Gdanning
2yr ago
Well, they reconnect on Facebook 12 years after parting as children, when Hae Sung reaches out to her. After some time, Nora says that she wants to stop communicating "for a while." But she never tries to reconnect with Hae Sung. Twelve years later, Hae Sung tells her that he is coming to New York and would like to see her. Nora never once initiates contact, and as far as we can tell, she never would have.
And see this interview with the director in which she notes that the film was inspired by an incident from her own life:
The movie hinges on the concept of “inyeon,” a Korean word for “destiny” or “fate,” the idea that every human interaction – no matter how deep or fleeting – was preordained in a previous life. In actuality, when Song’s friend came to New York, her feelings were only platonic. But Song is quick to point out that inyeon doesn’t just mean romantic love.
“My feeling was, ‘This is a really incredible level of inyeon.’ That’s really what I was feeling,” Song says. “He knew me as a 12-year-old, and because it was hard to keep up our friendship in adulthood, the conception of me and him never evolved. On the other hand, my American husband doesn’t know anything about the 12-year-old because he’s never met (her). He’s seen photos, but it’s not really real to him. So that was primarily the feeling, like: ‘Wow. Neither of them know what the other person knows.’ “
Gdanning
2yr ago
According to Freddie deBoer the movie is laughably heavy-handed.
It might be; I have seen the trailer and based on that I would not be surprised. But in that piece, he describes Past Lives as being about "a woman’s struggle over whether to stay with her husband or leave him for another man," which it absolutely is not. Whatever the male lead's hopes might be in that regard, the female lead shows no interest in kindling a romance with him. That really casts doubt on his judgment about film, especially in a piece about lack of subtlety in film, given that "Past Lives is about a woman’s struggle over whether to stay with her husband or leave him for another man" is the most unsubtle take ever; it is what the audience might expect the film to be about, but in fact it goes in a completely different direction. I agree with him that it is somewhat overrated; it is good, not great.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Seems unlikely, given that the two border issues are not remotely analogous to one another, a fact which is no doubt quite obvious to them.
Gdanning
2yr ago
You're missing the point. Obviously, Israel has existing plans on the shelf for invading Gaza. Just as I am sure they have existing plans on the shelf for invading the West Bank. And I am sure they have wargamed both many times.
The point is that step one of the plan is certainly calling up reserves, massing troops, pre-invasion aerial attacks to degrade Hamas capacity to defend itself, etc, etc. It isn't "chase Hamas into Gaza at a time dictated by Hamas, using only the troops that happen to be available at that time ," which was OP's proposal.
Gdanning
2yr ago
First of all, it’s true that there are many dads who will more or less advise their sons that “crazy bitches are always the best [fucks]”.
The only advice I got from my father was, "Keep it clean as a whistle, or it won't be blown."
Regardless, surely the "crazy" in "crazy bitches are the best" refers to a different phenomenon than the "crazy" in "don't stick your dick in crazy." As you note, the latter refers to women "who obviously seem to be mentally imbalanced." Doesn't the former refer to something else, such as a woman who is wild or a member of a subculture like punks or goths?
Gdanning
2yr ago
I do think they goofed by not invading Gaza immediately, as if they were in hot pursuit.
It is my understanding that a successful invasion requires a great deal of preparation.
Gdanning
2yr ago
+1
Here is where again I reference value rationality:
Value-rational behavior is produced by a conscious “ethical, aesthetic, religious or other” belief, “independently of its prospects of success.”6 Behavior, when driven by such values, can consciously embrace great personal sacrifices. Some spheres or goals of life are considered so valuable that they would not normally be up for sale or compromise, however costly the pursuit of their realization might be. The means to achieving these objectives might change, but the objectives themselves would not.
The term value-rational does not, of course, mean that the values expressed by such behavior are necessarily laudable. Indeed, the values in question may range from pure pride or prejudice (vis-à-vis some groups or belief systems) to goals such as dignity, self-respect, and commitment to a group or a set of ideals. Likewise, value-rational acts can range from long-run sacrifices for distant goals to violent expressions of prejudice or status.
Gdanning
2yr ago
My understanding is the recent ancestors of the present Israelis bought the land from willing sellers fair and square, whose tenants were evicted when the new buyers wanted to move in
That seems a bit over-simplified, to say the least.
That's why the left is pro-Palestinian
The left has generally been pro-"national liberation" for decades, so there is no need for some sort of special explanation re Palestinians.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Does this argument seem like it would hold up in court?
Presumably. The federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed in response to an analogous case, Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), which held that the state could punish a person for using as part of a religious practice. The federal RFRA does not apply to state laws, but Kentucky has its own RFRA
Gdanning
2yr ago
its own apartheid ethnostate
I dunno. Jews apparently make up only 73% of the population of Israel and the United Arab List became a member of the coalition government in 2021. If they are trying to create an ethnostate, they aren't doing a very good job.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Gdanning
2yr ago
The holocaust took place when Germans were being killed in the millions and civilians were starving in the hundreds of thousands.
The Wannasee Conference was January of 1942. German armies were still besieging Stalingrad a year later.
Apologists for genocide and other mass atrocities always claim that they are necessary for self-preservation. That doesn't mean anyone has to believe it.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Now someone may counter by saying that it doesn’t matter how much material prosperity you may have if you don’t have political rights and “freedom”, defined in some nebulous way that aligns with how westerners think of it. Except that empirically, people behave in the complete opposite way, gladly sacrificing those things for higher prosperity.
Except that empirically, many people also gladly sacrifice prosperity, or even their lives, in an effort to obtain or preserve civil rights and, more importantly, the dignity that recognition of rights entails. Your analysis is way too neat; it fails to explain, among other things, the actions of the Hamas fighters who died in the attack; surely, if they valued prosperity above all things, they would be pushing for the recognition of Israel's right to exist, or staying home playing video games, or doing anything other than risking their lives. It also fails to explain why people ever quit jobs when they are treated in a way which they consider unjust. Nor even why people will often refuse to patronize a store with the lowest prices, but rudest employees, in town. Nor why some people choose to sacrifice income and comfort to live in rural areas where they are left alone.
Not all actions are instrumentally rationality; there is such thing as value rationality as well ["Value-rational behavior is produced by a conscious “ethical, aesthetic, religious or other” belief, “independently of its prospects of success.”6 Behavior, when driven by such values, can consciously embrace great personal sacrifices. Some spheres or goals of life are considered so valuable that they would not normally be up for sale or compromise, however costly the pursuit of their realization might be."].
Bottom line: Whether Arabs in Israel are "better off" overall simply because they have greater material comfort is a normative question that has no single correct answer.
Gdanning
2yr ago
No, just like Israel doesn't count the jews killed by other jews wrt the conflict with Palestine
I don't understand the relevance, unless you think there is some sort of race war going on in the US.
are you still going to pretend that 20 = 500
No, I but I am going to "pretend" that 1200>500. I am also going to "pretend" that 1200 people in a country of 10 million is equivalent to 42,000 in a country of 350 million.
Gdanning
2yr ago
To put that in perspective there are no state run military programs that try to avenge the loss of white lives
The data clearly show that whites pose a much greater threat to white lives than do blacks. So, I assume you support a state-run military program against whites? And, of course, there are all the black victims who are killed by black perpetrators. I assume you support a state-run military program to avenge those victims? (I kid, of course, since I actually assume that you don't).
But, of course, your entire premise is bogus, because we do have state-run programs to avenge murders, and other crimes, as incarceration numbers clearly show.
Gdanning
2yr ago
As the Court noted in DC v. Heller, the "militia" referred to in the Second Amendment is not an army, nor any other sort of organized military group, but rather "'all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.'" As it also noted, the Constitution gives Congress the power to "call[] forth the Militia" and to "provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress."
So, yes, the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to own weapons for the purpose of fielding a fighting force,* but, no, it does not protect the right of an individual to raise a private army.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Give up. Most human beings are apparently incapable of distinguishing between an empirical issue and a normative issue, and most people who post here are very much not an exception, in my experience.
Gdanning
2yr ago
- That is not the point. The point is that if treating Iran as an enemy is truly about serving the interests of Jewish people, one would expect that Jewish voters would reward candidates who treat Iran as an enemy, and punish candidates who seek reconciliation with Iran. Yet, the opposite happened.
- If you now want to distinguish between Zionists and Jewush people, fine. That is obviously true. But you made a claim about an ethnic group, and Zionists are not an ethnic group.
Gdanning
2yr ago
And yet, strangely, the vast majority of the voters who are members of the group in question voted for Obama. And against Trump. It's quite the conundrum.
Gdanning
2yr ago
The author of that Nation piece, Chalmers Johnson, was a former professor of mine. He was hardly a leftist.
Much of that true, but also not quite on point. DeBoer's claim was that the movie was about a woman trying to choose between two men. Yes, Nora has an emotional bond with Hae Sung -- they were childhood friends after all -- and she might even find him attractive. But there is very little evidence that she ever considered being with him, because they are of different worlds (a big theme of the movie is immigrant identity, and it is very significant that she left Korea at age 12, whereas he never left) and because, and this is the major theme -- she is no longer the person for whom a relationship with him is a particularly attractive option. Hence the discussion of that being a possibility only in a future life.
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