The problem is that people can map fictional resistance movements onto opposite real life parties. In my college poli Sci class, both I (a known lefty) and the most conservative guy in class excitedly supported the idea of showing V for Vendetta. I guarantee the January 6 guys thought they were in an underdog resistance movement.
A witch cursed Alan Moore to have fash mouthbreathers relate to his work.
Considering what I know about Alan Moore I’m 50/50 on thinking this literally happened or is just a useful metaphor.
But he wrote like that so it’s to be expected, a lot of his stories are ‘what if I retell crazy right-wing fantasy but make the hero kinda lefty a bit’
I think it really shows just how vast the different realities people live in truly are, and how often those individual or collective realities don’t really align with actual reality. The human mind is great at convincing an individual that their biases are the truth, when they can be extremely far from it.
Which poses a fun philosophical question: if 90% of a given population perceive something to be true, does that make it reality?
first one must define reality… if by reality you mean being alive and interacting with the world, then beliefs, even if going against fact, affect reality.
Which poses a fun philosophical question: if 90% of a given population perceive something to be true, does that make it reality?
The question isn’t all that philosophical, and the answer is yes, for those people.
I actually have to disagree with this. They are the underdogs. Democrats and traditional Republicans are the establishment. Just because you’re a resistance movement doesnt make you automatically good. Castro led a resistance movement and now it’s a dictatorship.
You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain…
I can assure you the jan6 criminals thought they were fighting for the good of the planet. I heard nothing of the changes they “almost” made and how their innocence was going to win out. Coworkers are fuckheads, had zero clue.
It’s all about the story and how it’s told. They chose to believe, poorly.
I guarantee the January 6 guys thought they were in an underdog resistance movement.
While blasting RATM as they tried to subvert democracy.
One reason for this is these shows don’t tend to show the morally questionable things a resistance has to do to be able to win. So it’s a lot easier to side with the resistance in Star Wars when they’re just fighting conventionally against the empire. I think a much better depiction of resistance can be seen in Star Trek Deep Space Nine with the Bajorans. They fought the Cardasians in a guerilla war which often led to civilians on both sides being killed. It’s a lot more murky but the Bajorans are still unequivocally viewed as the good guys since it was the only way to resist and get rid of the Cardasians and stop them from killing their people.
They blew up the death star! That was full of people. Thousands and thousands of soldiers and engineers, pilots etc. We all cheered. Id say it was pretty morally questionable.
Isn’t the death star specifically a military spaceship? You can’t just choose not to fire at a battleship just because there are engineers who won’t personally shoot at you in it.
I’ve had this argument with people before. It was a military installation so a viable target by the rules of war, you don’t need to be a combatant to be in the military. Even when they upgraded to an entire planet as a weapon they still only ever show military personnel being located there. Meanwhile the empire demonstrably killed civilians when they blew up entire planets.
Of course it’s all a bit arbitrary because people have just decided for themselves that it wasn’t purely a military installation, and that it had civilians and children onboard, even though they never showed that.
I think you can blame Star Trek for that view. TNG often showed families about the Enterprise whereas the original TV show was strictly ‘military’ in function. I’m old enough to have seen the OG Star Wars in theater, the Death Star was purely military. Anyone that died on it was a soldier.
A slight older real world conflict that people are forgetting was the Irish Republican Army vs the British Army. Lots of bombings that killed civilians by the IRA. The Brits tried to not kill civilians, and they mostly succeeded. But they were still often viewed as the baddies.
Revolutionaries are very often a morally dark group. They are often willing to go above and beyond to justify killing to achieve their goals. But historically sometimes, it appears to a necessary thing to do so.
Edited for extra words - drink more tea before typing I guess
yes. it’s akin to blow up an aircraft carrier.
It’s not a space ship, it’s a space station. Obi Wan says so. Yes, it’s a space station that flies around like a ship. Why does that not make it a ship? Fuck if I know, ask George Lucas.
They blew up an enemy military ship that had already destroyed a peaceful planet and was in the process of killing them.
Nice try
Which presents the dilemma perfectly. Decision to destroy the planet was made by a higher-up, thus do all Death Star “employees” deserve to die?
We aren’t speaking about employee in an hydroelectric dam. Even if both took part in an the economy of an oppressive system, one give electricity, the other mass murder. If they do not agree with, they think that taking part in this crime give them more chance than deserting.
Whenever You Gamble, My Friend, Eventually You’ll Lose.
They are military, not employees. Fair game.
Depends though doesn’t it. Was it conscription or voluntary. Some of those military were forced to join the empire or have their planets blown up. Obviously many were zealots but im sure if it wasnt for vader, many of the soldiers wouldnt have joined.
When it comes to people being forced into the military is it still fair game?
I can only speak for myself but yes even being conscripted would put you in the fair game category.
If I am given the choice between slaughtering others or risking being shot in the back as I run away, I’m going to take the risk of getting shot.
Someone will now come in and call me a liar and I really don’t mind. I do put the value of others lives above mine on a regular basis. Volunteer firefighters do it every day.
[Edited to remove unnecessary crudeness. Old habits die hard.]
No, the Empire only recently gained the ability to blow up planets. No one joined under threat of their planet being blown up.
And yes, conscripts are fair game. Unless they A) rebel against their commanders and/or B) immediately surrender. As long as they keep running the death machine, they are culpable.
Only a sith deals in absolutes!
They are serving in the Empire’s Army, so yes. Despite the fact that they were conscripted. If they didn’t want to be killed, they should have organized a massive uprising against their leaders and surrendered the Death Star to the rebel scum.
And Mr Stevens, the head of catering.
You know Mr Stevens?
Geoff Vader said he could kill him with a tray.
RIP.
Yea but it’s never mentioned ! Might have well been an unmanned satellite
Well, it certainly wasn’t a moon!
😂😂😂
Great film. I always considered the contracters to be closer to slave labourers. The empire took prisoners, if personal politics would get in the way then a laser gun would surely convince anyone unwilling to help.
a lot of em were just contractors
The Palestinian struggle is one source of inspiration for the Bajorans. It boggles my mind when I read comments that ‘Bajoran’ episodes are boring.
I love the Bajorans and their struggles, both externally and within their own politics and religion. I think most people who got bored with the Bajorans were just hoping for more battles against the Borg.
They might’ve even been turned off by the focus on religion in the first place. Roddenberry was famously outspoken against religion (due to rejecting his upbringing). I think TOS and TNG went pretty far towards cultivating a large audience of atheist and agnostic fans. Many of these would’ve been pretty turned off by the depiction of religious characters in anything but a negative light. When you go from being raised religious to being an atheist who rejects all that, it’s hard to walk back to being neutral or open-minded about religion once again.
The Palestinian struggle would get more sympathy if Hamas wasn’t involved. Hamas is delighted with the high civilian death toll because of the backlash against Israel from people who place far more value on human lives than they do.
Fiction SHOULD NOT be equated to real-life.
IRL there are much more complex and serious outcomes which cannot be pre-determined. Hindsight will not save the day as consequences are terrible.
For example, here is some imaginary bullshit that will never happen…
“Things that will never happen for 500, Alex”
<imaginary BS/>
I wish North America or South America or even Europe can setup an Ashkenazi Independent Autonomous Area … perhaps Alsace-Lorraine ? Or somewhere between Poland and Russia ? Any and all Israeli and Philistine citizens wishing to live in peace and harmony can and should move there and re-integrate back into Europe.
Palestinian land should be returned to the original settlers and descendants of those lands since the fall of the Roman Empire.
Hopefully a Joint-UN-led Area of Non-Violence should be established stretching from the Mediterranean to the borders of Pakistan. No “Country” or “Border” or anything. Just Non-Violence DMZ. Any weapons or violence will be considered Death-Sentence through International-Court-for-War-Crimes.
<end-of-imaginary BS/>
We can all dream up solutions that all sound good, but IRL isnt like that. Things dont happen as they should or as we want them to play out.
In the Americas? Shouldn’t people in the Americas be returning the land to the indigenous Americans and returning to the homes of our European ancestors?
By the way, the last place my grandmother lived in Scotland was turned into a Tesco. Should I bomb it since I have an indigenous right to my homeland?
If you like to go bombing in Tesco Scotland I am sure the Scottish would be cheering for you as well :'D
Also real life isnt as simple as “return the land to the previous owners who are all dead and wiped out and the remaining mixed descendants are mostly 1/16th or 1/64th or some piddling fractions of the original settlers”
It is easy to ask for Forgiveness rather than ask for Permission.
Imagine if European Settlers " IF you already are on this land , can we get permission to enslave, infect and eradicate you? Please with sugar and cherry on top ?" AND JESUS HIMSELF APPEARED … " Die all you Bigotted, Misbegotten Sons of Satan! " … Just imagine the Vatican and Church of England catching Fire Spontaneously and restoring Christianity to its roots!!!
"Things that Never Happened for 5,000,000 Alex! "
:-D Comedy gold if every wrongdoer got their just desserts instant Karma style ! :-D
So the trail of tears is what sounds good to you.
Hypothetical and IRL are very very different. Other peoples guilt doesnt apply to people who never committed the sin. This is exactly the reason I “made up” a situation and you had to prove my point so adequately. “Things that happened but I never said it had to happen for 500, Alex”.
Also, by your analogue, you consider Europeans as barbaric enough to replicate “the trail of tears”. Dude chill. No one is solving the middle-east by implementing “hypothetical” scenarios. It wont work IRL. So chill out.
Also important: the shows show a very personal narrative about the protagonist enduring oppression themselves. The media does occasionally try to show that, but it’s hard to empathise from a distance with experiences so traumatic.
Also empires are always building super-weapons in fiction and not the railroads/bridges/tax offices and all other boring shit that empires tend to do.
The last ‘super weapon’ to be used in anger was made by the glorious republic (USA) against the Evil empire (Japan). The genocides meanwhile tend to be perpetrated with boring old bombs, shells and blockades.
I agree re: DS9 and SW with the recent but noteworthy exception of “Andor.”
Yeah, Andor did a good job of showing the systemic repression and the agonizing choices the resistance had to make to survive.
We need more gray areas in our stories.
Also though the idea that any resistance is just good people forced to make difficult choices that upset them is crazy - a lot of ‘resistance movements’ are brutal and cruel because that’s what they belive in, Lord’s Resistance Army is a resistance movement against the powerful and so they say evil government - their leader Kony is not a heroic movie character.
Even if like many here you hate Isreal it’s still very difficult to ignore the evils hamas have committed, certainly their leader living in Qatar is not luke Skywalker or Morphius, he’s an awful person who believes awful things.
Yeah that’s definitely not something that’s shown as much in media. The fact that usually resistance groups that do well tend to be the more extreme ones. Probably because of their beliefs they’re willing to fight back in ways other groups wouldn’t which limits those other groups’ effectiveness. And then because the more extreme groups are seen as more effective at resisting the occupying power they end up getting more support from the people than more moderate groups.
But at least in the case of Israel part of the reason Hamas is able to have so much support from the people and power is Israel’s fault for all the terrible things they’ve done to the Palestinians. In media when the evil government does evil things the resistance gains support and the same things happens in real life even if the resistance is also doing terrible things. They’re seen as at least better than the oppressors who are actively killing their friends and families.
What about the Maquis? That’s another side to a resistance. Most times resistance movements accomplish exactly nothing and everyone would have been better off if they just worked with the existing government to improve things. Sometimes it’s just about egos and personal vendettas more than they are about any kind of cause. A lot of people die for nothing.
Other than the Maquis, we mostly tell the stories about resistances that were successful. This serves to romanticize the idea of a resistance and makes people feel that victory for a resistance is inevitable. It’s not. Most of the time it’s just causing death and destruction so that a few resistance leaders can have power over people before the resistance movement fades out.
Nearly every resistance movement ever has been pushed by outside actors. It’s extremely rare for these outside actors to have the best interests of the people they’re supposedly supporting. Countries don’t have friends, they have interests. This aspect of a resistance is rarely portrayed in fiction too.
While I do generally agree there are times when working with the government isn’t possible, much like with what’s happening in Israel. Israel has shown they’re not gonna make things better unless they’re forced to. Sure you can argue the resistance isn’t gonna work and is just a way for the leaders to have power but that doesn’t mean resisting in general isn’t justified. Even if resistance is futile it doesn’t mean that trying to resist is bad.
Israel’s primary motive has always been the safety of their people. Currently there’s Israelis being held against their will in Gaza.
It’s not really all that complicated really. Biden is doing his best to get Hamas to release the hostages, but Hamas just isn’t doing that. Israel isn’t going to just say “I guess it’s fine for Hamas to do whatever they want with our people”.
With the Palestinian resistance, it’s a “you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain” kind of thing. If land was taken from you, sure the people that took it from you have done you wrong. But if you’re using violence because to restore the ethnic makeup to how it was in a history book, then you’re a fascists. Over time it has changed from the first to the latter. They should’ve taken taken the deal offered in the 1990s but they chose to continue using violence instead. So now if there ever is a Palestinian state it will be much worse off than it would’ve been had there not been a resistance. People could be living good lives, their families would be safe living in a Palestinian state if not for this romanticized resistance. As the resistance continues a potential future Palestinian becomes more and more diminished.
This is the problem with the romantization of resistance, and war in general. We have a strange respect for Germans who fought to the bitter end in WWII and we don’t respect Italian soldiers who surrendered at first contact with the enemy. Personally I respect Italians who refused to fight for Mussolini over the Germans who fought to the bitter end for Hitler. Similarly I also don’t respect people who fight for the authoritarian Hamas who are only hurting the Palestinian people.
The world would be a better place if we didn’t romanticize using violence for lost causes under authoritarian leaders.
I’m not arguing that Israel should just sit down and let them do whatever they want. I’m just saying that resistance is justified when it’s clear all the other side wants to do is take your home and push you and your people out. Israel is ultimately responsible for giving evil groups like Hamas support as it’s hard for Palestinians to care about their beliefs when the other side is indiscriminately killing your people and trying to either push you out or treat you as a second class citizen. All they see is a group that is trying to fight against the people doing that so they support it. Cause the only other option is to lay down and get bulldozed by Israel. Without fighting Israel has no reason to care or negotiate, and even with fighting they barely have a reason to care with all the support they get from the western world.
Also it’s pretty clear they don’t really care about the safety of their people. See all the protests against how the government is handling the situation in Israel and the fact that their indiscriminate fighting against Hamas has killed many of the hostages they’re trying to save. It’s just an excuse to expand their control and get rid of more of the Palestinians from the region.
I do agree that the goals of getting rid of Jews from the region are terrible and not possible but the solution isn’t to let them keep pushing the Palestinians out more and more. That would be like saying during the time of manifest destiny well it’s impossible to give the native Americans all their land back cause we live here now so they should stop fighting back and let us take more of their land.
Do you think Palestinians are animals? You’re talking as if Palestinians aren’t responsible for their actions and aren’t capable of making rational decisions. So it seems to me that you think Palestinians are animals and no one should expect them to act like civilized people.
And that’s where we disagree. I think Palestinians are people and therefore are responsible for their actions. What Hamas did on October 7 was a decision they made. They are responsible for that decision. They should face justice for what they did just as any other people in the world would. Because they aren’t animals, they are people that committed a horrible crime.
Ideally the Palestinian people would turn on Hamas and send the leaders of Hamas to either Israel (or the ICJ if they’re capable of considering Palestinians as humans that are responsible for their actions) to face justice for the crimes they committed. But they aren’t doing that. That is a decision they are making. Because they are people making decisions, not animals.
Because of the inability (or unwillgness) of the Palestions to remove Hamas from power, military action is required. At the very least to get the hostages out. Ideally to bring the leadership of Hamas to justice if that’s possible.
I think because you’re thinking of Palestinians as animals that aren’t capable of making decisions and therefore aren’t responsible for their actions you can’t understand the magnitude of the crimes Hamas has committed.
Please make more of an effort to think of Palestinians as people that are responsible for their actions, ok?
No I’m just saying that Israel is more responsible for Hamas than the Palestinians. If Israel wanted to they could stop their oppressive programs and the expansion of their state through settlers. They could take more care when trying to fight Hamas which it’s pretty clear they don’t right now with the number of civilian deaths and massacres that have happened. You’re trying to say instead of resisting that they should try to negotiate, but without the threat of violent resistance if the negotiations don’t go through then what reason does Israel have to negotiate? If there’s no resistance they can just ignore the Palestinians attempts to negotiate or stall them indefinitely while they continue to push them out of their homes. And yes Hamas is bad and them winning wouldn’t be a good thing but it’s understandable why Palestinians would support them when the only other option is to lay down and die. And yes their resistance is probably not gonna stop Israel in the long run, only international pressure and sanctions on Israel would actually get them to stop the terrible things they’re doing. But that doesn’t mean trying to resist is bad cause again the only other option is to lay down and let the Israel state bulldozer over you and your people.
They identify with protagonists.
Also, Divergent should not be on the same list as the others.
More seriously though, it is frustrating.
I have never seen Divergent or read the books. The Pitch Meeting episodes on YT were more than enough
Watching guys shit on things is tight!!!
Yeahyeahyeah!
I read divergent and seen the movies. In some aspects it’s kind of true. Iirc, if you ignore the drama then it’s about exposing the corrupt government.
Counterpoint: I did not watch Divergent.
It was derivative. You missed out on nothing. Hunger games did it way better.
Okay, most of this is fair play, but saying hunger games did it better? You take that back right now.
Divergent just didn’t have the nuance, character depth or world building that the Hunger Games had and I’ll stand by that opinion. The divergent movie was a let down to tbh, the book was better. Still not as good as the hunger games tho.
Is the book version of the conspiracy better? I watched the first movie and thought that the supposedly smart caste was pretty braindead.
It seemed like the entire setup was pretty braindead honestly.
Entertaining enough, but nowhere near plausible enough to really get invested in the story.
Same with Hunger Games, honestly.
Hunger Games depicted revolution’s harsh but necessary sides in a realistic way, and that elevates it above all other YA I’ve ever read. Granted I stopped reading YA novels after 16 but still.
Katniss has a real personality, real desires, and loses things because she (thought) she decided to lead a revolution. Only to find out that she wasn’t in charge at all and only a figurehead at best, and herself became a victim of the revolution. Nonetheless the revolution was absolutely necessary.
The world of the Hunger Games is much bigger than the teenage protagonists and that’s… missing in most of young adult fiction.
That’s why The Hunger Games was successful I believe. They treated the audience not as children, but as adults who can consider complex ideas. They just want to read about people their age. Most YA considers their audience as little more than hormone filled idiots.
I didn’t watch either. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. There are so many other excellent dystopian films-
Brazil, Children of Men, Blade Runner, Logan’s Run, Gattaca.
I guess I prefer such movies that aren’t YA-oriented… although the BBC TV adaptation of The Tripods back in the 80s was amazing.
Oh yeah. I take offense really at the implication that I would have watched it.
Complicated problems do not have simple solutions.
Life isn’t like a movie. A movie has the liberty of making things black and white or easily understood. Real life is full of shades of gray and history, which shapes beliefs and opinions.
Right? I mean I get there are problems in the world, but this post is literally saying “you’re stupid for not joining a resistance (apparently any resistance) because you enjoy movies where the protagonist resists something.”
What an insanely shallow take.
Does Twitter really allow for depth?
Would’ve been more deep to just not say anything, tbh.
OP’s take is above grade.
Incorrect. This post is literally saying exactly what it’s saying and nothing more. That’s what “literally” means.
What it’s implying is that the reader, who supposedly rooted for oppressed proletarian resistance groups fighting against evil empires in various famous movies, contradictorily and blindly roots for evil empires oppressing proletarian groups in real life.
Because this is fiction, where there is good and evil, right and wrong, the good people are rewarded and the bad people punished, successful people earned it and the poor deserve it, and complex problems have simple answers. Where every argument only has a pro and a contra.
But we are living in reality, where most things are in shades of grey, and everything is more complex than it appears. People have to make decisions based on partial knowledge, to not get stuck in indecisiveness. Where even the middle ground solution might be wrong. And with so many distractions and propaganda.
Just be kind and understanding to other people with different ideas, the real world is a complex one, and easy to get lost. Sometimes people like to flee into their simple worlds of populism, maybe through talking and listening we can help them find their way again.
You watched starship troopers and sided with the humans… Oh wait…
You watched die hard and sided with the terrorists. Join the resistance bois
FOR MANAGED DEMOCRACY AND SUPER EAAAAAARTH
/c/helldivers2 is leaking again
Turns out siding with the resistance in a movie doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t have the potential to have your family tracked and killed by the state. It doesn’t have the potential for you to end up even worse off than you already are.
A lot of people side with their own resistances in the real world, but there’s a reason all of the resistance fighters in the movies are beaten-down, destitute people. They’ve got nothing to lose. We’ve still got our bread and circuses, so we don’t have the fight.
It’s often even simpler than that. Most people are really, really bad at predicting consequences and rarely even worry about known potential consequences if their emotions are in play. People will jeopardize their whole family routinely to scream their political passions, and this is for one reason only: they have connected with the storyline.
People who watch movies and go out and wave flags and go to protests often have one thing in common, which is they have emotionally connected with the struggle. The conservative right in America is very, very good at publishing a super-simple and well-integrated storyline into politics so that’s why we have the same people who dressed up to watch Wrestlemania and denied that it was scripted, now running around the US countryside in new costumes, waving new flags.
The people who are protesting genocide and authoritarianism and discrimination are the people who have a personal connection with the story, they have followed this from the beginning and know what’s at stake. The people on the other side have no connection and are letting a more entertaining noise guide their feelings. It’s our sad human nature, that to mobilize we need a selfish motivation to get anything done and all 8-billion of us will just sit on our fucking hands doing fuck-all while the world literally burns around us before we will make a stand, the whole while looking at everyone around us for a cue how to act and what to do.
I don’t like blaming us humans too much. I do it too but fo real a lot is being asked of a species that are evolutionarily, literally the same dirty monkeys who stumbled out of caves. Nothing has changed in our guts. We are all “unfrozen caveman lawyer”.
We like to think we’re smart, but that’s not our strength. It’s our communication, our ability to combine strengths and abilities to shore up individual weaknesses. This, our greatest strength, has been co-opted by interests who have spent a great deal of time learning how to manipulate opinions.
Years and years of advertising data go into think tanks who then spend their whole work day trying to figure out how to push our buttons to get is where they want. These bullshit artists are paid to do this, why would we poor dirty homo sapiens have a chance?
It’s not our fault, this is what society looks and sounds like when every level of discourse has been co-opted by a rich fuck who bought the only bullhorn.
a lot is being asked of a species that are evolutionarily
Oh I fully agree, we’re trying to process a world of instantaneous communication, rapid transportation, industry and production and complex political lines drawn between 8 billion people… with a brain designed for surviving the ice age. This is why we’re all having so many mental health problems, this is why suicide is a climbing epidemic. Our brains are trying to help us survive a world that it has no tools inherent to it to navigate.
Ice age brain has no idea how to handle having access to billions of different voices at once, it will naturally retreat to what feels most safe and makes most sense, no matter if it’s connected to reality or not, because the brain doesn’t want a logical, sensible world, it wants a story that connects how you feel to what’s going on around you. The story doesn’t even have to make sense, just slap some wrestlemania villains and heroes into the mix and we have crack cocaine to the brain’s desire to simplify the world around us.
But I have to blame us because we’re the only thing that can save us. No help is coming. AI or aliens or Jesus are not going to appear suddenly and guide our whole species to a better place. We HAVE to start taking responsibility for our world, or what will be left of it in the coming decades.
The conservative right in America is very, very good at publishing a super-simple and well-integrated storyline into politics
One thing those not-on-the-right in America are bad at doing is crafting a narrative. People want to vote for better, but the not-on-the-right only seems to offer the status quo. (Honestly, it’s a global phenomenon. See France’s snap elections for the latest iteration.) I feel that if they offered a vision of the future that people could get behind other than “Office Space for everyone, everywhere, forever” there would be a lot more enthusiasm.
Conservatives have a very convenient narrative they can use: The Hayes’ Coded Turner Classic Movie America is the “Great Again” they’re trying to make America. They can just point to the highly sanitized and glorified days of the 80’s and earlier as a tangible goal.
If the not-on-the-right could offer a clear, coherent vision of a future where people don’t feel like they’re getting ripped off I think they’d do better in elections globally.
so that’s why we have the same people who dressed up to watch Wrestlemania and denied that it was scripted, now running around the US countryside in new costumes, waving new flags.
but the not-on-the-right only seems to offer the status quo.
Liberalism by definition is the political stance that any problems can be addressed using existing systems and power structures. Our nation has been run predominantly liberal for a very long time, and that’s why it’s so hard to get anything done. People like the status quo, even if they can imagine something better, nobody wants to change things if they’re even moderately comfortable.
That’s not what the definition of liberalism is at all.
Liberalism is a political and social philosophy that believes in individual rights, equality, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise. Liberals do support revolutions when the system that is being overthrown is illiberal, such as a monarchy or dictatorship.
Liberals simply don’t support the Marxist idea of a “permanent revolution.” Revolution always gets a lot of people killed, so they should be few and far between. Furthermore, revolutions - especially idealogical revolutions - run a very high risk of being coopted by brutal opportunists who cynically exploit the idealistic revolutionaries to gain or retain permanent dictatorial power for themselves.
Right now, there’s no guarantee that a revolution would result in something better. History shows there’s a very good chance that revolution will kill a lot of people and lead to something much worse.
Furthermore, our current system has a successful track record for slow yet steady improvement. But it’s always two steps forward, one step back - at best. Sometimes there is backsliding more than one step. But history shows that the current system can be used to move forward again… So there’s no reason to throw it all away, risking a much worse replacement.
Good write up. Thanks for that. Very well said.
Thank you.
I like V for Vendetta but i cannot watch the end of the movie where the crowd just walks through the police without thinking “never in a million years would it go down that way”. I do know it gets a bit visually metaphorical there at the end but scoff!! Scoff i say!
You watched Batman and sided with a billionaire
I think there’s nuance here. Most of us side with Batman because we side with ideals and a desire for good. Batman represents, in a broken way, what good can be, and the cracks in his character let us relate more with him. This happens out in the real world too. Those with money, who take that money and the time/effort to help others, are less hated. Ever deepening shades and shadows, humans rarely truly operate on black and white.
Those with money, who take that money and the time/effort to help others, are less hated.
Are they really though? They got that money by stealing it - over charging customers and under paying workers. Thieves who return a small fraction of what they stole to the people they took it from are not altruistic.
Yes, they are.
But…
It’s a very thin line. They may be less hated, they are not less trusted.
Just the multimillionaire, but it’s hard not to take Morgan Freeman’s side when he’s onscreen.
People side with Batman because he wears a cool costume, has cool gadgets, and delivers funny one-liners while he beats up cartoonishly evil bad guys. Not because he’s a millionaire.
whilst people side with neo purely due to their shared philosophical suppositions?
No, they side with Neo because he’s relatable, they’re on his side long before the Matrix is revealed, much less the philosophical suppositions put forth by the series.
No one ever watched “Divergent” come on now
Or hunger games /any of the new Disney kids Star wars movies.
Do you not remember how big the hunger games were?
Things don’t have huge backlashes with irate fandoms if there’s no one watching. They have to watch to get disappointed.
I actually have met a concerning number of people who idolize The Empire in the original Star Wars trilogy. The one who was always loudest about it willingly moved to Florida recently and is turning sadly right wing. He used to be a super smart punk rocker, too.
That’s strange since the movies don’t really try to give The Empire any redeeming values. It’s pretty literally and figuratively black and white.
But The Empire has a better costume department. …Man I guess I’m in.
Hugo Boss!
If Star Wars was indeed a long, long time ago, that brand has some serious staying power.
Better costumes, better toys, no restrictions on the use of force power (can choke out anyone you like).
Let’s face it, Darth Vader is one of the coolest villains of all time. Tons and tons of kids who grew up on Star Wars fantasized about being powerful like him and choking out their enemies in the schoolyard.
Ever since I was young, you know, I hated dissension.
Among my peer group, it caused a whole lot of tension.
When the other kids were slouching, I would stand at attention.
And I’ve always looked so good in white.
My best read on that phenomenon is that a few people took the discussion from Clerks a little further and started arguing as a joke that the empire were just trying to establish order as. They started r/EmpireDidNothingWrong, where irony-poisoned kids began taking the joke seriously, just like the people who legitimately believe the whole “birds aren’t real” theory.
Unfortunately anti establishment scenes always attracts right wingers. Like how the Skinhead subculture, which was started by British working class leftist teens, was co-opted by Nazis. Or how those wellness moms and hippies became virulent antivax right wingers.
These people often don’t even know they are right wingers until these oblivious right wingers form critical mass. Not very surprising that a punk rocker became a right wing idiot.
Are they independent contractors?
Worse, an AirBnb landlord
Through victory my chains are broken. For the Empire! In all seriousness though, it’s fictional space fantasy. When I was a kid, watching the OG trilogy, I always supported the rebels, but as I got older I slowly became way more into the empire. Sometimes it’s just fun to root for the bad guys. Also the dogmatic nature of the Jedi becomes glaringly more obvious as you get older.
The Republic turned on and tried to assassinate the democratically elected leader because of his religion, and because they didn’t want to stop all the wars Republic was constantly fighting, supporting crime syndicates etc.
The fucked up part is that the right wingers think they are the resistance. And that the liberals are the evil empire trying to take over everything.
It’s like if the rebellion in Star Wars was fighting and sacrificing to get the emperor back in power.
Just the latest in a long, long list of things in the real world that would be too stupid to put in a work of fiction.
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Lol, is this dude a right winger? I just assumed lefty commie based on the rhetoric. Clearly we need to lower taxes on the rich to solve the problem.
Never ask a man his salary, a woman her age or a neo classical economist what tax breaks for the rich doesn’t fix.
Clearly we need to lower taxes on the rich to solve the problem.
This is what’s literally been happening since the early '80s. So far it’s not working out very well. And all those dipshits who want to roll back our country to the “Great Again” 1950’s and 60’s don’t seem to realize that that is when we had the absolute highest tax rate on the wealthy in the country. It was at almost 90% marginal tax rate.
But no, you think what’s holding them back from spending their massive wealth is that the government is taking too much right now. 🙄 What a joke.
I’ve seen some of my left wing friends and right wing friends post this meme, thinking that, of course, they are the one who sees the obvious.
None of those who have posted it are particularly smart.
Yeah, my first thought was “What side is he talking about?”
Is it normalcy resisting fascism or fascism resisting normalcy? Yeah the system needs changing but sure as fuck not from a fascist dictatorship built on lies and attacks.
We need to start a resistance movement against this meme.
Yep. It clearly illustrates their lack of understanding how nuanced politics and social issues are. If it’s that easy on TV, it should be so easy in reality, right?
He’s so right. Free Puerto Rico!
Hooo boy. Try saying that in PR. Some of them want statehood, some of them want to stay a territory, but I’m not aware of any of them that actually want to leave the US.
Are there any advantages to the average resident to being a territory vs statehood?
I understand the advantages of being part of the US vs not being part of the US, but are there any drawbacks to statehood?
https://raginithewriter.medium.com/pros-and-cons-of-puerto-rico-becoming-a-state-e2c15ddac230
This seems to be a fairly neutral analysis of the situation. I don’t believe that the tax and debt points are actually cons for PR, as much as the greater US. I do see the potential for loss of culture to be a potential disadvantage to PR. Economically it’s kind of a no-brainer on their part.
They might be looking at how native Hawaiians are treated in Hawaii
