people. Americans. 

Is America perfect? Far from it. The United States, like all countries in the history of this world, have done their fair share of wrong. But as that child of immigrants, I still have hope. And optimism. I still have faith in the Republic. 

Democracy isn’t easy. It never was. We won’t always agree on the way to get to our ultimate goal of making the United States a better place to live for all Americans. We may not have voted for the leaders that have been elected or agree with their policies, but the beauty of the Republic is that we all have input to make a change. And also, Democracy isn’t quick. It never was. It is a slow and often painful process. Progress is never a straight line. As I describe it to my friends it is more like a pendulum moving along time on a clock. The clock moves forward while the pendulum swings back and forth. Thus is democracy. We keep moving forward. 

And the pendulum always swings back.