dasfoo
10mo ago
I think ideally the democrat media would have been more measured and patient, and the temperature on everything could have stayed more reasonable while the professionals did there work
This is really the issue to me. The institution that has positioned itself as the arbiter of partisan agreements no longer does their job with any commitment to the truth.
The reason there are so many unanswered questions about seemingly suspicious behaviors on election night 2020, is that there was never a good-faith effort to investigate those questions. If election skeptics thought something fishy happened at a vote counting center after observers were sent away, the reporting on such a claim amounted to "The people counting the votes said 'No, nothing fishy happened.' Therefore, it was the fairest and most secure election in history." Narrative buy-in won over actual investigating, which was never going to convince the skeptics and only pander to those who wanted the skeptics to be wrong regardless of the truth.
dasfoo
10mo ago
Anecdotally, in the last day I've seen Reddit threads, Facebook posts, and have heard directly from acquaintances who work in government that they worry about their work being impacted. Don't discount the social media effect wherein everyone wants the positive attention that comes with signalling victimization at the hands of the bad man, even before they know if it's actually happening.
The argument previously formulated by these same groups -- "No, it's not happening, but if it is happening it's good" -- is probably a safe fallback response. We can empathetically help anyone who loses their important government job move into the private sector, where their important skills will surely remain valuable.
dasfoo
10mo ago
If you're like Charlie Chaplin, doing it explicitly as a satire making fun of Hitler, it's fine.
Well, yes, Chaplin did satirize Hitler in the 1940s, but he also wore that mustache long before Hitler rose to power, starting in the 1910s.
dasfoo
11mo ago
A friend of mine who is an accountant got sick of living in the Portland area and moved to rural Kentucky where he was able to buy a lot of land. He's been there for two years and can't find any clients in his new state. He's a good networker, but they do not trust outsiders (and, according to him, are largely too dumb to understand what he does). It's friendly but he's not one of them. He gets a majority of his new clients from our referrals in the purpler Portland suburbs and comes out twice a year for in-person meetings.
dasfoo
11mo ago
At what point are Trump's allies tacitly seconding accusations that Trump is an authoritarian and his "movement" a cult of personality, by treating him as though the accusations are true?
Isn't this just all politics during the age of social media? Every candidate is idealized because to show any misgivings is to give aid and comfort to the other side. No nuance is allowed, or else you will be beset by purity trolls who will question your loyalty. It's gross and tiring, but it's the same dynamic that made every Democrat pretend to be all-in on Joyful Kamala within one day and previously pretended that Joe Biden was as sharp as ever right before he obviously wasn't.
Really? It made a huge splash at Cannes last year. The movie podcasts I listen to have been monitoring it for a year now.
But, yes, as a fan of two other Audiard movies, this was total horseshit. The characters make no sense, the songs are tuneless, and the plot is not only stupid but is actually kind of sick -- unless you choose to read this movie as deeply critical of transsexuality as a concept.
The title character attempts two key transitions in this movie: Man to Woman, and Killer to Savior. IMO, both are depicted not only as failures but also as sick expressions of narcisissm. This former drug lord in "her" new life becomes an advocate for the victims of drug lords like "his" former self. It's so gross a turn as to be literally nauseating if one has any empathy for the victims of those monsters. If this transition is to be seen in parallel with the gender transition, how are we then to read the gender transition? That one, too, doesn't really take: Perez is unable to shake "his" past, becoming jealous of his supposedly widowed wife's romantic life and employing "his" old tactics to run the new fiancee out of town. This backfires in a way that also brings the trappings of "his" old world back into "her" new life. The message? One can't escape their nature, and the attempt to do so will ruin the lives of everyone around them.
EDIT: I'll add to this that Zoe Saldana's character operates as the key trans-enabler in this story. She is hired by the drug lord to facilitate the transition. She does it, at first, cynically, out of greed. Later, she sort of falls in platonic love with the woman that Perez becomes, lavish praise on Perez' really groos moral makeover, as if fake tits can erase decades of murder. It doesn't end up well for her, either, at least psychologically. This mirrors how many trans-skeptical critics think about those who cheerlead for transitioning: a mixture of cynicism and myopic self-congratulation.
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