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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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At this year’s G-7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, U.S. President Joe Biden summed up his foreign-policy doctrine in two words: “democracies deliver.”

It is a sentiment shared by many other democratic leaders, such as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who seek to showcase democratic success at a time of widespread democratic disillusionment.

But what does it mean for democracies to deliver? And how can they do it better?

In a recent book, Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman, Charles Dunst explores these questions, arguing that, while democracies have delivered great things in the past, from the Marshall Plan to the moon landing, democratic systems are falling short today.

If democracies want to maintain their edge in the global competition against autocracies, he asserts, they will need to identify their own deficits and remedy them. Only when democracies are flourishing at home can they maximize their power and influence abroad—and convince the world that the democratic model is one to be admired and emulated.

According to Dunst, a government delivers when it can provide “a good life” for its citizens. This generally means ensuring basic needs such as health care and education, functional and fair state institutions, and a strong economy.

Dunst notes that throughout history, democracies have delivered, thanks to their free, open, and stable systems. Indeed, as one of us argued in a recent book, democracies have consistently outcompeted autocracies for the past 2,500 years, from the Greeks against the Persians through the Cold War.

But Dunst warns that autocracies today are more capable and more attractive than in the past, threatening democracy’s long-standing dominance. He argues that small autocracies such as Singapore and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) demonstrate how illiberal regimes can provide their people with a high quality of life—even while denying them basic political rights. Singapore’s subsidized housing or the UAE’s free health care services are appealing to many.

Larger autocracies can sometimes deliver, too. China, he argues, despite its recent slowdown, has made significant strides in infrastructure, education, and economic growth over the last few decades. Meanwhile, according to Dunst, democracies have been struggling with fraying or nonexistent social safety nets, outdated infrastructure, and political polarization, among other challenges, while autocracies build new airports and high-speed rail connections. It is no surprise that some are starting to question whether autocracies might be just as effective—if not more so—at delivering the good life than democracies.

Dunst argues that democracies are not doomed, but they need redirection and better long-term strategies to foster good governance and better compete with China and other autocracies.

He provides a series of policy recommendations for rejuvenating democracy: investing in human capital and innovation, building robust 21st-century physical and digital infrastructure, expanding health care and workers’ rights, cleaning up corruption, and enacting smart immigration policies to attract the best and brightest to democratic shores.

Overall, Defeating the Dictators is a creative and thought-provoking book bolstered by well-researched statistics, potent anecdotes, and a slate of high-profile endorsements from defenders of democracy on both sides of the aisle in the United States and from around the world. It provides a welcome, mostly optimistic take on a subject characterized by too much recent pessimism.

Still, the book has some shortcomings.

First, the methodology is questionable. Dunst cherry-picks the world’s most successful dictatorships, like Singapore and the UAE, and identifies their policy successes that democracies should emulate.

But this focus on highly anomalous autocracies risks losing sight of the broader, more dismal picture for dictators around the world, which Dunst only briefly mentions. After all, dictatorships are much more likely to be abject failures than standout successes. There is a robust correlation, for example, between autocratic rule and low GDP per capita.

Furthermore, Singapore and the UAE are both small states. It is doubtful their model can travel to other, larger states—whether autocracies or democracies.

Many of Dunst’s sensible recommendations border on the unrealistic, as he himself acknowledges. Passing sweeping voting rights or immigration reform legislation in the United States and other major democracies will not be easy. Some of his solutions for overcoming gridlock—for politicians to be “braver” and have “courage”—are likely insufficient.

After all, the inability to force through massive change is a feature—not a bug—of democracy. Urging democracies, as Dunst does, to overcome their divisions and mass resources for investments in major priorities is like advising dictators to impose checks and balances on themselves to constrain rash decision-making. Neither set of recommendations meshes with the logic of the respective political system.

Second, with its strong and justified emphasis on domestic democratic renewal, the book mostly overlooks the important advantages that democracy provides in foreign policy. International relations scholars have shown that democracies build larger and more effective alliances, are more likely to sign and comply with international agreements, and are more likely to win the wars they fight.

In the strategic competition between democracies and autocracies, what democracies can achieve together may be more important than what they can achieve separately at home. Indeed, after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there has been remarkable free-world unity, with the United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Australia working together to sanction Russia and provide aid to Ukraine.

In many of the areas where Dunst advocates democratic investments, such as emerging technologies, democracies will be most successful if they combine efforts and work together. A democratic technology alliance, for example, could help the free world maintain its innovation edge and serve to embed democratic norms into 21st-century technologies. New democratic trade and economic partnerships could help “de-risk” and secure supply chains from autocratic coercion and overreliance on China and Russia.

To be sure, balancing domestic priorities with allied commitments will always be challenging, as evidenced by Europe’s recent frustration with Washington’s “Buy American” approach to clean energy innovation. Still, greater international coordination among like-minded democracies has vast potential.

In the end, democracies can defeat dictators by doing what they do best. They should continue to provide the stable economic institutions and freedoms that unleash radical economic innovation and high long-run rates of growth. They should use their combined economic heft to build the military power necessary to deter revisionist autocracies. They should expand and deepen their alliances and partnerships with like-minded states to advance shared goals and develop the free-world strategies of tomorrow.

They should also heed Dunst’s advice, to the extent possible, and strengthen their own societies and institutions to unlock democracy’s full potential at home.

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thelensofyashunews · 4 days ago

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ROCK VETERANS THREE DAYS GRACE RELEASE NEW SINGLE & MUSIC VIDEO FOR “MAYDAY” FEATURING BOTH ADAM GONTIER & MATT WALST ON VOCALS

After surprising Three Days Grace with the return of the band’s original singer Adam Gontier, the esteemed rock veterans have released the first new single, an anthemic rock track “Mayday”, with both Gontier and Matt Walst on vocals, available across all digital streaming platforms today via RCA Records. The song was produced by Zakk Cervini and Dan Lancaster with vocal production by Howard Benson. In addition, the band released an epic CiRCUS HEaD directed visual to accompany the track which can be found on YouTube.

Amid the first single since the reunion, Three Days Grace shares “This song is a reflection of the current state of the world, an unsettling mix of disillusionment, exhaustion, and denial. The sense that we’re all on the brink—emotionally, socially, and environmentally, yet we refuse to admit defeat. So even though we feel like we are barely surviving we keep on moving forward, one foot in front of the other.”

youtube

Since 2003, Three Days Grace has staked a spot amongst the hard rock vanguard, breaking records, toppling charts, and moving millions of units worldwide. Overall the band has eighteen #1 records at US Mediabase Active Rock and seventeen #1s at Billboard/US BDS Active Rock. The band has been nominated multiple times for “Best Rock Album” at the Juno Awards in addition to multiple nominations for “Rock Song of the Year” and “Rock Artist of the Year” at iHeartRadio Music Awards. Moreover, the band consistently averaged a staggering 13 million monthly listeners on Spotify—remaining one of the most listened to rock bands in the world. With over 5 Billion combined streams, top tracks include hard rock anthems “I Hate Everything About You”, “Riot”, “Time of Dying”, among others.

To date, their veritable arsenal of number one includes “Home”, “Just Like You”, “Pain”, “Animal I Have Become”, “Never Too Late”, “Break”, “Good Life”, “World So Cold”, “Misery Loves My Company”, “The High Road”, “Chalk Outline”, “I am Machine, “Painkiller”, “The Mountain”, “Infra-Red”, “Right Left Wrong”, “So Called Life”,and “Lifetime”.

Catch Three Days Grace on the road with Disturbed in February and March 2025. The first leg of the Disturbed tour will mark Adam’s return to the stage with Three Days Grace. The band has also been confirmed for Sonic Temple, Welcome To Rockville and Inkcarceration festivals.

Feb 25 - Nampa, ID @ Ford Idaho Center Arena *

Feb 27 - Denver, CO @ Ball Arena *

Mar 02 - St. Louis, MO @ Enterprise Center *

Mar 04 - Milwaukee, WI @ Fiserv Forum *

Mar 06 - Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center *

Mar 08 - Chicago, IL @ United Center *

Mar 10 - Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena *

Mar 12 - Louisville, KY @ KFC Yum! Center *

Mar 14 - Boston, MA @ TD Garden *

Mar 17 - Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena *

Mar 19 - Montreal, QC @ Centre Bell *

Mar 21 - New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden *

May 08 - Columbus, OH @ Sonic Temple festival

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newsource21 · 10 months ago

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Europe’s major trade union organisations have expressed deep concern about the scale of the EU’s industrial decline, as structurally high energy prices continue to lay waste to a crucial pillar of the bloc’s economy.

Fears were compounded after a Eurostat study published on Monday (15 January) found that month-on-month industrial production in the EU fell by 0.2% in November last year, the third consecutive monthly decrease. Year-on-year industrial output was also down 5.8% in November after declining by 5.4% in October.

“We are facing a very worrying situation,” European Trade Union Confederation Confederal Secretary Ludovic Voet told Euractiv. “These figures are a canary in a coal mine: the biggest hit are the long-term investments in buildings and equipment.”

Voet’s concerns about a lack of investment in key infrastructure are also borne out by the Eurostat data.

Month-on-month production of capital goods such as buildings, machinery, and equipment fell by 0.8% across the bloc in November after dropping by 0.7% in October. Capital goods production was also 8.7% lower in November compared to the same month in 2022.

“The lack of investment we are seeing today is already having dramatic implications for working communities,” Voet warned.

“Factories are closing and jobs are being cut in the very sectors that lifted Europe to where it is today.” These especially include energy-intensive sectors such as the aluminium, fertiliser, and chemicals industries.

‘Raising the alarm’

Judith Kirton-Darling, the acting joint general secretary of industriALL Europe, similarly told Euractiv that her organisation, which represents some seven million European workers, “has been raising the alarm about industrial decline and the threat of deindustrialisation in Europe for some time”.

She stressed that current EU policies, including the controversially stringent fiscal rules recently agreed by EU finance ministers, will only exacerbate the bloc’s industrial malaise.

“Alarmingly, fiscal austerity and a return to austerity policies are further hampering industrial development, potentially undermining Europe’s competitive position in the global market,” Kirton-Darling said.

Both Kirton-Darling and Voet urged European policymakers to introduce more “flexible” fiscal regulations to encourage investment. They also suggested that future state industrial subsidies should be contingent upon the strengthening of collective bargaining rights and the creation of high-quality jobs.

“Rather than imposing rigid fiscal constraints, European leaders should actively promote resilient industries, good industrial jobs, and social cohesion,” Kirton-Darling said.

Voet further warned that the EU’s failure to arrest its industrial decline is causing “bitterness and disillusionment” among European workers, which in turn is being “preyed on by the populist far-right, who only drive further division and chaos”.

“To win working people back to the European project, we need the EU to show it is on their side,” he said.

“[Energy] prices are less volatile but remain two-to-three times above pre-crisis levels,” McWilliams said. “These continue to be passed along value chains, and ultimately reduce the economic incentives for heavy industrial production in the EU.”

Like Kirton-Darling and Voet, McWilliams noted that Europe’s long-term industrial prospects will depend upon current and future national government policies.

“Longer perspectives on the EU’s industrial position cannot be interpreted from a short-term natural gas price-driven phenomenon,” McWilliams said.

“The future of Europe’s industrial competitiveness will instead be determined by its ability to develop new sources of renewable energy and create a good investment environment for innovation and the technologies of tomorrow.”

Gehrke agreed: “Without intervention, Europe’s deindustrialisation will only accelerate.”

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beevean · 4 years ago

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逆転裁判　逆転のトノサマン Part 1 (捜査 1)

Yes, this project is still alive!

This case is pretty long compared to the previous two and I’m not looking forward to this. It’s one of the reasons I took such a long hiatus.

This part goes from the beginning of the case to the beginning of the first scene with Oldbag (a bit after her introduction). Here’s all my playthrough from the beginning.

1) Right at the beginning of the case, while Maya is watching the new Steel Samurai episode, she brandishes a broom and Phoenix tells her not to. In English she says “Oh, Nick! I didn't know you were here!”, at which Phoenix replies “Of course I’m here!”. In Japanese she says “Oh, I’ve hurt Nick” (“あ、いたんだなるほどくん”) and he replies “I’m not hurt!” (“いたんだじゃない！”). Odd change but it works.

2) For some reason instead of saying “villain”, referring to the Evil Magistrate, they say “mysterious person”, 怪人.

3) If you present your badge to Maya and she teases Phoenix for wanting to show off, he says “My poor, poor ego”, which in Japanese is “軽くながされてしまった” (literally ”I was lightly washed away”, which is a funny mental image)

4) A bit of ambiguity. If you click on Phoenix’ desk, he says in English “Sitting here always makes me feel like a professional”; in Japanese it’s “ここに座ると、どんな時でも気持ちが引き締まる”, which is almost the same, but 引き締まる means “to become tight, tense”. While it could mean that he immediately sits straight to look more professional, the first time I read this I took it as “sitting here reminds me of Mia and it makes me uncomfortable”.

5) Will Powers speaks in keigo, which makes sense for a softie like him.

6) Global Studios’ name in Japanese is 英都撮影所 (えいとさつえいじょ). I suppose 英 is used with its meaning of “hero”, so the name means “Hero Capital”. Pretty cool.

7) After he finishes telling what he had done the entire afternoon of the murder, Powers says in Japanese “恐縮” (きょうしゅく), which can mean either “thank you” or “I’m sorry” (he’s very polite, as I said), but in English that became “What will the kids think?”

8) A joke that was improved in English. Maya is eager to see Global Studios, and Phoenix snarks “完全に見物に行く気だぞ” (”I have a strong feeling she’s going to do sightseeing”) - in English it’s “I’m willing to bet 10 bucks she asks for autographs”

9) Once again the GBA version is slightly different from the DS version - there is a small piece of dialogue missing from the first conversation with Oldbag. The very first thing that she says is “Hey you! My job is to keep out rubbernecks like you!” (I learned this new word), while in the English version Maya has the chance to introduce herself and Phoenix as lawyers. She also doesn’t say “Youths today!” at the end of her rambling (probably in Japanese it’s conveyed by the use of なさい) I can see why they fixed it for the DS version.

Did you know that Oldbag was very popular in Japan, and this is the reason she appeared in two other games (and it would have been three if they had memory left in Trials and Tribulations)? Different strokes for different folks, I guess...

箒　（ほうき）　broom

振り回す　（ふりまわす）　to wield, to brandish

絶大　（ぜつだい）　tremendous, immense

燥ぐ　（��しゃぐ）　to be in high spirits

根本的　（こんぽんてき）　fundamental, basic

爺　（じじ）　old man, old geezer

それはそれ　“in that case” (with a disappointed tone)

朝っぱらから　（あさっぱらから）　very early in the morning, at this ungodly hour

遣っ付ける　（やっつける）　to attack, to finish off

串刺し　（くじざし）　impalement

さっぱり分らない　（わからない）　having no idea of

向け　（むけ）　intended for, aimed at

明らかになる　（あきらかになる）　to become clear, to be made public

着ぐるみ　（きぐるみ）　cartoon-character costume

突き刺さる　（つきささる）　to stick into, to pierce

見物する　（けんぶつ）　to sightsee

素直に　（すなおに）　honestly

引き締まる　（ひきしまる）　to become tense, to become firm

潤ける　（ふやける）　to swell up

気味　（ぎみ）　-like, -looking

可愛がる　（かわいがる）　to cherish, to dote on

水責め　（みずぜめ）　water torture

憧れ　（あこがれ）　 yearning, adoration, admiration

幻滅　（げんめつ）　disillusionment

滅相もない　（めっそうもない）　“don’t be absurd”

ご覧の通り　（ごらんのとおり）　“as you can see” (keigo)

白　（しら）　unaltered

役　（やく）　role

素顔　（すがお）　face with no make-up, true face

迫力　（はくりょく）　impressiveness

恐縮する　（きょうしゅく）　feeling obliged

打ち合わせる　（うちあわせる）　to strike against each other, to arrange (a meeting)

撮影所　（さつえいじょ）　film studio

付近　（ふきん）　vicinity, neighborhood

槍　（やり）　spear

青二才　（あおにさい）　greenhorn, novice

主人公　（しゅじんこう）　protagonist

宿敵　（すくてき）　arch-enemy

死闘　（しとう）　life-or-death struggle

繰り広げる　（くりひろげる）　to unfold

内容　（ないよう）　contents

昼食後　（ちゅうしょくご）　after lunch

集合時間　（しゅうごうじかん）　time appointed for meeting

慌てる　（あわてる）　 to become confused

警備員　（けいびいん）　security guard

野次馬　（やじうま）　curious onlookers, gawkers, rubbernecks

面白半分　（おもしろはんぶん）　 for fun, half in jest

映像　（えいぞう）　image, footage

管理する　（かんり）　to control, to manage

警備員　（けいびいん）　security guard

詰所　（つめしょ）　station, office

貪る　（むさぼる）　to crave, to indulge in

正面　（しょうめん）　 front, main

入口　（いりぐち）　entrance, gate

押しかける　（おしかける）　to go uninvited

見取り図　（みとりず）　floor plan, blueprint

勘弁してくれる　（かんべん）　“Give me a break”*

* said if you present anything to Oldbag. In English it’s a stronger “Absolutely not!”

#ace attorney #gyakuten saiban #逆転裁判 #japanese #単語 #beev plays gyakuten saiban #the steel samurai theme slaps no matter what #also rip all the dialogue lost when oldbag starts rambling

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audreycious · 6 years ago

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[A]nti-communists will attack, dismiss or discredit any archival findings, interviews or survey results recalling Eastern Bloc achievements in science, culture, education, health care or women’s rights. They were bad people, and everything they did must be bad ... Those offering a more nuanced narrative than one of unending totalitarian terror are dismissed as apologists or useful idiots. Contemporary intellectual opposition to the idea that ‘bad people are all bad’ elicits outrage and an immediate accusation that you are no better than those out to rob us of our ‘God-given rights’.

... Ethnographic research on the persistence of red nostalgia [in East Europe] shows that it has less to do with a wistfulness for lost youth than with a deep disillusionment with free markets. Communism looks better today because, for many, capitalism looks worse. But mentioning the possible existence of victims of capitalism gets dismissed as mere ‘whataboutism’, a term implying that only atrocities perpetrated by communists merit attention.

This article nicely reflects my thoughts on American attitudes towards “Eastern Bloc” history and politics. As someone with a dual US/Russian heritage, I am sensitive to the fact that American anti-communism is deeply shaped by propaganda, more than by actual intellectual or philosophical objections - much like the Soviets' anti-capitalist propaganda. The main difference is that in the US, it was often more subtle and more seamlessly integrated with culture. An excellent example is the Hollywood production Red Dawn. What could be more Mom-and-apple-pie than white high-schoolers killing commies?....

Related thought: I was recently chatting with an acquaintance of mine - a liberal, social-justice oriented person. We got to talking about Russian politics, and out of nowhere she stated, matter-of-factly, that “yup, Russians just love to oppress minorities”. This was a bit of a jaw-dropper given that she knew I was Russian, and that she could never say that in her liberal milleu about any other nationality (Israelis, Mexicans, Turks...)

A little while later, it occurred to me that Rusophobia is largely a consequence of decades of American society being conditioned to despise anything further left than social democracy, from Red Scares to Red Dawn. The irony being, of course, that Russia is now a capitalist state.

#social criticism #socialism #communism #politics #history #capitalism #russia #soviet union #rusophobia #vdr

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heavymachineindustry92 · 4 years ago

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A Conversation With Chuck Palahniuk, the Author of Fight Club and the Man Behind Tyler Durden

Itâs been more than 20 years since Chuck Palahniuk first unleashed Fight Club on the world and simultaneously inspired legions of impressionable young men and appalled their parents. But the themes Palahniuk explored in that book â the emasculation of late-capitalism and the creeping sense of worthlessness and dread that accompanies it â seems more relevant now than it did even back then. Modern men find themselves in a precarious position, where masculinity itself is being (justifiably) re-evaluated, and in some cases, derided as the source of all societyâs ills. And many of them are facing the troubling realization that they will never be as successful as their parents.In response, a substantial number of them have dug in to oppose that evolution â men who seem to worship at the altar of tyler durden, the Fight Club character who was a paragon of unfettered, unapologetic machismo. If Durden were alive today, he wouldnât inspire Project Mayhem â heâd be wearing a MAGA hat, leading a group of disaffected young men through the streets with pitchforks and staging #GamerGate-esque online harassment campaigns. And so, Fight Club seems to be a rallying cry for their anger.MEL recently spoke with Palahniuk about the bookâs influence on the toxic ideologies that have taken hold in our culture today; why he thinks another kind of toxic ideology â toxic masculinity â doesnât exist; the meaning of Harvey Weinstein, Joseph Campbell and John Lennonâs assassination; and how he coined the derogatory term âsnowflake.âA lot of the things you wrote about in Fight Club and revisit in Fight Club 2 seem even more pertinent today than when you originally wrote them more than 20 years ago. Specifically, the disillusionment of men who havenât radicalized but have adopted radical ideologies and the infantilization of the modern workplace. You were able to see the seeds of what has now grown into these very toxic elements in our culture.In Slaughterhouse-Five, thereâs a comment about how many people are being born every day. Someone else responds by saying, âAnd I suppose theyâre all going to want dignity and respect.â This dovetails into a grueling dread that I felt as a younger person â that status and recognition would always be beyond my reach. I think subsequent generations, larger generations, are coming up against that same realization: That despite their expectations, they might never receive any kind of status. And theyâre willing to do whatever it takes at this point to make their mark in the world.It seems like a lot of these movements, though, have seized on the ideas expressed in Fight Club. Theyâve co-opted these things that you wrote about and made it a part of their own ideologies. Do you feel any regrets or resentment about this? Or better put, how does it make you feel when you see menâs rights activists on Reddit quoting your work to rationalize the terrible shit they say online?I feel a little frustrated that our culture hasnât given these men a wider selection of narratives to choose from. Really, the only narratives they go to are The Matrix and Fight Club.Yes, they get red pilled and then they look at tyler durden as the platonic ideal. Exactly. Almost all the narratives being sold in our culture take place in this established, very static sense of reality. We have very few narratives that question reality and give people a way to step outside of it and establish something new. So far, the only two things are The Matrix and Fight Club. I feel bad that people have such slim pickings to choose from.But it almost sounds like you have a certain level of sympathy for these guys as well.I have sympathy in that I was young a long time ago. And I know the terror of worrying that my life wasnât going to amount to anything â that I wouldnât be able to establish a home or create a career for myself. I can totally empathize with that panicked place young people are in.What are your politics?My politics are about empowering the individual and allowing the individual to make what they see as the best choice. Thatâs all Fight Club was about. It was a lot of psychodrama and gestalt exercises that would empower each person. Then, ideally, each person would leave Fight Club and go on to live whatever their dream was â that they would have a sense of potential and ability they could carry into whatever it was they wanted to achieve in the world. It wasnât about perpetuating Fight Club itself. Have people come to you and said, âFight Club helped me realize my potentialâ?In a lot of different ways. Many people decided to, as a permission through nihilism, to go ahead and do the thing that theyâve dreamt of doing. And a lot of fathers and sons were able to connect to this story and express their frustration about what little parenting they themselves got from their fathers. A lot of people think of you as a nihilist. Do you bristle at that label?You know, I am kind of a nihilist, but Iâm not a depressive nihilist. Iâm a nihilist who says that if nothing inherently means anything, we have the choice to do whatever it is we dream of doing. Youâve been known to go after some of your critics throughout your career. Is that something you wish you hadnât done in retrospect?I willingly did it twice. And they were both instances very early in my career. Iâve never done it otherwise, so I can forgive myself for maybe taking actions I shouldnât have taken. But what the hell? I had to learn.This was before social media had taken off, too, and everyone was a critic. What is it like now when everyone can either directly give you praise or tell you what a terrible writer you are and how you should go die in a fire?You have to completely ignore it. Because if itâs all praise, it just gets you high and thatâs not healthy. And if itâs all criticism, it just gets you depressed and thatâs not healthy. So I ignore it as much as I possibly can. And the people who bring me the news, I know those people arenât my friends. Itâs like Nora Ephron, one of my favorite writers, once wrote: It takes two people to hurt you â one person to actually say or do the thing, and a second person to tell you that this thing has been done against you.Both Fight Club and Choke have been made into movies. Did you take any issue with the film versions?No. You know, there is no point. The book will always be there. The film needs to be its own thing; itâs a different medium. It needs to express itself through different aspects of this story. So you canât expect the film to be completely the book.But with Fight Club specifically, there were so many people who got rich and famous and whose entire careers were changed by that movie. I mean, David Fincher became one of the biggest directors in Hollywood afterwards. Is there any type of resentment that people are dining out on this thing that you created and that maybe your role in it has been lost somewhat?Not in the slightest. Because when that movie came out, it was an enormous failure. It was a failure in a way that Blade Runner was initially a failure. It was out of release within maybe two weeks and considered a massive massive tank. Pretty much everyone associated with the movie lost their jobs. It took a year or two of putting together the meticulous DVD to dig that movie back into profitability. Earlier, you mentioned the terror you experienced as a young man about maybe never being successful. But now that you are successful â and I imagine successful beyond your wildest dreams â are you fulfilled? Or do you have the same sense of dread?Iâm very fulfilled. Because I get to work with many gifted creative and passionate people. Thatâs great because we all want to live our lives in the company of other people who love what theyâre doing. Thereâs no better life than that. On the other hand, Iâve started to teach because I do want to be back in touch with what it was like to be that kid who couldnât write a great story. I want to be able to be with those people until they break through and can write something fantastic. I ask because in Fight Club 2, we find that the narrator has successfully put his tyler durden alter ego to the side. He got married and had a kid and is living the American dream in his house in suburbia. But heâs deeply unfulfilled. He worries his wife doesnât love him, and heâs worried his kid doesnât respect him. So tyler durden starts popping back up. To me, that seemed to express that thereâs a certain hollowness or lack of fulfillment in achieving what you want.Itâs funny, it isnât the process of getting stuff, itâs the stuff itself that becomes the anchor. Itâs buy the house, buy the car and then what? Itâs that isolated stasis thatâs the unfulfilling part you ultimately have to destroy. Thatâs the American pattern â you achieve a success that allows you isolation. Then you do something subconsciously to destroy the circumstance because you can come down into community after that. Maybe youâve got this great career where you can do whatever you want, but on the side, youâre sexually harassing and assaulting women. Youâre doing something thatâs going to force you out of the isolation of success. Itâs going to push you back into the community with other people. We like to move between isolation and community and back to isolation again. Are you referencing Harvey Weinstein specifically?Well, whether itâs Weinstein or successful people who abuse drugs or have affairs like Tiger Woods, people always create the circumstances along the way that will destroy the pedestal that theyâve found themselves on. Then they can come back to earth and just be a person among people. Lance Armstrong is another good example.So more of a self-destructive impulse. But is there any way to keep those two things in balance? Can those two things co-exist as a part of a manâs personality? Or are they irreconcilable?Can you build a house on a plot of land without tearing down the house thatâs already there? I think itâs inaccurate to call it self-destructive. In a way, itâs a different form of self-improvement or a different form of creativity. That act of demolition in order to replace the thing with a more profound and better thing.In the book, you also seem to portray suburbia as an affront to masculinity and manhood itself. Do you personally feel that way? I know youâre an outdoorsman and live in a rural area. Is that something that you seek out to maintain your edge?Thatâs a tough one. Because Iâm not so much talking about suburbia as I am talking about this self-isolation that goes back to the whole snowflake metaphor where weâre taught that weâre special and hyper-individualized by being told that weâre unique and innately a treasure. Itâs that idea of ourselves as different that drives us apart from one another. It was only once I realized, No, actually, all of us have far more in common than we have differences, and Iâm not a snowflake, that I recognized myself in other people. Thatâs when I started to write about myself as part of a larger pattern of a larger experience. âSnowflakeâ is an interesting word. Itâs what tyler durden uses to tell men that theyâre not unique or special. But now itâs been coopted by the alt-right as their favorite epithet of liberals and people who have no toughness. Which gets back to what we were talking about beforeâ¦You know, you want people to adopt the thing. You want to put the book in the movie producerâs hand and have them adopt it like a baby, raise it and put a huge amount of energy into it. In doing so, the movie producer is going to change it so that it reflects the movie producerâs experience. And once that material passes on to an audience, the audience adopts it. It will become the child of the audience and will serve whatever purpose the audience has for it. It would be insane to think that the author could control every iteration or every interpretation of their work.So you just feel like an innocent bystander to how itâs being used? You donât feel any type of feeling either way â good or bad?No, I do not. You know, itâs like J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye and the death of John Lennon. I donât think Salinger felt huge remorse that heâd written a fantastic book, and this book was interpreted by a damaged person. Nor do I think it was Salingerâs fault.Thereâs one passage in Fight Club 2 that I found particularly interesting. You write, âThroughout childhood, people tell you to be less sensitive. Adulthood begins the moment someone tells you that you need to be more sensitive.â Is that something that youâve specifically had to work on as youâve grown older?Oh, hell yeah. Itâs one of those little truisms. You have so many people telling you, âDonât be so sensitive.â Then, suddenly one day, it turns around.You seem very soft and gentle over the phone, Iâm surprised that the man who wrote Fight Club seems so tender in his voice. Iâm a much older man now too. Fight Club was 20 years ago for me. It seems like youâre saying that youâve released a lot of the rage you had as a young man.I was going through a huge disillusionment. Iâd been a really good student. I kept my nose clean. I followed this blueprint society had presented to me that said that if I did all these things â get my degree, pay back my student loans and work very hard â eventually Iâd achieve some sort of satisfying success. But it just wasnât working. Around the age of 30, all of that good boy stuff starts to fall apart. You have to make a choice as to whether youâre going to continue along that road, or whether youâre going to veer off that road and find ways to succeed you werenât taught. Thatâs where I was. I was really disillusioned that Iâd been given the same roadmap everyone else was given, but that none of us were finding it effective. We hear the term âtoxic masculinityâ a lot these days. As someone who writes a lot about manhood, what does it mean to you?Oh boy, Iâm not sure if I really believe in it.Why?It seems like a label put on a certain type of behavior from the outside. Itâs just such a vague term that itâs hard to address.Let me take the opposite approach then: Who would be the male role model in todayâs culture? Is there somebody who young men have to look up to as the ideal man and is someone who I should aspire to be like?Joseph Campbell said that beyond a personâs biological father, people needed a secondary father â especially men. Typically that was a teacher, coach, military officer or priest. But it would be someone who isnât the biological father but would take the adolescent and coach him into manhood from that point. The problem is that so many of these secondary fathers are being brought down in recent history. Sports coaches have become stigmatized. Priests have become pariahs. For whatever reason, men are leaving teaching. And so, many of these secondary fathers are disappearing altogether. When that happens, what are we left with? Are these children or young men ever going to grow up?Is that what you fear â that weâre going to have a generation of young men who have never been fully socialized? Who have never been fully taught, not just how to be men, but how to be fully realized people?Iâm not afraid that it wonât happen, because itâs gonna happen. One of the things that I loved about Campbell is that he explained gangs by saying this is what happens when thereâs no secondary father. These gangs are taking young men and giving them impossible tasks, giving them praise and rewards and coaching them to an adulthood. But itâs a negative adulthood. And so, as these secondary fathers disappear for everyone, there will be similar forms that will appear and fulfill that function. But they will coach these young men to maybe more negative manhoods. Yet it also seems like thereâs a lack of universally accepted male role models at the national level. Thereâs no Frank Sinatra or Hugh Hefner anymore â no one who, for better or worse, everyone looks up to. Do you think Iâm wrong in that assessment?I think youâre wrong in that these were maybe not the healthiest male role models to model yourself after. I prefer to think of someone like John Glenn.Okay, Iâll buy that. Is there a modern-day John Glenn?Maybe not on the big, big level that everyone can emulate. But I think that on a more local level, there are teachers who mentor students. The man who taught me minimalist writing, Tom Spanbauer, was very much the master of this workshop of students. And among his apprentices â the people who could produce work that was marketable â bought their way out of his workshop. They achieved a mastery of their own. Iâd like to see more of that happening. Instead of people just being given grades and being given loans to repay. Iâd like to see them actually demonstrate a mastery in something useful in this kind of apprentice/mentor student role.Youâve experienced a lot of death in your life and even volunteered at a hospice for a time. Why were you drawn to something so morbid?It panicked me as a young person to first get a sense of my mortality â that at some point, I was going to be called upon to die. Because I had no idea what it was like to die. By working at a hospice, I was able to see what the process was like â that some people die beautifully and some people die horribly, but that if they could do it, I could do it, too. It gave me a greater sense of ease around the inevitability of dying. Later in life, your father was murdered by the ex-husband of his new girlfriend. When something that terrible and seemingly random happens, how do you try to make sense of it?By using my journalism degree. By going to the trials and talking about all the details. By understanding moment by moment everything that took place. And by establishing a sense of, not quite control, but a sense of having mastered the narrative of what led to what.On another strange and inevitable level, my father had almost been killed as a child. His father had become very upset and killed his mother and himself. But he also tried to kill my father. He just gave up searching for him before he committed suicide. When my father was finally killed by this womanâs ex-husband all these years later, a mattress fell on top of his body as the building he was in burned. The mattress is what preserved his body well enough that they could identify him as my father. Crazy enough, the reason my father survived as a child when his father went insane was that he had hidden underneath a mattress.There were so many coincidences like that. So in a way, my fatherâs death seemed like this perfect circle back to this past event actually coming to fruition. There were just too many odd coincidences to completely ignore them all.And yet, despite all these coincidences, you still identify as a nihilist? Something like that is uncanny. It almost seems otherworldly that there would be that many parallels.Thereâs a choice â you can either identify as a nihilist, or you can try to impose your own belief system on something you donât understand. The latter option says more about controlling other people, and I prefer not to do that. Iâd rather work from a position of nihilism, because I think thatâs the best base for creativity and play.Still, you needed to process your fatherâs murder as a story and have some control of it in order to get past it.I treat storytelling as a digestive function. You ruminate like a chewing animal. And you chew a story over and over again until it has absolutely no emotional reaction, and youâve resolved your emotional reaction to it. First by distancing it as a craft exercise â by turning it into a story â thatâs one step. But the big step is to tell that story over and over again until youâve completely assimilated the event into your identity, and youâve exhausted your emotional reaction. You are no longer used by the story; youâre using the story at that point.You also supported your fatherâs killer being sentenced to death, a sentence that ended up getting commuted. I canât imagine you arrived at that conclusion lightly. Some of the officials showed me documents from this manâs lifetime of incarceration. It was unethical, maybe even illegal, but there were a long string of things that heâd been convicted of doing since childhood. This man had created so much pain and had destroyed so many peopleâs lives that it just seemed like the cleanest way of resolving his life. What was the most important thing that your dad taught you?When I was little, we lived out in the country and had this chopping block where we killed chickens. My father had told me not to put metal washers over my fingers and get them stuck. But I did it anyway. The washer got stuck, and my finger turned black. I went to my father, and he said, âWeâre going to have to cut this off.â It was completely clear to me that it was my fault, that there was a price to pay and that my father was doing me a favor by washing my finger and putting rubbing alcohol on the axe so it would be sterile.When we got to the chopping block, my father had me kneel down and put my finger on it. Then, he swung the axe and missed by an inch. Afterward, he took me inside and took the washer off with soap and water. But in that moment, I was very clear â and Iâve been very clear since â that if things are going to happen in my life, Iâm gonna have to make them happen â and if they donât happen, Iâm going to have to take responsibility. Thatâs one parenting techniqueâ¦He was like a 22-year-old guy. So I donât want to be too hard on him.Thatâs very gracious of you. Nowadays, someone would call DCFS if something like that happened.Again, he was a 22-year-old guy whose father had killed himself and his mother in a murder suicide. Heâd been beaten as a child and had grown up to the best of his abilities. He had no parenting skills. I think he did a marvelous job when you consider his circumstances.Aside from your fatherâs murder, the other big element of your personal life thatâs become public is your sexuality. You didnât, however, come out until 2003. And, in fact, even gave the impression that you were married to a woman. Why?Because of my partner. He doesnât want to be a public person. And the next question they ask you after coming out is, âWho are you with?â So I chose not to go down that road. For the same reasons so many celebrities will refuse to talk about their children â they donât want to make their children into public figures.If you were to start your career today, would you be more willing to come out? I imagine it would be much easier now socially speaking.Iâd probably do it exactly the opposite way. Iâd say no picture on the book. Iâd use a pseudonym like the author of The Hunger Games. Iâd refuse to do any kind of public relations. Iâd keep myself entirely out of the process. Why?Because Iâd like the work to stand on its own and to be judged on its own. Iâve become exhausted with the constant explanation of the work, which I donât think is necessary. Too much of the presence of the author can get between the reader and the story. Afterwards, the reader will no longer see themselves in the story; they will see too much of the author.Thatâs interesting because thereâs a certain kind of bro-y, straight white guy who really loves the Fight Club movie â and the book if they happen to read it. I imagine that theyâre a little surprised when they find out the author is gay. Would you consider that accurate?They are, and they arenât. I donât think itâs a big deal. I also wrote Invisible Monsters, which gay guys love as well as straight women because itâs all about that panicky feeling that this beautiful thing isnât going to be beautiful forever and that youâve got to transition that beauty into a different, more lasting form of power. Thatâs something so many beautiful women face and why people really attach to Invisible Monsters. And so, I think that by the time that book came out, I had such a variety of books in the world that the particulars about me were less important.Youâre really downplaying your own role in this. You donât take pride in the fact that people really resonate with your work and want to discuss it with you?Thatâs because my degree is in journalism. My job is to listen to people at parties and to identify their stories and to find a commonality in the pattern between them. Because when someone tells an anecdote that goes over well, it evokes other people to tell almost identical anecdotes from their own life. Then you choose the very best of these to demonstrate a very human dynamic. In a way, what I do isnât so much invent things as it is identifying them. Later, I just put them together in a report that looks like a novel.You think of your fiction as reporting?It is. I have so little imagination. But I have so much admiration when I hear a great story from someone â the journalist in me wants to preserve it, archive it and honor it in some way.Not long ago, we were talking about male role models, but it just dawned on me that I never asked you who yours was when you were growing up.Dr. Christiaan Barnard. He was a heart transplant surgeon in South Africa. There was an article about him in a magazine when I was a small child, and something about him just completely captivated my attention.Do you know what it was exactly?The idea that he had dedicated his life to heart transplant research but that he had developed arthritis so severe that he could no longer do the work himself. That seemed like such a tragedy and made him infinitely more appealing. John McDermott is a staff writer at MEL. He last wrote about how we need a better name for net neutrality to get people to start caring about it.More conversations:A Conversation With Conner Habib, the Syrian-American Gay Porn Performer and Radical PhilosopherMoments after the solar eclipse peaked over Los Angeles on Monday, I found Conner Habib perched on his porch. We sat onâ¦melmagazine.comA Conversation With Chris KluweThe outspoken former NFL punter whose mouth got him blackballed from pro footballmelmagazine. comA Conversation With Dan Wilson, the âClosing Timeâ Singer Whoâs Written Hits for All Your Favoriteâ¦How the former Semisonic frontman became a hitmaker for womenmelmagazine.comA Conversation With Keith Law, Baseballâs Foremost Intellectual and FirebrandESPNâs sabermetrics guru discusses antidepressants, the importance of logic and his great new book about the future ofâ¦melmagazine.comA Conversation with Langston Kerman, the âInsecureâ Star and Slam Poet-Turned-Standup-ComicLangston Kerman is an L. A. -based comedian who tours the country performing stand-up and is on the verge of starring inâ¦melmagazine.com

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rqt1351 · 4 years ago

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City Pop Presentation (featuring DJ Van Paugam), 2020, Online presentation

Script

[Play Plastic Love Intro]

[Ryo: Introduction] Originally from Miami Beach and currently based in Chicago, DJ Van Paugam specializes in 70s and 80s Japanese Disco, Funk, and City Pop. He claims the title of the first DJ on Youtube who used only vintage Japanese records as sources of his mix, that had rarely been heard outside of Japan. Credited with resurrecting the genre online, he influenced dozens of other Youtube Channels and Radio Streams. Having achieved 100k subscribers on Youtube, he lost his channel on February 14th 2019 due to a dispute with the Recording Industry Association of Japan. Despite losing his Youtube channel, he continues to DJ live and create new original content focused on expanding the influence of the music to inspire a contemporary and cosmopolitan minded audience. Please join me in welcoming Van Paugam.

[Van] In 1980s Japan, a particular genre of music called “City Pop” sprang from the financial boom. It drew influence from many styles including Rock, Jazz, Pop, and Disco. At that time the thriving economic “miracle” propelled Japan into the global stage as a top contender in technology, science, and business. It generated prosperous cosmopolitan lifestyles, and the City Pop sound was the perfect match for the mood. With the advent of advanced car stereos, it became typical to hear City Pop while driving through urban landscapes and sprawling highways encircling metropolitan areas. Now that Japanese music is becoming more appreciated globally, City Pop is once again being heard, this time mainly by listeners outside of the country. City Pop can evoke a strange sense of familiarity as it borrowed various elements from other genres and mixed them together with a different sensitivity. It seems like remembering a distant memory too obscure to make out completely in your mind, but still comforting enough to keep you hooked from beginning to end. City Pop has been described by many as incredibly nostalgic, even by those too young to remember the era.

Its imagery and themes often reflect the social paradigm of the times; excitement for the future, romance and heartbreak, optimism and an overwhelming urge to enjoy life.

The genre presents a time capsule into the collective psyche of those who benefited the most from the economic bubble.

It reflects the care-free, breezy perceptions of a newly cosmopolitan generation of savvy business people, socialites, and lovers of luxury.

[Ryo] In Van Paugam’s opinion, the years 1978-1985 produced the best City Pop songs, since after that era the music started sounding too commercialized. In 1985 there was a pivotal moment in Japanese economy called Plaza Accord. The accord was signed between Japan, the UK, France, West Germany, and the US, aimed at reducing the imbalance in trade between the countries. At that time, Japan had a huge trade surplus, as the Japanese yen was weaker against the US dollar, while the US suffered from a consistent trade deficit. The accord was partially due to complaints by the US regarding the imbalance in the exchange rate between the yen and the dollar. Most Japanese imports had cheaper prices relative to their quality than the domestic products due to the weaker yen. This sudden, steep appreciation in the yen arguably caused the asset price bubble from 1986 to 1991, and its subsequent burst in 1992.

[Van] Like all dreams, Japan’s economic bubble of the 80s popped going into the 90s, resulting in the country’s commercialistic paradise being perceived with sharp disdain as much less euphoric times loomed on the horizon. City Pop records, and all their fantastical neon hopes and dreams were nothing more than a remnant of a time many no longer remembered, and most would rather forget as evidence of a country’s collective recklessness and disillusionment. The genre had long been relegated to the dust-bin of Japanese cultural importance, except for the few who kept the records alive. Thanks to the internet, the genre eventually found a new home online in the mid-2010s. It is once again being shared and appreciated for its finely crafted melodies, soaring arrangements, and evocative imagery of hopeless romanticism, innocent joviality, and promises of a bright future.

[Ryo] Here are some YouTube comments on some popular City Pop songs: [Van] - Anyone get false nostalgia listening to 80's music? I feel like I remember memories of the 80's yet I was born in 95'. Its so weird [Ryo] - You remember that time we were working as police detectives in Tokyo during the 80's, and we were at this little bar in Yokohama chatting up this cute waitress when the yakuza busted in and we had to fight them to this song? [Van] - Damn, takes me back to a trip to Egypt with my grandfather, a frenchman, a school boy, an arabian and a dog to defeat a meterosexual vampire. Good times. [Ryo] - This comment section is flooded with shit like this and I can't help but have similar fake memories too. What the fuck is this magic?! [Van] - It was a good time. I went to middle school through college in Tokyo metropolitan area in 80s. We followed new video clips from MTV Japan, every week. I went to Michael Jackson’s concert in Tokyo Dome, which was a best and newest venue at that time. Everything was hopeful and I was truly happy to be living in Shonan area where we had beach heavily influenced by American West coast culture. Every morning, I was passing by surfers who parked their pink “Beatle” on the way to my high school. The beach culture, night club culture in Roppongi and Nishiazabu, Italian restaurants in Daikanyama, Towe records in Shibuya... those are the things we liked and feel privileged. [Ryo] - I think the reason we’re all nostalgic for a time we weren’t even alive in is that we are nostalgic for that happy go lucky feeling, that feeling of the summer breeze and no worry too difficult to overcome. An optimism that was popular in the Japanese roaring 80s, and in our childhoods in the 90s-early 2000s in contrast to today, where technology is more advanced and the news is rampant with corruption, death, and disease. I don’t care what no one says, I’m making this decade my roaring 80s [Van] - I'm a Japanese who spent the 80s as a teenager. This is like going back to the old good days with lots of foreign friends I've never met. [Ryo] - 1980’s Japan was living in the future

[Ryo] Japan’s younger generations generally feel indifference or even disdain or resentment toward the culture of “bubble generation” as they cannot relate to such an optimistic outlook because all they have seen growing up is a slow decline in their economic opportunities. Therefore they are cynical about nostalgia felt by the older generation who experienced it in real time. The City Pop phenomenon is an example of how global capitalism and nostalgia work together to produce wants, needs and desires as one comment says, “I didn’t realize I needed it until I found it, thanks YouTube algorithm.”

[Play Plastic Love outro]

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theeverlastingshade · 4 years ago

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The Suburbs- Arcade Fire: 10th Anniversary

Within today’s music landscape it seems unthinkable that an outsider indie band could have achieved the sort of success that Arcade Fire achieved with their third LP, The Suburbs, a decade ago. TS sounds like a culmination of that particular strain of bombastic, orchestral indie rock that Arcade Fire helped popularize alongside the likes of Broken Social Scene and The Decemberists in the early aughts. Indie bands of that ilk existed alongside the margins of what was happening in popular culture until the rapturous reception of Arcade Fire’s debut LP, Funeral, catapulted them into the upper echelons of indie royalty. Arcade Fire were never shy about their ambitions, and positioned themselves as if they were a stadium act right from their first shows. That ambition still hasn't waned, for better or worse, but if their classic debut, Funeral, and the band’s great second LP, Neon Bible, are the urgent ruminations of wide-eyed, pre-maturely world-weary twenty-somethings, than TS is the more multi-faceted, mature record about facing the realities of adulthood. Although TS falls short of the consistency and cohesiveness of Funeral, it’s the second strongest record that the band have released to date, and it’s their last great record. The fact that Arcade Fire have yet to follow it up with another great record only seems to echo its place, alongside other 2010 touchstones like Halcyon Digest and The Monitor, as one of the last classic records of its kind.

After NB, it was hard to say exactly where Arcade Fire were going to go next. Any attempt to simply double down on the anthemic Neutral Milk Hotel/Bright Eyes meets Springsteen formula likely wouldn’t have done them many favors, so instead of going bigger, they got bolder. The band were already known for elaborate baroque arrangements in their music, but on TS these sound less like tasteful embellishments than the focal points of the songs themselves. Songs like “Empty Room” and “Deep Blue” have stunning string and piano arrangements far more impressive in their melodic and rhythmic interplay than anything the band had ever done prior. The songs here are more downtempo, relaxed, and display a wider palette of tonal and emotional frequencies with respect to their first two records. There’s also a stronger willingness to experiment that was much welcomed after the fairly tight uniformity of their first two. So while infectious rippers like “Month of May” and “Empty Room” are largely in the minority here, they do a nice job of evening out the pacing and providing ideal transitions after some of the record’s slower cuts. There are more missteps on TS than on Funeral, but the risks more often than not pay off, and it showcases a wider, more versatile side of the band without compromising any of their strengths. The tone of the record perfectly reflects the transition into the steady thrum of middle-age after the storm of young adulthood has subsided, and the lingering disquiet of uncertainty and fatigue has begun to set in.

Arcade Fire will likely always be a band incapable of not wearing their hearts on their sleeves, and so while they can often slip into heavy-handedness, there’s absolutely no denying their conviction throughout the course of TS. The chorus of the title track couldn’t possibly lay out their intentions any clearer “I can’t believe it/I’m moving past the feeling”. Whether Win is singing about war stripping people of their humanity on “City With No Children” or pondering the simplicity of life before technology stripped everyday things that we take for granted of their agency “We Used to Wait”, the themes of nostalgia, perseverance, and the loss of innocence define the album as a whole. Although earnestness has generally been one of Arcade Fire’s most notable assets, subtly has never been, and Win’s tendency to drop some clumsy lines still gets the better of him from time to time (“The business men keep drinking my blood/Like the kids in art school said they would”, “Like a patient on a table/I wanna walk again, gonna move through that pain”) even as the music around him consistently swells with stirring arrangements and lush production. Aside from a few missteps, Win and Regine both deliver some of their sharpest writing to date, particularly in Win’s case on “Suburban War” a creeping jangle/chamber pop ode to an old friend of his that he’s lost touch with “And while we sleep/We know the streets get rearranged/With my old friends/It was so different then/Before your war/Against the suburbs began” and in Regine’s case on “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”, an epic about the unrelenting march of capitalism “Living in the sprawl/Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains/And there’s no end in sight/I need the darkness; would you please cut the lights?”. On TS Arcade Fire managed to transcend their occasionally awkward songwriting through simplicity, and their belief in the power of the collective.

While TS rarely reaches the highs of Funeral, the best songs here are handedly among the best that Arcade Fire have ever written, and it’s without question their most varied, and diverse set of songs. The album is broken up into two halves, with the first half spanning the intro title track through “Half Light II”, and everything else up through the refrain outro of the title track closing things out. The one-two punch of “The Suburbs” and “Ready to Start” provide an ideal jolt of chiming keys, booming percussion, soaring strings, and Win’s queasy-yelp high in the mix as the disillusionment begins to settle in. These two set the tone for the proceedings and establish the kind of strong early momentum that Arcade Fire records can be counted on for. “City With No Children” and “Rococo” coast along funky basslines that foretell their future forays into disco and synth-pop, while “Half Light II” and “Sprawl II” luxuriate in cathartic, orchestral-fueled peaks coupled with some tasteful electronic embellishments and sublime harmonies courtesy of Regine Chassagne. Those last two songs showcase the mode that Arcade Fire have always excelled most at, one and neither the newfound sonic complexity, nor the heightened lyrical maturity displayed throughout this record has changed that. But everything else they attempt here is genuinely thrilling (even if they don’t necessarily succeed), whether it’s the baroque pop shuffle of “Rococo” or the rollicking garage swing of “Month of May”, or the bar band piano-waltz of “We Used to Wait”. TS is without question the single best distillation of everything that Arcade Fire can do as a band.

Although TS initially scanned like the cresting of a particular wave of indie rock finally penetrating the larger popular culture, the aftermath of its release was nowhere near any kind of oversaturation of indie rock quite like what was the case with the grunge explosion in the wake of Nirvana. The following years saw the industry begin to shift towards an emphasis on electronic music, hip-hop, and r&b, and Arcade Fire remained one of the few bands among their peers that ever managed to tour stadiums. Given how diffuse media is it’s impossible to imagine another band having the kind of initial success that Arcade Fire achieved through the strength of the reviews of their debut ever again without being an industry plant. It took Arcade Fire three years to follow up TS with Reflektor, and whether by creative stasis, or astute reading/being savvy opportunists they returned abandoning any pretense of the arty chamber rock of their first three records in favor of a foray into dance music. The growing pains were blatant, and they haven’t really subsided in the years since, but their artistic progression remains remarkably indicative of where the music zeitgeist has shifted throughout their career, for better or worse. Throughout their first three LPs Arcade Fire challenged the zeitgeist to meet them where they were at. Everything that they’ve released since TS has found this dynamic functioning in reverse, and the quality of their output has reflected the shift. TS is the sound of a band in full command of their craft beginning to strain against an industry no longer willing to invest resources to discover bands like them.

After TS Arcade Fire released the art rock/dance hybrid LP, Reflektor, in late 2013, and the spectacular synth pop dumpster fire LP, Everything Now, in mid 2017. While both of these albums have their moments (more so Reflektor than EN) they both present an immensely talented band straining against their strengths as they watched the zeitgeist pass them by, flailing for a way to move forward without simply going through the motions. As long as they’re active, Arcade Fire will likely remain an engaging live band full of dynamic performers capable of compounding the potency of their grand compositions several times over, even if they’re no longer able to record music that captures a fraction of that spark. But for a brief moment in 2010 it really did seem like Arcade Fire were going to take over the world through ambition for ambitions sake in a way that sort of reminds me of indie acts today who just can’t miss, and continue to get better as they become more immediate ( Alex G, Big Thief, Perfume Genius, etc). Although Arcade Fire’s best days are almost certainly behind them, their first three records still hold up remarkably well as some of the most vital indie rock of the last decade and a half. The shadow that TS casts over the contemporary music landscape is large despite the fact that it sounds like a relic from another era, primarily because of what it signifies. Trends disappear and re-emerge like clockwork, but the strive to break, and remain relevant, remains eternal.

Essentials: “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”, “Half Light II (No Celebration)”, “Empty Room”

#Arcade Fire #the suburbs #merge records #City Slang #mercury records

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michaelbennettcrypto · 5 years ago

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Could Growing Global Distrust be a Boon For Bitcoin (BTC)?

More nations appear to be starting to see the folly of fiat currency. With growing calls for gold-backed currencies for international settlement, there may be an opportunity for Bitcoin to facilitate trade deals with far less manipulation than possible when using national currencies.

Evidence is mounting that countries are more distrusting of one another and in particular of the US dollar and its potential for manipulation. This is driving nations to seek out alternatives.

Is Global Settlement Currency the End Game for Bitcoin?

As NewsBTC covered recently, the Malaysian Prime Minister has advocated a gold-backed currency for use between East Asian trading partners. The leader argued that the current use of national currencies left room for manipulation by Forex traders. This can have disastrous impacts on economies, even when said economy has been growing.

Earlier today, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert appeared on RT’s Keiser Report to discuss the Malaysian Prime Minister’s proposals. The two argued that the current system of using a fiat currency for international settlement was indeed flawed and that a sounder (less prone to manipulation) form of money, like gold or Bitcoin would be preferable:

“The reason why gold works is because it’s trustless. You don’t have to trust that someone is printing up a whole bunch of money.”

Herbert then went on to state that distrust was growing around the globe and that nations like China, Malaysia, Turkey, Russia, and others were stockpiling gold in order to reduce dependence on the dollar. With nations finding it more difficult to trust one another, a fair “yardstick” is needed to measure each nations’ performance.

Given that Bitcoin offers an even sounder monetary policy than gold – it is issued at a consistent rate and has a total supply that is actually known – this growing distrust amongst nations and what Herbert describes as a deglobalization movement around the world could also create an opportunity for Bitcoin to be used in international settlement.

After all, gold has some limitations that make it ill-suited for the digital age. With information being able to travel around the world almost instantly, surely value needs to as well. Gold is hideously expensive to transfer, store, and protect. Compare this to Bitcoin and the perks of crypto assets become clear.

Given that the US seems hell-bent on normalizing the quantitative easing (printing money) that was originally introduced as a temporary measure, there is good reason for the growing disillusionment with the US dollar.

Keiser went as far as to call the US dollar a “hyper-inflated bubble” thanks to the Federal Reserve’s reliance on printing its way out of issues. His guest, Alasdair Macleod, of GoldMoney.com, rather poetically referred to the policy as the “last refuge of the scoundrel” and that it was the only weapon available to central banks, even if it didn’t work:

“The idea that you can rescue an economy by debasing wealth is absolute lunacy.”

With tensions between the US and China still high with regards to the ongoing trade war, there seems little to suggest that efforts to de-dollarise around the world will stop anytime soon.

Keiser believes that the dollar’s demise is inevitable at this point and that its pending crash will see a huge influx of capital into safe-haven assets, such as gold, and perhaps even Bitcoin too.

Related Reading: Crypto CEO to Preach Bitcoin at Gold Mining Investor Conference

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brettzjacksonblog · 5 years ago

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Could Growing Global Distrust be a Boon For Bitcoin (BTC)?

Evidence is mounting that countries are more distrusting of one another and in particular of the US dollar and its potential for manipulation. This is driving nations to seek out alternatives.

Is Global Settlement Currency the End Game for Bitcoin?

“The reason why gold works is because it’s trustless. You don’t have to trust that someone is printing up a whole bunch of money.”

“The idea that you can rescue an economy by debasing wealth is absolute lunacy.”

With tensions between the US and China still high with regards to the ongoing trade war, there seems little to suggest that efforts to de-dollarise around the world will stop anytime soon.

Keiser believes that the dollar’s demise is inevitable at this point and that its pending crash will see a huge influx of capital into safe-haven assets, such as gold, and perhaps even Bitcoin too.

Related Reading: Crypto CEO to Preach Bitcoin at Gold Mining Investor Conference

Featured Image from Shutterstock.

The post Could Growing Global Distrust be a Boon For Bitcoin (BTC)? appeared first on NewsBTC.

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joshuajacksonlyblog · 5 years ago

Text

Could Growing Global Distrust be a Boon For Bitcoin (BTC)?

Evidence is mounting that countries are more distrusting of one another and in particular of the US dollar and its potential for manipulation. This is driving nations to seek out alternatives.

Is Global Settlement Currency the End Game for Bitcoin?

“The reason why gold works is because it’s trustless. You don’t have to trust that someone is printing up a whole bunch of money.”

“The idea that you can rescue an economy by debasing wealth is absolute lunacy.”

With tensions between the US and China still high with regards to the ongoing trade war, there seems little to suggest that efforts to de-dollarise around the world will stop anytime soon.

Keiser believes that the dollar’s demise is inevitable at this point and that its pending crash will see a huge influx of capital into safe-haven assets, such as gold, and perhaps even Bitcoin too.

Related Reading: Crypto CEO to Preach Bitcoin at Gold Mining Investor Conference

Featured Image from Shutterstock.

The post Could Growing Global Distrust be a Boon For Bitcoin (BTC)? appeared first on NewsBTC.

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#IFTTT #Cryptocracken Tumblr

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fitnesshealthyoga-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/yoga-and-religion-a-journey-of-faith-christianity/

Yoga and Religion: A Journey of Faith + Christianity

People often think that yoga and religion are two separate things. And while that may be true for some, yoga and religion are intertwined for others. Here’s one yogi’s story of how her Catholic faith impacted her practice.

I walked into the high-ceilinged, sunny-yellow Philadelphia yoga studio with ebonyashes clouding my skin. The mark, smeared across my forehead earlier that day by an old man’s thumb, was less a cross and more of a faded, L-shaped blotch.

It was 4:30 p.m. on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, and I noticed that no one else in the class had a similar mark. I hadn’t had ashes on my forehead since I was in Catholic high school more than 10 years ago. When I was young, I learned that we wore ashes as a public admission of guilt—an expression of a deep and incomprehensible sorrow. Back then, I knew I was supposed to spend Lent correcting my faults, purifying my heart, and controlling my desires, the way Jesus had when he was allegedly tempted by Satan as he spent 40 days in the desert.

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I, on the other hand, had carried my lavender yoga mat past a red-and-gold Om symbol painted on a wall next to copper statues of Buddha and Ganesh, inhaled smokey sandalwood incense, laid out my mat, and dropped down into Balasana (Child’s Pose). My knees splayed out wide past my bare feet, my arms stretched forward to the top of the mat, my ash-anointed forehead touched, in humility, rubber over hardwood floor.

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See also Do You Really Know the True Meaning of Yoga? Thoughts from a British Indian Yogi

The sounds of flutes and sitars and Indian devotional music played in the background, and a slender, soft-voiced yoga teacher advised us to clear our minds, focus on being present, and to set an intention for our practice.

Earlier, at church, a kind and graying priest had advised worshipers not to “give something up” for Lent, but to instead be fully present to God—the divine—in ourlives. In the modern, minimalistic church, with its familiar central crucifix and ornate portraits of saints and the Virgin Mary lining the sunlit walls, I had felt as much at home as I did now in the yoga studio. The pews had been packed to capacity for Ash Wednesday, with people crowding in the back vestibule, coats still on, like my family always had when we’d arrived late to Christmas mass.

In the humid, heated yoga room, class was filled to its highest capacity as well—not because of a day-of, religious obligation, but because it was a community yoga class costing only $7, rather than the usual $15. A crowded class (or church, for that matter) never bothered me, really. But today I was dimly aware of the mark on my forehead, my struggles with faith readily visible to all. I rose from Child’s Pose to stand with the other spandex-clad men and women on a sea of neon mats, our legs locked in Vrksasana (Tree Pose) and our hands in Namaskarasana.

Searching through my Catholic faith in my late 20s sometimes feels empty and regressive. There are so many reasons to not believe in it: abusive pedophiliac priests, lack of equal respect for women, blatant disregard for LGBTQ people I hold so dearly. Unsurprisingly, for years since college, I’ve been more comfortable with yoga mats and meditations rather than confession and unrelenting guiltI learned to bear from rigid nuns in brown habits when I was young and still clapped blackboard erasers.

See also Q&A: What’s So Sacred About the Number 108?

Tomaine and her mother praying at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter & Paul.

I remember being a child in a wooden pew wearing flowery dresses on Easter and contemplating, in an abstract and sanitized way, what it would have felt like to have iron nails put through my hands. I pictured the blood running out in neat rivulets, always imagining it as a manageable pain, something confined, before drifting off to other daydreams and bemusements. In my world, my concept of pain was not enough to understand the gory and impossible torture of an actual crucifixion. Everything is neatly packaged when you are 11, delivered in a picture book both palatable and disturbing—a story accepted and then dismissed.

But at 28 years old, I haven’t just been searching for faith, but also for a sense of self I seem to have lost somewhere between growing up and post-college malaise—learning that I wasn’t going to marry that guy or the one after that. I also wasn’t going to have the perfect career and easily sketched life I’d imagined for myself all those years. Somewhere along the line, I realized, with a staggering jolt, that I didn’t have all the answers, nor would I. This realization of how little I knew led me on a bumpy path back to a yoga mat, a church pew, and finally, after years of shying away from the one thing that had always made me, me: writing again.

I started writing in tiny notebooks, in notes on my iPhone, on airplanes, waiting in line outside free concerts. If I’ve learned anything of value so far, it’s that spirituality is intrinsic to the writing process, because creativity itself is justa form of spirituality. What is a writer if not someone, as William Faulkner put it, attempting to understand and convey “the human heart in conflict with itself?” And is spirituality not just trying to understand that same heart? A search for peace and meaning and inner strength? A way to slow down in a world where it is all too easy to speed up until one day you wake up old and wrinkled, and you cry, looking back, thinking, “That was my life.” Fiction, poetry, nonfiction—these are all really just attempts at divinity.

See also 9 Top Yoga Teachers Share How They ‘Talk’ to the Universe

For years, I had stopped writing, practicing yoga regularly, and praying, allowing myself to sink into a daily fray—worrying about the unruly edges of my life, how things were not settling how I wanted them to. I lost my true sense of awe and wonder, of spirituality. I was overwhelmed, instead, by personal tragedies and plans gone awry, at heartache and mistakes that built up into disillusionment and depression. But, I also think, like almost any great religious story—whether it be Jesus wandering off into a desert in Israel or Luke Skywalker flying off on a spiritual quest to Dagobah—there comes a universal knowledge that to find yourself, and your true voice, you must first lose everything and build up from the dirt.

Over time, I shifted direction. I began walking out of my personal desert—a place where I had felt lonely and entitled, angry at my life for not unfolding asI imagined. AndI started being more humble: accepting that even if some people involved in the church were terrible, that didn’t make faith terrible. I started going to yoga, not to improve my form, but to calm my mind.

I began to, slowly, feel happy again. I started laughing more, and talking more, and drinking more red wine. I started meditating. I went to yoga classes regularly again. I started praying again, in odd, awkward moments, as I’d done as a girl. I focused seriously on meditation in a way that felt not at all incongruous with blessing myself with the sign of the cross as I lay in the dark, reading Psalms from my iPhone Bible before bed.

See also 5 Ways to Turn a Mental Breakdown into a Spiritual Breakthrough

“Spirituality, both in yoga classes and in prayer, simply became my non-acceptance of my predicament.” – Gina Tomaine

I prayed when I needed a parking spot. I prayed when there was airplane turbulence. I prayed when I felt anxious about a conversation or a relationship. I prayed thanks when I had a piece of writing published. I prayed thanks when I was laying in Half Pigeon Pose. I prayed for my family.

When I prayed, I said that I wasn’t sure if what I was praying for was the right thing, but if God could just do whatever was right, I would be OK with it. It didn’t even matter if anyone was listening—capital G God or anyone at all—it just mattered that I had finally learned, once and for all, that everything was not up to me.

I started to shake myself out of whatever had been holding me. I did legs up the wall every night. Psalms told me, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made.” I started acting fearfully and wonderfully made.

Spirituality, both in yoga classes and in prayer, simply became my non-acceptance of my predicament. I didn’t consciously decide I wanted to be Christian again, but it was a survivalist instinct. If I wanted to live and not just exist, I hadto let myself believe again. It was as simple, and perhaps as childish, as that. Spirituality became my decision to transcend depression, emotional malaise, and discontent, and instead worship the creative process, the divine in everyday life, and the things I loved about the world. After all, how we are all cosmically connected and divine is real—and I would rather believe it and be called foolish than die faithless, cynical, and smart.

See also 3 Things I Learned After Taking a Break from My Yoga Practice

At the end of yoga class on Ash Wednesday, I sat up straight, cross-legged, breathing heavy with eyes gently shut. My ashes were sweaty on my forehead, my yoga tights sticking to my thighs. I felt emptied and grateful,reminded thatI am dust.

Our teacher offered an option for our final pose: “Rest your hands on your knees facing down if you are searching for answers within yourselves,” she said.

Without a thought, I placed my hands down on my knees.

“Or,” she continued, “rest your hands on your knees facing up if you are searching for answers from the universe.”

I flipped my hands facing up.

“Namaste,” we said, in unison.

The week after that, I read another Bible verse; I wrote another poem, another essay, another short story; I took another yoga class; I rose up into Warrior Pose II before transitioning into a twist, my hands folded softly together in Prayer Pose, my breath moving steadily, my heart open.

About the Author

Gina Tomaine is a Philadelphia-based writer and editor. She is currently Deputy Lifestyle Editor of Philadelphia magazine, and previously served as Associate Deputy Editor of Rodale’s Organic Life. She’s been published in Prevention, Women’s Health, Runner’s World and more. Learn more at ginatomaine.com.

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thisdaynews · 5 years ago

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How TV Predicted Politics in the 2010s

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/how-tv-predicted-politics-in-the-2010s/

How TV Predicted Politics in the 2010s

And if “The West Wing” trio worked in Congressman Frank Underwood’s Washington, they might just get shoved in front of a moving Metro train. When Netflix premiered “House of Cards” in 2013, it seemed natural to juxtapose it with the brighter era of political TV that preceded it. If only we knew at the time that the show was preparing us for a decade of dark political TV to come—and reflecting an overall perception of Washington that would soon have an impact on therealWashington.

Of course, “Scandal” and “House of Cards” were just TV—few people on the government payroll, after all, could afford those wardrobes. But these shows’ portrayal of the creeping rot of Washington didn’t show up in a vacuum. Television can both set and reflect the mood of the nation, creating expectations about human behavior. After Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, many mused, in seriousness, about whether Dennis Haysbert’s acting turn as President David Palmer on “24” helped get voters used to the image of a black president. Something similar might be at work now. Today’s real-life sweeping nihilism about politicians’ motives, the widespread hatred of the “swamp,” the notion that the process is flawed and the rules of engagement themselves might not be worth following, was, if not created by television, then at least predicted by it.

To realize how dark TV’s take on Washington has been these past eight or 10 years, it’s worth thinking about how relatively sunny the view was just a decade earlier. The aughts were full of political shows whose central politicians were virtuous and well-meaning, engaged in public service for the right reasons. This wasn’t a just a liberal Hollywood thing; in ABC’s short-lived “Commander in Chief” (2005-06), Geena Davis, a vice president who ascended to the Oval Office when her boss died, was a political independent. Fox’s “24” (2001-10) didn’t take a progressive view of issues like torture—but when Kiefer Sutherland and his fellow counterterrorism agents played fast and loose with the Geneva Accords, they did so for the sake of virtuous presidents and the safety of the American people.

And nothing screamed “higher calling” more than “The West Wing,” which aired on NBC from 1999 to 2006, tracking the righteous souls who worked for President Jed Bartlet. The soundtrack was stirring and majestic; the opening sequence was gauzy and triumphant; in most episodes, someone gave a speech about doing the right thing. When the actors showed up on the Democratic campaign trail—as they did en masse for Hillary Clinton in 2016—you sometimes got the sense that they actually believed they had been part of the government.

“The West Wing,” created by Aaron Sorkin, was a liberal wish-fulfillment fantasy, but it also mostly imbued Team Bartlet’s conservative antagonists with a certain kind of honor: They wanted power, but in service to their causes, and with ultimate respect for the system. (That point was underscored in a 2002 documentary-style “Special Episode” that featured gauzy interviews about the work of White House staffers, and included such Republicans as Marlin Fitzwater, Peggy Noonan and Karl Rove.) Even though the show premiered seven months after President Bill Clinton’s highly partisan impeachment trial, it was forever optimistic about the system—confident that a few good friends and well-placed Sorkin-penned speeches could fix whatever ailed democracy. If there was political analysis embedded in “The West Wing,” it was the notion that the system fell short when the players didn’t fight hard enough for what they believed in; when they were too willing to play the safe bet instead of taking a risk for the greater good.

Then came the end of Obama’s first term—a moment when, if you were a liberal with Sorkinesque optimism about “Yes We Can” slogans and transformative change, you might be coming to terms with the notion that politicians are imperfect, gridlock is pervasive and Mitch McConnell isn’t just going to step aside to make way for your higher cause, whether it’s universal health care or closing Guantanamo.

And a new era of political TV shows took that disillusionment one step further. Shows like “Veep” and “House of Cards” offered a new, darker theory: The system can never work if everybody in politics is terrible and venal and self-serving—and the very nature of Washington makes people terrible and venal and self-serving.

“Veep,” a kind of inverse of “The West Wing” that premiered in 2012, was a farce about ambitious politician Selina Meyer and her marginally competent, politically hungry staff. Here, majestic “West Wing”-style music is played in little jabs, like punchlines, between scenes where Meyer does her best to squeeze political capital from every situation. And her disdain for the actual public is glaringly obvious. (“I’ve met some people, some real people, and I’ve got to tell you, a lot of them are f—ing idiots,” she says in the first season.) Where the staffers in “The West Wing” were fast and loyal friends, Meyer’s staffers mock and undermine one another other without mercy. The closest thing Meyer has to a friend is the devoted body guy who brings her snacks on demand and whispers useful facts in her ear in public settings. In the series finale, she sets him up to take the fall for a political scandal—and watches FBI agents haul him away, out of the corner of her eye, as she delivers a nomination acceptance speech at the party convention.

“Veep” was created by a Scotsman, Armando Iannucci, a veteran of scathing British black comedies about the moral compromises of government. He held no special reverence for American institutions, and he was keenly aware of the comedic possibilities when teeming ambition crashed into powerlessness. Around the time of the series premiere, Iannucci told theLos Angeles Timesthat he was partly inspired by Lyndon B. Johnson, who spent his vice presidency “sort of sitting in his office waiting for a phone call.” (The running joke in the first season is that Selina keeps asking if the president called, and the answer is always “no.”) Like the best satire, the show has an undercurrent of sadness; Meyer is acutely aware of how much toil and personal sacrifice it has taken to obtain whatever capital she has, and how much the struggle has changed her as a person. The finale offers a brief, melancholy image of her sitting alone in the Oval Office, having sacrificed every relationship to reach her goal.

“House of Cards,” too, had roots across the pond; it was loosely based on a British political-thriller series from the 1990s. But where “Veep” spun nihilism into farce, “House of Cards” turned it into high melodrama. The credit sequence shows the monuments of Washington in ominous time-lapse photography, with dark clouds sweeping overhead and shadows climbing up the buildings. The central characters, politician Frank Underwood and his wife, Claire, are so deeply committed to Washington power that they’d do anything to get it—not just the garden-variety TV fare of murders, affairs and bribery, but some truly sinister bureaucratic moves. In the second season, in order to blackmail a pregnant former employee, Claire forges health insurance paperwork to deny her a drug that would aid blood flow to her placenta. “I’m willing to let your child wither and die inside you if that’s what’s required, but neither of us wants that,” she says, matter-of-factly.

The ruthlessness of politics was a running theme throughout the decade. Even soap-opera fantasies picked up on the idea of Washington as a force for ambition, evil and, really, not much else. “The Oval Office, in our show, was a place that corrupted anybody who came near it,” “Scandal” creator Shonda Rhimes told reporters before the series finale. “And the closer you came, the more corrupt it made you and the more damaged it made you.” This year, Netflix’s “The Politician,” a Ryan Murphy political allegory set at a California high school, mocked the poll-driven, values-free drive of a budding politician and his handlers.

The most powerful way that TV predicted politics in the 2010s, though, was in its prescription for a fix: the suggestion that what Washington really needs is an outsider to swoop in and shake things up (or drain the swamp, if you prefer). Mainstream networks in particular offered another archetype alongside these power-hungry nihilists: the accidental politician who reluctantly takes high office, then comes face-to-face with that broken system. These shows might have been more optimistic about human nature than “Scandal” or “Veep,” but in their own way, they were just as cynical about Washington.

In 2016, ABC launched “Designated Survivor,” a political thriller starring Kiefer Sutherland, best known as fearless agent Jack Bauer in “24.” Here, Sutherland plays Tom Kirkman, a mild-mannered career academic who serves as secretary of Housing and Urban Development—but is so bad at navigating Washington politics that one morning, he learns that president plans to fire him. He has one final duty: to be the Cabinet member taken to a secure location during the State of the Union address, just in case. As it so happens, that night, somebody blows up the Capitol.

Kirkman takes the Oath of Office with no trust, no mandate and no idea how to do the job, though viewers surely trust that his inner Kiefer Sutherland will come through. It does, in a mild-mannered way, as he fires subordinate generals, stumbles through international crises and finds it within himself, eventually, to deliver a stirring speech. (In the third season, he delivers his own State of the Union address, but goes off-script and caterwauls at Congress: “The system is broken and you people broke it!”) Through it all, Kirkman is fighting against a greater conspiracy: a network of corruption that wrongly believes he’d be an easy mark. As other characters handle the action-adventure work, Kirkman stands his ground; it’s his rare integrity, his un-Washingtonian Kiefer-ness, that holds the nation together.

CBS’ “Madam Secretary,” which premiered two years earlier, has a similar premise: Elizabeth McCord, a former CIA analyst-turned-college professor, is tapped to become secretary of State after the current one dies in a plane crash. The president, a former CIA director, tells McCord he trusts her to think more expansively than most Washington lifers, and within reason, she complies, battling a White House chief of staff who would prefer she follow protocol more often. “This is me not being a politician,” she declares in one early episode, explaining an unconventional decision.

“Madam Secretary” is more like “The West Wing” in the sense that multiple characters have virtue. The president is a basically a good guy; the McCords’ marriage is a mutually supportive dream; the State Department staff is behind her. (So are some real-world political operatives: In one 2018 episode, former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell appear together, as themselves, to offer bland advice about pushing for national unity after a crisis.) Still, the show’s backdrop is a Washington that’s compromised and divided, full of conspiracies and unworthy opponents, from secretive bureaucrats to government moles and ambitious two-dimensional senators. At the end of the first season, one such senator discovers that McCord shared classified information with her husband Henry. Issued a subpoena to appear before the Senate committee, Henry declares his intention to obstruct justice. “This whole thing lacks integrity,” he tells Elizabeth. “I feel no ethical obligation to play by their rules.”

Ultimately, Elizabeth barges into the hearing, takes Henry’s place at the witness table and delivers an impassioned speech, saying she only broke the law because she cared about the country and didn’t know who else she could trust. (“Man, I have never heard a more eloquent defense for violating the Espionage Act,” another character says, in admiration.) She storms out of the hearing without being dismissed. Soon afterward, the president informs her that the Justice Department has decided to let it pass.

Of all of the political shenanigans on television this decade, that 2015 scene might have been the most telling, and the most predictive of the real-life politics that were to come, not long after the episode aired. “The West Wing” never argued that the rules of political engagement can and should be broken. But today, real-life Washington is full of disagreements, not just about facts and outcomes, but about the basic codes of conduct, the processes that everyone needs to follow, the obligation anyone has to play by anyone’s rules.

Again, it’s just TV. But academic treatises have been written about how TV crime shows can create a warped impression of the criminal justice system, giving jurors outsized expectations, for example, of the power of forensic evidence. A decade ago, on political TV, we had an openhearted baseline expectation about how the system works, why it fails and what kinds of behavior gets rewarded.

But in these 2010s shows, the characters learn that breaking the codes of conduct and propriety will wind up taking you far. Selina Meyer of “Veep” and both Underwoods of “House of Cards” all get to be president in the end. Elizabeth McCord, of “Madam Secretary,” eventually becomes president, too. But, you know, a good one. So long as you’re on her side.

#Foreign #Politics #Predicted

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ivfclinicsinindia · 5 years ago

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Best IVF Center’s in Delhi | Top affordable IVF clinics in Delhi | Ovo health

Best IVF Centre’s in Delhi

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Top Affordable IVF clinics in Delhi

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Best IVF Doctors in Delhi NCR with High success rate

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IVF Cost in Delhi with ICSI treatment

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