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Notes -
Newsom basically calling for a boycot of Target.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/did-governor-newsom-spark-target-boycott-among-liberals
So he’s not too happy that red tribe has learned how to cancel something. I think we are approaching a day where you have to declare your allegiance. Red or blue.
I usually don’t like Balaji and think he’s a smarter hack who knows how to grift, but I think he’s right in this thread
https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1659094966671425536?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
And Scott had a thread about how pride is just like every other cities holiday posted recently. I can’t find it.
America seems to be in a religious war between two cultures now. A couple years ago red tribe didn’t know how to wield power. Desantis has done that highlighted by his war on Disney and grassroots red tribe found their first success with Budweiser. Twitter going Musks was an obvious red tribe move. Jan 6 and Trump overall was a movement that hadn’t found their real leaders who could use power.
I don’t think religion is that strong anymore on the right. I say this because there is a lot of tolerance for Trump being not a Christian. He bangs hookers. So red tribe has an internal sub-war between their traditional alpha male and their good Christian Desantis.
I do like Scott’s metaphor of this being a time like when Christianity took over the Roman Empire. No one believed in the old pagan gods anymore. And I think blue tribe would have won this but they made two crucial mistakes:
The movement doesn’t have a great place for males. Who have always dominated every society.
The trans movement has a lot of vibes of backward religions. Getting kids to cut themselves up and change their bodies has a lot of vibes of practices we long since banished.
We haven't banished genital mutilation for boys for religious reasons enough. And don't get me started on elective surgical double mastectomy.
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You can't declare red tribe allegiance... you'll be sued into oblivion for discrimination and permanently locked out of being publicly traded lest ESG type stuff immediately tank you and force your board to resign.
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The "success" was only successful because of a combination of two factors that don't generalize. First of all, switching costs for beers, and time to switch, are very low compared to almost anything else. Second, enough people felt insulted by the campaign that they could exert financial pressure without coordination or institutional capture.
That's almost never going to happen and would be impossible to set up on purpose. (Note that the second criterion requires more than just "a large number of people feel insulted".)
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Its pretty lulzy to see Target, the wokest retailer in the game, to be targeted by the left for mildly walking back a "trans the 5 year olds" campaign. If you can't shop at Target as a progressive, you are basically left with HelloFresh and Gucci.
As a progressive myself: lol no. Nobody gives a shit about target, except as a target for punishment for defection.
Target is as late capitalistic as any other retailor in the country, and their human rights record is as bad as anybodies.
So you shop where exactly?
Wherever I want. I personally boycott nestle products on account of the slaves and the death squads; but that is vanity.
Ethical consumption is impossible under capitalism.
So you intend to drop your consumption drastically?
Assuming you live in a first world location, this should be easily doable- the world average is to live on $11,000/yr, a fairly low income in first world countries.
I already do, and it is also vanity.
I do it because I want to because it is morally correct, but it isn't activism and it isn't actually doing a god damn thing to solve the problem.
Only liberals believe that individualistic vote with your wallet bullshit; the right and the left both know the actual score.
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The moral implication of this statement is "consume as little as possible" not "do whatever I want". And it is possible to consume very little.
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Ah, yes. The phrase that gets trotted out whenever people want justify breaking with their alleged principles because they want to buy X.
Instead of dismissing it out of hand, please consider for 45 seconds: my +/- couple hundred dollars a year means jack shit. I've been 'boycotting' Walmart and activision and bunch of other late capitalistic hellmouths for a decade, and yet they still somehow persist. Hence: Vanity. It is the donating to salvation army of political activism.
Pretending buying or not buying something is some sort of activism is just self delusion. The only solution to the problem is political, hence and so forth.
They aren't dismissing it out of hand - it isn't really a reflection on you anyway if you still boycott things despite the futility. It's just really common for people to 'realise' their boycott is useless when it gets in the way, because they aren't thinking about their principles (which are why people boycott even though it's futile).
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Religion isn't very strong among the intellectual right (i.e. places like this), but look a little closer at the Target kerfuffle. A lot of the outrage isn't just because they have a pride display with trans-marketed clothing. It's because they had satanic imagery.
A whole bunch of church ladies who have been awful quiet the last couple of decades are going to get a whole lot louder if wokeness dies and leaves a cultural power vacuum.
This Newsom stuff is exactly what I was talking about a few days ago when explaining why it would be bad for Bud Light to put out a statement repudiating trans ideology. The right controls the rednecks who buy beer yes, but the left controls the regulatory apparatus that all companies are beholden to. They control the managers who run the company. They likely control a majority of the shareholders who own the company too. A right-wing boycott will hurt sales. A left-wing boycott will destroy the entire organization.
I wouldn't think that concern about satanism is the domain solely of church ladies- plenty of people who don't, themselves, go to church very often and are not particularly moralist understand themselves to be definitely on the side of "with Jesus and against Satan".
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This one?
Ya that’s what I wanted to include instead of spending an hour finding it I figured some one else would.
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Gay Rites are Civil Rites.
I don't think that's totally true, but I do think the place it holds is incompatible with what Red Tribers would consider desirable.
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I don't have a great model for either the Blue or Red tribe versions, here, so this will be very much motioning in the sense of blind men and an elephant sense. And this is a sphere where there's always a bunch of exceptions and special-cases.
A lot of Red Tribers have a variety of claims that the Blue anti-'toxic' masculinity is broad enough to eliminate all masculinity, both negative and positive, and as a result that this destroys a lot of ways to be successful male. The joking-not-joking extreme tends to go to references to orchidectomy, either in the trans sense or the Lance Armstrong one or the connected eunuch ones, but the not-joking bit is kinda relevant given the aftermath of Comment 171 (especially the reactions to conversations about it, even from 'Good Feminists'). There are more serious analysis of things like heterosexual relationships and norms being constrained by a lot of Blue Tribe norms, but it goes far further than 'just' sex: they can point to everything from meeting norms to leadership styles to family rearing to financial planning to house design being framed and opposed over real or perceived chauvinistic norms or drives or expectations.
Some of this is reading intratribal social or sexual conflict as something deeper, and a lot of the proposed space doesn't actually work that way (eg, 'Livestrong' and the doping scandal, I expect that in the next ten years or so we're going to find a lot of contact sports start getting the football treatment 'absolutely by coincidence unrelated to' trans stuff). Some of it's a reaction to feminists who make a lot of hay about toxic masculinity with only fleeting and often empty references to any non-toxic variant (I will again point to Serano, but that's mostly because she's unusually disappointing rather than unusually bad), but at the same time when the progressive movement says they want to dismantle patriarchy, increasingly reframed into kyriarchy, they're not exactly lying or even necessarily wrong! There's a lot of downsides they can pretty readily point toward when talking about the 'traditional' or actual traditional frameworks for dating or leadership roles, of domination, so on. At the less steelman end, spaces where 'white cis straight guy' is a self-demonstrating proof and end of argument do exist, even if they're not actually about (and sometimes even come from!) white cis straight guys. Officially, there's no wrong way to be a man, but in practice there's actually quite a lot of wrong things to do in general that just so happen to be male-coded.
Those Non-Toxic Masculinity frameworks tend to be pretty vapid or empty, but a lot of Red Tribers find them objectionable beyond that: even people who aren't one of Ozy's "five guys in Ohio" can end up liking the 'cage' of masculinity more than the empty structurelessness, either because a lot of its fixtures are things they can strive toward, or because they like being around people who match some or more of those traits, or because they find a lot of the bits they don't match pointless and focus on those they do. There's a copypasta Zontargs had from reddit, about how this was "a crayon-colored world filled with ball pits, crying low-testosterone manchildren, ponies, furries and ugly transexuals", and it's not hard to come up with reasons why this might disappoint people who want a mancave filled with sharp power tools, stoicism, and Hooters-brand chicken wings.
But even if you deny the progressive framework and consider Masculinity the only way to be a man, it's not the only way to exist as an XY-chromosoned non-trans person. And if you actually poke too hard from inside progressive spheres, there's actually a ton of the anti-masculinity stuff where the practice ends up with a lot of not-straight, non-cis, non-white, and/or non-men on the receiving end. As I've pointed out, no matter what the claimed goals are, here, there's not a lot of places for the "crayon-colored world filled with ball pits", either The real crux is...
I dunno. I want to say something insightful about bubble wrap, or the crab-pot mentality, or the last men inventing happiness in a smaller world, or bugmen or whatever this is, but not only are these descriptions vague and contradictory and kinda a grab-bag of grab-bags of disliked traits. They are all descriptions, and that itself is kinda running headfirst into the pothole, here. The very nature of being a categorization group and focus drives objection, whether it's tabletop grognards or history nuts or My Little Pony or Rick and Morty fans or model railroad enthusiasts or pro-/anti-shippers or what have you. This is a joke or meta-commentary, but it's not exactly off, either.
But this isn't a prohibition on living, or even doing noteworthy things. Obviously there's a ton of exceptions with little more principle than 'whatever I like is ok', and a ton of other taboos and standards and rules and not-quite-explicit-or-consistent landmines, but there are people who succeed without getting milkshake duck'd. Even within the principles themselves there is an Ideal Male Form: it's just more of a humble auteur with a lot of superstitious-seeming taboos and habits.
But this is also pretty repulsive to a lot of the Red Tribe. Trivially, a ton of the actual taboos and habits and landmines are the centre of the political disagreements, and just as trivially a lot of the aesthetics are appalling, and there's a lot of arguments about what extent the practical result is good or not, but the bone of the problem far beyond any practical or pragmatic limit is that it's just not what a lot of Red Tribers want. For all a steelman of the progressive perspective might say that "destroying the kyriarchy" doesn't prohibit you from being traditionally masculine so much, in the short term tearing down a cage with the people inside it doesn't look like a great extension for the metaphor, and sometimes the metal bars end up being support beams.
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Men are doing pretty bad in blue-dominated society dating-wise, but economically they seem to be doing okay. I've seen it thrown around that the female majority in universities is actually the economic equilibrium in a society where half the population goes to college. Men are physically stronger and so have the option of choosing a blue-collar of manual-labor career. Women pretty much have to do intellectual labor (or marry a rich husband) to be successful. That requires a college degree.
This is an argument I've seen before, but it doesn't make much sense to me. Group X has the option of choosing low-status low-pay work, which group Y hasn't, and so Y is condemned to going through the hustle of high-status high-pay work.
Consider the following:
This seems to me to have exactly the same structure as an argument, but it's completely ludicrous. Am I missing something here?
Peasants and aristocrats do not differ much at base biological level(and when they do it is in favor of the latter), women and men do. Still, in the modern service economy there are enough low paying low status jobs that don't require physical prowess nor degree. Most often women constitute majority in them.
I probably didn't choose my example wisely. The issue I was trying to get at is the following: you have a group Y whose outcomes seem objectively better than another group X's, but still, this is presented as an advantage for X.
The flipped version is likely prostitution. Men who are down on their luck can't sell themselves. Woman who are down on their luck can (to some extant). This is an extra option for women, but it's generally not an appealing one, so isn't seen as an advantage for women.
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A lot of these blue collar jobs are not actually low pay(although, say, electricians are lower in status than many worse paid white collar professions). For men skipping college has the potential to turn into a well paying career, although there’s obviously washouts and blue collar workers in general make less than white collar workers.
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I thought of it the other way around: due to higher conscientiousness (in adolescence at least) and agreeableness, girls will do better at school - at least up until grad school - and this gives them the pick of what they study. Due to higher interest in people over things or ideas, plus somewhat higher Big Five Neuroticism, females tend to prefer the humanities and social sciences, as well as jobs like teaching and HR, even when these don't pay well, because they are relatively secure and very people-orientated. Insofar as women aren't smart, there are people-orientated jobs in retail, childcare etc.
This leaves everything else for men, whose choices are also influenced by the way that certain subjects and jobs become coded as "girly". Insofar as men are smart, they can end up in relatively well-paid jobs that aren't fun and which are maybe insecure. Insofar as they aren't, there are jobs where they can do better if they're strong and/or well-coordinated. If a man isn't smart or strong or well-coordinated, things start getting very tough.
I have been through grad school and its academic extensions. One interesting factor is that, as the conscientiousness gap narrows in people's late 20s, and very high agreeableness becomes less of an advantageous trait (your supervisor might even like it if you respectfully disagree with them) the competitions among men and women become more even. Obsessive interest in the subject becomes more important, which tends to be an advantage for men in thing and idea orientated subjects. For various reasons, women still have an advantage, including in the academic job market (I think partly because entry-level jobs in academia are mostly about being nice, compliant, caring, and diligent) but the hyper-productive young academics that I know are almost all male. So you end up with e.g. men publishing more and women having an easier time getting opportunities to publish.
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I see the Trump bit as alliance, and not really endorsement. It’s not that religion isn’t strong, but that they’re not powerful enough to win without allies who share their goals. Religion has what it always does — jihad. Religious groups tend to be much more likely to go scorched earth, to be willing to give up everything for a win. Everyone else has a price. The business community will stop when it becomes clear they’ll lose their money if they continue. People seeking power will align with the winning side eventually.
And I think what’s happening on the right is people learning to use social power effectively . They know that they can cut woke down at the knees by cutting off the money. They know that if they can make sales drop 20% they get the behavior to stop. They’re no longer afraid of the beast before them. I’m not sure that the woke are going to do as well as people think they will. They’re used to calling the shots with little opposition, and simply getting their way. Businesses aren’t going to be nearly as eager to anger Americaners as they’ve shown that they can turn the screws equally as well as the left can. Which, depending on what wokies do next could make the thing shift.
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On Trump:There was a very obvious tip-toeing going on with Trump and Christianity during the 2016 campaign. I wouldn't call the disposition of Christians to him a decline in their religiosity or a change of faith since that would place Christianity and religion in general on a pedestal it doesn't really occupy.
Being a 'good Christian' was always just as much about showing allegiance to the ingroup as it was about actually being a good Christian person. You can be accepted, as an outsider, to the ingroup as long as you demonstrate respect for and allegiance to it. Which is what Trump did. There's no hand of god involved with this. It's just ingroup/outgroup bias.
As for the boycott thing: it's an exciting change. From a broad perspective it seems like, to some extent, the American system has, though from a narrow populist standpoint at best, worked. As an example, white nationalism 2.0 was killed off in its infancy. Banned from all platforms. And to this day any resurgence or reinvention gets a very similar treatment. From an idyllic and naive standpoint, the 'system' was corrupt in that instance. But red tribe conservatism was to some extent left to live. Aside from the massive anti-Trump thing, and in part because of it, red tribe conservatives managed to fumble their way into organizing on Facebook. And from there, luck their way back on Twitter.
You don't need all that much meme power to appeal to a group of disgruntled folks who have been left politically marginalized for a long time. Remember the TEA Party? I mean, most of the chest pounding group affirming rhetoric had been relegated to a loser like Glenn Beck. Every other conservative avenue for proper group formation got strangled dead or acted as controlled opposition, at least in my lifetime. Caring more about 'respectability' than winning. But now there seems to be a soft resurgence of the red tribe conservative movement that is, to some extent, free of the mainstream media right.
Maybe I'm tying too much optimism to this. There have been multiple iterations of this old dog called 'conservatism' growling back at the leg that's kicking it. It's never amounted to much of anything. Assuming this will be different is naive. Especially since the whole 'gay' thing is a red herring for more unfixable issues like mass immigration, which has already 'doomed' the country. But having a common enemy is always a good baseline for organizing. Maybe the rainbow colored flag can act as a unifier for the red tribe as well. I certainly wouldn't mind the dog getting a good bite out of that sadistic leg before it finally gets put down.
The Tea Party Saga is one of the most interesting bits of recent political history. It provided the emotional oomph, revitalized the power of the far right bases while also giving Christian Nationalism social legitimacy among the south.
Considering the 2008-2011 election eras had so much going on, it's almost worth a look to revisit those years and show how bald-faced the democrat party were in the dirty tactics they used in order to establish power. While you see on democrats side, people crying about the right wing being conspiracists or whatever, a close examination of the events of 2008 - including the Democrat takeover, and the resulting fatalism of the conservative party, as the republican fat cats were happy being the performative losers while letting the democrats steamroll over them...
The way the Dems shat on then-Senator Palin for 2007/8, spreading some of the nastiest misogynistic shit about a woman who chose to have kids... And then watching democrat voters justify the shit they said about her after the fact.
As we gear up for a new election year, it's going to get downright dirty.
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Well, regarding Trump, Christianity is not a religion of “living up to an ideal”, but finding yourself continually dying to one. Trump banged his favorite porn star, but 90% to 99% of Americans have spent more hours than that watching porn, and this is the selfsame sin of lust according to the Lord. The secular charges of religious hypocrisy were always, well, hypocritical. They have no understanding of the religion, which is all about man’s inability to live up to ideals. Hypocrisy for a Christian is only when you harshly judge someone [by way of exclusion / social punishment / consequent] for committing an infraction the same significance of which you commit. Hypocrisy is when someone criticizes Trump for having money when they themselves would never give theirs away, or when they tweet about his privilege from a cush cubicle at their parent’s company. Hypocrisy is not saying “this ideal is good”, but saying “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers,” while nurturing equal sins in your heart.
I seriously doubt enough women watch porn on the regular for this to be true. Not that I care much about the larger topic (squaring Trumpism with the religious right is not a fight I have a dog in since I'm just like "A pox on both their houses!"), but that jumped out at me.
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Yeah, and Christianity is generally okay with sinful, imperfect men being used as instruments to spread the word of God and advance the cause.
I mean, look at King David's reign or King Solomon (he of 1000 of h̶o̶o̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ women) and tell me Trump is really beyond the pale.
Problem is every group wants to tap into religious fervor and the fanaticism/loyalty that comes with a deep faith that you're doing the right thing, but nobody can present a leader who is capable of actually embodying the ideals that the religions (including the secular ones) profess so it becomes hard for anyone but the most ardent of adherents to actually buy into a movement that can't possibly deliver on its promises because there is no all seeing all knowing deity at its center to actually make things happen.
You can look at Trump and see him as a charlatan who talks a great game and maybe even is an extremely strong negotiator but has zero actual principles and no higher goals in mind other than enriching himself and bolstering his own fame.
You can look at the LGBTQ+ movement and see it as a divisive and somewhat incoherent mishmash of different interest and activist groups that at best manages to be a pale echo of the original civil rights movement but has no other core, defining belief system and thus they only manages to cling together because the members have been convinced that their very survival depends on presenting a unified front.
But you can't shake the faith of the followers of those respective secular religions and get them to turn away and embrace a different religious order merely by pointing out how their respective gods have utterly failed them.
Desantis, speaking somewhat cynically, seems to have a chance to actually live up to the ideals he tries to espouse and thus might function as the head of a secular religion (with Christian trappings) where even the less devout might pledge to follow.
But many competing groups (including the Trumpists and the LGBTQ+ mentioned already) consider it blasphemy to even consider lending him support, so I'm very curious to this election seasons develops in the midst of increasingly fanatical cults of personality.
Desantis actually does live up to it a great extent. I would guess 30-70% of motte posters have a higher net worth than him (I think it’s around 300k). Probably 90-95% at his age.
I only see 2 areas where he is failing. He expanded the death penalty. True pro-lifers are against that. And it’s a harder argument to make but I think he’s not following his beliefs on Ukraine.
I predict that support for abortion and support for the death penalty have a strong negative correlation. Do you predict the opposite or is there some other meaning to your claim?
That’s true. My point was a true religious person would be against abortion and against the death penalty. All life is sacred.
Only in so far as you can abolish the civil state can you abolish the death penalty, and I think you'll find many zealots don't make Christian Anarchism a priority.
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Which is my position, as a Catholic, and both fed the other: if I don't think even a vicious, sadistic murderer should be executed, why would I think it's fine to execute a child in the womb? If there is a right to life for the unborn, then the right to life applies to all humans.
I've held this position for decades, which is why all the "hypocrites! you support the death penalty!" smarming by the pro-choicers never had any effect on me.
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No, some not-insubstantial portion of religious Catholics and smaller numbers of ‘liberal’ protestants(I don’t just love this term, but I haven’t heard of a better one) hold that view. Almost all other Christians hold that abortion and the death penalty aren’t directly comparable because their acceptability hinges on totally different questions.
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See my reply to sliders.
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Admittedly I’m speaking from a Catholic perspective and tend to have view other sects as make it up as you want Christians. Being as Catholics are the preferred faith for pro-life Supreme Court justices I think I am correct in saying true pro-lifers are against abortion and the death penalty. And Catholic doctrine is quite clearly against both.
The death penalty is one of the few areas where I’m disappointed in Desantis and believe he’s doing something for political game versus true beliefs.
I hadn't realized that DeSantis is a Catholic so I will cede your characterization of him in particular as not living up to the ideals he professes in that regard. I think your insistence on using "true pro-lifers" to refer to the Catholic position is obnoxious but there's no point in an extended argument about a label.
It’s probably obnoxious.
Honestly how did you not know Desantis was Catholic? I have a more obvious Italian last name but that’s still looks very Italian to me.
As I think about it this morning I wish the church would get aggressive and ban him from communion over his death penalty stance and make him apologize. It would make them look more honest when they talk about doing it with Biden.
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With the partial exception of Barrett, the catholic pro-life justices are not notably more anti-death penalty than they are pro-abortion. ‘Consistent life ethic’ is clearly a minority position among intellectual Catholic circles in the US even as it’s a politically correct consensus view.
They are not in communion with Rome on that issue. As someone who went to the same school as ACB and who went to pro-life marches a person who is Catholic first would be against the death penalty. The evangelicals have always been anti-abortion pro death penalty vibes but I don’t think an intellectually honest (most people aren’t) could view life as sacred and take that view.
But I also think the old slur about a Catholic politician having to bend the knee to Rome is true. It’s what makes us undesirable POTUS to most but very desirable for the Supreme Court when Rome and a political movement have an agreement on an issue.
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I can say that I don't actually agree with everything he's done, and would actively oppose a few measures.
BUT... I can absolutely follow the logic for the actions in almost every case, even if I don't find it sound. That is to say he's not acting arbitrarily, he is not acting on pure ideology (not implementing policies solely to boost right-wing cred) and there's at least a good case to be made that the policies he implements will produce outcomes that align with his goals... even if there will be undesirable side effects.
And I've honestly reached the point where redditors and lefties have written off the state as a fascist hellhole that nobody should visit... and I say GOOD. If it makes those sorts of people move out of the state and prevents more of them from moving in, if they FEEL unwelcome even though the state is quite willing to accept them, then that's a side effect I can tolerate.
Indeed, the idea that it is absolutely fine to make policy decisions that will cause people to avoid your state may be the single best 'innovation' he's come up with or popularized. Laws with minimal impact on the average citizens but that nonetheless drive activists and extremists away (without, we'll say, actively discriminating against them) are probably a net win for said average citizens.
The Disney lawsuits are also a distraction for the left. I see a fair amount of online commentary about how DeSantis is an idiot for picking a fight with Disney which has the lawyers and money to crush him, and apart from the cognitive dissonance of lefties licking the boots of large capitalist organisations which exist to make profits, they're not following the news.
Disney doesn't have the deep pockets they imagine, right now. They're laying off thousands and need to make billions in cuts:
Disney+ streaming service pulled underperforming shows in what's been called a purge. They're losing subscribers, like all the streaming services. There's a whole internal power struggle going on with Kathleen Kennedy and Star Wars (the Galactic Starcruiser hotel shut down after only two years primarily because it was way too pricey for the experience, but also in part because Kennedy insisted nothing from the original trilogy be included, but all her Rey Skywalker movies) and the need for the latest Indiana Jones movie to make a billion, which - going by the reviews after it was shown at Cannes - is going to be very difficult to achieve. Bob Iger, the CEO who came back, laid it all out in the earnings call:
The relocation to Florida being cancelled is being blamed on DeSantis and taken as a victory for Disney - Florida will lose out on all these jobs and money, thanks to the stupid Republicans! - but it's mostly due to the California staff not wanting to move, plus the need to drastically cut costs.
Disney is still big, rich and powerful, but it has a lot on its plate right now and the fight in Florida may not be as straightforward as the lefties hope.
I think there's good reason to not blame Kennedy for everything that went wrong (my understanding is that the original sin of rushing the Sequel trilogy without a set plan was a Disney mandate) but I honestly don't know how she a) was even allowed to make this call in the first place (the only thing the ST had going for it was nostalgia) and b) hasn't been fired for it.
I'm not able to keep up with the number of Star Wars movies by now, to be honest, but around the time J.J. Abrams got the gig I was very surprised, because they seemed to be jumping from one director to a different one for the next movie, and the new guy immediately started contradicting the stuff set up in the last movie, then the next movie contradicted that.
I think people like the original trilogy because (1) they grew up on it and (2) it's consistent. Luke and the Rebels are the Good Guys, Vader is redeemed in death, the Empire is the Bad Guys and at the end the Good Guys win. Simple, exciting, and no "and then they all turned into the Atreides family and started trying to murder each other".
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And 2) She must have some dirt on those in power in that corp or else she would have been fired about 2-3 movie trashfires ago.
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