• Kernal64
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    7020 days ago

    It’s astounding any living thing which is that deeply stupid can survive to adulthood.

  • ArgumentativeMonotheist
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    6120 days ago

    Every so often I wonder how people could be so stupid and/or heartless to bring the world to where it is today and then I see an American tweet something outstandingly silly/inmoral and I remember, lol.

    Also, Americans use the word “political” to mean ethical nowadays. And whenever they recoil because you said something like “hey, wars for profit are wrong” or “gay people shouldn’t be killed just because they’re gay” and ask you to stop being ‘political’, they’re just admitting they don’t stand for anything, no self-restraining rules nor lofty ideals. This is why the Nazis could also go as far as they went: “just follow the leader and I too will succeed, I don’t believe or stand for anything except what has been told to me and I’m a good boy for following”. They want/got the bag, and fuck you, basically.

    • @theparadox@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Also, Americans use the word “political” to mean ethical nowadays.

      A certain segment of our population has been told to equate words like “political” and “woke” with “That person is saying or doing something that might influence someone about something I’ve been told to disagree with”.

      It’s incredibly horrifying how quickly this same segment of the population has been conditioned to view the rest as “weak, sensitive, entitled weirdos who can’t handle even the slightest criticism without seeing it as a existential threat” while simultaneously being conditioned to throw a tantrum when anyone takes an action to support something they’ve been told they should disagree with.

    • @tryagain@lemmy.ml
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      1920 days ago

      Americans use the word “political” to mean ethical nowadays.

      This is wonderfully succinct and I will be stealing it, please and thank you.

    • @GooberEar@lemmy.wtf
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      1219 days ago

      Every so often I wonder how people could be so stupid

      Most of the world’s large predators are extinct or on the verge of extinction. Interpret that how you want.

  • @guywithoutaname@lemm.ee
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    5319 days ago

    Really there’s nothing that’s not political in some way. Politics is the expression of human wills and desires and people tend to say something is political when they disagree.

      • @grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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        1119 days ago

        Yuppp. It’s basically like admitting you like the present ideology, and just don’t want to think about how life could be better.

    • @Belgdore@lemm.ee
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      2419 days ago

      Literally. Politics is all about the power dynamics between people. If there are two or more people there will always be a power dynamic even if the two are on good terms and do not exert power over each other.

      It’s like how you can always describe the color in any given painting, even when the painting is monochromatic.

    • @modeler@lemmy.world
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      1419 days ago

      Woah there, that’s leftist woke propaganda, talking about human wills and desires. I was brought up apolitical so I’m sensitive to these things - I can only vote for the Republicans because every other party is just too political.

      /s

  • @Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    This is sort of wrong, though. lucas has said he drew inspiration from all the tiny country vs. giant empire fights - american revolution, vietnam, the winter war, Yi Sun-Sen’s defeat of Japan, etc.

    Vietnam was the most culturally prominent in the US, but beyond the superficialities (little force defeats big force) the stories don’t really track at all. Like: there was no deathstar moment, there wasn’t even a single decisive victory (the US just got sick of the meatgrinder and public pressure overcame the political will to continue). The US also wasn’t defeated then replaced New Republic style, the NV weren’t going it alone in their fight against the empire and nobody threw Kissinger off a cliff at the end (mores the fucking pity),

    He drew ideas from a LOT when writing it; presenting it like it was inspired by a single event is pretty disingenuous.

    • @Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world
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      820 days ago

      Lots of good points here. It would have been cool if Star Wars had a more complex geopolitical (galactopolitical?) environment, including more instances of multilateral politics.I feel like this was touched on in the prequels, but it still kinda boiled down to “good guys vs bad guys.” The general audience will get what it wants. That’s how markets are supposed to work.

      Still, I feel like it was a missed opportunity to have a politically complex sequel rather than just dialing up the space-wizard lore. We could have also gotten some more complex characters rather than just bad guys or good guys that change at the end. People are way more complicated than that.

      It probably would have been better if Warner Bros. Had acquired the IP rather than Disney. I’d watch HBO Star Wars all day long. I get why that wouldn’t work for their marketing position, but it would have been worth it to me to hear an Ewok say, “Yub yub, motherfucker” before offing the imperial officer that burned his village.

      Also, we learn that Tibbit the Ewok has a bad glowroot problem, wasn’t entirely faithful to his partner, Nubni, and was a bit of a negligent father. His character doesn’t really improve, but he does save the village. The resultant fame nearly destroys him, and he goes back to spicebark farming with his toxic affair partner. The Alliance turns out to be as oppressive to the Ewoks as the Empire, but they have better PR. The other Ewoks label Tibbit as a traitor for protesting the Alliance he fought for. Ewoks boycott his spicebark. He loses everything. Grikk finds his body, glowroot seeping out of his mouth. Clutched in his lifeless paw is a child’s drawing. It was the one Grikk gave him on Father’s Day over a decade ago. Tibbit had yelled at Grikk and thrown the drawing away in an intoxicated rage. That was the last time Grikk had seen Tibbit. To think he had dug it out of the trash and carried it for ao many years. Grikk held his dead father’s paw with tears in his eyes. “Yub yub, Dad. Yub yub.”

      Okay, Shakespeare it’s not, but tell me if it’s worse than any scene in the sequels.

      • @Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        I could certainly believe it, there’s lots of parallels. Dense jungle forest, ancient ruins, small brown… natives…

        … hey wait a minute.


        Really though I could believe it. I was only commenting that the idea all of OT star wars was an allegory for vietnam is a stretch. The existance of allegories in the OT is totally reasonable.

    • @Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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      419 days ago

      One could make the argument that the Death Star is a stand-in for nuclear weapons, as literal weapon of mass destruction. There was notable political push to use nuclear weapons in the Vietnam war

      This was not too long after there was notable political push to use nuclear weapons for heavy excavation and similar engineering purposes. Thankfully it was never actually performed since the results would obviously have been devastating

      • @Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        Man, I know everyone was doing cocaine basically continuously in the 50s/60s but even for that era Teller was one coked up lunatic. His plan to “deflect earthquakes” by burying a mesh of nuclear weapons across basically the entire west coast has gotta be my favorite. Just absolute insanity.

  • Lovable Sidekick
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    19 days ago

    Close to kind of getting it - Lucas has compared the empire in Star Wars to both the American empire during the Vietnam War, and the British empire during the American Revolution.

  • @andros_rex@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    I wonder why BioWare was pressured to cut out so much of Juhani’s content in KOTOR. I don’t think that was a BioWare decision - Jade Empire and Mass Effect both had lesbians. I’m not really willing to give George Lucas rainbow a lot of rainbow points.

    If Finn and Poe’s chemistry had been allowed to blossom naturally, I think the sequels would have been much better. The attempted “theme” of “it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can shape your own destiny” just would be so much better if the story had been about Finn’s growth and reconciliation with his past work for the First Order. Then you don’t have Rose (and the subsequent ridiculous internet harassment that poor actress received) and the aborted character/subplot.

    You can even do Palpatine returning, just have it be more like the Thrawn clone shit. Less Jedi stuff, more people stuff. You’re even copying the structure of the original trilogy that way - Rey is off doing her Jedi training stuff, while Poe and Finn are on related adventures that lead them to growing closer and closer.

    Like I’m 99% sure the actors for both characters have even said that they agreed with the fact that those characters were needing each other.

    • @chaogomu@lemmy.world
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      719 days ago

      I’m not denying that Finn and Poe had an interesting chemistry, I just think that Poe should have stayed dead.

      The lingering question of what could have been would have been a way to deepen Finn’s character.

      And if you want to keep the actor, well. When Poe comes in to land after rescuing Finn and the group, his first words to Poe are “why are you wearing my brother’s coat?”

      And now you have another interesting character dynamic to explore.

        • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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          318 days ago

          That might be because it’s right: War is an instrument of politics just as taxation, law enforcement, welfare, or diplomacy. They are each employed to achieve political goals.

          To a politician that should sound darn obvious because political goals is all they think about, it’s the generals and soldiers that need to be reminded of it because it influences the way war is fought, can be fought. As an example, in that rough section of the book (it’s been a while) Clausewitz goes on to explain how total war is impossible: For a people to have the will to fight they have to fight for something, and if there’s nothing to fight for, no civil life, no tradition, no nothing, only war, there is no will, any more. If fascists would read and understand him they’d realise why their politics, “war for war’s sake”, are inherently self-destructive. Difference between Stauffenberg and say Goering.