This reminds me very heavily of what I wrote last year regarding how I believe that movies like Knives Out are basically trying to implant progressive "brain worms" into people's heads, to kind of overwrite their perception of famous people:
The movie just seemed like a pulpit for Rian Johnson to talk about how much he hates Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and various other people. I almost feel like the entire plot is really the secondary goal. The main goal of him making this was to implant and grow a brain worm in the audience that every famous rich person is connected, really part of a cabal that got what they got through no talent of their own, took advantage of individuals and the world at large, contribute nothing, and are evil, vile, worthless, and bratty pieces of shit.
And here
The redpill manosphere streamer character also doesn't really fit Rogan. Rogan of course didn't 'lucky break' his way into prominence, he had a lengthy career as a comedian and hosted mainstream TV shows before starting his podcast.
This is all a part of how I think Johnson is trying to implant brain worms. It's not the truth he's written, but people will walk away from this feeling like they understand Joe Rogan and Elon Musk better, even though they're just watching fictionalized versions of them. They'll feel inside like they can just write them off as well-connected lucky backstabbers. Whether the characters are actually similar in deep ways to Rogan and Musk doesn't matter, because they're the first people who will come to mind for the general populace when they see this movie, due to their cultural prominence.
I haven't noticed this blatant trend so much these days, but maybe it's because I simply am checked out of modern media and the culture war.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
I feel like any life script involves people going into a dominant industry. It would have to be known for years that this industry is up and coming or well established enough that it can accommodate everyone at good salary for their entire lives. I know that I personally want to instill the value into my kids that they when they come of age, they should have a good look at the world, consider what are the major dominant fields, and get a degree that will help them get a job in a dominant field. Doing this drastically reduces the luck required to be and stay gainfully employed. I know too many people with English degrees who have far too much trouble finding work, or finding work that pays more then $50k/year. Also, any industry where the labor market it demand-driven is going to make employees more comfortable, whether we are talking about salaries, benefits, or even just the leeway to not have to be "on" all the time.
For the boomer generation, I'm tempted to say that this dominant field was education. For whatever reason, I know a lot of teachers from that generation. And I certainly know that they were paid much better then teachers are now, including amazing benefits and pension. However as we all know, education generally no longer offers benefits like that and no longer offers even middling salary.
For our generation, perhaps the dominant industry is software. Of course it's possible that now software is under threat of no longer being able to hold this title. There are fewer jobs, lots of layoffs, lower salaries, and everyone feels under threat. Perhaps this is what happens when the boom is over and an industry is no longer dominant. In which case, I only hope that there will be a new dominant industry that springs up so my kids (or even I) can feel like there's a new, safe way to have our lives be supported.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
I think this is an interesting topic. I try not to believe in conspiracy theories much, but sometimes complex systems can take on aspects that seem like conspiracy. One thing I'm wondering about, and I'm not sure if anyone would really know the answer here, is what incentives do the experts who are telling us that everything's great have for telling us that? What incentives do they have for telling us that things are not great?
Here would be some guesses, but they're really just guesses. I know nothing about these systems and positions, and I don't even know who the "usual suspects" are, besides the Treasury Secretary and/or former Treasury Secretary who you listed above.
Incentives for telling us that things are great:
- if people believe it then it's more likely that Biden will get reelected (though this sort of then raises the question of whether these experts are incentivized to get Biden reelected. I know little enough about the system to know whether that's the case either way)
- avoiding panic that could lead to more crisis
Incentives for telling us that things are bad:
- if things are truly bad, and they tell us things are great, people will lose trust in them as an institution
- if things are truly bad, then they can start enacting policies to make things better
Any other incentives people can think of?
haroldbkny
1mo ago
The court has sought to lower the political temperature as a primary goal
Do you mean the current Supreme Court? I don't follow much SCOTUS news in general, but I thought that people felt that this court was doing the opposite of that. They had two landmark rulings within the past two years that both pissed off leftists, hard: Dobbs struct down Roe in 2022, and last year they overruled affirmative action.
Could you clarify? I am likely just not understanding what you mean by political vs partisan, or by political temperature.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
I haven't read A Princess of Mars, but I watched John Carter last year, which I understand to be a fairly direct adaptation of it. My wife thought it was too hard to get into given the strange world building, but I thought it was a super fun adventure romp. I didn't know the history going in, but I remember thinking "wow, this is practically ripping off Flash Gordon, almost scene for scene".
Needed more Queen, tho.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
I definitely don't disagree that he should not have gone into Iraq, and probably not Afghanistan, too. Uhh, I was responding in the car and maybe I got your post mixed up with another one at a similar time, also about Bush and how he responded to 9/11, when I said it was more academic.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
Just to make my point clearer, I don't necessarily think that Bush needed to parlay 9/11 into attacking Afghanistan, and definitely not Iraq, and I don't think there was universal support for those specific actions. But I think to simply ignore it, as @AhhhTheFrench said, was out of the question. Where I was (in the blueish-purple part of northeastern US), it was basically a given that he had to acknowledge the loss and try to coach the country through it in some way, swear vengeance, and at least try to go after Al Qaeda in some fashion.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
This truly sounds more academic than realistic. I think it's well easy to say what you might have done in a perfect hypothetical world, but actually leading the country, and leading the country through such an unprecedented, harrowing event is another thing
That is so unrealistic. No one would have stood for that. Maybe you weren't in America at the time, or maybe you weren't even born yet. But trust me it was a harrowing experience well before Bush said anything. No leader would have simply done nothing in response to an unprecedented attack of American citizens on American soil, and if he had, no one, not even most of the people on the left would have stood for him.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
The "with" in that sentence was intentional - I'd say there is ample evidence that the post contains a sentiment that could be summarized in that way, not that the sentiment is all there is to it
This seems to me that you're backpedalling. Your original phrasing was
with a sentiment amounting to 'DAE leftists are whiny bitches?'
To "amount to" something means:
to add up to, be in total, be equal to, or be the same as
Therefore, by saying my post had sentiment amounting to "DAE leftists are whiny bitches?" you were not saying that my original post had that tone. You were saying that my original post was entirely equal to "DAE leftists are whiny bitches?". As I said verbatim above, that was "not the sum totality" of my post.
Furthermore, I think that saying things like:
It feels like the left, or at least the leftists in my life, are taking an infantile tactic
is actually a very gentle way of putting it, and I was attempting to convey my point while still maintaining detachment. If I wanted to be less, detached, I would have phrased it as "they're being crybabies", or if I wanted to be "egregiously" inflammatory I could have even said things that were far worse.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
Please do this, I'd love to read it!
haroldbkny
2mo ago
For me, for example, leftist seething is a plus. I enjoy it. I don't care about national unity. It is not one of my preferences. I like the political tensions and the rage. For me it's a plus of Trump. I like right-wing seething too
If that's the case, is this really the best forum for you to be participating in? It sounds like your values and the values of this forum are fundamentally at odds.
Infantile seething is not just a leftist thing.
No arguments from me here. But for whatever reason, I expect more from the left, and the fact that they've devolved in this way from previously having the moral high ground (in my previous estimation), taking everyone around me, and no one around me seems to be willing to acknowledge this, really drives me nuts.
It is worth noting that the liberal elite/centre-left establishment/Deep State/Blob do not have the same kind of hate-on for Reagan that they do for Bush Jr and Trump (and, as far as I am aware, never did - although I was too young to be following US politics when Reagan was in office.) For example, Reagan usually comes slightly above average in historical rankings of Presidents by academics.
That's interesting. I will say that it's hard for me to determine how much the left (in various factions of the left) hate Reagan, and this is probably because I wasn't around then. But fairly often, I hear people positively hating on him in what seems like an irrational way. I may be weighting those cases too heavily.
Finally, you noticeably did not threaten the original poster with a ban, despite the open egregiousness there.
if "next person who makes a top-level post with a sentiment amounting to 'DAE leftists are whiny bitches?' eats a ban" (and actually following up on it).
What open egregiousness? I admitted I probably could have phrased some things better, but "leftist whiny bitches" is clearly not the sum totality of my post, and I was honestly not trying to be provocative. I actually want to discuss whether the currents/counter-currents situation leaves any actual options for non-leftists, and I think that merits discussion.
FWIW, I agree that it doesn't make sense to mod @KnotGodel's question.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
takes you away from the rest of the thread to a "you are looking at a single comment's thread" page
Yes, I do find this annoying. I don't mind so much the "(+) 3 more replies", when it actually does work and when it also doesn't direct me away from the page.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
I mean, they don't have a vitriolic hatred for Bush sr.
That could be true. I honestly don't even know enough about him and his term to say one way or the other. I may not know enough about him either because he was just bland and forgettable, or maybe because the left didn't hate him as much. Or maybe the left didn't hate him as much because he was bland and forgettable?
haroldbkny
2mo ago
I really hope you are right! But... "fool me once". I've seen so much that strikes me as going past the point that I ever thought our society would go, that has shattered my notion that logic and reason can win out over mob mentality spurred on by the media's desire to push a juicy story. And it kept coming back again, and again, and again. It was not one year ago that I had coworkers sharing with me the joyful news that Trump was indicted for the whateverth time, as if I care or want to talk about it.
I really wish you are right, but I'm afraid that we're just in a lull right now.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
Wet-market origin has been discredited at this point - COVID was almost certainly leaked from a lab doing Gain-of-Function research.
Can you cite proof of this? I wouldn't mind being able to prove this to some people I know.
I don't really know your politics (because I can't keep track of people's username over time), but from this thread, you seem to lean progressive. However, I don't know your particular politics and how progressive you are, so this may be a gotcha and it may not be.
But I'm wondering how you feel about things that feminists may consider demeaning to women, such as fantasy depictions of violence against women, or women in skimpy outfits, etc. I don't know what the party line is these days, but 5 to 10 years ago, people were falling over themselves to denounce a plague of violence against women in media and video games, on the basis that this normalized such depictions, ultimately causing more violence against women or more unrealistic beauty standards, not less. Anita Sarkeesian made a career on this, there were protests against movie ads that feminists found to be unsavory. Overall this sort of thing seemed to be one of the biggest issues of last decade.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
I'm not a Bush fan, but if I were to try to say:
- He managed the country without it dissolving or getting destroyed. I know this may be a low bar to some, but I don't think it is. It must be the hardest thing in the world to be the president
- He rallied America after 9/11. Getting the nation through that, and stoking feelings of patriotism and solace, and trying to get people to believe that they're actually safe in the face of the most unprecedented event in American history is no small feat.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
I guess when I said
Is there an explanation for Reagan?
I meant to be asking why so many leftists seem to have this vitriolic hatred for Reagan to this day, to see if there's an explanation besides just "they'll have vitriolic hatred for any Republican who's in power".
So are you saying that the left to this day hate Reagan because he actually had sway over the populace, and he managed to shift the country right?
haroldbkny
2mo ago
Ah, yeah, I guess. Sorry! I wasn't really thinking about it on that level, just expressing my thoughts/frustrations.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
I guess not. But I don't exactly respect them, either. But I do sympathize with some of their frustrations.
most on the left will blame Trump for not having a strong response in the early days of Covid where we could have maybe actually headed off the worst outcomes, and for letting his party fall into turning COVID into a partisan issue where it was impossible for any policy to fight it because half the country would disobey
This to me sounds pretty strongly like the perception-of-reality-warping whining that leftists did under Trump (see where I talk about it here). Trump needed to do exactly what the leftists told him to do. When he didn't do that, the leftists got everyone to believe that Trump was the one making a partisan issue out of it.
Just because it's happened before, does that mean it's good to do? I love Citizen Kane and think it's an amazing movie, but would I feel like it was crossing a line if I were of the time period when William Randolph Hearst were a prominent figure? Maybe.
I also know that Citizen Kane is clearly driven by an artistic vision, more than just character assassination. I don't know if it's something I can quantify, but I can tell you that Knives Out is no Citizen Kane. If someone is trying to tell a great story and that happens to be inspired by someone real and portrays them in less than perfect light, that's far different than specifically trying to make something just to make them look bad and pander to a political audience.
One way perhaps this can be measured is in how sympathetic the movie is to the character in question. Charles Foster Kane was clearly a sympathetic character. We were taken along for the ride with him his whole life. Even if he is a ultimately a tragic figure, he is still a great figure, and one that we can understand exactly what happened to him and see ourselves in his shoes. When Knives Out portrays Musk and Rogan, there is no sympathy, and they're just portrayed to be incompetent, bratty, lucky, talentless backstabbers, and we are made to feel like only the most wrong hearted and selfish people could ever end up like them.
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